Has Russia completely shed its communist past?This 1940 novel covering the final weeks before the execution of N.S. Rubashov, a prominent Russian/ Soviet revolutionary from before and long after the 1917 revolution, is a true classic. It has inspired countless governments, politicians and authors of spy novels and -films during the Cold War. Could it make a comeback if relations with Russia deteriorate any further?Written semi-autobiographically, Rubashov is presented first as a cunning operator and apparatchik for the Movement, an enforcer of Party doctrine emanating from No. 1, Stalin. Working undercover in the 1930s in e.g. Germany and Belgium on missions ordered from above, he confronted local cells of Comrades asking, ‘why offload Soviet rare metals for enemy Germany’s weapons industry, why transfer crude oil to Italy, busily colonizing parts of Africa? It’s against the Party line!’ Whereupon Rubashov explained the Revolution’s needed hard currency to become an industrial powerhouse. His missions, visits or postings always produced fear, sometimes death.This novel is coldly realistic about incarceration, harsh regimes and communing Morse-style with neighbours by tapping on heating pipes. Quite authentic about its warped 1930s ideology constantly revised by No. 1, its random classes of victims (here, advocates of large submarines, nitrogen fertilizer, poetry genres) and the jargon and mindsets of Believers worldwide, [incl. the Party’s local offshoots controlling workers- and student unions until the fall of the Berlin Wall (and beyond).] It contains searing memories of Rubashov’s betrayals, his state of living by instinct and feral sense of survival, and plenty of memorable scenes and anecdotes. Also, his hopes for a reprieve and rest, added time to write why exactly History’s inevitable and worldwide destiny of/for the SU failed, and so quickly.Arthur Koestler spawned a literary sub-genre which grew like a tree with large and smaller branches representing subgenres. Its leaves, fruits and flowers are the books and films that have guided policy makers and educated and entertained voters for 75 years. Loved a recent flower, Julian Barnes’s half-fictional life story of how composer Dmitry Shostakovich survived during Stalin’s rule.
