This is what turned Stalin from a petty if brutal dictator to what Amiscalls "negative perfection," his simply inability to accept reality. Amisexplores this "negative perfection" and all its base, degrading, andhorrifying fullness. He discuss the forced famines, the concentrationcamps, Stalin's seeming attempts to wipe off the face of the earth anyoneand anything that displeased him. Stalin's obsessions and maniacal actionsliterally warped the foundations of civil society in the Soviet Union untilthey snapped. Soon truth had no meaning and survival seemed almost randomluck. Amis illustrates this tragic and absurd situation when discussingthe census of 1937. Apparently their was a national census in 1937, thefirst one since 1926. Stalin felt that the population should be 170million. The Census Board reported their findings - 167 million. Stalin'spolicies of forced famine and concentration camps was having too great aneffect on the population. Stalin's reaction? Have the Census Board arr!ested and shot! Their crime: "treasonably exerting themselves to diminishthe population of the USSR."
Amis notes that many of the early revolutionaries were often proud of theirlack of hypocrisy - their ability to get beyond the illusions that otherscould not. But this is again a subject in which truth was turned on itshead:
In fact, of course, hypocrisy boomed under the Bolsheviks, like hyperinflation. I do not intend it as a witticsm when I say that hypocrisybecame 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; ithad played its part in innumerable social interactions; it had starred inmany Victorian novels; and so on; but it had never been asked to saturateone sixth of the planet. Looking back hypocrisy might have smiled at itsearlier reticence, fo it soon grew accustomed to the commandingheights.
The above paragraph is also illustrative of Amis's style. His subject ishard and somber but Amis brings a literary and sharp tongue to the task. His descriptions of characters and his unpacking of rhetoric is rich withbarbed jabs and beautifully turned phrases. Some see this tone asdiscordant with the subject but for me it gave the writing a kick it mightnot otherwise have had.
So, the bottom line for me? I enjoyed the book and found it a powerfulreminder of the horrors of the Soviet experiment. It left me with adetermination to not let the subject fade; to not let the world shrug offthe terrors that occurred with much of the "best and brightest" tacitagreement. The awkward inclusion of Amis' personal details, demons, andtragedies do not add to the work but neither do the fatally detract fromit. The work could have been much more but it is still a powerful reminderof 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 toremember. In one of those personal stories tacked on the end, Amisdescribes a political event in which his friend Christopher Hitchens speaksof being very familiar with the chosen venue having spent time there withmany "an old comrade." Amis describes how everyone, including himself andhis friend Robert Conquest, chuckled affectionately at the comment. Amisnoted! the different reaction Hitchens would have gotten had he mentioned havingspent time with many "an old blackshirt." And of course most of us arewell aware of the difference between being a former communist and a formernazi in today's PC environment. To Amis this is not right:
Article comments
1 - Prentiss Riddle
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.
2 - Nathan Lott
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 theoristsâ€"outside of their artworkâ€"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.)