And where had it led him?
“... Not to perish,” sounded Gletkin’s voice. “The bulwark must be held, at any price and with any sacrifice.
The leader of the Party recognized. this principle with unrivalled clear-sightedness, and has consistently applied it.
The policy of the International had to be subordinated to our national policy.
Whoever did not understand this necessity had to be destroyed.
Whole sets of our best functionaries in Europe had to be physically liquidated.
We did not recoil from crushing our own organizations abroad when the interests of the Bastion required it.
We did not recoil from co-operation with the police of reactionary countries in order to suppress revolutionary movements which came at the wrong moment.
We did not recoil from betraying our friends and compromising with our enemies, in order to preserve the Bastion.
That was the task which history had given us, the representative of the first victorious revolution.
The short-sighted, the aesthetes, the moralists did not understand.
But the leader of the Revolution understood that all depended on one thing: to be the better stayer.”
Gletkin interrupted his pacing through the room. He stopped behind Rubashov’s chair.
The scar on his shaven skull shone sweatily. He panted, wiped his skull with his handkerchief, and seemed embarrassed at having broken his customary reserve. He sat down again behind the desk and settled his cuffs.
He turned down the light a little, and continued in his usual expressionless voice:
“The Party’s line was sharply defined.
Its tactics were determined by the principle that the end justifies the means—all means, without exception.
In the spirit of this principle, the Public Prosecutor will demand your life, Citizen Rubashov.
“Your faction, Citizen Rubashov, is beaten and destroyed.
You wanted to split the Party, although you must have known that a split in the Party meant civil war.
You know of the dissatisfaction amongst the peasantry, which has not yet learnt to understand the sense of the sacrifices imposed on it.
In a war which may be only a few months away, such currents can lead to a catastrophe.
Hence the imperious necessity for the Party to be united.
It must be as if cast from one mould—filled with blind discipline and absolute trust.
You and your friends, Citizen Rubashov, have made a rent in the Party.
If your repentance is real, then you must help us to heal this rent.
I have told you, it is the last service the Party will ask of you.
“Your task is simple.
You have set it yourself: to gild the Right, to blacken the Wrong. The policy of the opposition is wrong.
Your task is therefore to make the opposition contemptible; to make the masses understand that opposition is a crime and that the leaders of the opposition are criminals.
That is the simple language which the masses understand.
If you begin to talk of your complicated motives, you will only create confusion amongst them.
Your task, Citizen Rubashov, is to avoid awakening sympathy and pity.
Sympathy and pity for the opposition are a danger to the country.
“Comrade Rubashov, I hope that you have understood the task which the Party has set you.”
It was the first time since their acquaintance that Gletkin called Rubashov “Comrade”.
Rubashov raised his head quickly.
He felt a hot wave rising in him, against which he was helpless.
His chin shook slightly while he was putting on his pince-nez.
“I understand.”
“Observe,” Gletkin went on, “that the Party holds out to you no prospect of reward.
Some of the accused have been made amenable by physical pressure.
Others, by the promise to save their heads—or the heads of their relatives who had fallen into our hands as hostages.
To you, Comrade Rubashov, we propose no bargain and we promise nothing.”
“I understand,” Rubashov repeated.
Gletkin glanced at the dossier.
“There is a passage in your journal which impressed me,” he went on.
“You wrote:
‘I have thought and acted as I had to.
If I was right, I have nothing to repent of; if wrong, I shall pay.”’