Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [68]
3
Rubashov had been waiting for two days to be taken before Ivanov. He had thought this would follow immediately after he had handed the document announcing his capitulation to the old warder; it happened to be the same day as the term set by Ivanov, expired. But apparently one was no longer in such a hurry about him. Possibly Ivanov was studying his "Theory of Relative Maturity"; more probably, the document had already been forwarded to the competent higher authorities. Rubashov smiled at the thought of the consternation it must have caused amidst the "theorists" of the Central Committee. Before the Revolution and also for a short while after it, during the lifetime of the old leader, no distinction between "theorists" and "politicians" had existed. The tactics to be followed at any given moment were deduced straight from the revolutionary doctrine in open discussion; strategic moves during the Civil War, the requisitioning of crops, the division and distribution of the land, the introduction of the new currency, the reorganization of the factories--in fact, every administrative measure--represented an act of applied philosophy. Each one of the men with the numbered heads on the old photograph which had once decorated Ivanov's walls, knew more about the philosophy of law, political economy and statesmanship than all the highlights in the professional chairs of the universities of Europe. The discussions at the congresses during the Civil War had been on a level never before in history attained by a political body; they resembled reports in scientific periodicals--with the difference that on the outcome of the discussion depended the life and well-being of millions, and the future of the Revolution. Now the old guard was used up; the logic of history ordained that the more stable the régime became, the more rigid it had to become, in order to prevent the enormous dynamic forces which the Revolution had released from turning inwards and blowing the Revolution itself into the air. The time of philosophizing congresses was over; instead of the old portraits, a light patch shone from Ivanov's wallpaper; philosophical incendiarism had given place to a period of wholesome sterility. Revolutionary theory had frozen to a dogmatic cult, with a simplified, easily graspable catechism, and with No. 1 as the high priest celebrating the Mass. His speeches and articles had, even in their style, the character of an infallible catechism; they were divided into question and answer, with a marvellous consistency in the gross simplification of the actual problems and facts. No. 1 doubtless had an instinct for applying the "law of the relative maturity of the masses". ... The dilettantes in tyranny had forced their subjects to act at command; No. 1 had taught them to think at command. Rubashov was amused by the thought of what the present-day "theorists" of the Party would say to his letter. Under actual conditions, it represented the wildest heresy; the fathers of the doctrine, whose word was taboo, were criticized; spades were called spades, and even No. 1's sacrosanct person was treated objectively in its historical context. They must writhe in agony, those unfortunate theorists of today, whose only task was to dress up No. 1's jumps and sudden changes of course as the latest revelations of philosophy. No. 1 sometimes indulged in strange tricks on his theorists. Once he had demanded an analysis of the American industrial crisis from the committee of experts who edited the Party's economic periodical. This required several months to complete; at last appeared the special number in which--based on the thesis exposed by No. 1 in his last Congress speech--it was proved, over approximately three hundred pages, that the American boom was only a sham-boom, and that