Cold Light

by Frank Moorhouse

  Edith found Janice’s response odd. ‘Do you doubt the figure or the act?’

  She said, ‘All these oh-so-specific numbers – I think that the British SIS would invent specific numbers like that to make the document sound bona fide.’

  Although Frederick still held the report, Janice kept her hand on it and controlled the pace that the pages were turned, slowing Frederick down, who was trying to take in the contents without seeming to seriously read it.

  Frederick said, ‘Of course it’s a fake – put out by the SIS or the Americans to demoralise the national parties.’

  Janice had gone pale. She turned to Edith. ‘Did Ambrose hint that it’s a stratagem?’

  Would Ambrose ever tell her the truth about these sorts of matters? ‘I could ask him, I suppose. But why would he tell the truth?’ She smiled ruefully.

  Janice must have been thinking along the same lines and said, ‘Of course, why would he tell us? He writes on the cover that you should show it to us – it was meant for us.’ She frowned and gave a dissatisfied laugh. ‘And what should we do with it?’

  How odd that Janice felt betrayed by Ambrose, given that Janice and Frederick were completely and always on the opposite political sides to him, even if they had enjoyed his company before he had been recalled.

  Edith smiled to herself. Yes, Ambrose had at one time, in their earlier relationship before they had married, described himself as some sort of a rotten friend – engaged in the devil’s business of the world – using diplomatic rationales she had once barely understood and had then understood only too well. And there was his own huge personal deception to the world about his true nature as a man. That could be seen as a metaphor for his whole life.

  Perhaps he was now not so much a rotten friend as a perfect ex-husband.

  Janice went back to reading and she said tentatively, more to Frederick than to her, ‘But how would they know all this internal Party stuff?’

  Frederick closed the report. ‘I don’t think we can read this just now. I don’t think we should read it. I don’t understand where it is coming from. If it were a secret Party document from the Soviet Union, it would not be on a table in a Manuka café.’

  Janice sat up, seeming to concur. ‘And even if some of it is a Party document, the rest could’ve been doctored.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Frederick said.

  The report sat on the table with the sugar bowl, salt and pepper shakers and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. He said profoundly that it was probably a fabrication by something he called the American Central Intelligence Group, and was now being circulated to embassies and people such as Edith, who could be expected to spread it unofficially in the national Communist Parties to undermine their morale and create dissention about the new Soviet Union leadership.

  He was very satisfied by this analysis.

  She could see its plausibility. ‘I think you are right to consider that possibility. But it has a feel of authenticity to it.’ They both looked at her, weighing her hopelessly bourgeois opinion.

  Then Janice picked up the report and began reading it again. Frederick said, with his party organiser voice, ‘Don’t read it, Janice. It’s very cleverly manufactured venom.’

  Janice looked at him, as if assessing his authority and whether further reading of it would be an act of disloyalty to him and to the Party. Perhaps she sensed that the document might bring him, her and the Party undone. Totally undone. Disastrously undone.

  Janice chose to disregard Frederick, and her eyes went back to the report. She read swiftly through the pages. ‘Listen to this – how could the Americans or British fabricate something like this? Khrushchev says that in one of his exchanges, Stalin expressed his dissatisfaction with Postyshev and asked him, “What are you actually?”

  ‘According to this, Postyshev answered, “I am a Bolshevik, comrade Stalin, a Bolshevik.”

  ‘It says that, at first, this assertion was considered by Stalin “simply to show a lack of respect for his leadership. Later, Stalin considered it a harmful act. Eventually, it resulted in Postyshev’s annihilation and castigation as an enemy of the people.” ’

  Janice stopped reading and looked at Frederick. ‘That doesn’t sound like a fabrication. What’s that all about? That is so like actual internal Party stuff, especially stuff from the CPSU. I don’t get it.’

