In its purest sense, Communism follows life’s two true events – birth and death. Whittaker Chambers, to attach a name to the narrative, along with countless others, have sought a sense of soul rebirth. It is the inherent unity found in the promising tagline of Communism, aiding your fellow man and striving towards a common goal. Few leave the Communist Party of their own free will because that distinction between life and death is never made.
The distinction that Communism is not a spiritual rebirth is key, because as Chambers writes, Communism reduces the basic question of allegiance in life to a 50/50 possibility – do you place your undying trust in Man or do you place your faith in God? For Communist adherents, the first choice is obvious as Communism strips faith away from life. Communism is apophatic in its fullest sense. Rather than viewing God in terms of the qualities which an omniscient being does not possess, Communism negates the presence of a higher power completely, creating a Godless existence, seemingly necessary for compliance within the view. If there is no known escape route present, anyone awakening to find themselves “in too deep”, would be trapped. As Chambers proclaims rather bluntly in his brilliant foreword to Witness, most Communists chose death as they did not see an alternative to their suddenly-hellish existence. In a particularly-heartbreaking memory, Chambers offers an anecdote of his son crying out in fear and asking Chambers not to “go away”, a stand-in for suicide (Chambers, Foreword, 50), as even from a young age, being surrounded by Communism allows a son to recognize the horrors present. For the Communist rulers, as Stephane Courtois adds in The Black Book of Communism, the answer is genocide. Courtois references the French Criminal Code which defines genocide as “The deed of executing a concerted effort that strives to destroy totally or partially a national, ethnic, racial or religious group…” (Courtois, 8). The term genocide is important and while the term is typically used in reference to the physical ending of life that follows a rise in Communism, shown in the staggering death tolls that the ideology leaves in its wake, the term can also be applied to supporters’ mental state. In the process of ascribing fully to Communism, a supporter experiences a sort of mental genocide, relieving oneself of their former life in favor of service to the regime. It takes a mental rebirth to then break for good from the Communist cycle, rather than as Chambers would say to “seek an intellectual night’s lodging.” (Chambers, Foreword, 41)
In the documentary, “Secrets, Lies and Atomic Spies”, it is proclaimed that for Soviet conspirator Saville Sax, Communism was a sort of substitute Judaism in his community (PBS, 33:10). Rather than believe in the Jewish faith, which would have been in direct violation to the Communist notion of a Godless society, Sax needed something on which to hang his metaphorical hat. While Sax – and by extension, Theodore Hall – were never truly caught and charged for their crimes – much to the anger of the codebreakers working tirelessly to punish them for their misdeeds – the case can be made that the two and Klaus Fuchs, et al, never truly lived. Communism, by its very nature, of unity to your fellow brother at all costs, strips an adherent of their individuality and personal freedom. When an individual breaks from Communism as Chambers accomplished, they “cross that bridge from death into life,” (Chambers, 58) in a sense completing the cycle.
Works Cited
Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, by Stephane Courtois, Harvard Univ Press, 2015.
Chambers, Whittaker. Witness. Regnery History, 2014.
“Secrets, Lies and Atomic Spies.” PBS, 2002, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzoxYGFrLS0.