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BooksPursui t in ZurichThomas Molnar

he title of Solzhenitsy ns new book , LeninT n Zurich (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 309pp.; $ 8 . 9 5 ) , brings to mind two other towering works ofpre-gulag literature: Dostoevskis Th e Possessed an dJoseph Conrads Under Western E y e s . If he is up to date ,he adds perhaps the recently published corresponde ncebetween Herzens daugh ter, Natalya , and various Rus-sian liberal and socialist exiles, among them Nechaev.The topic, the tone, and the style of these works ispresent in Solzhenitsyns book. What is new here is themasterly use of interior monologue.Lenin in Zurich contains the centurys central en igmaunder a sober, one might say scholarly, title. I t is askillful collation of several chapters whose natural placeis i n th e three volumes (the authorc alls them k n o t s ) ofthe trilogy: August 1914, Ocrober 1916, and March 1917.Thus asse mbled, these chapters give the impression ofcontinuity: from the moment Lenin sett les in Zurich withwife and mother-in-law until his departure for St.Petersburg in the famous sealed wag on. The first train,facilitating his passage from Austria into neutral Swit-zerland, was agreed upon by the government in Viennaon the intervention of Lenins socialist comrades; thesecond train by the government in Berlin. Thes e begin-nings were a uspicious; since then, the various W esterngovernments have assumed th e lions share in helpingother Communist leaders into pow er -ca st ro , Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, as well as legions of lesser candi-dates.Between t h e two tr ips, to the Zurcher Bahnhof and tothe Finland Sta tion, Solzhenitsyns tour de force revealsonce again the gigantic figure of the author. He over-whelms in the sens e that he turns inside out our thinkingabout Lenin. Indeed, what opinio ns does even the mostan t i -C om mu n is West e rn c i t ze n en e r a n a boutLenin-whose nam e is now include d in at least onecatechism o fficially circulating in France ? That he was agreat man, an organizational Titan, a brain able toconceive the course of history in advance, a peerlessstrategist. When he takes the train to cross Germany, hemerely gathers th e fruit of his stupendous and well-directed efforts , the mathematically calculated result ofhis supreme tactics by which he had patiently corneredthe German government a s well as his ow n reluctantcomrades. He then installed himself in the Kremlin,whence his genius would have radiated for the greaterglory of the world revolution-if he had not died

prematurely, leaving his finally secure regime to amonster whom he, a sick man, had vainly tried to keepaway from the succession.So far the familiar hagiography. Solzhenitsyns con-clusion is vastly different. First of all , h e has carefullystudied everything pertinent; then, more important, hehas succeeded in putting himself into Lenins skin, anenterprise he had planned for many years, preocc upied ashe was from youth with th e causes and the m eaning of theBolshevik Revolution. Thus fate seems to be at workwhen Solzhe nitsyn lands now also in Zurich, he too as anexile in this island familiar to more than a centuryspolitical refugees. All this makes i t possible for him towrite from inside Lenin, psychologically repeating thelatters trajectory. More than that: There is betweenLenin and Solzhe nitsyn a my sterious relationship uniting,authorand charac ter, a relationship cemente d by detesta-tion, but a relationship nonetheless. Two men grownfrom the same soil, reflecting about their peoplesdestiny on the sa me gro und of exile-this in itself wouldbe sufficient to lend the book an intriguing tone. Bu tthere is yet more: Solz henit syn s Lenin is one of th erichest creations of historical an d fictional literature.From beginning to end we read an interior monologue, sothat not only the au thor but the reader as well hears theauthentic voice, the voice not of som e Leopold Bloom ofDublin, but of a hero of history.Thomas Mann was perhaps the only writer (we maymention Marguerite Yourcenar as well) before Sol-zhenitsyn w h o dared a similar tour de force. In Lorte inWeirnar no less a personage than Goethe, waking to anew day, lets fantasy and memory come to him inhalf-conscious tumult. But Manns Goethe is not yetquite awa re of reality in the We ima r dawn-whereas allof Lenins n ervous race-horse fibers are tense with actionand anticipated action, a purebred revolutionary fully incontrol of his own conscious ness and of what others doand might t h i nk . Following Solzhenitsyn, we graduallylearn to see Lenin and in Lenin and are grateful to thewriter for attempting neither to psychoanalyze his heronor to explain his inner mechanism in some othertechnical way.

