The tactics to be followed at any given moment were deduced straight from the revolutionary doctrine in open discussion; strategic moves during the Civil War, the requisitioning of crops, the division and distribution of the land, the introduction of the new currency, the reorganization of the factories—in fact, every administrative measure—represented an act of applied philosophy.
Each one of the men with the numbered heads on the old photograph which had once decorated Ivanov’s walls, knew more about the philosophy of law, political economy and statesmanship than all the highlights in the professional chairs of the universities of Europe.
The discussions at the congresses during the Civil War had been on a level never before in history attained by a political body; they resembled reports in scientific periodicals—with the difference that on the outcome of the discussion depended the life and well-being of millions, and the future of the Revolution.
Now the old guard was used up; the logic of history ordained that the more stable the regime became, the more rigid it had to become, in order to prevent the enormous dynamic forces which the Revolution had released from turning inwards and blowing the Revolution itself into the air.
The time of philosophizing congresses was over; instead of the old portraits, a light patch shone from Ivanov’s wallpaper; philosophical incendiarism had given place to a period of wholesome sterility.
Revolutionary theory had frozen to a dogmatic cult, with a simplified, easily graspable catechism, and with No. 1 as the high priest celebrating the Mass.
His speeches and articles had, even in their style, the character of an infallible catechism; they were divided into question and answer, with a marvellous consistency in the gross simplification of the actual problems and facts.
No. 1 doubtless had an instinct for applying the “law of the relative maturity of the masses”. ...
The dilettantes in tyranny had forced their subjects to act at command; No. 1 had taught them to think at command.
Rubashov was amused by the thought of what the present-day “theorists” of the Party would say to his letter.
Under actual conditions, it represented the wildest heresy; the fathers of the doctrine, whose word was taboo, were criticized; spades were called spades, and even No. 1’s sacrosanct person was treated objectively in its historical context.
They must writhe in agony, those unfortunate theorists of today, whose only task was to dress up No. 1’s jumps and sudden changes of course as the latest revelations of philosophy.
No. 1 sometimes indulged in strange tricks on his theorists.
Once he had demanded an analysis of the American industrial crisis from the committee of experts who edited the Party’s economic periodical.
This required several months to complete; at last appeared the special number in which—based on the thesis exposed by No. 1 in his last Congress speech—it was proved, over approximately three hundred pages, that the American boom was only a sham-boom, and that in actual fact America was at the bottom of a depression, which would only be overcome by the victorious revolution.
On the very day on which the special number appeared, No. 1 received an American journalist and staggered him and the world, between two pulls at his pipe, by the pithy sentence:
“The crisis in America is over and business is normal again.”
The members of the Committee of Experts, expecting their dismissal and possible arrest, composed in the same night letters in which they confessed their “misdemeanours committed by the setting-up of counter-revolutionary theories and misleading analyses”; they emphasized their repentance and promised public atonement.
Only Isakovitch, a contemporary of Rubashov, and the only one in the Board of Editors who belonged to the old guard—preferred to shoot himself.
The initiated afterwards asserted that No. 1 had set the whole affair going with the sole intention of destroying Isakovitch, whom he suspected of oppositional tendencies.
The whole thing was a pretty grotesque comedy, Rubashov thought; at bottom all this jugglery with “revolutionary philosophy” was merely a means to consolidate the dictatorship, which, though so depressing a phenomenon, yet seemed to represent a historical necessity.
So much the worse for him who took the comedy seriously, who only saw what happened on the stage, and not the machinery behind it.
Formerly the revolutionary policy had been decided at open congresses; now it was decided behind the scenes—that also was a logical consequence of the law of relative maturity of the masses. ...
Rubashov yearned to work again in a quiet library with green lamps, and to build up his new theory on a historical basis.
The most productive times for revolutionary philosophy had always been the time of exile, the forced rests between periods of political activity.
He walked up and down in his cell and let his imagination play with the idea of passing the next two years, when he would be politically excommunicated, in a kind of inner exile; his public recantation would buy him the necessary breathing-space.
The outward form of capitulation did not matter much; they should have as many mea culpas and declarations of faith in No. 1’s infallibility as the paper would hold.
That was purely a matter of etiquette—a Byzantine ceremonial which had developed out of the necessity to drill every sentence into the masses by vulgarization and endless repetition; what was presented as right must shine like gold, what was presented as wrong must be as black as pitch; political statements had to be coloured like gingerbread figures at a fair.
These were matters of which No. 402 understood nothing, Rubashov reflected.
His narrow conception of honour belonged to another epoch.
What was decency? A certain form of convention, still bound by the traditions and rules of the knightly jousts.
The new conception of honour should be formulated differently: to serve without vanity and unto the last consequence. ...
“Better die than dishonour oneself,” No. 402 had announced, and, one imagines, twirled his moustache.
That was the classic expression of personal vanity.
No. 402 tapped his sentences with his monocle; he, Rubashov, with his pince-nez; that was the whole difference.
The only thing which mattered to him now was to work peacefully in a library and build up his new ideas.
It would need many years, and produce a massive volume; but it would be the first useful clue to the understanding of the history of democratic institutions and throw a light on the pendulum-like movements of mass psychology, which at the present time were particularly in evidence, and which the classical class struggle theory failed to explain.
Rubashov walked rapidly up and down his cell, smiling to himself.
Nothing mattered as long as he was allowed time to develop his new theory.
His toothache was gone; he felt wide awake, enterprising, and full of nervous impatience.
Two days had passed since the nocturnal conversation with Ivanov and the sending off of his declaration, and still nothing happened.
Time, which had flown so quickly during the first two weeks of his arrest, now crawled.
The hours disintegrated into minutes and seconds.
He worked in fits and starts, but was brought to a standstill every time by lack of historical documentation.
He stood for whole quarters of an hour at the judas, in the hope of catching sight of the warder who would take him to Ivanov.
But the corridor was deserted, the electric light was burning, as always.
Occasionally he hoped Ivanov himself would come, and the whole formality of his deposition would be settled in his cell; that would be far pleasanter.
This time he would not even object to the bottle of brandy.
He pictured the conversation in detail; how they would together work out the pompous phraseology of the “confession”, and Ivanov’s cynical witticisms while they did it.
Smiling, Rubashov wandered up and down through his cell, and looked at his watch every ten minutes.