Stalin the Terrible

KOBA THE DREAD: LAUGHTER AND THE TWENTY MILLION by Martin Amis. Confronted with the rare case of a defendant who simply refused to break under “questioning,” an enraged Josef Stalin asked the interrogator-torturers, “How much does the Soviet Union weigh?” The answer to that chilling question gets at the very heart of this book and goes some ways towards explaining how twenty million died. The subtitle's second point, laughter, refers to novelist and critic Martin Amis' argument that while one could always joke about the Soviet Union, laughter about the horrors of Nazi Germany has never been permitted.

Now, this is not actually true (the premise of Hogan's Heroes comes to mind, as does the episode of Seinfeld when Jerry makes out with his date during Schindler's List), but I still think there is a valid point to be made. The Bolsheviks have had their dupes and apologists for the better part of a century, including some of the brightest minds in Europe and the U.S. The enormity of the atrocities committed -- even welcomed -- by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin (terror-famine, the peasantry’s virtual return to serfdom, the suppression of Kronstadt, the purges, the show trials, etc.) still goes unacknowledged in some “progressive” circles. Yes, the Bolsheviks killed millions and built a totalitarian police state, I have actually heard someone argue, but they were at least trying to build a better world.

I have also heard that cheap and callous excuse regarding omelets and broken eggs offered in more than one college classroom. And then there is the merchandise. Not counting Che's pretty face, you can shop for a dazzling array of hammer & sickle t-shirts at your local retail outlets. (How about “Got famine?” for the ad campaign?) In 1968, when Robert Conquest published his seminal book on Stalin's purges, The Great Terror, many on the left denounced his findings as the suspect conclusions of a Cold Warrior. Well, Conquest was right and his critics were wrong. When the book's publisher asked for a new subtitle to accompany the revised 1991 edition, Amis reports that Conquest replied, “how about, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.”

Part memoir, part biography, part polemic, and part essay on the depth of man's inhumanity to man, Koba the Dread is an interesting and disturbing book. It is also the most controversial and poorly received work of Amis' career. No, he does not break any new historical ground and yes, he does rely heavily on both Conquest and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's devastating Gulag Archipelago. Still, I wonder just what percentage of Amis' large readership has even skimmed those authors or could sketch the importance of Sergei Kirov's murder? I’d wager that quite a few could explain, however, the significance of the Reichstag fire or the Night of the Long Knives. That is not an insignificant point.

As for the personal being political, Amis is certainly at his best when he's most outraged or disgusted. Thus he is particularly striking on the ghastly specifics of torture chamber, gulag, and firing squad, as well as the innocence of most men, women, and children inhabiting them. “When it was their turn to be purged,” Amis writes, “former interrogators (and all other Chekists) immediately called with a flourish for the pen and the dotted line.” In other words, they knew their part in the charade. Equally compelling are Amis' reflections on his celebrated father, Kingsley, who went from Communist Party member to red baiting Cold Warrior; his father's and his own friendship with Conquest and other anti-Communists during the Vietnam War; and his enduring political rows with “best friend” Christopher Hitchens. Again, the critics are correct, you ought to read the original material that is so liberally quoted. But Amis' haunting, literary treatment of one of this ravaged century's most despicable figures and the foul movement that spawned him deserves your attention as well.