n spite of his great talents the secret nucleus ofI h e revolutionary Lenin was an obsessionthat never for a minute seems to have given him peace.Everything must be subordinated to the revolution,nothing must be left to chance, nothing should beundertaken w ithout the will of promoting the cause. Andyet, Solzhenitsyn does not reduce Lenin to a machine; hestudies with an almost painful attention the vibrations ofthis man, at once so simple and so complex. He showsthe depth of his hatred, his dissimulations, the tension ofhis nerves, the abyss of his despair , the recapture of hi sda ns , the m erc ilessness of his self-criticism. But therehides in this bookworm (Marx in the British MuseumTHOMAS OLNAR s Professor of Humani t ies at BrooklynCollege. Among his most recent writings are God and [h eKnowledge of Reality;Le Socialisme Sans Visage u u s t pub-lished by Presses Universi taires de France); an d Aurhor iv an dIfsEnemies (to be published this summer by Arlington House).

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comes to mind as Solzhenitsyn paints Lenin devouringnewspapers in the Zurich municipal library) an incredi-ble energy that dislocates his black moods and crises ofpessimism and allow s him to reconq uer himself, to spithis immense, his cosmic hatred in the face of h isenemies. But, and here lies the secret of Lenin asSolzhenitsyn sees him, everybody is an enemy. Leninmanufac tures opposition the way others seek friendship,the way a spider secretes its web. He does it also bycalculating the advantages: The enemy is one who isscared, whom one blackmails, comers, locks into unten-able situations-whereas a sim ple oppo nent still main-tains his dignity, This psychology contains the wholeLeninist, later Soviet, strategy, but its first high pointwas the period from July to October, 1917: makingenemies w hile making allies also who are aw are that theytoo may become enemies, the better to crush them.Everything is in this formula, from the relationship ofLenin and the social revolutionaries to the programmecommun of Marchais and Mitterrand.Hegelian dialectics found in the two men, Marx andLenin, seems less a philosophical echo than a naturalresponse of temperament. To divide both opponents andallies , this is the Leninist-Communist formula beforeand after Zurich. Nobody felt sure around Lenin even i nexile, all were exposed to his violence and his contempt,all had a bad conscience before this man who wanted tomake the revolution the way Go d created the wo rld. Withh i s deep-sea ted eyes , h is sparse beard and h ighforehead, th e little man is as determined to destroy asothers are to build. The wa r must be carried everywh ere,above all where there is peace-kcause peace is nothingbut a hypocritical method of self-perpetuation in powerfor the bourgeoisie. Sw iss neutrality? Lenin works dayand night to kindle the civil war, the worke r insurrection;the revolution must issue forth from these peacefulhomes and engulf Europe before an arm istice removes allhope of violent renewal. What about the other re-volutionists-Austrian, Dut ch, Ge rm an, Russian-whooffer to collaborate? Precisely, they are all traitors,imbeciles, sold-out double agents, phonies, la ckeys whomust be crushed, betrayed, reduced to impotence! Hisown intimate assistants? But precisely, they must bescorned, threatene d, forced to wallow in their own moralexcre men t, finally gripped inside with an icy hand. Thelater methods of CPU. KGB, and GULAG are, l ike abundle of bloody flowers, a part of Lenins ordinarystance: cont emp t, hatred, distrust, cold logic, the pursuitalways and everywhere of the one single objective.There is one single exception! I t is Parvus, nom d eguerre of Alexandre Helphand, itself a Frenchifiedpseudonym of Israel Lazarevich G el fand. Th rough thismiddle-aged bon vivant adven turer-conspirator anotherof Solzhenitsyns creative secrets emerges, or , rather , isconfirmed. In the admirable autobiography Le Chin e etle Veau (reviewed in IVorldvierc~ n Ma y) the poet-editorTvardovsky was so fashioned as to appear Solzheni-tsyns p en d a n t , the contrapuntal figure over against themajor theme, Solzhenitsyn himself. The two themes,willpow er and hesistancy, resistance and collaboration ,strength and weakness, Solzhenitsyn and Tvardovsky.The reader finds the formers contours more easily

