THE LURE OF COMMUNISM

For some time I have been considering the issue of why educated, intelligent people turned to communism after World War II in Czechoslovakia. By the late 60’s many had become disillusioned and began to question what caused them not to ignore the flaws in communist ideology until it was too late. Maybe my interest is a result of meeting some of these people who, after 1968, were questioning themselves.

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovaly describes her story from Nazi concentration camp to wife of a Czech communist who was purged in the early 1950s during the Slansky Trials. After her husband was purged (and later killed) from his leadership position in the trade ministry, she became a pariah and struggled to keep herself and her small son alive when everyone and everything seemed to be turned against her. It is a fascinating and troubling story. While there were good people who tried to help in small ways without endangering themselves or their families, more appeared to be hurtful to her as they fell in with the party line. Or maybe they were "small" people who had bec0me taken with their new found power over people.

Some quotes:

For many people in Czechoslovakia after the war, the Communist revolution was just another attempt to find the way home, to fight their way back to humanity.

I have often thought that many of our people turned to Communism not so much in revolt against the existing political system, but out of sheer despair over human nature which showed itself at its very worst after the war.

The Communists at that time kept stressing the scientific basis of their ideology, . . .

Our conditioning for the revolution had begun in the concentration camps. Perhaps we had been most impressed by the example of our fellow prisoners, Communist who often behaved like beings of a higher order. Their idealism and Party discipline gave them a strength and an endurance that the rest of us could not match.

The most eagerly embraced belief of the time was that no national or racial oppression could exist under communism.

Why did some Communists continue to believe after the purges of the 1950s? For them, the struggle for the ideal took on the meaning of a struggle for personal redemption. . . . To give up this ideal would be to disclaim the meaning of one’s whole life.

Membership in the Communist Party was very much like belonging to a religious order.