A CONVERSATION WITH SAUL BELLOW

...Had there been democratic alternatives to Communist rule in those countries in the past, their present situation would most likely be different...

...The author and his wife, the daughter of a former leader of the Rumanian Communist party, were staying at Mishkenot Sha'ananim, the beautiful hostel for artists and writers run by the Jerusalem municipality...

...But this was an illusion...

...It now became clear that the conversation was moving in the direction of a general debate about the global aspects of American policy...

...In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, life has immensely improved...

...This puzzle may, however, be explained by the difficulty encountered by an author—whose work is mainly in the realm of the imagination, the aesthetic, the selection and filtering of images from reality—when he attempts to switch roles and function as a researcher or a reporter...

...During the 1930s few had believed that democratic, liberal, capitalist Europe would survive...

...I conclude that he is only trying out these views...

...Our meeting took place at the Beth Belgia Faculty Club of the Hebrew University, to which I invited Bellow for lunch on November 10, 1975...

...Any new agreement that may be reached in this region will also have to be based on the continued exclusion of Russia from the area, coupled with a further increase of American influence, which will serve to consolidate the stability and political balance of the Middle East system...

...When, however, one fills one's book with the images of living people, as Saul Bellow did in To Jerusalem and Back, and not with creatures of the imagination such as Herzog, Sammler, or Humboldt, the picture is bound to be distorted...

...The way to prevent the rise of Communism in Western Europe is to reduce public support for the Communist parties in France and Italy, and nobody has come up with a proven method of doing so as yet...

...The oil crisis of 1973 was a dramatic expression of the end of this honeymoon period...

...And indeed, in all of these countries, with the exception of Russia, a certain relaxation is now noticeable—a certain readiness, even if still with reservations, for some openness...

...And Russia, before Communism...

...I expressed the opinion that after World War II, two common fallacies had been prevalent among Western intellectuals regarding developments in international relations, both of which had been apparent as early as 1945, but later came to be seen as universal and almost eternal laws of historical development...

...The Western anti-Communist thinkers fall into the same trap: they view the actions of the Soviet Union as if they were motivated by an ideology of world revolution, while in fact the leadership of the Soviet Union is guided by callous power calculations, which are fundamentally different from ideological absolutism...

...Would Lenin and his colleagues have succeeded in taking over Russia in 1917 had there been a durable democratic and liberal alternative at the time...

...How much more do intellectuals need to learn about the U.S.S.R...

...I had innocently assumed that Bellow was interested in hearing the opinion of an Israeli, such as myself, about the problems of the conflict in our area and its possible solution...

...The tragedy of those countries was not the Communist take-over itself but the total absence of hope for any democratic alternative...

...Other Western countries must now prepare to live on a more austere standard...

...At the same time, it became clear that inflation was a necessary by-product of the consistent growth in Western affluence, and this would inevitably lead to new types of economic crises—to pressures for higher wages, strikes, a decline in investment and international trade, economic stagnation, and even the threat of collapse of entire national economies (in Italy and Great Britain, for example), which could not continue to support high living standards at a time of skyrocketing oil prices...

...the very fact of their outgrowing the Communism of their youth was an indication of the basic direction in which the winds of Western liberalism were blowing...

...I explained that one fallacy was related to the character of the development of Western liberalism...

...Bellow's literary genius, having to discuss the global aspects of American politics with him...

...When I compare my own notes of that conversation in November 1975 with the garbled and truncated report of it that Bellow recounts in his book, and which misconstrues the whole tenor of our meeting, I am surprised...

...ACCORDING to my notes, the meeting went on as follows: After we had exchanged introductions and pleasantries, Bellow asked me if I wasn't apprehensive about the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union in the Middle East...

...Besides, Israel's utter dependency upon the United States leads Israeli intellectuals to hunt for signs of hope in the Communist world...

...The actual historical span of these developments was very short and I suggested to Bellow that, if he had no objections, I would elaborate on this point, since only in this way would I be able to refute the theses he had expounded concerning the collapse of the West...

...Europe succeeded in achieving hitherto unimagined comfort and prosperity, in contrast to the dire predictions of both Marxist and liberal economists, because the price of industry's basic raw material—oil—was determined not by the capitalist economy's law of supply and demand, but by the political power of the West, which still controlled, directly and indirectly, the energy source on whose cheapness the entire Western economy depended...

...None of us knew then that Bellow was working on a book about Israel, based almost entirely on his discussions with Jerusalemites...

...Consequently, the picture has become far more complex and it now more closely resembles the difficulties involved in the establishment of democracy in any part of the world where it does not presently exist...

