The Right Books

Arnold Beichman—the scholar, polemicist, and author—was seated at a dinner recently beside Georgi Arbatov, the Kremlin’s Dean of American Studies. Much to his American host’s embarrassment, Beichman plied the urbane Arbatov with pointed questions about the new General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Yuri Andropov, about whom he has just published a book. Beichman was particularly pressing on the subject of Andropov’s 15 years as head of the KGB, during which he perfected the technique of curing dissidents by putting them in mental hospitals. At last Arbatov, goaded momentarily from behind the façade with which he charms George Kennan and Harrison Salisbury, turned on Beichman and half-shouted: “Do you know what would have happened to them under Stalin?”

The main proof of Communism is that we have stopped shooting troublemakers. Now they are carefully placed in jails and provided for. Even members of the Central Committee are no longer shot. My fellow historians, when they publish the minutes of Party congresses and the decrees of top Party bodies, no longer have to include lists of Central Committee members who were almost all massacred by Stalin. This means there have been major shifts and a sense of shame—another vivid and irrefutable indication of the coming of the new Communist era.

Featured Tags

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Arnold Beichman—the scholar, polemicist, and author—was seated at a dinner recently beside Georgi Arbatov, the Kremlin’s Dean of American Studies. Much to his American host’s embarrassment, Beichman plied the urbane Arbatov with pointed questions about the new General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Yuri Andropov, about whom he has just published a book. Beichman was particularly pressing on the subject of Andropov’s 15 years as head of the KGB, during which he perfected the technique of curing dissidents by putting them in mental hospitals. At last Arbatov, goaded momentarily from behind the façade with which he charms George Kennan and Harrison Salisbury, turned on Beichman and half-shouted: “Do you know what would have happened to them under Stalin?”

The main proof of Communism is that we have stopped shooting troublemakers. Now they are carefully placed in jails and provided for. Even members of the Central Committee are no longer shot. My fellow historians, when they publish the minutes of Party congresses and the decrees of top Party bodies, no longer have to include lists of Central Committee members who were almost all massacred by Stalin. This means there have been major shifts and a sense of shame—another vivid and irrefutable indication of the coming of the new Communist era.