Slavoj Zizek. First as tragedy, Then as farce
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156 FIRST AS TGEDY, THEN AS FARCE
and record of domestic violence. What is much less well known is that
,
immediately aer this victory
,
while he was being hailed all around the
world as a Cold War hero, Kravchenko became deeply worried about
the McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunt, and warned that in using
such methods to ght Stalinism the US only risked becoming more
like its opponent. He also become increasingly aware of the injustices
of the liberal democracies
,
and his desire to see changes in We stern
society developed almost into an obsession. Aer writing a much less
popular sequel to his I Chose Freedom, signicantly entitled I Chose
Justice, Kravchenko set out on a crusade to nd a new, less exploita
tive, mode of organizing production. is led him to Bolivia, where he
ploughed his money into organizing poor farmers into new collectives.
Crushed by the fa ilure of these endeavors, he withdrew into solitude
and eventually shot himself at his home in New Yo rk. His suicide was
the consequence of his despair, not the result of some KGB blackmail
proof that his denunciation of the Soviet Union had been a genuine act
of protest against injustice.
Today
,
new Kravchenkos are emerging everhere, from the US to
India, China and Japan, from Latin America to Africa, the Middle East
to Western and Eastern Europe. ey are disparate and speak dierent
languages, but they are not as few as may appear-and the greatest fear
of the rulers is that these voices will start to reverberate and reinforce
each other in solidari. Aware that the odds are pulling us towards
catastrophe, these actors are ready to act against all odds. DisappOinted
by twentieth-century Communism, they are ready to "begin from
the beginning" and reinvent it on a new basis. Decried by enemies as
dangerous utop
ians
,
they are the only people who have really awakened
from the utopian dream which holds most of us under its sway. ey,
not those nostalgics fo r twentieth-century "Really Existing Socialism;'
are our only hope.
e fact that Deleuze, just before he died, was in the middle of
writing a book on Marx
,
is indicative of a wider trend. In the Christian
past
,
it was co
mmon for people who had led dissolute lives to return
THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS 157
to the safe haven of the church in old age, so they might die reconciled
with God. Something similar is happening today with many anti
communist Leists. In their nal years, they return to communism as
if, aer their life of depraved betrayal, they want to die reconciled with
the communist Idea. As with the old Christians, these late conversions
carry the same basic message: that we have spent our lives rebelling
vainly against what, deep within us, we ew all the time to be the
truth. So, when even a great anti-communist like Kravchenko can in a
certain sense return to his fa ith, our message today should be: do not
be afraid, join us, come back! Yo u've had your anti-communist fun, and
you are pardoned for it-time to get serious once again!