My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  Totalitarian ideologies built on faith collapsed, but the need for faith remained. Even where traditional churches retreat into the background, people look for some kind of replacement for traditional faith. They believe in astrology, in people from outer space, in the miraculous power of a faith healer, in alternative medicine, in karma, in clairvoyance.

  Perhaps surprisingly, however, the strongest faith is evoked by that which faith has always denied: reason, science, and technology. At least in our part of the world, people began to believe in their own redemptive abilities, their own wisdom. Science should be able to reveal and explain the past and predict the future, ensure prosperity for everyone who tries hard enough, overcome illness and finally even death. Lately scientists have begun to experiment with decoding the human genome. More and more we hear in the popular press ebullient cries that man stands on the threshold of immortality.

  People have once again begun to believe in the paradise that science will bring them from heaven.

  Whenever people begin to believe in the attainability of paradise, they usually enter upon a path leading to hell.

  Dictators and Dictatorship

  The governments of two especially cruel dictatorships affected my life directly, but during the same time a Fascist dictatorship ruled in Italy; at the end of the 1930s democracy was suppressed in Spain; a totalitarian, or at least undemocratic, regime came to power in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. And outside Europe? Dictatorships persist today: in Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, and a number of Muslim countries in both Asia and Africa.

  With the benefit of hindsight, people continue to wonder how, in a country with such a tradition of learning and culture as Germany, citizens could voluntarily entrust their fates to the hands of Adolf Hitler and the riffraff that surrounded him. One could say the same thing, of course, about the country in which Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy wrote.

  Usually certain obvious arguments are adduced for a blossoming of such reckless dictatorships: the humiliation of defeat, the collapse of the economy and resulting world economic crisis (which in Germany deprived almost half its working-age citizens of work), the inability to resolve social questions, military traditions, even a fascination with self-sacrifice and death in Germany and conversely the ruminations and popular debates concerning a better society in Russia. But it is obvious that there was something more general and overarching.

  Considerations of national character, culture, or people’s behavior usually substitute the image of society for the image of the elite. Cultured Germans knew Goethe and Schiller (probably not all had read them), perhaps also Hegel and Kant (probably not all had studied them). Certainly some of the educated were acquainted with the German myth of the Nibelungs and might have considered that the meaning of German fate lay thus in self-sacrifice. It’s safe to assume, however, that most citizens in these categories did not consider that most Germans were not knowledgeable about the great German minds, just as in semi-educated Russia most muzhiks had not heard of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Chernyshevsky, Berdyayev, or Plekhanov, let alone cogitated over their works and allowed themselves be inspired to action.

  Who were the people of the twentieth century? How did our lives differ from the lives of our forefathers?

  The twentieth century brought unprecedented technological progress, new revolutionary developments in communication, the automobile, the radio, and the smashing of the atom, as well as new forms of entertainment, which was dominated by the recording of pictures and sound. New heroes were proclaimed. Celebrities of the entertainment industry—film stars, athletes, and singers—replaced the spiritual elite. The twentieth century brought ruin to many traditional values: Religious faith flagged; the village community faded in significance, as did the feudal nobility; and the family started to fall apart. A spiritual emptiness suddenly opened up before humanity. The atmosphere of precipitous development compelled people to ask how they could fill this void. Movement, change, upheaval, the cult of the new—these were most clearly expressed in art. The modern began to disdain tradition, while everything new seemed to be a revolutionary contribution and was showered with praise. What had until recently been considered a virtue, for instance, communicability, clarity, or even an idea, was snowed under by the ridicule of those who saw themselves as adjudicators of art. An abyss opened up between those who considered themselves the creators and everyone else. The tragedy was that “everyone else” made up the great majority. This majority, now deprived of certainties that until recently had provided them with faith—the traditional arrangement of society and generally recognized values (even if most of those values were mistaken)—found themselves untethered. The overturning of traditional values was exacerbated by serious societal crises, the most serious of which was the world war at the beginning of the century, the largest and bloodiest thus far in history, both in extent and in its use of new, lethal weapons. The war, however, ended with the defeat of the militaristic and undemocratic regimes. In their stead, in the place of defeated monarchies, new democratic republics began to establish themselves. For a brief moment, the promised rule of the people aroused brash and grandiose hopes of a way to escape the void. Yet these hopes went unfilled, and the people were overwhelmed with disappointment. The poverty they had longed to escape persisted and, moreover, they found nothing suprapersonal, nothing absolute to cling to, nothing before which they could bow down in religious devotion.

  What a splendid opportunity for fanatical prophets of hope, for demagogy promising to fill this void and endow life with a new meaning.

