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Darkness at Noon (Modern Library, 74.3)

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I first read Koestler's Darkness at Noon in high school, close to 30 years ago. Although I cannot recall my earlier reaction to the book, I am certain that I was not prepared, as a 17-year old, to appreciate either the literary beeauty or socio-political importance of Koestler's masterpiece.

I came back to this book for two reasons. I had just finished reading Volkogonov's "Stalin" and "Trotsky" and Solzhenitzyn's Red Wheel (Volume I). Darknesss at Noon seemed to be the next appropriate book to pick up off the shelf.

I had also been reading about the remarks President Clinton made (alluded to by other reviewers) to Sid Blumenthal indicating that he felt "like the prisoner in Darkness at Noon."

It is, perhaps, either a sad testament to human nature, or an indicia of the power of great literature, that the story of the fate of one (fictional) man, Rubashov, can feel more compelling than the narrative description (in "Stalin" and "Trotsky") of the fate of millions.

Further, whereas Volkogonov's works go a long way towards explaining what happened and how it happened, Rubashov's self-crticial analysis, and his dialogues with Ivanov and then Gletkin go a long way towards explaining why the purges happened. It helps explain the mindset of those many, like Rubashov, who confessed their non-existent sins before their ineveitable demise. It also goes a long way to explaing why so many millions of people actively participated in the denunciations that accompanied the purges and show trials.

Clinton's comparison to Rubashov is rich with unintended irony. Perhaps Clinton, like me, had not read the book since high school, and felt that Rubashov was the purely innocent victim of a prosecutorial system run amok. However, Koestler makes it clear that Rubashov was not merely a vicitim of Stalin, or Stalin's henchmen, but of the system that Rubashov (a hero of the revolution) himself played an important role in creating. Rubashov spent a life filled with deceit, manipulation, and even murder, on behalf of his party and its "core values". The doctrine of the end justifying the means was a cornersone of Rubashov's philosphy and morality. Whatever "core values" existed at the beginning of his revolutionary life with the party had long since withered to nothingness by the time of his imprisonment. Consequently, if President Clinton's comparison of himself to Rubashov was based upon the idea that Rubashov was a purely innocent victim, he is just wrong. To the extent Clinton was aware that Rubashov was in no small way responsible for creating the milieu under which this despicable actvity takes place - then he is more self-aware than I had previously given him credit for.

Finally, the book is just darn well-written. Of particular beauty and impact are Rubashov's dialues with his interrogators.

Pick up this book and read it.

"The characters in this book are fictitious. The historical circumstances which determined their actions are real. The life of the man N. S. Rubashov is a synthesis of the lives of a number of men who were victims of the so-called Moscu Trials".That is part of the dedicatory that Koestler wrote for his book, "Darkness at noon".

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) was a person that believed in the progress that Communism was supposed to bring, but that became disillusioned in the way in which that dream was being carried out in the URSS. He wrote many books that give expression to his feelings of disenchantment, but "Darkness at noon" is probably the most popular one.

Not overly long, and very easy to read, this book is the story of Rubashov, an old communist who took part in the revolution and who is very loyal to the "Cause". Strangely enough, he is accused of treason, and taken to jail, where he must face harsh interrogatories. While he is in jail, Rubashov experiences flashbacks that allow us to know more about him, and the things he did due to his devotion to the Party. He betrayed people he loved, and those he appreciated, for no other reason than obedience to the Party and fear of going to jail.

We can have an idea of Rubashov's feelings and ideas all throughout his ordeal thanks to the fact that "Darkness at noon" is written in the first person. After a while, we are Rubashov, and like him we are surprised, outraged, desperate and ultimately resigned to our luck.

In the beginning, Rubashov says that he isn't a traitor and that he hasn't done the things he is accused of. But slowly our main character starts to come to terms with the idea that the truth of the accusation isn't really important, what matters is to serve the country. And if the leader (Number one) says he is to be blamed, he must have done something....

