(4 of 4)
"Grazhdanka! (citizeness)," cried the Tsarina, "you have been reading banned books. Those are the views of the renegade Leon Trotsky."
"The Muse cannot help being an intellectual," said the Tsar generously, "but I do not think that we should charge her with Trotskyism. I must say, though, that for a Muse of History, you seem to have a very slight grasp of the historical dialectic. It is difficult for me to understand how a contemporary of the dialectician, Heraclitus of Ephesus, can still think in the static concepts of 19th-Century liberalism. History, Madam, is not a suburban trolley line which stops to accommodate every housewife with bundles in her arms."
"I think I liked you better, Nicholas," said the Muse of History, "when you were only a weakling Tsar. You are becoming a realist."
"Death," said the Tsarina, "is a somewhat maturing experience. What Nicky means is that between two systems of society, which embody diametrically opposed moral and political principles, even peace may be only a tactic of struggle."
"But have not the gentlemen downstairs," asked History, "just agreed to solve the Polish and Yugoslav questions in a friendly fashion?"
"What makes Stalin great," said the Tsar, "is that he understands how to adapt revolutionary tactics to the whirling spirals of history as it emerges onto new planes. He has discarded the classical type of proletarian revolution. Nevertheless, he is carrying through basic social revolutions in Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland. Furthermore, we Marxists believe that in the years of peace Britain and the U.S. will fall apart, due, as we Marxists say, to the inability of capitalism to solve its basic contradiction—that is, its inability to provide continuous work for the masses so that they can buy the goods whose production would provide continuous work for the masses. Britain and America can solve this problem only by becoming Communist states."
"If that were true, Stalin would be wrong," said History, "because America and Britain, though they may undergo great changes, will not become Communist states. More is at stake than economic and political systems. Two faiths are at issue. It is just that .problem which these gentlemen below are trying to work out in practical terms. But if they fail, I foresee more wars, more revolutions, greater proscriptions, bloodshed and human misery."
"Well," said the Tsarina, "if you can foresee all that, why don't you do something to prevent it?"
The Muse of History drew the Tsarevich to her, for he had become restless. "Poor little bleeder," she said, stroking his hair, "different only in the organic nature of your disease from so many others who have bled and died. In answer to your question, Madam," she said, glancing at the Tsarina, "I never permit my foreknowledge to interfere with human folly, if only because I never expect human folly to learn much from history. Besides, I must leave something for my sister, Melpomene, to work on."*
* In the Greek Pantheon, Melpomene was the Muse of Tragedy.