because he sees the latter i n the background; the paintersand architects technique. In Lenin in Zurich Leninsvis-&vis is Parvus, the man whom first h e must van-quish . Solzh enitsyns art consists in showing , yet with-out stressing in a way that could be interpreted asvind ictive ness , that at bottom Lenin w as a revolutionaryimpotent, a man of moods and of miscarried projectsbecause full of hatred, a political animal turning in hisself-made cage and s pew ing forth stillborn ideas-andthat i t was Parvus who grasped correctly the revolution-ary idea and action. Parvus is described in rich colorssimilar to those of Tvardovsky in the other work: bigdrinker, e ater, and fornicator. devouring 311 pleasures; amelange of high-class spy, c o n d o r t i e r e , Maecenas of therevolution, and international financier with an equallyeasy entr ie in salons and chancelleries.Facing Parvus-Tvardovsky. there is the asceticLenin-Solz henitsyn, a figure cut from gran ite, a man ofone idea. But i t is Parvus-Helphand-Gelfand whonegotiates the busi ness of revolution-the revolutionneeds the business-in Den mar k, Stoc khol m, Berlin; i tis he w h o concretizes the project. While Lenin is stillinvolved in kindling the ever-slow revolutionary flamei n the hearts of h is petit-bourgeois Swiss com panions andpreach ing to them the why and how of generalinsurrection, Parvus works out with the General Staff inBerlin the transport plans to Russia of the little band ofBolsheviks. He also knows what Lenin is too petty tounderstand: t ha t much money is needed, not j u s t smallcontributions, but a fortune. Parvus amasses it, in part toenhance his own reputation of invincibility, in part toenjoy membership in the world of intrigues amongultrarich liberal c apitalists ever ready to finance a revolu-tion. He had arranged, orga nized, set into motion every-thing, prompted by a different &h oug h parallel hatred toLenins: As a young man he had sworn to help destroy theCzars Russia. In order toachi eve this he had to remain inthe background. In other words, he needed a savagebea st, a total fanat ic, an executioner-a Len in.

erh aps the most brilliant parts of this splen-P did work are the two chapters where Leninreceives in his poorly l i t kitchen around a linoleum-covered table first Parvuss emissary, the businessmanSklarz, then, a few weeks later, Parvus himself. S klarzarrived in Zurich when Lenin had reached the end of therope. He was exhausted, almost ready to resign. Yet i twas imperative to impress Parvus and before him, hismessenger. Lenin treated the man like a servant, anenem y, exactly as he was later to treat Parvus. Sarcasm ,contemp t, reproache s, the ironic list of the other mansfailures-these were Lenins negotiating weapons. Hehad to show th e other h is ineptitude, his stupidities, hisblunders, his unreliability, the seeds of treason alreadyplanted in him. He had to prove to the othe r that he was acoward, a social traitor, an imbecile, a turncoat. Onlyone man is pure: Lenin; the revolution is where he is.now, for example, in this near-proletarian kitchen. Heknew that his force resided i n his implacability (likeRobespie rres), all the othe rs had to serve him; and firstof all the elegant, mundane Parvus had to serve him. Atthe moment he had to convince the other that he, Lenin,

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h a d the bet ter plan a n d t h a t th is b u s i n e s s of t h e s e a l e dtrain was, a f t e r all, a m a t e u r i s h ! If he a c c e p t e d i t in theend , i t w as not without dozens of objections, p e d a n t i cc o n d i t i o n s , c o n s i d e r a t i o n s of a l l t h e f a c t o r s i n v o l v e d ,a n d mainly hi s o w n prestige.The reader puts down the book, exhausted; Solzheni-tsyn conducts the plot like L e n i n the revolution: accelerat-i n g h e r e , s l o w i n g d o w n t h e r e , b u t a l w a y s in a s t y l e o f ahundred faces-irony , humor, melancholy tableaux,b o n h o m i e , picturesque d e t a i l s . With a fe w b r u s h s t r o k e s

t h e r e s t a n d s t h e i n c o m p a r a b l e p a m p h l e t i s t , R a d e k , t h e .Swiss c o m r a d e s somberly contemplating their mug ofbeer an d listening, o p e n - m o u t h e d , to the T a r t a r fromS i b e r i a ; a n d t h e r e K r u p s k a y a , t h e s e l f - e f f a c i n g w i f e . av e r i t a b l e v i p e r after h e r h u s b a n d -h e r o 's d e a t h .One question remains. Has Solzhenitsyn gotten rid ofhis incubus through t h i s book, through t h e t r i l o g y whoseC e n t r a l Person is a l w a y s L e n i n ? Or wil l he cont inuepursuing his character down the narrow streets ofZ u r i c h ?