The prisioner writes a diary, where he dwells upon the nature of men, and politics. He thinks that after the revolution he defended so passionately, an individual is defined merely as "a multitude of one million divided by one million". The individual doesn't matter because only the "Cause" matters. Regarding politics, he concludes that at the end only one thing is clear: "the end justifies the means". Is it any surprise, then, that the tone that pervades this book is so gloomy?.

On the whole, I highly recommend "Darkness at noon" to all of you, for two reasons. To start with, it is a literary masterpiece, beautifully written and accessible to the average reader. Secondly, and more important, it also shows us once again that every attempt to forget that the end doesn't justifies the means ends in a nightmare.

Belen Alcat

A faded photograph reveals the bearded, solemn, serious men that were the delegates to the first Congress of the Party. It is decades later and only a few like Comrade Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov have survived. Late one night Rubashov is awakened, arrested, and taken to cell number 404. Like so many others, he now expects to be interrogated, tortured, and shot. Harsh steps echo down the prison corridor; this time it is only the guard bringing soup.

Darkness at Noon is an authentic and chilling look at Stalin's Russia in the late 1930s. Arthur Koestler completed this superb historical fiction in Paris as WWII was just beginning. In a short forward he says that the characters in this book are fictitious, but that the historical circumstances which determined their actions are real. The life of the man N. S. Rubashov is the synthesis of the lives of a number of men that were victims of the so-called Moscow Trials. Several of them were personally known to the author. He dedicates this book to their memory.

Suffering from a toothache, subjected to endless interrogation, deprived of sleep, Rubashov struggles to delay his inevitable final confession. He questions his own past and motivations. Was he unconsciously disloyal? Is he guilty? Does it matter whether he is guilty? Should he remain silent, argue, or simply capitulate?

Rubashov finds meaning in politics, history, and philosophy. We see him wrestling with the meaning of suffering, senseless suffering versus meaningful suffering. We sympathize with him as he questions the morality of betraying his life long beliefs, despite his recognition that he himself has been betrayed. He clearly knows that he is guilty of betraying others. In his exhausted and muddled state, his motivation for living seems driven by a desire to explore more fully a new idea, the law of the relative maturity of the masses. He only needs time to sort out his questions and to resolve his doubts.

Koestler reveals much about Rubashov through flashbacks. We recognize that his own ethics and morality became victims as he participated in the destruction of well-meaning, loyal party members that unintentionally became guilty of political divergencies. He allows his lover to be imprisoned, and even joins the chorus that condemns her. Nonetheless, Koestler persuades us to have sympathy for Rubashov, now a victim of his own ideology.

I was unfamiliar with Arthur Koestler and I was unprepared when I opened this little book. I was captivated as Rubashov gradually awoke from a disturbing dream of betrayal, only to discover that he was being awakened by the secret police. I carried Darkness at Noon to work and shared it with a colleague. His teenage son was the next reader. Darkness at Noon is a classic that you will share with others.

Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness At Noon explores the inner struggle raging inside Nicolas Salmonovitch Rubashov, a bureaucrat and Old Bolshevik who is arrested in 1939 on charges of conspiring to assassinate Stalin. While awaiting his sentence, he is forced to reexamine his past. The conflict within Rubashov can be construed as a struggle between several sets of dualities: Communism versus Christianity, "we" versus "I," the Party versus the individual, emotionless logic versus emotional conscience, a.k.a. "the grammatical fiction", lies versus the truth, old Bolsheviks versus new Bolsheviks, and regarding History, the Party, and Stalin, the most important duality of all: right versus wrong. Whatever the outcome, as Rubashov says throughout the book, "I shall pay."

Rubashov is expected to do the right thing, to logically arrive at the conclusion that he was wrong and that Stalin and the Party were right, but while in his cell, contemplates his past in daydreams, silent soliloquys, monologues, in the process analyzing monologues as "dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as 'I' instead of 'you.' He revisits his past and remembers the people he betrayed, such a Richard, the German communist, Little Loewy, the Belgian communist who takes issue with Stalin supporting Hitler with mineral shipments prior to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, and Arlova, the librarian and Rubashov's former secretary whom he denounces just to save his own skin.

