ABSTRACT
In the early days of civil war, intervention and famine, when the state was most in danger, art was most free. In the war years of 1939-1945, when the state was once more in danger and its very survival was in question, there was a new era of comparative liberalism. The relation between danger to the state and total terror is just the opposite of what is generally imagined. While opposition is alive or danger is great, these are hindrances to total terror. Then terror rages unchecked and the state treat its victims as "rebels" precisely when they are most helpless, most atomized and most submissive. With "complete socialism," the state, far from withering away, then swells to totality, embracing every aspect of life in its all-encompassing, steadily more constricting grasp. Many more were loyal to socialism, to the people, to the ideals once proclaimed by bolshevism.