psychology; the q uestion of the historicThe Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism or i g i n and valueof pr ivacy ; t he revolu-by Daniel Bell(Basic Books; xxvi +301 pp.: $12.95)

John P. SiskLet us suppose t ha t the reader con-fronted with this title knows nothingabout the author except t ha t he is aprofessor of sociology at Harvard U n i -versity (where, God knows, there is avariety of sociological opinion). Let usfurther suppose that this reader is areasonab ly in te l l ig en t and we l l -informed person famil iar w i t h th epolemical promise of the titles of bo oksengaged with contemporary problems.Such a reader might well assume thatthis is one more attempt to measurecapitalist society against a possibleharmonious sociopolitical orde r that allmen of good will have a right to expec t,even demand. He might. influenced bythe conventional metaphor of music ,assume that any serious criticism ofcontemporary life must have as its endthc elimination of contradictions in th einterest of achieving something like asocial symphony.

Such a reader would, of course, bemisled. I cannot imagine anyone moreaware t h a n Professor Bell that in ourtime social symphony is an honorificsynonym for totalitarianism-that suchharmony as we achieve is a by-producto f what we get i n some measure if ourefforts are well-directed and i f we arelucky. Such an awareness guaran tees ananalysis of society quite different fromt h a t of a critic convinced that a society isgood i n proportion to the absence ofconflict. tensions. and contradiction.For Bell society is "not integra l. butdisjunctive." Against the holistic view(no less dear to what is already the o ldNew Left t h a n to Dostoevski's Grand

Inquisitor). he finds i t "useful to t h i n kof Contemporary society . . .as three dis-tinct realms, each of which is obedientto a different axial princ iple." He there-fore divides society analytically into thetechnoeconomic structure, the polity,and the culture. I t is "the discordancesbetween these realms that are responsi-ble for the various con tradi ction s withinsociety." This methodological premise.as Bell points out i n an important foot-note. differs from that of Marxism andfunctionalism. both of which share thepremise "that society is a struc turallyinterrelated system and t ha t one canunderstand any social action only i nrelation to that unified system."For the Marxists and functionalists,one might say, the proper social modelis the work of art, that supremely com -pelling ecological unit . For Bell, on theother hand, the proper model is thehousehold , which he prefers becsuse of"its sociological connotations of familyproblems and common living." Themetaphor of the household has particu-lar structural im portance in the last longchapter . S ince, however, i t is a humanemetaphor (the work of art as model-m e t a p h o r c a n b e n o t o r i o u s l y a n dparadoxically inhumane with its insis-tence on the subordination of parts towhole), i t proves to be an excellentfacilitator for issue s crucial to the bookas a whole: the conflict between avant-garde and bourgeois; the conflict be-tween individual and community andthe related question of authority; theascendancy of the secular over the sa-cred: the replacement of history by

t i o i of "rising entitlements" as wantsreplace needs; the problem of the sep-aration of realms.I t is within the context of the house-hold metaphor that the cultural con-tradictions of capitalism are clarified.

Thus the Protestant work ethic, with itsemphasis on the inhibition of sensualsatisfaction and its tendency to delaysumptuary but not capital accumu lation,in time produces the abundance thatmakes i t difficult to reconcile escalatingprivate and group wants with publicneeds-that, inde ed, makes the satisfa c-tion of private and gr oup needs a priorityof virtue. H ence the dilemmas we con-front when we tr y to combine bourgeoisappetites, a democratic polity. and anindividualist ethos "which at best de-fends the idea of personal liberty."Hence the New Left's moralistic attrac-tion to the totalistic (and harmonious)solutions of Castro and M ao on the onehand, and the modernist-inspired rejcc-tion of delayed gratification on theother.The latter contradiction gets attentionthroughout the book, but especially inPart On e, "The Double Bind of Moder-nity." where Bell concentrates on thecapacity of the Protestant ethic "tostimulate a demand for pleasure andplay in the area of consumption." Sostimulated, capitalism i n time producesHuge Hefner's Playboy much as Hegelproduces Marx. More specifically, theethos o f the sumptuary life with itsmoralistic commitment to consumptionand experien ce produces a rampalit in -dividualism that expresses itself best inthe profanation of traditional values andin the spoliation of national resources.-So we are confronted with the politicalcontradictions that result when a liberalsociety set up to promote individualends becomes so hedonistic that the veryidea of a public household appears to bean American heresy.