...But I look again at Professor Avineri and see that he is an engaging fellow, far from heartless...

...What frustration...

...Was I, then, of the opinion that the Communists would take over Western Europe, Bellow asked...

...In a different form, I heard it recently at the Beth Belgia, one of the Hebrew University buildings, from Professor Shlomo Avineri, who is a historian and political scientist...

...In my judgment this is a frivolous analysis —heartless, too, if you think how little personal liberty there is in Eastern Europe...

...As intellectuals, we must not use our opposition to Communist oppression to overlook the fact that the systems of government that were replaced by the Communist regimes were the dictatorships of Horthy and Antonescu, the Czar and the "Black Hundred," Chiang-Kai-chek, and the Generals of South Vietnam...

...And there I found myself, instead of luxuriating in Mr...

...As stated by Professor Avineri, the position is something like this: After World War II, it was widely believed that capitalism had taken a new lease on life...

...It takes for granted that in fighting the extension of communism in Southeast Asia the United States made the greatest mistake in its history...

...he can expand or contract it as he sees fit...

...But it was obvious that the post-1945 welfare state was not the ultimate salvation and, like every historical process, it must undergo changes...

...the more Bellow expounded his own views regarding the American government, Kissinger's policies, the withdrawal from Vietnam and everything involved in it, the more I understood that our conversation would not focus on the problems of the Middle East...

...Knowing something about life in Communist countries, I disagree completely with Avineri...

...It ignored the fact that, among the major factors affecting the emergence of the new post-1945 balance in Europe, cheap energy was of critical importance...

...BenDavid told me that Bellow would appreciate it if the two of us could meet, since he would like to hear my views on various political issues...

...The postwar prosperity of capitalism was based on cheap energy and low-price raw materials from backward countries...

...The Western centers of old Europe are growing dimmer, but Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland are brightening up...

...A desire to accept a new view of communism is one of the results of the Vietnam disaster and of America's internal disorder...

...It was not by coincidence that most of the outstanding contributors to these two journals were thinkers and writers who had themselves been sympathetic to Communism in the 1930s...

...He asked questions and listened carefully...

...And China before Mao-Tse-tung...

...The lower classes are beginning to eat well and dress comfortably and live in warm apartments...

...But the United States failed to learn the lesson from these events in time to perceive that the war in Vietnam was not the result of a global plan for world revolution but the result of local conditions...

...The general feeling was—in view of the economic crisis, mass unemployment, and the rise of European Fascist and Communist parties—that the days of the liberal West were numbered, and that it was destined to collapse in the face of Fascism and Communism...

...But to discuss global politics with Saul Bellow...

...At that time, I was still Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University, and it was only about six months later that I assumed my position with the Foreign Ministry in the Rabin government...

...However, it is possible that, along with the increase in social welfare, there will come demands for the right of freer expression, intellectual contacts with the West and freedom of travel there, and for a generally more open society...

...Such a meeting between us did indeed take place...

...As Bellow continued to elaborate his ideas on the moral decline of America and its diminishing international status, I felt that I was becoming increasingly intrigued by the situation in which I found myself: before me sat one of the most brilliant authors of the Western world, whose books I value, since I always found them a source of much intellectual and aesthetic pleasure...

...Here Bellow asked heatedly: Are you not sensitive to the Communist abuse of human rights, liberty, freedom of speech, in all the countries over which they have taken control...

...The price of these has now risen, and the last free ride of Western capitalism is over--over for all except, perhaps, America...

...I often wonder why it should rend people's hearts to give up their Marxism...

...However, I noted, this euphoria—much as it expressed the achievements of the post-1945 era— was short-termed and uncritical...

...Even if the agreements by themselves are not yet a final peace agreement, they nonetheless contribute to regional stability, not only by reducing danger of war between us and the Arab states, but also because their effect is to reduce Soviet influence in the Middle East and to increase the American standing in the area...

...All the countries that are Communist today—whether in Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, or Russia itself—were not democratic prior to the Communist take-over...

...No, I did not think so...

...Europe's courting of the Arab countries is also part of this new structural reality, and is likely to constitute a threat to the democratic character of certain European states, to the degree that they find themselves overly dependent in one way or another on the oil-producing countries...

...I cannot believe that he distorted my words intentionally—because, as I envisage Bellow again in my memory, he is an engaging fellow, far from maliciously misrepresenting anyone's words...

...The attitude to the Church in Poland and Hungary is beginning to be less oppressive, and in Rumania and Yugoslavia, at least, a change is beginning to be felt in attitudes toward their Jewish minorities...

