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Darkness at Noon: A Novel

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A faded photograph on the wall depicts 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 toward his cell, but 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, formerly a member of the Communist Party, 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 a 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 Rubashov's own ethics and morality were undermined as he participated in the destruction of well-meaning, loyal party members that unintentionally became guilty of political divergencies. He allowed his lover to be imprisoned, and even joined the chorus that condemned 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.

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. Now that I've read it again I think I can begin to understand the praise that has been heaped on it since its publication.

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 descriptions found in history texts such as Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsarand Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him of the fate of millions during the purges.

Further, whereas these 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 in Darkness at Noon go a long way toward 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 explaining why so many millions of people actively participated in the denunciations that accompanied the purges and show trials.

During the height of the proceedings against him during his Presidency, former President Clinton compared himself to Rubashov. 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 dialogues with his interrogators.

Pick up this book and read it.

Set during the Stalinist purges and show trials, `Darkness at Noon' presents a fictionalized account of the interrogation and breaking of a (former) communist leader `Rubashov'. Under Stalin, 'former communists' were limited to those persons about to be executed, already executed, or waiting to be uncovered. As an original Bolshevik, a leader of the 1917 revolution, Rubashov's disillusionment was simply inadmissible to Number One (as Stalin is referred to by Koestler).

Koestler explores the journey of Rubashov from the knock at the door through the final denouement. The reader observes Rubashov, who plays the role of narrator, as he undergoes the psychological change from a determination to resist to nearly total capitulation. Rubashov manages to hold to some crumbs of self-respect, but yields to the logic of the revolution as more important than any individual even when the accusations are complete fabrications.

`Darkness at Noon' is precisely imagined with its details of Rubashov pacing the floor of his small isolation cell, the coded tapping between adjacent cells, and the deprivation of physical comforts that make the subsequent small graces, such as limited outdoor exercise, become precious by comparison. This much of the tale was informed by Rubashov's experiences as a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War. Koestler's examination of the psychological destruction of the prisoner is fascinating, although at times it briefly lapses into stultifying disquisitions on the distorted Stalinist political philosophy.

Koestler himself was a German communist through much of the 1930's before immigrating to Britain, leaving the party and becoming an influential ex-communist. George Orwell's excellent essay about Koestler is readily available on the Internet (google `arthur koestler orwell').

Darkness at Noon was the middle book of an unusual trilogy of loosely related subjects: Gladiators and Arrival and Departure (20th Century Classics). Readers may also wish examine Victor's Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics).

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the era of communism in its Stalinist form or more broadly in the perverse ability of humans to place greater meaning in abstract and abstruse ideology than in the actual lives of other humans.

Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon", his magnum opus, is more than just a book. It is not a novel, nor is it an essay; it is a memory and an experience, a warning and a vision. It takes the reader into a nightmare world that is nevertheless real, an alternative history that is more history than alternative, and if he has a sensitivity to questions of history and politics, it is sure to be imprinted on his mind forever. In summary, it's one of the most powerful political books of the 20th Century.

The theme of the book is the experience of Stalinism, in particular the Stalinist Great Purges and the show trials during the late 1930s. Arthur Koestler himself was a Party socialist for much of his life, and only left the Soviet Union in 1938. Having known many of the Old Bolsheviks personally, he saw the state of the revolution taken over by Stalin and his henchmen, and witnessed the slow (and sometimes fast) destruction of the revolutionary old guard.

It's the experiences of this infamous Great Terror of communism, seen from the eyes of a communist, that form the basic of this book. The plot is rather limited in scope: the protagonist, N.S. Rubashov (probably loosely modelled after Bukharin), is arrested for 'counterrevolutionary crimes', and spends the rest of the book in prison, being interrogated and prepared for the inevitable show trial. This of itself is not particularly clever, but that is not the core of the book.

The real core of the book is Rubashov's fundamental theoretical paradoxical position: all his life he has believed in submitting the "subjectivity" of the individual to the demands of the Party, in the knowledge that they were building a future for mankind. All his life he has believed in History working its will, in the inevitable eventual victory of the right over the wrong. Yet now this same history has taken a turn, and he and the works of his generation are destroyed by the progeny of his own revolution. His interrogators, first the cynical intellectual Ivanov and later the farmer's son-turned-cadre Gletkin, want him to sign a series of damning confessions that are palpably false, which all parties involved know. Yet if the Party demands this of him, if this indeed is the will of History, can he resist? And moreover, how is it possible to begin with that the revolution led to the terror of "No. 1", the totalitarian Party leader?

