Volume 9, Number 8 · November 9, 1967
The Survivor
By A.J.P. Taylor
The Post-War Years 1945-54
by Ilya Ehrenburg, translated by Tatiana Shebunina, in collaboration with Yvonne Kapp
World, 352 pp., $6.50
In years of danger and crisis, it becomes almost a crime to survive. Siéyès, the original survivor, blotted his reputation in history for ever, merely by drawing attention to himself. After the First World War, those who came back from the trenches were troubled by remorse, as Harold Macmillan and others have shown in their memoirs. In the same way, there is a general chorus of opinion that there must be something peculiarly wrong and degraded in those who survived the years of Stalin's terror. The Soviet politicians are not worth condemning. It is obvious that they were concerned only to save their skins. For some reason, writers are less easily excused. Any Soviet writer who came through alive or at any rate without a stretch in Siberia must surely be a coward and a timeserver.
Review, 1766 words
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