Also, consider this: "History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth; for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development." Key to the argument of truth and lies is Stalin's absolute control of Party policy. As Rubashov wonders during one of his bouts of doubt: "And what if, after all, No. 1 were in the right? If here, in dirt and blood and lies, after all and in spite of everything, the grandiose foundation of the future were being laid? Had not history always been an ..., unscrupulous builder, mixing its mortar of lies, blood and mud?" Truth is a commodity held ... by Stalin, i.e. what mattered was what Stalin believed was the truth and woe be to he who challenges him.

This is akin to Orwell's 1984, where Winston Smith is forced to repeat the Party slogan: "Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past" O'Brien replies that "whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth." And the Party has power with control of the truth. Power is thus an end, not a mean.

Koestler displays religious overtones in connection with Rubashov's attack with conscience, ironic considering Marx's view on religion as the opiate of the masses. Rubashov compares the Russian people under Lenin with the Israelites under Moses, who "for forty years... had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land?"

A painstaking introspective look at a man struggling with conscience, but also looks at the dark aspects of the Stalin purges and the ruthless machinery of the Party.

Along with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four", this novel is held up by some as one of the most important literary works in galvanizing public opinion against a social or political system. But whereas there is little doubt as to the intent of the first two novels, I think that Koestler's work cannot be so easily pigeon holed. When Koestler wrote this novel he had not yet reached that stage in his life when he was stridently anti-communist (some would argue anti-everything) and still held the architects of the Russian Revolution in high esteem. It is one of those books that can preach differing and conflicting sermons. Thus readers from the political right see the novel as an indictment against what they see as the inherent dehumanizing and brutalizing aspects of the communist system; while readers from the left see the novel as an indictment against the abrogation of freedoms and the abuse of political power by any political system, be it communism, fascism, or Bushocracy. In other words, any political system that appends a system of logic to a diaphanously perceived righeousness. Unfortunately for both sets of readers, the literary value of the book is usually overlooked in favor of a particular political viewpoint.

The novel is set during the Moscow Trials of the 1930s in which Stalin systematically eliminated all opposition to his power. That this liquidation ended the lives of most of the remaining Bolsheviks of the 1917 Revolution is one of the great political ironies of history. The main character of the novel, Rubashov, represents one of the old guard, a party member whose intellectualizing of political history has no place in the new Soviet world of collectivism and one man rule. From the time the cell door slams behind Rubashov until the "smashing blow" ends his life, the action of the novel centers around Rubashov's internal fight between his loyalty to the ideals of 1917 and the encroachment of the "grammatical fiction" which forces him to consider things more subjectively. One would hardly think that this conflict could possibly be turned into a novel that could hold the reader's attention. But this is exactly what Koestler has done. The novel maintains a sense of tension throughout, and gives the reader a sample of some of the realities that constitute political imprisonment. There are unforgettable characters and scenes in the book: Rubashov's old friend, Ivanov, who now tries to get Rubashov to make public "his former errors"; the cool and ruthless Gletkin, and Rubashov's faceless and nameless neighbor with whom he carries on conversations by tapping out messages. While suffering through his imprisonment and the psychological torture that is inflicted on him, Rubashov has ample time to rethink his own poltical career, back to a time when he was able to inflict his own brand of logical expediency on both his friends and the innocent.

Some readers without the requisite knowledge of Russian history might be confused by some of the extended conversations in the book that deal with the Revolution and other arcane issues of poltical theory that take place between Rubashov and his interrogators. But confusion can be remedied by some outside reading, and a little perseverance on the reader's part will be rewarded with an unforgettable journey into one man's mind as he does battle with history, with totalitarian henchmen and,more importantly, with himself.

Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" is a manifesto decrying the totalitarian tactics of the Soviet Union during the 1930's. A political prisoner himself, Koestler had a lot to say about the treatment of those who were considered threats to the Communist ideal. Although Koestler does not name the Party or the associated countries, the implications are obvious, including the identity of the Party's leader, who is known simply by the name "No. 1."