Through a series of short but thrilling scenes in interrogation and longer periods of reflection, monologue interieure, and flashbacks, the downfall of a committed revolutionary and intellectual and his generation are painted as vividly and profoundly as one could demand of literature. This book is more powerful than Orwell's "1984" and yet more understanding than any of the common anti-communist works of the last century; it is a testament, dedicated to the generation of Trotsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Rakovsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and all the other fighters for socialism at the birth of that bloodiest of centuries.

I'm afraid to read anything else by Arthur Koestler.

"Darkness at Noon," his excellent novel about an aging revolutionary awaiting a show-trial and execution in Stalin's Soviet Union, is so thoroughly compelling and readable, alive with ideas and general brilliance, and so widely recognized as Koestler's masterpiece, that I fear his other books will be disappointing by comparison.

This, on the other hand, may well be my favorite book. Ever. Despite the fact that my "to-read" pile is a paper stalagmite that grows faster than I can chip away at it, I ripped through this one twice in under six months, and if I were somehow locked in the bathroom with only this on the toilet tank, and forced to start it a third time--I can't imagine this actually happening, but bear with me here--I can't say I'd be all that disappointed.

This reads like "1984," but it preceded Orwell's book, and presumably greatly influenced it. More importantly, although the real 1984 eventually rolled around to make Orwell's dystopia seem at least somewhat absurd (in execution, if not idea and desire), this still feels incredibly realistic.

And scarily, this is more relevant to today's America. While our level of freedom and political discourse may be completely different than that of Stalin's Soviet Union, the methods they used would not be unfamiliar in Guantanamo or Abu Grahib--or in some police precincts. Not the shrill and scary tactics of "1984," but the soft and simple: psychological games, sleep deprivation, and the like. Sleep deprivation may seem downright kind in the pantheon of torture, and I'm sure it starts off relatively innocuously--"They're terrorists, they're criminals, so why should we coddle them? Why should they get a good night's sleep?"--but any tactic whereby one compels the body to betray the mind is torture. And the sad thing is that torture doesn't work. Forget all the crazy ticking time-bomb scenarios, the fact is simple. Torture. Doesn't. Work. It does not provide reliable information or accurate confessions. And this book shows why. Rubashov, kept up for days on end, becomes willing to say or do anything for a few blessed moments of sleep. He will sell himself out. He will say anything. He will lie.

The strange peculiarity of Soviet Russia is that the victim and the torturers both know these lies are lies. But he says them, and they listen, because they both have their roles to play. The show trial is not really a trial. It is only a show.

But the great thing about "Darkness at Noon" is that it isn't just a polemic about tactics or a lesson about history; it is a powerful meditation on good and evil, and the extent to which we allow the latter in the short term because we believe it will somehow help us get the former in the long term. One reads this and feels sympathy not just for Rubashov, but for his interrogators, because they grapple with a timeless question: can we, and should we, make today difficult and imperfect and unjust for the sake of a better tomorrow?

This is a weighty question, and the book abounds with such meditations: like Dostoyevsky's works--to which it is clearly in debt--it is a philosophical novel with true weight and depth. In "The Grand Inquisitor", one of the most famous chapters in literature, Dostoyevsky concocts a prison scene in which the head of the Spanish Inquisition discourses to Jesus on why the Church felt it necessary to behave in ways contrary to Jesus' teachings. And this book feels like "The Grand Inquisitor" writ large. Though it revolves around ideology instead of religion, the effect is similar--disciples explaining to the master why they needed to stray, why they needed to corrupt and pervert their beliefs in order to save them from external enemies, why they needed to destroy the movement in order to save it.

On this and many other issues, Rubashov ponders but--importantly--does not always come up with clear answers. "How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?" he muses early on, then asks, "How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives--where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?" I don't think Koestler wants to give us answers. Like the best artists, he's not so much interested in telling us what to think as he is in making us think. It's not always about finding answers; it's about remembering to ask questions. And that's something we need to remember today.