  Frederick went to the report and read the section. He was agitated. ‘It’s from the time of the trials. I know that story. Postyshev was one of the few who objected to Stalin putting some of the old members of the Party on trial. Stalin turned on him and asked Postyshev why he thought he had the right to be critical. Postyshev replied, “Because I am a Bolshevik.” He meant that he was from the original Party, where they had the right to question. It was an attempt by Postyshev to remind Stalin that Party practice in the 1920s had allowed disagreement during debate – that is, you could be critical of the leadership, provided that factional politicking was not involved. So when he says “Because I am a Bolshevik”, he means that he still lives by this principle and had to have the right to challenge Stalin.’

  Janice said, ‘This document might be a mish-mash of things from other reports and stuff taken from gossip and records. To make it sound authentic.’

  Frederick took the report, closed it and pushed it away towards Edith.

  Edith said, ‘And Stalin had him killed?’

  Frederick said to her, ‘It was, as the military might say, “insolence through manner” – a court-martial offence in most armies. He was shot.’

  ‘Criticism is insolence? And insolence gets you shot?’

  ‘In the wrong time and place, yes,’ he said with impatience.

  Janice reached over for the report and again opened it.

  Frederick said, ‘I think we should stop reading it,’ and he tried to pull the report away from her.

  Edith watched curiously. They were like cranky children fighting over a toy.

  He stopped trying to wrest it away. ‘This illustrates,’ he said to her, ‘how a report like this can cause strife – splitism.’ He looked at Edith, who was grinning. ‘Sorry for what you call jargon, Edith. In this case, I think it’s the perfect word . . . Lenin’s word.’ He went on, ‘Which is probably precisely why it was concocted. And precisely why the Major sent it here.’

  Edith reached over and took the report from Janice. ‘I will be custodian of the disputed document.’

  ‘It should, perhaps, be destroyed,’ Frederick said.

  She detected panic in his voice.

  ‘It should be destroyed,’ he repeated.

  ‘I will definitely be custodian of the document.’ She folded it and placed it in her handbag. ‘If you should change your minds, I will have a copy made for you at Parliament House.’ She wondered if that offer was such a good idea, from her point of view. How to explain it to the copying clerk?

  ‘Do that, please,’ Janice said rebelliously.

  Frederick was perturbed and turned to her. ‘I don’t believe in authorising copies of unauthenticated material.’

  Edith smiled and shook her head at her brother. ‘If we have a copy here in Manuka, there must be hundreds of copies circulating in the world.’ She said that she suspected it would become common knowledge very quickly. She pointed out that Ambrose had said it would, at some point, be broadcast by the BBC.

  Janice nodded. ‘Edith’s correct.’

  Frederick said, ‘Or it could be one of a few, which has arrived by chance personal connections into Edith’s hands. To be passed to us, for us to pass to the leadership. And then we become servants of the Central Intelligence Group.’ Frederick then said, almost to himself, thinking aloud, ‘Ted Hill was our delegate to the 20th Congress – he’s not back yet from Russia. He’ll be reporting on the Congress. He’ll put us straight.’ And then he softened away his hard line, for what reason Edith could not tell. ‘I could telephone Turner or Murray-Smith.’ Despite his resistance to believing the report, he still seemed somew
hat unnerved by what he had seen.

  ‘Do that,’ Janice said, her hand on his arm, in solidarity. ‘Call them.’

  Edith remembered Janice once saying to her that the Soviet Union was not a one-party state. There were three parties: the rank-and-file, the intellectuals and the leadership. Frederick was a functionary, part of the leadership. Or maybe functionaries were another party. Murray-Smith and Turner were both themselves Party functionaries, or apparatchiki, as Frederick would say. From having heard their conversations over the years, she thought there were two other parties now existing within the Communist Party – the Sydney party and the Melbourne party.