The novel concerns a fifty-ish man named Rubashov, a high-ranking Party official, who is imprisoned for suspected acts of dissension against the Party. Placed in a lonely cell, he communicates with the occupant of the neighboring cell by tapping on the interposing wall. He finds that his anonymous neighbor holds a grudge against him for reasons he refuses to reveal. The prison is filled with people considered "enemies" of the Party, victims of snitching and backstabbing from various levels of bureaucracy.

An old friend and battalion commander of Rubashov's, named Ivanov, turns out to be his primary inquisitor. Rubashov and Ivanov have long discussions about the ideals of the Party and how Rubashov is losing faith in a system he once fought so vehemently to establish. The Party's ideals were noble in the beginning, but it gradually became inefficient and underhanded. During his imprisonment, Rubashov recalls Arlova, a secretary with whom he had an affair, who was fired from her job and sentenced to death for suspected political dissension. Rubashov had the chance to save her by testifying in her defense, but doing so could have damaged his own career.

When Ivanov shows some sympathy for Rubashov, he is "removed" and replaced with a stricter interrogator named Gletkin, who uses draconian tactics to wear Rubashov down to the point of confession. Rubashov is accused of various attempted acts of governmental sabotage, including a planned assassination of No. 1. The reader sees that it is not relevant to his "trial" whether or not he actually committed these crimes; they are merely trying to get rid of those who threaten the stability of the Party.

Koestler demonstrates how the creation of the Soviet Union formed a nation of political prisoners. These are the problems of a government that is concerned more with theory than with practice; that is concerned more with ideals than with individuals.

I read this book, not because Bill Clinton or Sidney Blumenthal read it , but because Edward Teller did. Two unforgettable quotes:

1. "Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent..."

"Yes," said Rubashov. "So consequent, that in the interests of a just distribution of land we deliberately let die of starvation about five million farmers and their families in one year. So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Artic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China. ..."

2. "It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.

It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? "We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast."

This is the first work by Koestler that I have read and if this work is an indication of the quality of his other novels, I wonder why he is not better known.

The whole book deals with a few days in the life of a prisoner from arrest to interrogation and then to his final fate. Koestler writes so well that he creates, and what is more difficult maintains, tension throughout the 200 or so pages of the book.

It is through works like this, about the depths to which humanity can sink, that you begin to appreciate anew the preciousness of life. This work also set me thinking about who I am, no not `existential angst', just what I would do in such a situation. Is this veneer of respectability that we present to the world the real us, will it wash off when we are faced with extreme situations that test our character?

Don't get me wrong, this work is not a sloppy moralizing tale about the evils of communism, but it does get you thinking.

I'd recommend it.

"The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it. But WHO will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile he is bound to act on credit and to sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution... Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means." -- from the diary of N.S. Rubashov in "Darkness at Noon"

V.S Rubashov is the fictional protagonist of Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon." He is a high-ranking official in a Marxist totalitarian state based on the real-life Soviet Union under Stalin. The book begins with Rubashov being imprisoned in one of the dungeons of the Communist system he helped create. Rubashov was a top member of the Party from the beginning of the Revolution and a close associate of the leader, "No. 1" as he's called by his subjects, but just like in so many Communist states of the 20th Century, the machine that Rubashov helped set in motion eventually steamrolled over most of its makers as well.

"Darkness at Noon" is simply brilliant and will be especially interesting for anyone familiar with Stalin's Show Trials of the 1930s (the specific event on which the book is most directly based). The reader is placed in the mind of Rubashov as he debates with himself about whether what he once fully believed (that the Party is justified in whatever it decides) is still true, even if that means his imprisonment and execution. Who decides what is morally wrong, do such concepts as "right" and "wrong" even exist in reality, and what is not permissible in pursuit of the ideal? Alone in his cell, in between his prison interrogations at the hands of lower-ranked products (Ivanov and the even younger and more ruthless Gletkin) of the Communist machine he helped create, Rubashov struggles with these questions. If there is a morality higher than simply what the Party judges to be correct, was his whole life - soon to be ending as he well knows (having been on the executing end of the equation so many times) - lived in testament to a lie? How would one even face such a conclusion other than with complete despair?

