Passage from Communism

Being both emotional and articulate, Howard Fast has given us a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the anguished process of his break with the Communist Party (The Naked God, Praeger, $3.50). Except in the formal sense, that break is far from completed; Fast’s mind is still cluttered with the prejudices and clichés of his indoctrination. For antiCommunists, the spectacle again raises the problems of conscience and tactics posed each time a prominent writer or intellectual escapes from the dungeon-world of Communism.

One critic, sensible enough on other scores, sees no problems. “Why genuflect before a Howard Fast?” he exclaimed. “He’s played the Kremlin’s dirty games for a dozen years and can’t settle accounts with a bit of rhetoric.” But the matter is not so simple.

EL

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Eugene Lyons

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Being both emotional and articulate, Howard Fast has given us a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the anguished process of his break with the Communist Party (The Naked God, Praeger, $3.50). Except in the formal sense, that break is far from completed; Fast’s mind is still cluttered with the prejudices and clichés of his indoctrination. For antiCommunists, the spectacle again raises the problems of conscience and tactics posed each time a prominent writer or intellectual escapes from the dungeon-world of Communism.

One critic, sensible enough on other scores, sees no problems. “Why genuflect before a Howard Fast?” he exclaimed. “He’s played the Kremlin’s dirty games for a dozen years and can’t settle accounts with a bit of rhetoric.” But the matter is not so simple.