The Cold War in Literature

The Anti-Communist Manifestos
John V. Fleming (2009)

I read a short notice for this book in the Sewanee Review two weeks ago. The notice explained that the book is about four key milestones in publishing in the period around the second world war when the true nature of Stalin's Russia was revealed to the world by four ex-Communists: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Richard Krebs' Out of the Night, Whittaker Chambers' Witness, and Victor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom. Before these books, American and European "progressives" actually believed that the Soviet Union was the hope for the future, a humane workers' paradise. The authors were all blasted by liberals the left as liars.

Now, I have known the book I Chose Freedom since childhood. Today it is obscure, almost forgotten, but in 1946 it was a sensation. A copy sat on my grandmothers' bookshelf, a purple-clad reprint my grandfather had purchased (and inscribed) all those years ago, one of those books I told myself I would read when I "grew up", along with the Finnish novel The Egyptian right next to it. When I was 14, I pulled the book down and read it. Kravchenko's autobiography tells of the Ukrainian famines of the 1920s, the purges of the 1930s, the alliance with Hitler in 1939, and the war, in deepest detail. I still have the book, and I re-read it every five years or so. So the notice in the Review attracted my attention, and I got the book.

And, no, it's not a right-wing screed. Fleming is professor-emeritus of English from Princeton, and the book is about the impact of the exposure of the truth -- even through novels like Darkness at Noon. Recommended, although a bit sloggy to read because the author is very, very professorial.

And by the way, if you are inclined to believe that there were no real Communists in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, ask yourself one question: Why were none of these books made into movies when all of them are ripping good stories? The answer is certain writers and directors who were later blacklisted were instrumental in suppressing them because these poor souls believed that Russia was not a police state.