PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY
A speech given by Stefan Heym last December 4 at an "International Colloquium of Authors from Socialist Countries” held in East Berlin is still echoing in Bast Germany. Heym is an old Communist who lived for many years in the United States during the years of Nazism in Germany. Today he lives in East Berlin where he is a member of the Communist party. Although he was awarded the "National Prize," East Germany's highest distinction for artists and scientists, the well-known Communist author was not invited to thr colloquium. He went anyway and asked for the floor. The speech which he then wrote in one night and delivered the next day is now going the rounds.
Heym began by telling an anecdote which he heard from Ilya Ehrenburg, the well-known Soviet writer. In 1956, the story went, the producer of a film in which Stalin was glorified was taken to task. He defended himself by submitting the scripts he had been given to make the movie with. One sentence reading, "Stalin leaves the room," had been corrected. The corrected sentence read, "The eat Stalin leaves the room."' The correction was in Stalin's own handwriting. ..
Such an anecdote raises many questions, Stefan Heym said, "Not only questions of a medical nature -- the psychiatrists of the future will certainly closely study the morbid symptoms and reach a correct diagnosis of that sick man, Stalin. But more important is the question of revolutionary ethics. How did it happen that thousands of Communists, experienced fighters, could gradually acquiesce in a situation which they should have considered evil and against their ideals?"
After making the ‘point that Stalin wasn't able to destroy the validity and viability of socialism, Heym continued:
"How much more could have been accomplished through the efforts and sacrifices of these men [who were building socialism], and
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how much further history would have advanced by today if they had not been held back by something that is with great discretion today called 7a deformation of Leninist norms!?
"For the sake of mankind, it is necessary to clean up the dirt that was swept under the rug, it is necessary to clean the rug it- “self and to disinfect the room Stalin left."
Heym pointed out that if the socialist countries have scored great progress in industry, technology and the natural sciences in recent years, philosophy, the arts and literature have lagged badly behind, The intellectual atmosphere appears singularly placid; but this apparent placidness screens great uneasiness. Public declarations often have a double and even triple meaning. Hypocrisy is universal. —
"This is very dangerous, '* Heym said, "and can lead to stagnation and decline. There is only one way to avert this, and that is to bring things out into the open, to discuss, to weigh and to make corrections, To maintain silence any longer, to act as if the old rulés were still valid, or, even worse, to create the false impression that you have adapted your ideas to new facts when in reality you are still clinging to the old dogmas can only heighten the cynicism to be felt everywhere.
"The key, it. appears’ clear, is therefore fearless discussion. Discussion without tabus, with scrutiny of what appear to be evident truths, with questioning of things that seem to have long been established. It is above all necessary to deal with the central probiem, the contradiction between revolutionary democracy on the one hand, which implies constant questioning of ukases, constant re-examination of doctrine, and, on the other hand, revolutionary discipline, which calls for submission: and unconditional execution of directives."
Heym called for a deep-going and critical debate, particularly of the problems of artistic, literary and scientific creation. The need for debate and discussion goes very deep, he said, and where © the censor's red pencil forbids real debate, false debates spring up.
Heym ended by taking up the argument about "the enemy listen~ ing in." He granted that the enemy in the capitalist countries listens in; but the tactic of silence is more costly, in the long run, than probing for the truth even. under the eyes of the enemy. “We should not shrink from the cost of reaching the truth, for the truth is always revolutionary; and where its finger touches the revolution, there it indicates something wrong -- not with the idea of the revolution, but with the way the idea has been applied. ...
"When we discuss freely, it is not to please Time, Inc., or the Axel-Springer publishing house in Hamburg [the biggest newspaper trust in West Germany]. We do it instead to cleanse socialism of the rust and blood stains of the Stalin period, and from the mold of
bureaucracy, so that socialism can again shine in the great light cast by those who gave their hearts and their lives for it, so that socialism can again inspire mankind, especially the youth, with that enthusiasm capable of changing the world,"
Speeches like this are not rarities. Similar ones have been heard many times since 1956 in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and. the Soviet Union. "De-Stalinization" has given the intellectuals a voice, but not satisfaction. In their way they, too, are preparing the political revolution with their passionate pleas for truth and reason,