Free Klaus by Allan Massie Page A

published in Amsterdam had recommended him.) What he found there was what he longed to find: a dynamic faith. It was marvellous to observe the joyful determination and zest with which the ordinary Soviet citizens participated in the collective effort to build Socialism. Literature in the USSR was not, as it was in the west, the occupation of a dilettante minority, a diversion for the bourgeoisie. On the contrary! It was recognised and promoted as an integral part of this vast creation of a New Society, a comprehensive scheme which appealed no less to the public imagination and general interest than the enactment of the Five-Year Plan and the reorganisation of Soviet agriculture into collective farms. The Conference offered a magnificent demonstration of this national concern for Literature. All its sessions were attended by workers, private soldiers and peasants who engaged with intelligence and enthusiasm in discussions about modern poetry and the role of the theatre and the cinema under Socialism. Albert felt his heart swell with joy. Tears of happiness came to his eyes.”
    Yes, indeed, these had been Klaus’s own feelings, which he now lent to Albert, when he had attended that Congress and been, for a few days, enraptured, delighted too by the reverence with which all present, it seemed, regarded Maxim Gorki, and the affection, love really, they extended to the old doyen of Russian and Soviet literature. And Klaus had met other Soviet writers there like the delicate and thoughtful poet Boris Pasternak, who had charmed him. At first, that year – it was 1934 – the atmosphere, so different from that in Germany, being full of hope not hatred – had seemed intoxicating.
    Intoxicating – that was actually the right word – for even before he left Moscow Klaus was experiencing the lucid revulsion of hangover. There had been an air of make-believe. People smiled to conceal their fear. There was, he realised, the same will to power there, and the OGPU was in reality no different from the Gestapo. It had been a relief to him when, a couple of years later, Gide had retracted his approval of the Stalinist regime.
    And then in ’38 Klaus and Erika had gone to Spain to report from the Loyalist side in the Civil War. Should he send Albert there? No, that wouldn’t do, because it would have been impossible for an honest man, such as he was determined Albert should be, to have spent time in Spain without realising how viciously and unscrupulously the Communists, instructed by Moscow, had set out to destroy the democratic parties of the Republic. Why should this have surprised Klaus? It was natural it should horrify him, certainly, but why the surprise? Hadn’t the Communists in Germany also obeyed orders to attack the Social Democrats and undermine support for them – because Stalin believed that they, rather than the Nazis, were the chief obstacles to revolution? Stalin had underestimated Hitler and the Nazis. Klaus couldn’t forgive him, even though he admitted that he had made the same mistake himself. “That afternoon in the Carlton tea room,” he scribbled in the margin. “What a blind fool I was!”
    One of the Germans at the nearby table was speaking more loudly now.
    “Of course,” he said, “I experienced difficulties. It seems absurd now, but I was actually hauled before one of these courts, required to prove that I had never been a member of the Party. It was because I had served in the SS, but the Waffen SS, the fighting troops, not Heinrich’s boys, you understand. I enlisted because I was a German and a patriot, even though I never thought the ideology anything but rubbish. All that True Aryan stuff – it was nonsense, I always knew that. But I showed them my wound – this I got at Stalingrad, I said, fighting for Germany, not for the Nazis. Naturally they believed me, I come from a good family after all. And so I’ve remade my life, in our family business, which is a reputable one, believe me, and now