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May 12, 2002
REVIEW: Loss of a dream
IN the twentieth century, the universalist socialist ideal and the egalitarian ethos of the communist revolution inspired thinkers and intellectuals across the globe. Individuals were caught up in great, passionate battles for ideologies, beyond the boundaries of nationalism and nation states. The idealism of the early part of the twentieth century gave way to the espionage and double dealing of the cold war and the division of Europe into East and West, embodied by the Berlin Wall.
The war for and against communism continued to be waged across the globe from the Americas to Asia, but in the 1990’s, the great bastion of communist power. The Soviet Union crumbled. The Berlin wall came down and Germany was reunified. In Europe, the old left, the lifelong socialists, found themselves relegated to the forgotten pages of history.
In this fascinating, historical novel Fear of mirrors, Tariq Ali reconstructs the story of communism in Europe during the twentieth century, through the manuscript that Vlady Meyer puts together for his son Karl, each named after the great revolutionary icons their parents had admired: Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Karl Marx. The difference is that Karl has no time for the creed that shaped the lives of his parents and grandparents in Eastern Europe.
He is appalled at the crimes that have been committed in its name. Vlady tells him:
“At your age, my parents talked endlessly of the roads that led to paradise. They were building a very special socialist highway which would become the bridge to constructing heaven on earth. They refused to be humiliated in silence. They refused to accept the permanent insignificance of the poor. How lucky they were, my son. To dream such dreams, to dedicate their lives to fulfilling them. How crazy they seem now, not just to you or the world you represent, but the billions who need to make a better world, but are now too frightened to dream”.
Fear of mirrors not only explores how that dream took hold, but why it went awry, brutalizing the very individuals who had risked their lives for the ideals of equality and justice for all.
In the new, reunited Germany, Vlady has been retired from his lectureship at Humboldt University because in the new democratic order, he is still associated with the old ideas, although in East Germany he was a dissident. As a protest, Vlady, who has never been involved with officialdom, joins the Party of Democratic Socialism which “is the re-incarnated version of the former ruling Communist Party of East Germany”. This drives a deeper wedge between him and his son, because Karl has embraced the ideas of the West with enthusiasm and risen rapidly within the ranks of the German Social Democratic Party in Bonn. The narrative that unfolds is essentially the manuscript that Vlady puts together for Karl. He wants to place historic events in their correct perspective and to unravel the secrets of his communist family.
The novel is heavy on history and politics but as the book develops and gathers momentum, it draws the reader into a riveting tale of complex loyalties, espionage, thwarted love and an unexpected, chilling revelation. The book moves seamlessly through past and present, using one to illuminate the other; it is interspersed with glimpses of Vlady and Karl’s contrasting lives in modern Germany. While Vlady struggles with ghosts from East Germany’s past and discovers old communist comrades in new, fashionable, self-serving guises, the bright, ambitious, young Karl moves with ease into the ethos of the West and the shining world it appears to promise.
Vlady goes on to describe the formative years of parents, Ludwig and Gertrude, who are both of Jewish origin. They were recruited to the cause of world revolution at the universities of Vienna and Munich respectively. Tariq Ali captures the fervour and mood of the changing times very well, against the backdrop of Tsarist pogroms, anti-communist brutality in Germany, the death of Lenin, the rift between Trotsky and Stalin, the rise of fascism, Hitler and Mussolini, the Spanish civil war and the two world wars. Gertrude and Ludwig first meet in 1923. He is her immediate superior, working with the Red Army’s military intelligence; she has been selected by the German communist party to conduct clandestine operations. Both are involved in daring undercover operations in many countries, but Ludwig finds himself increasing alienated by the oppressive policies of Moscow and Stalin’s reign of terror.. Decades later, Vlady is conscious that there is much that he doesn’t know about his parents and their past. He is haunted by the knowledge that his father was mysteriously killed. He has no idea by whom and why. He decides that the one person who can help him is his old Vietnamese friend Sao, an erstwhile communist, Vietnam guerrilla who has become an entrepreneur in Russia with excellent contacts in official Moscow circles. Through Sao, the novel brings in another dimension of the communist struggle — Vietnam. Vlady is also aware that his mother “belonged to a generation that had no difficulty in subordinating truth to the needs of Moscow or even her own personal need, to protect her new post-war identity in the new Germany”. Shortly after his wife Helge leaves him, Vlady learns that Gertrude had not only worked for Soviet intelligence before and after the war, but been assigned to the intelligence services of East Germany. Vlady begins to wonder how much she has told her intelligence colleagues about him and his activities.
Through Vlady’s quest for answers, Fear of mirrors reveals that facing the truth, whether personal or historical, must remain paramount if individuals and the societies in which they live, can be truly liberated: it is only then that they can move forward.
Fear of mirrors
By Tariq Ali
Alhamra Publishing, Saudi Pak Tower, Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad Tel: 051-2823862
Email: contact@alhamra.com Website:
www.alhamra.com
ISBN 969-516-045-X
324pp. Rs295
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