The phrase Orwellian only deserves to be classified as a derivative of the work of Koestler whose slightly-earlier reflections are a telling reflection on the spirit of Marxism with greater poignancy since they come from one who formerly professed Marxism as a positive doctrine. While some of the narrative aspects of Darkness at Noon are slow-moving, they add to the ponderous nature of the subject at hand as the character of Rubashov questions his adherence to an ideology which has seemingly stripped the skin off humanity without the ability to graft a glorious replacement on the exposed internal organs. The doubts of a noble, high-minded reformer are poignant to any reader who has ever considered the interplay between the individual and the whole of society.

This perennially question of all philosophy, the question of the One and the Many touches the core of our questing for the Truth and easily makes one sympathetic to the trials of the reformer who desires both to enact the noble goals of the revolution but also realizes that so much has been lost on the way that it is quite possible to question the result. In the face of cold, hard, systematic logic which easily leads one to believe with certainty in the questionable fate of the future, Rubashov quavers both against his own questioning as well as against his own self-assured innocence in the face of charges against his devotion to the Party's cause. Such a duality of confidence is naturally found in all of humanity and retains a poignancy for all readers who have considered the noble weight of the Truth against the dangers of liberty-destroying force. The story of a confused Marxist is not that different from the story of any person, even the most devout of Christians who desires for adherence to the Truth of Faith while dually acknowledging the necessity of freedom, an acknowledgement which leads to difficult choices and seemingly-insurmountable contradictions. For this reason, Darkness at Noon is a read of great importance today, even for those who are furthest from the philosophical social materialism of Marxism.

I just finished reading Darkness at Noon, a 1940 novel by the late Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler. It's a disturbing, yet essential, book for anyone who wants to understand the dark side of political orthodoxy and human behavior.

Set in Russian during the Stalinist purges of the late 1930's, Darkness at Noon tells the story of the fictional character , Rubashov, a hero of the 1917 revolution and one of the founders of the Communist state. As Stalin (simply referred to as" No. 1" in the book) tightens his grip on power and eliminates all of the old guard, Rubashov is arrested, interrogated and tried for treason and other crimes against the revolution. He relives his life through flashbacks of those he has had exterminated over his career for petty failings, failure to strictly adhere to the party line, and, in one case, to protect himself from accusation. Now a victim of his own methods Rubashov takes an introspective look at his life, his party, his philosophy and the meaning of it all.

The book portrays Communism as it was practiced in Stalin's era as philosophically empty. The party exists and acts only for self-preservation. Everything else, even - especially - the stated goals of the revolution become secondary to that end. This is how the Party can justify the extermination of millions to starvation, the prison like conditions that peasants must work under and the utter disregard for the truth that is practiced at every turn. Any thought, deed or mistake that disagrees with the orthodoxy of the day is cause for suspicion -- or worse.

Koestler, the author, is an interesting person; I suggest reading up on him on the Internet. This book of his is one of the most important books of the 20th century. It exposed the Communist Party for the corrupt entity it was. By the way, it also was a great influence in a later work by a fellow named George Orwell. That book? 1984.

Aruthur Koestler (1905-1983)wrote a depressing novel that is both thoughtful and a warning. Koeslter was a complex man, and his political loyalties "ran across the political spectrum." He was at one an ardent Zionist, a member of the Communist Party, an anti-Communist, etc. He was learned in history, astronomy, languages, etc. Koestler became disillusioned with Big Communism during Stalin's purge show trials in the late 1930s which may have inspired this novel. Koestler'complex background gave him insight to write this novel about an Old Bolshevik named Rubashov who was one of Lenin's comrades prior to the purge trials.

The novel shows a tortured soul who was an ardent Bolshevik who saw no problem between means and ends re the Bolshevik Revolution and the Bolsheviks' grab for power at all costs. Much of the novel deals with Rubashov's soul searching after his arrest whereby re reflects on his own misdeeds as an ardent Bolshevik who himself trampled on innocent victims to further revolution. Rubashov tries to rationalize his own misdeeds and attempts to enhance to Bolshevik Party when Lenin rose to power. Koestler tried to show that Rubashov views his actions as furthering a "good" cause while his own arrest and torture and interrogation make no sense.

