Letter from Paris

L’aveu, the Costa-Gavras film based on Artur London’s horrifying story of innocent men forced to “confess” at the Czech political show trials of the Fifties [see NR, “The Confession,” Aug. 26, 1969], opened in Paris during the week when Communists everywhere were celebrating the centennial of Lenin’s birth. Deliberate or not, the timing was apt, especially as the final shots show Soviet tanks entering Prague and rolling past a wall inscribed “Lenin, wake up! They have gone mad.” “It is the worst blow struck in many years against Communism, or to be exact, at Stalinism and its aftereffects,” the critic of l’Express wrote. Until the picture has been shown elsewhere (it has just opened in New York), it is impossible to gauge the deadliness of the blow, but as far as France is concerned, it is the most devastating bombshell to hit a political group since the publication of J’Accuse!

London’s story was this. He was a longtime Communist (from age fourteen), a faithful Communist, who was Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1951 when Stalin decreed a purge of what he regarded as unreliable elements among Jewish leaders in the Iron Curtain satellites. For a number of reasons, London was a suitable victim. He was picked up, tortured, forced to sign a fabricated confession, sentenced to life imprisonment. He was freed only in 1956 when destalinization was at its height. He came out of prison, unbelievably, still convinced that Communism was good, and Stalinism only a perversion of it. He wrote the book on which L’Aveu is based.

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L’aveu, the Costa-Gavras film based on Artur London’s horrifying story of innocent men forced to “confess” at the Czech political show trials of the Fifties [see NR, “The Confession,” Aug. 26, 1969], opened in Paris during the week when Communists everywhere were celebrating the centennial of Lenin’s birth. Deliberate or not, the timing was apt, especially as the final shots show Soviet tanks entering Prague and rolling past a wall inscribed “Lenin, wake up! They have gone mad.” “It is the worst blow struck in many years against Communism, or to be exact, at Stalinism and its aftereffects,” the critic of l’Express wrote. Until the picture has been shown elsewhere (it has just opened in New York), it is impossible to gauge the deadliness of the blow, but as far as France is concerned, it is the most devastating bombshell to hit a political group since the publication of J’Accuse!

London’s story was this. He was a longtime Communist (from age fourteen), a faithful Communist, who was Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1951 when Stalin decreed a purge of what he regarded as unreliable elements among Jewish leaders in the Iron Curtain satellites. For a number of reasons, London was a suitable victim. He was picked up, tortured, forced to sign a fabricated confession, sentenced to life imprisonment. He was freed only in 1956 when destalinization was at its height. He came out of prison, unbelievably, still convinced that Communism was good, and Stalinism only a perversion of it. He wrote the book on which L’Aveu is based.