The Next Fifty Years: A Preview?

The time: the late 1970s. The place: a prison camp in the Arctic Circle. The narrator: a former citizen of the country called America Vorkuta Camp, sub-camp 17B February 17, 197- I realize that I cannot hope to live much longer and I am grateful to my interrogators for giving me this chance to tell my story. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1916. My father had inherited a sizable for- tune from his father, which derived from the exploitation of the workers in a number of cotton mills. I was educated at Choate and Harvard, and graduated summa cum laude in 1937. My views at that time were jejune and incorrect. As I now see, I was misled by left-wing liberal thinkers into believing that the so-called democratic powers, such as the United States, offered a viable alternative to Fascism. I did not then understand that they were themselves semi- Fascist societies. So great was my intellectual confusion that I even thought of myself as a Communist, though I never read Das Kapital. In these circumstances of ignorance it is hardly surprising that I failed to understand the true nature of the Spanish Civil War. I enthusiastically supported the Spanish Republicans, and it was in this connection that I first came into contact with American Communist Party members, includ- ing G., who may be in this camp if he has not already been liquidated. I became a close friend and ad- viser of G. Eventually I told him, one evening in Central Park, that I too would like to join the Communist Party of the United States. I recall how cold it was with snow on the ground. It was a month or more be- fore I heard from G. again. Then I met him on the Staten Island Ferry. He told me that I was of no interest to the Party unless I was prepared to obey unswervingly any instruc- tions that I might receive. I agreed. A few days later he rang me at my office—I was working for a firm of publishers—and instructed: me to THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS: A PREVIEW ? CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON meet him on Amsterdam Avenue at 7:30 that evening. I waited for some time. At last G. turned up with a stranger with a foreign accent which may have been German. The three of us sat in a German beer parlor. The stranger ordered me to apply immediately for a post in the State Department and if possible to identify myself with my father’s political views; my father had been elected to Congress when I was in my teens. He was a Democrat and a fairly close friend of President Roosevelt’s. My head aches unbearably. I can write no more today. =< February

The interrogators told me last night that I had been lazy yesterday and should have written more. I realize that time is short. They told me of the criminally stupid uprising by the Pittsburgh workers and of the meas- ures that will have to be taken. I am fully aware that my fate and theirs are linked. I am not of course criticizing my interrogators. They treat me well here and often let me sleep as long as three hours at a time. Unlike the other place. fingernails have even begun to grow again.

CF

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Constantine FitzGibbon

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The time: the late 1970s. The place: a prison camp in the Arctic Circle. The narrator: a former citizen of the country called America Vorkuta Camp, sub-camp 17B February 17, 197- I realize that I cannot hope to live much longer and I am grateful to my interrogators for giving me this chance to tell my story. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1916. My father had inherited a sizable for- tune from his father, which derived from the exploitation of the workers in a number of cotton mills. I was educated at Choate and Harvard, and graduated summa cum laude in 1937. My views at that time were jejune and incorrect. As I now see, I was misled by left-wing liberal thinkers into believing that the so-called democratic powers, such as the United States, offered a viable alternative to Fascism. I did not then understand that they were themselves semi- Fascist societies. So great was my intellectual confusion that I even thought of myself as a Communist, though I never read Das Kapital. In these circumstances of ignorance it is hardly surprising that I failed to understand the true nature of the Spanish Civil War. I enthusiastically supported the Spanish Republicans, and it was in this connection that I first came into contact with American Communist Party members, includ- ing G., who may be in this camp if he has not already been liquidated. I became a close friend and ad- viser of G. Eventually I told him, one evening in Central Park, that I too would like to join the Communist Party of the United States. I recall how cold it was with snow on the ground. It was a month or more be- fore I heard from G. again. Then I met him on the Staten Island Ferry. He told me that I was of no interest to the Party unless I was prepared to obey unswervingly any instruc- tions that I might receive. I agreed. A few days later he rang me at my office—I was working for a firm of publishers—and instructed: me to THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS: A PREVIEW ? CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON meet him on Amsterdam Avenue at 7:30 that evening. I waited for some time. At last G. turned up with a stranger with a foreign accent which may have been German. The three of us sat in a German beer parlor. The stranger ordered me to apply immediately for a post in the State Department and if possible to identify myself with my father’s political views; my father had been elected to Congress when I was in my teens. He was a Democrat and a fairly close friend of President Roosevelt’s. My head aches unbearably. I can write no more today. =< February

The interrogators told me last night that I had been lazy yesterday and should have written more. I realize that time is short. They told me of the criminally stupid uprising by the Pittsburgh workers and of the meas- ures that will have to be taken. I am fully aware that my fate and theirs are linked. I am not of course criticizing my interrogators. They treat me well here and often let me sleep as long as three hours at a time. Unlike the other place. fingernails have even begun to grow again.