Koba The Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million
Published August 13, 2002
This is what turned Stalin from a petty if brutal dictator to what Amis calls "negative perfection," his simply inability to accept reality. Amis explores this "negative perfection" and all its base, degrading, and horrifying fullness. He discuss the forced famines, the concentration camps, Stalin's seeming attempts to wipe off the face of the earth anyone and anything that displeased him. Stalin's obsessions and maniacal actions literally warped the foundations of civil society in the Soviet Union until they snapped. Soon truth had no meaning and survival seemed almost random luck. Amis illustrates this tragic and absurd situation when discussing the census of 1937. Apparently their was a national census in 1937, the first one since 1926. Stalin felt that the population should be 170 million. The Census Board reported their findings - 167 million. Stalin's policies of forced famine and concentration camps was having too great an effect on the population. Stalin's reaction? Have the Census Board arr! ested and shot! Their crime: "treasonably exerting themselves to diminish the population of the USSR."
Amis notes that many of the early revolutionaries were often proud of their lack of hypocrisy - their ability to get beyond the illusions that others could not. But this is again a subject in which truth was turned on its head:
In fact, of course, hypocrisy boomed under the Bolsheviks, like hyper inflation. I do not intend it as a witticsm when I say that hypocrisy became the life and soul of the party - indeed this understates the case. Hypocrisy didn't know what had hit it in October 1917. Until then, hypocrisy had had its moments, in politics, in religion, in commerce; it had played its part in innumerable social interactions; it had starred in many Victorian novels; and so on; but it had never been asked to saturate one sixth of the planet. Looking back hypocrisy might have smiled at its earlier reticence, fo it soon grew accustomed to the commanding heights.
The above paragraph is also illustrative of Amis's style. His subject is hard and somber but Amis brings a literary and sharp tongue to the task. His descriptions of characters and his unpacking of rhetoric is rich with barbed jabs and beautifully turned phrases. Some see this tone as discordant with the subject but for me it gave the writing a kick it might not otherwise have had.
So, the bottom line for me? I enjoyed the book and found it a powerful reminder of the horrors of the Soviet experiment. It left me with a determination to not let the subject fade; to not let the world shrug off the terrors that occurred with much of the "best and brightest" tacit agreement. The awkward inclusion of Amis' personal details, demons, and tragedies do not add to the work but neither do the fatally detract from it. The work could have been much more but it is still a powerful reminder of just how much we have chosen to forget about "socialism in one country." This is what Amis ultimately wants, he wants us not to forget but to remember. In one of those personal stories tacked on the end, Amis describes a political event in which his friend Christopher Hitchens speaks of being very familiar with the chosen venue having spent time there with many "an old comrade." Amis describes how everyone, including himself and his friend Robert Conquest, chuckled affectionately at the comment. Amis noted! the different reaction Hitchens would have gotten had he mentioned having spent time with many "an old blackshirt." And of course most of us are well aware of the difference between being a former communist and a former nazi in today's PC environment. To Amis this is not right:
- Koba The Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million
- Published: August 13, 2002
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- Section: Books: Biography
- Filed Under: Books: History, Books: Nonfiction
- Writer: Kevin Holtsberry
- Kevin Holtsberry's BC Writer page
- Kevin Holtsberry's personal site
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Thought you might be interested to know I referenced your review on my own blog. I haven't read the book and don't presume to have an opinion on it, but an Amis article in Harper's caught my attention recently. At any rate, I'm glad to see blogcritics examining serious literature. Thanks.
Here's my piece, for anyone interested:
I'm pleased to report that Slate's Anne Applebaum has added her articulate voice to the chorus of critics chiding Martin Amis for the shortcomings of his quasi history of Stalinist terror, Koba the Dread... Even this blogcritic acknowledges that Amis's interweaving of memoir-esque material obfuscates his theme. (Here, parenthetically, I acknowledge the bias clearly revealed in my leade.)
I'm not an Amis reader (père Kinsely nor fis Martin) but I did read Martin's unconvincing diatribe on novel writing as an antidote/antithesis to religion in The Guardian, which is now reprinted in the current Harper's. I'm at a lost to explain why the latter chose to reprint such a disjointed piece, which seems all the less relevant for it's now-passé references to the aftermath of 11 September. Even The Guardian's secular audience found reason to slam the piece, twice. The reader who warned against allowing novelists to presume to be social theorists--outside of their artwork--proved prescient. In both the essay and book, Amis attempts to make sense of real life using the model of literary criticism. Rather backwards, I'm afraid. Fiction helps us understand/deal with reality, but crit. is for lit. not life. Of course, if you have no religion (in a broad sense here) you might think a critics lens as good as any.
But back to Harper's a moment: Why reprint a bad essay? Either 1) the editors can't tell bad from good (again, I'm not a regular reader so I can't say, though I doubt this), 2) the reprint was tangential promotion for their chum's Koba..., or 3) their blind anti-religion stance (revealed in the headers for this and other recent pieces) made 'em do it. I suspect a combination of 2 and 3. Which prompts me to say at least Amis has the integrity to acknowledge his opinions as such and, if not explicitly, admit that his life has shaped his perspective. I searched Harper's website and found no professed editorial stance. The publication is guilty of a typical sin (small s) of the left: failing to acknowledge one's bias. Generally, conservatives own up to their ideology. Their contemporaries on the left however, like to cloak themselves in robes of academia and pretend their opinions are the logical conclusions of learning. Honest left-leaners will at least label themselves "progressive." Those who pretend their beliefs are those of all learned men (and women) are delusional and/or self-righteous, which is far worse than idealistic. (Let's get a few bloggers off the NYT's back and let them take a look at the magazine rack.)
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Interesting review. Thanks for posting it. It makes the book sound like it's worth reading as more than a curiosity for Martin Amis fans.
You say that Amis failed to show why communism evokes nostalgia while nazism evokes horror. Did his raising the topic at least provoke you to do your own thinking about why? I suppose I've always thought that the difference had something to do with the motives we project on the two movements: it's possible to imagine the communist enterprise beginning from a sincere desire to make the world a better place, whereas fascism from the outset declares itself to be based on hatred. That may be simplistic as to the actual history of the movements, but those are two paths which seem to have been recapitulated by many a young person who joined up. Or am I wrong?
In the US, at least, I also associate a sympathy with communism with a repudiation of the narrow and ignorant ways of its most visible opponents: if the Reagan-Nixon-McCarthy-etc. camp sees communism as pure evil (along with mind-altering substances, music with a beat and making love with the lights on) then there must be something good about it. This belief that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is of course a fallacy which leads to all sorts of tragic mistakes.