Darkness at Noon: A Novel

The novel explains why Koestler gave up his communist beliefs by dissecting the details of the show trial of the real-life Bukharin, who was one of the main progenitors of Bolshevism along with Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin had Bukharin executed after forcing him to confess, in a trial that the whole world watched, to being a Fascist sympathizer.Koestler's book is like a more detailed version of the story of how Winston in Orwell's 1984 was interrogated for a confession. The tragedy is that Bukharin was a real person. But before you feel sorry for him you should consider that he very much was a Bolshevik revolutionary and they weren't very nice people at all either and Bukharin was probably the most powerful Bolshevik leader helping Stalin crush his enemies as he consolidated power. Bukharin was also the editor of Pravda, which lied in print for the sake of preserving the gulag system where hundreds of thousands of people were worked to death in the freezing cold with near-starvation level food rations. There are almost no good guys in the history of Russian/Soviet Communism.It is extremely difficult not to draw parallels with our current political situation, where all of the mainstream media sources seem to be following the Stalinist playbook when it comes to information, viz. the media is acting like The Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984. Joe Biden is a great unifier etc etc. It is hard to see how we are not being set up for a similar fate to what happened under Stalinism in Russia. Right now there are a lot of optimistic, naive young people like how Bukharin and his fellow bolsheviks were when they first got the revolution going. It will end in the same way because, as you see explained in a book like this one, they are being used for their hopeful enthusiasm to further the aims of ruthless people who want absolute global power.

I have for many years known of this book and what it portrayed; that, similar to Orwell's "Animal Farm "and "1984", it's a condemnation of communism from a disillusioned, former party-member, but now having read it for the first time only recently, I can say how delightfully impressed I am with the brilliance of the writing and the incisiveness of the political and psychological analysis. If you're familiar with the "Red Terror" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, with Stalin's purge and liquidation of hundreds of thousands including many in the party leadership (Lenin's old comrades), and with the public show trials many were forced to undergo, you might have wondered, as I have, why did almost all the old communists (Bolsheviks) publicly confess to such unbelievable crimes as participation in vast conspiracies, some involving foreign powers, to assassinate Stalin and his cronies, or to "wreck" whole industries, or to link with Trotsky and overthrow the Soviet government. You might think the NKVD's application of physical torture is sufficient to answer this question, but Koestler and "Darkness at Noon" reveal other reasons, perhaps more troubling and fearful, that might explain why former revolutionaries and convinced Marxist-Leninists would debase and humiliate themselves in such a public manner.The novel has three main characters: Rubashov, a high-ranking and influential member of the party who's arrested at the beginning of the novel, Ivanov, his former friend and colleague and high-ranking security official who's appointed to interrogate him, and Gletkin, another interrogator who contrasts Ivanov's cynicism with an apparatchik's "true believer" mentality. The focus of the novel is Rubashov's imprisonment, his reminiscences, and primarily Ivanov's and Gletkin's efforts to get him to confess to conspire to assassinate "No. 1" and other disloyal crimes against the state. What makes "Darkness" work so well for me is that Rubashov is no admirable, "closet" liberal. He has in fact sacrificed party members in the past who have deviated from the "party line" and believes, even up to the end, that "personal liberty and social progress are incompatible." But he's intelligent and has seen enough of Marxism-Leninism in power, or the Stalinist variation of it, to be aware of its human costs, although he seems to think, like Ivanov, that these human costs are transitional. After all, the party has taught him, and they all seem to agree, that "the only morality refers to social utility" and the end justifies the means. But for some reason he's perceived as dangerous and part of the "opposition" within the party (Lenin eliminated the opposition outside the party), and so he's arrested.Ivanov is also intelligent, and a cynical high-ranking security official, and it's fascinating to see his almost gentle, but very psychological and political, approach to secure Rubashov's confession. Rubashov knows he's a dead man once he's arrested and seems to have a fatalistic view and no fear of physical distress. Rubashov's initial disinclination to confess is mocked by Ivanov; he tells him that personal heroism is personal vanity and he seems to agree since Marxist-Leninists only recognize social utility as a moral or positive goal. The party's hold on Rubashov is unending; he has taken "the vows of his order" (i.e., the party) and even his death must not subvert the party's goals but enhance them. I found the dialogue between Rubashov and Ivanov in the "Second Examination" to be evocative of the dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha in Dostoyevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" and almost as brilliant. In both dialogues, one side advocates improving the future well-being of the "masses" at the cost of the present, and of human freedom as well as the need to eliminate heretics, both religious and political, while the other side seems to be wary of human utopianism and social engineering; of course, Rubashov lacks Alyosha's innocence and religious faith. But hear the cynical Ivanov denounce human feeling: "One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us (i.e., party members). Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery." That's writing!

What an extraordinary piece of writing. And although impatience may cause you to quit reading, perseverance will open your eyes to the horrors of humanity. A reminder of how destructive men in power can be. And one of the most chilling concepts - “the ends justify the means.” And what powerful nation is next on the road to adding a fascist dictator to world history?? Why America silly. Because we now have the smartest man ever to walk the earth as our President. And if you don’t believe it just ask him...modesty is not a quality of future dictators.