The second interrogator, Ivanov, is a cruel, heartless secret police agent. Both men know the accusations, confessions, etc., are lies and perposterous fabrications as "grist for the mill" during a show trial that all involved know is only a show trial. The accusations make no sense to Rubashov until he reflects that perhaps his own suffering and false confessions are part of the Revolution and are an aberrant means of furthering the Revolution. Yet, he also reflects that he had a loyality to the Revolution that surpassed most, and he cannot understand why a loyal Bolshevik should suffer at the hands of a faceless totalitarian terror regime. The interrogator, Ivanov, at times reminds Rubashov of his own excesses (Rubashov's)which the latter at the time justified. What Rubashov vaguely realizes is that he may be a useless cog in a bureaucratic totalitarian nightmare and that his life has no meaning after all. This is the crux of the novel and the Stalin terror. The victims were brutalized and humiliated so that they thought of themselves as useless, hopeless souls.

Rubashov is executed at the end of the novel. He still has some soul searching. Perhaps as a corrorlary to Bakunin's (1814-1865)remark that as the empire increases, the individual diminishes, Rubashov realizes that as nameless, faceless totalitarian regime increases power, the individual also dimishes.

This novel was written before George Orwell's (1903-1950)1984 and may have influenced the latter's book. Koestler and Orwell were on good terms and corresponded regularly. Orwell's and Koestler's novels are a hopeful sign that thoughtful men can analyze and diagnose unbridled power and cause men to think about regimes based on unbridled power and terror against innocent victims. However, as Koestler noted in this novel, Rubashov was not so innocent. Those who excercise power one day may be the victims of such terror later.

"Darkness at Noon" is one of those books that stays in your mind long after you put it down. I first read it more than 30 years ago when I was a high school student reading "serious" books for the first time. It just knocked me over. It raised questions about personal morality and the ends of politics that made other authors I was reading at the time (such as Ayn Rand) seem incredibly shallow. I loved it.

Recently I read the book again to see if it was as good as I remembered. It's actually better. "Darkness at Noon" tells the story of an Old Bolshevik who re-examines his life in the Party when he is caught up in the purge trials of the 1930s. As such, the book is a great analysis of the pathology and twisted logic that corrupted mid-20th century communism. But it is also a broader exploration of ends-justify-means morality, exposing the traps and contradictions we fall into whenever truth and common decency are thrown overboard in the name of social utility. "Darkness at Noon" easily transcends old controversies about communism. Indeed, in an age when the U.S. government has secret torture camps to fight terrorism, its message has lost none of its power or relevance.

The story is gripping. The writing is superb. The characters are vivid. Dialogues of near-Dostoyevskian intensity alternate with passages of sad introspection and guilty memory. Read it. It may even make you feel 17 again -- and wide open to the impact of great literature. Six stars.

Heck, seven stars....

If you are interested at all in smart, philosophical and interesting fiction, this book is a must-read. The thought and detail in the book overwealms you and if you pay attention, you can practically feel your mind expand. This book is a classic and for good reason: it plays on deeper thoughts and ideas in a beautiful and meaningful way.

The most interesting parts of this book, I found, were not the actual events of the plot but rather the long political and philosophical debates which support the story's significance. When Rubashov, the protagonist, is arguing with another character, each one of them sets forth his viewpoint and defends it at length. While many times I had to disagree with the character, I found the writing and the explanations logical (in their own way) and enlightening. I can not fully explain the ecstasy which comes with reading well written and beautiful prose which touches deeper ideas about the flow of history and the human mind but it was utterly enjoyable. The arguments use allegories and examples to underline their meaning and do it beautifully.

The passages in the book transcend superficial normal thinking and concentrate on deeper things bordering on the whole of human existence. At the core there is the storyline, the man Rubashov is being prosecuted by the same party which he has spent the last 40 years of his life serving and protecting, but each decision and action in the story is thought about carefully but the men (the only woman who is of any significance died a few years before the story begins) who drive the story. These thoughts are explained to the reader, either through long narrations, journal entries or, in the case of a chracter other than Rubashov, political discussion. These justifications and musings are the jems of the book, the parts that grab your attention and seem to demand greater analysis. These are the parts that force you to reread again and again. Even when I did not agree, I still felt as if ever word was worth reading.