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But what of the Moscow intelligentsia today? They are aware of the shabbiness, the flabbiness of the party lie. Among themselves they ridicule it. And then cynically, in the same breath, in angry protests and articles, ringingly and rhetorically repeat the very same lie, reinforcing it by their pseudo eloquence and style! Where did [George] Orwell discover his doublethink, what was his model if not the Soviet intelligentsia of the '30s and '40s? And since that time, this doublethink has been worked to perfection and become a perennial, vitally important device.
What distinguishes the mentality of the Moscow intelligentsia more than anything else is its greed for awards, prizes, titles: "honored personage . . . laureate . . ." In shameful pursuit of all this, people stand to attention, break off all unapproved friendships, obey all wishes of their superiors and condemn any of their colleagues if the party orders them to do so. I think even the sorriest pre-revolutionary intellectual would refuse to shake hands with the most illustrious one in Moscow today.
Everyone who lives in our country pays a moral tax in the form of the obligatory ideological lie. But for the working class the tax is minimal. About all they now have to do is once in a while vote at some general meeting. Meanwhile the rulers of the state and the other propagators of ideology sincerely believe in their ideology and many of them have devoted themselves to it out of long years of inertia, out of ignorance and man's peculiar psychological habit of developing a philosophy to justify his main sphere of activity.
Oh, we crave for freedom, we denounce (in a whisper) anyone who ventures to doubt the desirability and necessity for total freedom in our country (meaning, in all probability, freedom not for everyone but certainly for the favored few). But we wait for this freedom to fall to our lot like some sudden, unexpected miracle that will occur without any effort on our part. We ourselves are doing nothing to gain this freedom. Never mind the old traditions of supporting people in political trouble, feeding the fugitive, sheltering the passportless or the homeless (we might lose our state-controlled jobs). Day after day, the Moscow intellectual labors conscientiously, sometimes even with talent, to strengthen the walls of the prison that contains us.
ON THE RETURN OF BREATHING AND CONSCIOUSNESS:
The transition from free speech to enforced silence is no doubt painful. What torment it is for a living society, used to thinking, to lose, as from some day determined by decree, the right to express itself in print and in public, year in and year out to bite back its words in friendly conversation and even under the family roof.
But the return passage, which our country will soon face—the return of breathing and consciousness, the transition from silence to free speech—will also prove a difficult and slow process, and just as painful because of the gulf of utter incomprehension that will suddenly yawn between fellow countrymen, even those of the same generation and same place of origin, even members of the same close circle.