A reader sitting far removed from Rubashov's situation might think, "Of course what the Party is doing is wrong. Whatever that may mean about his life, it would be better for Rubashov to face the truth before dying." But why is what the Party doing wrong? Who is anyone else to say? If there is no higher morality, no "God," then what is there but efficiency and power? One might disagree with the EFFICIENCY of the Party's methods, but that is no grounds for disagreement with the Party's MORALITY. For Rubashov to come to a conclusion that what the Party is doing is morally wrong (as opposed to merely inefficient) and therefore choose not to sign his name to a dishonest confession as his tormentors are demanding, he has to have an appeal to an authority greater than the Party. But what in the world would THAT be?

As the interrogator Gletkin puts it, explaining to Rubashov why the end justifies the means: "The bulwark must be held, at any price and with any sacrifice. The leader of the Party recognized this principle with unrivalled clearsightedness, and has consistently applied it... We did not recoil from crushing our own organizations abroad when the interests of the Bastion required it. We did not recoil from co-operation with the police of reactionary countries in order to suppress revolutionary movements which came at the wrong moment. We did not recoil from betraying our friends and compromising with our enemies, in order to preserve the Bastion. That was the task which history had given us, the representative of the first victorious revolution. The short-sighted, the aesthetes, the moralists did not understand. But the leader of the Revolution understood that all depended on one thing: to be the better stayer."

Who is anyone to say that the leader is morally wrong?

'Darkness at Noon' not only stands as one of the most incisive political novels of its time, it is also peerless in its bleak portrayal of incarceration. Rawly compelling from the outset, the novel is set in the oppressive Soviet Union of the 1930's. Its hero is the reactionary Rubashov, imprisoned by his own party for crimes he has not committed yet forced, through rigorously severe interrogation, to confess and thus face certain execution. The despair inherent in Rubashov's position, and the gradual abrasion of his own moral and intellectual authority, make this a direct primogenitor to George Orwell's 1984. Koestler (beautifully translated by Daphne Hardy) exposes the cruel hypocrisy of a totalitarian regime which masquerades as a liberal, forward thinking movement. The party's views are expressed unequivocally by the prison interrogator, Gletkin, in the phrase 'truth is what is useful to humanity, falsehood what is harmful.' This statement, along with scores of others, conveys the suppression of free will at the core of Stalinist communism, and remains salient even when viewed in a modern political context. 'Darkness' examines the dilemma of a man who helped to establish his party yet can no longer condone its actions, and who as a consequence is ignominiously rejected by it. Rubashov's bravery in the face of oppression is heroic, yet his earlier treatment of secretary Arlova and his muddy consciousness towards this prevents him from appearing remotely altruistic: Rubashov is selfish and driven, although his aloof flippancy is grimly endearing. Like the Party, he will employ whatever means necessary to achieve his goal, human beings are a mere pawn in the game, ready to be sacrificed if to do so gains a strategic advantage. Koestler's portrayal of the hierarchical nature of oppressive rule, and the indurate self-interest it creates, is chillingly lucid. As Rubashov discards Arlova and young Richard, so the subordinate Gletkin, it is inferred, betrays Ivanov, shot for being 'a cynic', while both interrogators are ultimately controlled by the feared No.1. Implied throughout is the sense of degradation from an intellectual ideal; Gletkin is a 'Neanderthal', a 'barbaric relapse of history', and yet supersedes the thoughtful, intelligent Ivanov. Rubashov's interrogation by Gletkin is a farrago: both parties know there will only be one outcome, Rubashov, for pride's sake, denying endless charges until impelled by Gletkin's warped logic and the very human desire for sleep to acquiesce, exposing the fatuity of a dictatorial system averse to natural justice. The novel's muted end, the 'shrug of eternity' as Rubashov is killed, suggests serene release from a grimly arduous existence, an ambivalently Lethean suggestion of happiness to end this claustrophobically taut, intellectually and emotionally enthralling novel.