...This process was successfully arrested by the West in Berlin, in Greece, and in Iran at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, but Russia succeeded in obtaining what it considered to be a strategic security belt...

...I was somewhat disappointed but accepted the situation, as I imagined that every person with whom he talks is anxious to discuss literature with him and he wanted a change...

...The crisis came to a head in 1973, and though it was regrettable, it was but an expression of other, deeper processes, which are significant in their revelation of the fact that the balance created after 1945 was far more vulnerable and ephemeral than had been thought at first...

...For then the author is no longer responsible to his own inner truth (whose creature a Herzog is), but to the real, objective truth...

...As a result, we can expect certain economic and political dislocations in Western European countries...

...q 228...

...But never was I able to conclude from Bellow's writings that he was truly or deeply acquainted with the political world in any comprehensive way...

...It had already been clear years earlier that with the termination of European control over the oil-producing countries, local rulers would sooner or later rebel against the hegemony of the Western oil companies and would seek to employ to their own advantage the resources found beneath the sands of their countries, which are of such vital importance to the West...

...One may, of course, disapprove of the rise of Com226 munist parties and the possibility of their being included in government coalitions but, from the democratic point of view, it is clear that an Italian Communist party participating in a parliamentary coalition and declaring its approval of parliamentarism is quite different from the Czechoslovak Communist party being forced on that country by the Soviets at gunpoint in 1948...

...Thus, the Soviet Union has never had any qualms about sacrificing Communist parties (including the innocent idealists within them) for the sake of its power interests: so it was with the Stalin-Hitler pact, which sacrificed the prospects of the revolution in Germany on the altar of Soviet security considerations (which proved to be mistaken), and so it was at the time of the pact between the Soviet Union and Nasser's Egypt...

...This, rather than expanding Red imperialism and the subjugation of Europe by Russia, is what we should be considering...

...After World War II, it became clear that Western capitalism and democracy had succeeded in overcoming two challenges at the same time225 the challenge of Fascism and that of Communism...

...The rise in standards of living, the relative affluence, the liberation of the Western working class from the oppression and misery that had in the past pushed it to extremes, the prevention of economic crises by means of policies based on Keynesian theory, full employment and social welfare—all these were made possible because of the low cost of oil...

...Parallel to this the process, now apparent within the French and Italian Communist parties, of a gradual emancipation from Soviet dogmatism and from dependence on the Soviet Union will radically effect the Western political power system...

...And across the face of Europe we see a gradual evening out of privileges and a redistribution of the good things of life...

...There is also no doubt that, because of the cheap energy resources available in the past, Western economies neglected the search for alternative energy sources, for it seemed wasteful to invest in such research and development when oil was so cheap...

...I replied that our central probelm was not the Soviet Union: though it reinforces Arab hostility, it is not the source of the conflict...

...Neither the revolution nor the Communist ideal motivated the Soviet leadership: most important to them were considerations of power strategy, and the Communist parties were simply a convenient method of imposing their power interests...

...After World War II, Russia wanted to surround itself with satellite states within a strategic security belt...

...AT THIS POINT, I told Bellow, I wished to turn to what seemed to me to be the second fallacy in assessing the post-1945 situation, and this relates to developments in Eastern Europe...

...There is no freedom there today, but there was also no freedom there (again, with the exception of Czechoslovakia) in the past...

...Here Bellow interrupted me to ask whether I did not think that the Soviet Union was likely to take over the entire world in the near future, if America continued with her policy of appeasement, known as atente...

...Then we had an opportunity to discuss his writing in a little more detail...

...227 The trouble is that there is still no democratic alternative in Eastern Europe, although the current struggle for human rights provides the possibility and offers the hope of a better future there...

...For the author, on the other hand, reality is like clay in the hands of the potter...

...But in Hungary, Rumania, or Poland there is, at least, an impressive improvement today in the standard of living of large segments of the population in contrast to the despicable poverty of the majority of the people in those countries under their previous regimes...

...What does it take to extinguish the hopes raised by the October Revolution...

...It came closer to being a lecture on my part than a conversation, since Bellow was interested in hearing rather than talking...

...Bellow persisted: did I not fear the aggressive designs of the Soviet Union against Israel, which could frustrate all peace efforts and undermine any agreement that may be reached in the future...

...If I understand him, Professor Avineri is saying that an independent sort of communism is developing among Russia's satellites and that Western communism is becoming more democratic, less obedient to Moscow...