  The first place where restlessness broke out was in Russia during the war, where they had deposed the rule of the tsar and tried to replace it with a democratic government. They decided not to end the war, however, and it didn’t appear that the new democracy could fulfill any of the hopes the people had placed in it. Nevertheless, the fall of the authoritatian regime made it possible for freedom, which had long been suppressed, to enter into life. An expanse opened up for both reformers and revolutionaries. The first to avail himself of this newly formed freedom was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin, a fanatic with a utopian vision He placed the value of the ideas he propagated above the value of human life and was prepared to spill any amount of blood on their behalf. As soon as he took power he announced he was immediately embarking on the creation of a new, just societal order and that he would end the war because the workers were perishing in the interests of their exploiters. He would carry out land reforms, fulfill projects that previous utopias could only dream about but that two Communist theoreticians in the modern period, Marx and Engels, had scientifically worked out and deemed realizable. The new arrangement of society—which was not to be limited by national borders, since it was in the interests of all of the exploited classes, that is, most inhabitants of the planet—was supposed to develop in two phases. The first was socialism, which would do away with property inequality, seize the means of production, and thereby develop production to ensure general prosperity. Over the course of, at most, two generations, a new, free, and classless society would arise in which all could satisfy their needs. This second phase, which was suspicious to thinking people as a delirious and unrealizable utopia, was to be called communism. To lead people to this freest of societies, a dictatorship was required.

  Lenin’s idea of revolution inspired enthusiasm even in other countries. The first reports of unbridled Bolshevik terror, however, also inspired revulsion and even fear among the propertied members of society as well as among enlightened intellectuals. Moreover, Lenin never denied that he despised democracy, which was supposed to exist (but in a distorted form) only inside his party. Despite troubling accounts issuing from the land of the Soviets, enough politicians in democratic countries agreed that the societal order that had heretofore existed was unsatisfactory. In a society laid low and impoverished by war, with an economy that had not yet managed to recover from its war wounds, future leaders eager to promise anything and commit a
ny crime in order to acquire power began to prance about as prophets of new ideas and new hopes.

  Two countries seemed to have been affected by war the most: defeated Germany and victorious Italy. Germany was humiliated, Italy frustrated in its hopes and cheated, it was assumed, out of the war booty it deserved. Immediately after the war, Germany was hit with inflation, impoverishing the majority of its citizens. Italy, weakened by worker unrest and quickly escalating violence perpetrated by members of the growing Fascist movement in their fight with Socialists, searched in vain for a government that could lead it out of recession.

  It was primarily the workers in both countries, but also part of the intelligentsia, who saw a solution in Socialist rule. In both countries and at the same time, spokesmen and other opponents of democracy found receptive, eager adherents. In Italy it was a teacher and journalist, a demagogue intending to take power: Benito Mussolini. In Germany it was an unrecognized painter refused by art schools, a devotee of opera and ostentatious architecture, a half-educated deadbeat, pathological anti-Semite, and megalomaniac who was convinced of his calling: Adolf Hitler. They thundered against ineffectual democracy, warned of the dangers of Bolshevism (Hitler added Judaism), and promised to renew national glory and power and thereby provide their citizens with pride. They even offered a new savior who would solve everything and whose powerful will would rescue the country from all hardship. Everyone who believed in and followed him was promised a portion of the eternal glory in the new empire he would create.

  Both men stood out as passionate opponents of Lenin’s revolution and, when we compare their deeds with the benefit of hindsight, we find that the dictatorships differed from each other only slightly. At the same time that each was maligning the other, each also was looking to the other for inspiration as they introduced despotism.

  Dictatorship as asserted and defined by Lenin means nothing less than absolute power unlimited by any laws, absolutely unhampered by rules, and based on the direct exercise of force.

  Almost simultaneously, Benito Mussolini announced: Now in light of new political and parliamentary experiences, the possibility of a dictatorship must be seriously considered. And elsewhere: Violence is not immoral; sometimes it can be moral.

  Only a little later did the Spanish leader General Francisco Franco formulate his credo: Our regime is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.

  During his brief stay in prison (convicted for an unsuccessful putsch), Adolf Hitler formulated his hatred of democracy:

  For the view of life is intolerant and cannot be content with the role of a party among others, but it demands dictatorially that it be acknowledged exclusively and completely and that the entire public life be completely readjusted according to its own views. Therefore it cannot tolerate the simultaneous existence of a representation of the former condition. . . . With this, however, the movement is antiparliamentarian, and even its share in such an institution can only have the meaning of an activity for the smashing of the latter, for the abolition of an institution in which we see one of the most serious symptoms of mankind’s decay. And in a political testament only a few hours before his suicide, once more and for the last time, he shouted out his tyrannical credo: I am the last chance for [a united] Europe. A new Europe will not be built on parliamentary vote, not on discussions and resolutions, but only compelled by violence.

  The fanatical revolutionary and prophet of class hatred, Lenin, died too early to view with satisfaction how his theory would travel around the world. He found, however, in his own country executors of his legacy. The seminary dropout, reckless revolutionary, and crafty intriguer Stalin transformed his theory into dogma no one could dispute. He who disagreed would not be convinced under Stalin’s rule; he would be executed.