  Frederick said to Janice, ‘But I don’t want it to appear that I’ve been fooled by the report. I don’t wish to spread it. Or even to reveal that I’ve seen it. Remember, it’s supposed to be a secret report to be circulated only within the leadership of the Soviet Party. It is not for general circulation. That is, if it’s authentic.’

  Janice said, ‘You’re right – you mustn’t let on that you’ve seen the report. Call them on another matter and see if they raise it first.’

  Frederick said, ‘It has to be the British, it’s very devious.’

  ‘And cunningly clever,’ Edith said.

  He looked at her and said, reluctantly, ‘Yes, that too.’

  Janice kept playing with the sugar spoon in the sugar bowl, glancing now and then at Frederick. They were almost ignoring her presence. They were trying to find the right move to take.

  Frederick began stroking his chin, as if he had a beard.

  ‘Or telephone Sharkey or Aarons,’ Janice said. ‘Aarons would be best. He must be back from that Party school in China.’

  ‘It’s dangerous to let on that we’ve even sighted it.’

  Janice seemed to gain confidence. ‘Do as I say – call them about some other matter, seeking advice on something, and see if they raise it.’ She squeezed his arm.

  He patted his pocket for his pipe and tobacco, and lit up his pipe.

  Curiosity overtook him and he asked Edith for the document again.

  ‘As long as you don’t set fire to it.’

  She pulled out the report and handed it back to him. He opened it again, and read. ‘ “Cult of the Individual”,’ he said, as if surprised to find the words. ‘That can’t be right – Stalin? Cult of the individual? The Party has always known the dangers of the cult of the individual. Marxism-Leninism has always denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. Right from the start, Marx knew about it. Marx talked of his antipathy to any cult of the individual.’

  He turned to Janice, pointing to her with his pipe stem. ‘Remember, his followers wanted to elevate Marx to a special status in the Party, but he knew it was against the whole philosophy of communism. He and Engles both argued that everything making for superstitious worship of authority should be deleted from the constitution of the 1st International. Even then, they both knew all about the cult of the individual. Stalin would have been well aware of its dangers – would’ve been on guard against any attempts to elevate him to a cult.’

  Edith said, lightly, ‘I like the expression. It’s perfect. All those statues of Stalin and the busts, and the photographs in every shop, street names changed, songs written about him, and on and on. Somewhere, Khrushchev says that Stalin’s name is now being taken out of the national anthem.’

  Frederick became agitated. ‘For God’s sake, Edith. Stalin saved the Soviet Union from the Nazis. Under his leadership, he saw twenty-seven million of his people killed by the war, but the Soviets won the war, don’t forget that – not D-Day. The Soviet troops broke the Germans. He guided the Party for years. He deserves recognition. Recognition isn’t superstitious worship of authority . . . it was an honouring of him – a great man – twenty-seven million lost in the war. How many did the Americans lose?’

  She stared at him, waiting for him to answer himself.

  ‘The Americans lost 300,000 in the war – just 300,000.’

  He leaned back, again pushing the document away from him. ‘Burn it,’ he said and pulled on his pipe. The pipe was giving him back his steely conviction.

  He made to leave. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Janice, almost an order. ‘Twenty-seven million. How would you be if you had to lead the Soviet republics in which twenty-seven million had been killed by the Nazis? Those were no ordinary times.’

  But the question was how many were killed by Stalin. And the report referred to before the war.

  Frederick and Janice both slid out of the booth and stood up.

  Edith recited something she had seen at the end of the report. ‘ “Long live the victorious banner of our Party and Marxism-Leninism.” ’

  She raised her hand in a clenched-fist salute.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Frederick said, irritated. ‘Ha, ha.’

  Janice didn’t smile, but leaned over and kissed Edith on the cheek. As Janice came in close to her face, Edith resignedly noticed Janice’s neck – she was no longer a young woman. How sad it all was, this ageing.

  Edith sat there. ‘I’ll stay and have another coffee. I’m in no rush to go home.’

