ABSTRACT
Twenty and even ten years ago, it was an important intellectual task (and one in which, in a small way, I participated) to point out to Americans of good will that the Soviet and Nazi systems were not simply transitory stages, nor a kind of throwback to the South American way—that they were, in fact, new forms of social organization, more omnivorous than even the most brutal of earlier dictatorships. At that time, there were many influential people who were willing to see the Nazis as a menace but insisted that the Bolsheviks were a hope. And even today one can find individuals who have no inkling of the terror state—people who, for instance, blame “the” Germans for not throwing Hitler out or for compromising themselves by joining Nazi party or other organizations, or who attribute Soviet behavior to the alleged submissiveness of the Russian character or trace it back to Czarist despotism and expansionism and whatnot. Yet it seems to me that now the task of intellectual and moral awakening has been pretty well performed, and stands even in danger of being overperformed; in pursuit of the few remaining “liberals who haven’t learned,” groups such as this [the American Committee on Cultural Freedom] may mistake the temper of the country at large, misdeploy their energies, and, paradoxically, serve complacency in the very act of trying to destroy complacency.
