Dilemma

THE YOGI AND THE COMMISSAR--Arthur Koestler--Macmillan ($2.50).

Hungarian-born Arthur Koestler, once a Communist and still a Socialist, wears what he calls an Old School tie that is "one of the most distinguished . . . of the good old Continent." In Germany, the Old School was named Dachau and Buchenwald; in Spain, it was Seville (Koestler was imprisoned there for three months, under sentence of death). There was also France's Le Vernet, Italy's Civitavecchia prison. Inmates who have been lucky enough to escape death in the Old School now wear a tie that is patterned of scars, ulcers, and a chronic condition of shakes and terror. "I dream," writes Koestler, that "I am being murdered in some kind of thicket . . .; there is a busy road at no more than ten yards distance; I scream for help, but nobody hears me. . . ."

Unlike most of his fellow alumni, Arthur Koestler has succeeded in transforming his private horrors into brilliant pictures of contemporary life, his screams into some of the best of contemporary writing. His brush with death in Spain and France, plus his disillusioning lessons as a revolutionary, gave him the material for such bleak disquisitions as Dialogue with Death, Scum of the Earth, Arrival and Departure, and also for one of the finest novels of the past decade, Darkness at Noon (TIME, May 26, 1941).

Since 1940, Author Koestler has lived in England, serving as a private in the British Army and as an official propagandist. He has taken to the English language more ably than any foster-writer since Joseph Conrad.

Individualism v. Economic Law. The title of The Yogi and the Commissar, a collection of 16 essays, mostly on writing and politics, fits the book like a glove. For Koestler believes that every thinking man today is threatened or tempted by these two polar figures. On the extreme Left stands the Commissar--the superbly disciplined Communist who believes that the end justifies the means, and who has exchanged ethics, personal liberty and all irrational sentiments for a ruthless "pseudo-Communism" based on economic laws. On the extreme Right, in an "exotic hermitage," stands (or sits) the Yogi. He believes that "each individual is alone, but attached to [Truth] by an invisible umbilical cord" which must never be snapped by violent movement. The Yogi is convinced that a better world can be obtained only by spiritual means, not by legislation, "that the End is unpredictable and that the Means alone count."

Between these two figures stands the bewildered man of today. The intelligentsia, who might point a way for him, are either equally confused or deliberately blind. The blind, Koestler believes, are chiefly those who continue to put their faith in the creed of the Commissar.

The Creed of the Commissar. In a confused and confusing era of human life, the Commissar offers a doctrine that is completely "reasonable." In place of the doubts and contradictions of contemporary science and religion, he offers an "infallible" economic interpretation of history. Finally, after a century of Utopian hopes, he offers the liberal "a real country, with real people--a glorious Russian compensation for a life of frustration."

Once the Leftist has nestled in to the security of the Commissar's creed he is not even critical of the Commissar's most outrageous acts. In the book's longest essay, Koestler discusses "the stupendous . . . ignorance of Soviet reality among the addicts of the Soviet myth." Soviet addicts cannot, or will not, believe that capital punishment is the penalty for going on strike in Russia. They cannot believe that a Soviet citizen may not leave his home for as little as 24 hours without notifying the police; that no one may go abroad without permission (under penalty of death) or even travel freely in Russia itself; that divorce is virtually impossible except for the rich; that hundreds of thousands toil and die in forced-labor camps.

Finally, Soviet addicts will not admit that (whatever the Commissar may say) Russian Communism has been so modified that it is practically capitalistic. A factory or collective-farm Commissar may not "own" the factory he rules, but he may derive from it as much wealth and more power than a capitalist tycoon.

Will Russia Move West? Like most reformed Communists, Koestler is profoundly suspicious of Soviet intentions. He is convinced that Russian expansion Westward is inevitable, and that expansion, he thinks, will be prompted by a number of things: the nationalistic urge toward "more and more security and power"; the temptation to obtain world trade-lines via the Mediterranean, the Baltic and North Atlantic; the ancient Pan-Slavic tradition; the century-old Russian desire for hegemony over Poland, the Balkans and Constantinople.

The technique of Soviet expansion, says Koestler, will consist of "brisk surprise blows . . . followed by soothing periods . . . faits accomplis [alternating] with tokens of good will." But there will also be "treaties of friendship and mutual aid" which will lead the victim from "collaboration" to "vassalization" so discreetly that an opportune moment for Anglo-American objection will never come. The disillusioned liberal, faced by the advancing Commissar, is likely to turn helplessly to the passive resistance of the Yogi.

The Best of Each? Koestler's own preference, like that of most current prophets, is far less pungent and persuasive than his analysis. He has no wish to obliterate the teachings of the Yogi and the Commissar in toto; he is idealistic enough to hope that the best of each can be joined: a "synthesis of . . . the saint [and] the revolutionary." From the Yogi he would take the values of contemplation, the "inner voice," and reject the "sinning by omission," the passivity that invites rape. From the Commissar he would take a planned, state-controlled economy ("the inevitable next step of historical evolution") and reject the ice-cold rationalism that forbids a man to love his country or value his immortal soul above the dictates of the state.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.