  As they left, Frederick turned and said, ‘Tell the Major that it was a very clever piece of propaganda. Perhaps the cleverest since the war.’

  She nodded. ‘I will, indeed.’

  ‘And another thing –’ he came back to the booth – ‘please do not show it to anyone. It’s a dangerous document. It could do a great deal of harm.’

  She said she assumed Ambrose had meant her to show it only to them. Privately, she thought that quite a few of her friends would be interested.

  Frederick went from the café – straight-backed, self-important, pipe in mouth – and Janice followed.

  She observed that they had not thanked her for bringing the report to their attention. Could not really expect that, she supposed. The report was very serious; she shouldn’t have joked. And they had not offered to pay their share. Their minds were fixedly on other things.

  The owner, Harry, brought her a second coffee and they exchanged pleasantries about the weather before he went off.

  She took her flask from her handbag and gave her second coffee a nip, took out the report and read it again. It came to her that if the report were true, it was a massive bombshell. Massive. It showed how out of control the Party had been, and maybe still was. It had become exposed as a brutal dictatorship like any brutal dictatorship. And here, at last, the Soviet communists were denouncing themselves, but not yet recognising that it was the structure of the Party that was inherently dangerous. And maybe behind the Party, the ideology also. And maybe the theory behind the ideology. Or could the theory still stand? The economic insights, perhaps, but no, the Party structure was part of the theory. She was inclined to think it was all of a piece.

  The report showed what so many, including Ambrose and her, had come to realise over the years – that the whole history of the Soviet Union had been a barbarous lie and a disaster. The alliance of the Soviet Union with the West during the war had masked this.

  As she read through the report, she came across a notation by the stenographer, who had observed that after Khrushchev had delivered the report there had been ‘commotion in the hall’.

  Richard didn’t take much interest in the report. It was pretty much what he had always believed about the communists. No surprises for him. He didn’t even wish to see it.

  She arrived at the position that the document was one of the most significant political speeches of the century, which could be the beginning of the end for communist systems of government, if not for the ideal itself.

  She did not know what it would mean to Janice’s and Frederick’s lives.

  The Correct Line

  A couple of months later, an agitated Janice called and said that the New York Times had published the so-called secret speech in full in its international edition. Since the café discussion, Janice and Frederick had not wanted to have a copy of the report
in their possession and had pretty much dismissed it.

  Until now there had been only scrappy news items about it.

  ‘I saw that,’ Edith said.

  ‘Turner has read it and has been on the phone. He seems to be leaning towards believing that it’s accurate. By the way, he asked after you.’

  ‘I wish your communist friends wouldn’t ask after me on the telephone,’ she said, feeling flattered. ‘I thought that you people never used names on the telephone.’

  Janice laughed in a hysterical way. ‘There’s been much telephoning – without caution. No one is thinking of the ASIO now; everyone’s looking for ways to handle the report within the Party.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Turner and Murray-Smith are inclined to think it’s true, and so are some of the intellectual comrades in Sydney, although some of it may be mistranslated, with intentional distortions introduced during translation, and some might be a fabrication. But true in essence. It’s sending shockwaves through the national parties – Italy, France, the UK, Australia.’

  ‘How’s Frederick taking it?’

  ‘He accepts the Political Committee position – and so do I – that until we have it confirmed from Moscow, we cannot verify it, and until it’s verified, it’s dangerous to discuss it. I want to look again at the copy the Major sent. If you wouldn’t mind. I want to compare it with what the New York Times published. That might tell us something.’

  ‘What about Ted Hill? He was at the Congress in Moscow. Doesn’t he say how correct the New York Times is?’

  ‘Hill still isn’t back. He’s been ill – having treatment for his eyes. Had a problem with his eyes at the Congress.’

  Edith laughed. ‘Political blindness. Ambrose said in a letter that the leader of the British Party – Pollitt – has also had a haemorrhage behind his eyes and impaired his vision.’ She laughed some more.