...Some of its affluence was achieved by virtue of the cheap energy available to it, and now Western Europe will have to adjust to the new reality (America, I noted, was relatively immune to these developments because of its own oil resources...

...At the time I was told by my friend and colleague Professor Joseph Ben-David, who teaches sociology at the Hebrew University, that Saul Bellow was in Jerusalem...

...The researcher and the reporter must represent the literal truth: so-and-so said such-and-such, so-andso answered thus, here are the quotation marks...

...Every Israeli is used to that...

...Could anyone, I replied, not be sensitive to that...

...According to this revisionist school of thought, the take-over did not result from a strategy of world revolution (which in the long run doesn't interest the tough Kremlin leadership), but from the strategic and imperial interests of the Soviet Union as a superpower...

...Even the Communist parties themselves are beginning to permit internal elections with more than one candidate for certain positions though, of course, still within the framework of the Communist party, which retains the monopoly of government...

...Such a vision of the future evidently grows out of assumptions about the decline of American prestige and influence...

...The most effective way to achieve this was to station Soviet forces within their borders, along with the promise of "friendly" (i.e., Communist) rule in those states...

...It is not the Soviet Union that prevented the attainment of peace in the area—but the stubborn position of the Arab countries, which refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign Jewish state...

...This was the nature of our luncheon conversation in the autumn of 1975...

...It was here that I realized that we were not on the same wavelength...

...Tomorrow, in another mood, he may take a different line...

...I have always admired Bellow's unique qualities of psychological and human sensitivity, his successful raising of the distress of the American intellectual—usually Jewish—to a level of universal significance, by virtue of his subtle emotional understanding and perception...

...The terminaiton of World War II, the defeat of Fascism and the prevention of the rise of Communism in Western Europe, as well as the emergence of the neoliberal welfare state, upset these predictions...

...We spoke very little about Israel and he refrained from any discussion of his literary work, which was what really interested me...

...The alternative may possibly arise one day as a result of internal developments within the Communist regimes themselves, although with regard to Russia I am very pessimistic, for it is burdened with a tradition of 300 years of harsh oppression, from the days of Peter the Great to those of Stalin, and it still lacks a real social basis for the essential changes...

...One should, therefore, also view the agreements signed by Israel with Egypt and Syria after the Yom Kippur war in this context...

...In any case, the world is being transformed, and neither superpower is what so many of us had always assumed it to be...

...One might, perhaps, find both phenomena disturbing, but the two differ in both the political and the historical perspectives...

...Encounter and Commentary were the epitome of this expression of Western neoliberalism's feeling of confidence and relief...

...If, prior to 1939, there had been almost total agreement regarding the imminent collapse of Western liberalism, the new balance struck in post-1945 Western Europe seemed to have the quality of eternity: Fascism had been routed, the spread of Communism had been arrested, and the welfare state would exist forever...

...and here the contrast between fiction and reality is sharp and unavoidable...

...Instead of relating to the conflict there accordingly, America allowed itself to be drawn into the war, as if the fate of the free world would be decided in South Vietnam...

...Basically, the Soviet presence in the area is designed to undermine the stability of the regional political system...

...It is principally the old middle class that is unhappy—the professionals, the intellectuals...

...I replied that Soviet policy vis-A-vis the Middle East to date has been consistent with traditional Russian imperialist aims in this region since the days of the Czars...

...But here a difficulty arises...

...This is the sort of thing one hears in Paris or Milan rather than Jerusalem...

...I certainly had no idea that whoever met with him would be appearing in the next book of a man to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature...

...Ironically, Western Communist intellectuals find it difficult to accept this view, since it implies that the Soviet leadership is completely cynical in the manipulation of its ideology...

...One has no business to give away the rights of others...

...The cold truth was that the choice in Vietnam was between dictatorship by the military and dictatorship by the Vietcong, whereas the fate of Western democracy, as well as the strategic world balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, was not dependent on the outcome of this conflict...

...What were Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia before they became Communist but military dictatorships and Fascist tyrannies and, in most cases, anti-Semitic as well...

...He asked me to continue...

...Except in the case of Czechoslovakia, the Communists have not succeeded in violently seizing control of any democratic country, as democracy has an inherent strength that enables it to compete with the aggressive character of communism...

...Discussion of our own problems...

...We met a second time, in Miami in the Spring of 1976, at a Conference of the Friends of the Hebrew University, at which he was presented with the Agnon Prize in recognition of his literary achievements...

...So many foreign guests are interested in meeting with Israelis, and it 224 was with this in mind that I set forth for my meeting with Saul Bellow...