Andrei looked around the table inviting other comments but Kaufman interjected, “I’m speaking for everybody round this table.”
The Kaufmans always made that mistake and Andrei was aware of the dissent on the faces of the two women.
Andrei looked around the table. “Does that mean that everybody wants to end the meeting right now?”
There were a lot of dissenting voices and one of the women shouted. “I’ve come three hundred miles to this meeting. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
Andrei nodded. “Is that the majority view?”
Only two people didn’t put their hands up.
For a moment Andrei closed his eyes, then opened them and started speaking.
“There is no denying the fact that Moscow’s pact with the Nazis has made them outcasts in the eyes of the world. What we have to decide is whether we too consider their actions so irrational and duplicitous that we too consider them outcasts.
“So do we have to decide that the men and women who struggled so hard, with so many sacrifices to establish the first Marxist-Leninist State were either hypocrites or traitors? Because if we do we are abandoning everything we believe in. So what is the alternative? That the leaders of the Soviet Union are cowards perhaps?” He paused. “None of these conclusions can give us much comfort. It means that we go back to our homes and accept that capitalism and Fascism are the real way.
“I’d like to ask you to take your minds back to September 30th, 1938. On that day Chamberlain and Daladier signed an agreement that handed over Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The Soviet Union had informed both the British and the French that they would join in any attempt by the two powers to defend the Czechs. And the Czechs themselves had the strongest army in Europe. The offer wasn’t even refused. It was ignored.
“Why did the British and the French surrender the Czechs to Hitler?” He paused. “They needed time. Time to make plans and guns for the inevitable war with Germany. They were vilified for what they did. Vilified by countries who would not be affected by a war in Europe.
“You might ask why the British and French were not already strong enough to go to war.” He took a deep breath. “It was because it is more difficult for a nation that wants peace, and talks peace, to re-arm in a hurry. They didn’t want war with Germany. But the Nazis wanted it. And it only takes one army to make a war.
“So the British and the French gave away the Czechs to buy time to get ready for when they too were at war with the Nazis. They bought a year. I hope that Moscow has made as good a bargain.”
He reached for the glass of water on the table and there was a smattering of applause.
“Do you have any questions?”
An old man stood up. “Does this mean, comrade, that Moscow will attack the Nazis this time next year?”
Andrei smiled. “The other way round. The Nazis will attack us. It’s just a question of when. It may be less or more than a year. I don’t know. That it will happen is certain.”
A younger man stood up. “Can we tell our people what you have told us?”
“Yes. I want you to tell them. But don’t expect that the world outside will understand. The thugs who attacked the Summer Camp a few nights ago will always be with us. And others, who are not vicious, will not see it our way. Be patient with them. Time will prove you right.”
Andrei noticed Kaufman get up from his place and walk out of the room. There were some smiles as the door crashed to behind him.
Andrei said, “Accept that he cares. But his anger will always control his thinking. Such people can play a part. We must not dismiss them.”
He had stayed for another hour talking to small groups whose questions and enthusiasm showed that they had grasped the logic of his explanations.
The whole trip had taken him longer than he expected and he decided that his funds could allow him the luxury of a flight back to New York. Two of them drove him to the airport and waited with him until his flight was called.
Relaxed in his seat he closed his eyes and thought about the people he had met. They were strange people, the Americans. Unless they were recent immigrants they seemed to know so little about the rest of the world. And those who had recently come over combined a deep hatred of their original countries with a homesickness for the places they grew up in that made them defend the very countries they had fled from. The second and third generation Americans had long ceased caring about the world of Europe and its rivalries. And oddly enough it was the Jews, the victims of pogroms and harassment, who seemed to keep the European connection alive.
He had bought a cheap edition of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath at the airport and as he reached for it in his canvas bag he remembered the newspaper he’d bought with the book. He would read that first before starting the novel.
It seemed that the British really were fighting on. The headline called it “The Battle of Britain” and the text said that the RAF had shot down 180 Luftwaffe planes two days ago. His eyes went to the foot of the page and he saw the smaller headline. It was like a physical blow as he saw the headline and the photograph of Leon Trotsky who had been assassinated that day in Mexico City. His head smashed in by an ice-pick. The item went on to say that Trotsky had been sentenced to death in his absence, by one of the Moscow treason trials. He was reported to have been writing a biography exposing Stalin as being responsible for the deaths of over a million Soviet citizens. He closed his eyes and was aware
