The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds.
Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to?
How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?
How else can one change it?
He who understands and forgives--where would he find a motive to act?
Where would he not?
They will shoot me, thought Rubashov. My motives will be of no interest to them.
I read this first a couple years ago (when the parallel to the Crito which we will explore in class first occurred to me) and not again since--so I have been pleased to see there is as much to it as I remember. I am even worried that 50 pages a class might present more material than we can manage in a class session.
It's further my intention to pair each reading with some supplementary material. The first class will be a quick version of Russian history, starting with (as one must) Russia's failure in the Russo-Japanese War; then quickly through the 1905 revolution; then 1917, and the difference between left, right, and center Bolshevism; then Kronstadt and the Ban on Faction at the 10th Party Congress in 1921; then the succession fight after Lenin's death; the Kirov assassination, and then the Show Trials and the Great Terror. The second class will include the chapter on Ketman from Milosz' The Captive Mind. The third will deal with Havel's "The Power of the Powerless," the fourth some of Adam Michnik's writings. And we will cap the class off with Arendt from Eichmann in Jerusalem and Kafka from The Trial. I am looking forward to this.
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