  On his path to absolute power, Stalin made violence the primary tool of his politics. During the period of greatest terror he circulated requirements as to how many people in a given district should be disposed of and approved sometimes hundreds of death sentences a day. During the trials, which were preceded by the torture of the accused, he sentenced to death members of all strata of society, his closest collaborators, eminent artists, practically the entire leadership of the army and clergy. Even his relatives were not spared. The wives of the executed were either murdered as well or sent to concentration camps along with everyone who questioned his unshakable leadership. Led by the logic of dictatorship (and of all mafiosi), he executed those who could testify to his crimes, since they had committed them on his orders.

  Every dictator proclaims himself a spokesman for the people, that is, for everyone over whom he holds power, and he expends much effort to appear as a benevolent father. Dictatorship, proclaimed Lenin, cannot be administered by the entire working class (in part because they were not conscious enough and were corrupted by imperialism). It could be realized only by the vanguard, which had absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. This is how terror is justified. In theory it is employed by one party with respect to all society. In reality it is employed by a handful of leading party functionaries and finally in the name of the one and only leader.

  The great mass of a people, contemplated Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, is not composed of diplomats or even teachers of political law, nor even of purely reasonable individuals who are able to pass judgment, but of human beings who are as undecided as they are inclined toward doubts and uncertainty. Contempt for people and democracy is characteristic of all dictators. It allows them to conclude that it is possible to enslave the minds of the masses and that it is necessary—and correct—to devote all care and diligence to this effort if they are to rule. Dictatorships have gone as far as they can go in their methods of controlling human thought. To justify their deeds, which they claimed would protect society from ruin (whether from outside or within), it was necessary to create an image of the enemy who, no matter how weak and destined by history to disappear into eternal nothingness, is a constant threat and must be uncovered, isolated, and finally liquidated. Lenin had a wide range of enemies: the bourgeoisie, the White Guard, the imperialists, the members of all other parties, the nobility, and all of his opponents, whether they belonged to these categories or whether they were prominent artists or scientists who abhorred his terror. Hitler embodied evil, danger, and destruction in the figure of the Jew who was an enemy of culture, peace, and all humanity. (For contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, the United States and all democratic countries are the embodiment of evil. Among them, the most execrated is Israel.)

  A dualistic view of the world, a strict delimitation between good and evil, is innate to human perception. Demons of darkness and light, devils and angels, the goddess of abundance and the god of the underworld—this division is found in all mythologies. Dictatorships bring this mythology to life: First they offer to rid the world of evil forever by simply exterminating evil’s representatives. Some are murdered straightaway without trial. Others are carted off to concentration camps, where they are slowly destroyed by hunger, arduous toil, and finally gas, like troublesome insects.

  The dictatorship announces a merciless battle or fatwa against enemies of the state, of the people, or of the only true faith. Genuine cohorts of criminals are formed in the battle against an imaginary evil (at one time they were called the Cheka, at another the SS or SA, and at another State Security), and are determined in the name of an idea, a faith, or the unerring leader to commit violence, to torture and murder. Because the leaders well know the real character of their deeds, their rampages take place in secret. Often people living in the vicinity of an extermination camp had no idea what was going on behind the barbed wire. For months no news about the gas chambers leaked out, even though several thousand people were murdered there daily.

  At its most glorious moments, a dictatorship appears to be indestructible and thus eternal. Even Hitler, for a short time, when he controlled an empire that encompassed almost all of Europe and reached from the Atlantic and North African coast to th
e Caucasus and the Volga, seemed undefeatable. Before his death, not only did Stalin rule the largest country in the world, whose territory spread to the Baltic republics and the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, but he also controlled puppet governments in a series of European and Asian countries. In these others, often numerous and influential Communist parties were subordinated to his will.

  The dictator lawfully fastens the fate of his regime to his own. Although his merits are set up as indubitable, his glory as immortal, and the idea he serves as eternal truth, one day the dictator will fall in the battle he himself has unleashed, or he will die a natural or violent death. And suddenly, perhaps in the small Dominican Republic, the larger Spain, or the enormous Russia, the ingenious creation of the dictatorship established will collapse or at least begin to deteriorate.

  The Betrayal of the Intellectuals

  At the head of the two powerful European empires, which in many ways defined the insane events of the twentieth century, stood two semieducated men, two apparently down-and-out individuals. Hitler graduated from high school, Stalin not even that—he fled from a seminary before he could receive any education. Both attempted to adopt the persona of intellectuals; after all, they lived in a century of science. Hitler was even a decent painter and considered himself an art expert. He was a compelling orator who could fascinate a crowd. Stalin was a bureaucrat who excelled at nothing but intrigue, villainy, and boundless cruelty. When we examine what both of these homicidal maniacs preached, we are amazed at the emptiness, the backwardness of their words. They were preceded, or accompanied, however, by others who were more educated and who gave shape to their lunatic visions.