I recall reading this long ago and not connecting/understanding it.Now, with the new translation, and the context of today's news andstate of the world, it's shockingly relevant. Extreme ideological purity,joined with the view that the end justifies the means (any and all meanshowever oppressive and violent), that now infects our world.Not an easy read, but powerfully descriptive of great moral questions.And illuminating about that period of time - Stalin's Russia and themillions he sent to their deaths. Should be read with a focus on thecurrent resurgence of totalitarianism, in China, North Korea, the MiddleEast, and unfortunately, here in the US.

The true bureaucrat will always be tempted to justify his means up to the point where he has absolute power. The U S Constitution with its separation of legislative, executive and judiciary is still man's best safeguard against the consolidation of these three functions in the hands of a single person. Waiting for the death of number One and the relative openness of a Kruschev and the appearance of a Gorbachev is an intolerable risk.

This is a novel of great insight. I found it to be compelling reading. I attempted to read this about 40 or 50 years ago in my youth. I don’t this I made it very far. I wasn’t ready for it. I’m glad that I have matured enough intellectually that I could read this book with profit. It is a very good book.“The ultimate truth is the penultimately always a falsehood.” So begins the ‘The Second Hearing” potion of “Darkness at Noon”. The novel is ostensibly written about the Soviet show trials of the 1930s. However, in my opinion, it goes much beyond that to questions that are universal in politics. How does humanity define or better determine what is true and valuable? How is political truth found and used? That is the question that this novel addresses and that question spans all forms of politics from a rights-based democracy to a collectivist autocracy,Koestler examines the issue from the perspective of the conflict between the divergent interests of the individual and the collectivity. In reading the novel, I thought of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. Koestler then presented the example himself in the musings of the novel’s hero Ruboshov. Raskolnikov reasoned that he is entitled to murder and rob the pawn broker because he will sue the proceeds for better ends that she would. The means justify the ends. And yet he was plagued by conscience. He murdered not only her but her innocent sister in the commission of the crime. What justification could he provide that made his life more valuable than theirs? This is the conflict in the revolution between the “We” and the “I” that Koestler presents. It is the monologue or dialogue with the silent partner that the points out. It is the conflict between the visceral emotion and the cerebral reasoning. How is truth and ethics defined.One can see the issues discussed here in the political questions of our time. Globalization has increased world wealth incredibly and yet it also has caused great hardship to individuals. The answer to this dilemma ca only be found politically and that is the major political question of our day. “The ultimate truth is the penultimately always a falsehood.” Answers to this question compete in the political sphere. Society will select one of these answers and declare it to be the “truth” and all others to be “false”. This “truth” is politically constructed and selected. It is the product of both collective reasoning and individual emotional assessment.

Readers familiar with the 'standard' translation will find this a welcome occasion to re-visit an old Comrade. I find that the European flavor of the canonical version is changed to a more Americanized diction, which is a bit jarring when the subject matter is clearly Eastern European (Gletkin's follow-on from finding about the hours of the day, for example).Where we know that he quoted Darkness at his public trial, it is useful to have Bukharin's 'confession' included so that the parallel language is clear.This remains one of the great novels of the last century. Rubashov's exploration of moral ambivalence, and of ends and means remains personal questions for all of us.

It seems that every violent revolution must go through a period of repression in order to control the powerful social forces that the revolution itself has released. In Russia in the 1930s this period of repression was known as Stalinism.Written by Aurthur Koestler, a Hungarian by birth, a Communist by choice until he realized the true nature of Stalinism, "Darkness at Noon" (1940) is a look at this transition from hopeful revolution to repressive dictatorship. I have never read a better account of the changing of the guard from the old Bolsheviks to the young Stalinists, from philosophers with dreams to bureaucrats with guns.The protagonist in this novel is a man named Rubashov, an old Bolshevik who is arrested during the Great Purge of the late 1930s. Koestler created Rubashov from several people that he had known who were arrested, tried and executed. "Darkness at Noon" is a very thought-provoking book; it poses many questions on both the personal and the political level. The reader can sense Koestler's sense of betrayal by and his disappointment with the Soviet Union under Stalin and also his disgust with what Stalinism did to individual human beings.I'm fairly sure that George Orwell must have read "Darkness at Noon" before writing "1984" - Orwell knew Koestler from their time spent in Spain during the Civil War and later in Britain. In both books one can see the same abhorrence of totalitarianism and of politics based on "the end justifies the means". Like Orwell's book, "Darkness at Noon" is an indictment of Stalinism and totalitarianism in general. The brutality, the inhumanity and the vicious mindlessness of a true totalitarian system are portrayed brilliantly in Koestler's well-written novel.You don't have to be an expert on Soviet history to read this book, just remember that events like this really did happen and that Koestler served as an observant witness of the events of the 1930s & 1940s and as a witness he deserves a hearing so that we can learn from him. Stalin's Russia may be gone but totalitarianism still exists. We should learn from history and "Darkness at Noon" is a great place to do so.

Insightful and right on the mark.

Nice book, underrated!