John Rodden
Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2003, $20, h/b
John Rodden is one of the foremost Orwell scholars, someone with a remarkable knowledge not just of the man and his works, but also of his reception among academics, politicians and the general reading public. In this new collection of essays, he declares himself to be one of those who insist that Orwell has to be seen as a democratic socialist, as someone who never relinquished his ‘socialist ideals’. Of particular interest however is his discussion of Orwell’s reception behind the Iron Curtain, in those countries that he is often criticised for condemning. Rodden introduces us to Baldur Haase, imprisoned for three years in East Germany for reading Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was informed on by his brother-in-law. Why did people take the risk of reading Orwell? Rodden quotes the Russian dissident, Victoria Chalikova, remembering the 1950s and 60s:
‘How we used to read Orwell in Russia! In third and fourth typewritten copies and in pale Xerox copies we literally read close to the text looking around while we put ourselves at risk, in a tightly closed room, alone or with another person, just as in the novel Winston and Julia read the underground book. The book and life reflected one another as if they were in a mirror.’
When Andrei Sakharov first read Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was incredulous that George Orwell was not the pseudonym of a Russian dissident. The novel was so ‘true’ that he thought only someone who had lived under Stalinism could have written it.
More generally Rodden argues that Orwell has been ‘esteemed as a man and exalted as a mentor’ by intellectuals located everywhere on the political spectrum except the far left. For the Marxist left Orwell is a ‘heretic, renegade, traitor, turncoat……..a heavy, an impersonator, a stooge, a villain’. He has been one of the far left’s ‘leading dramatis personae non grata for more than half a century’. This is not entirely true. While the Communists have certainly condemned Orwell without reservation, the far left has divided in attitudes pretty much along the lines of sympathy to the Soviet Union or Red China. Those most hostile to Stalinism have tended to embrace Orwell, while those least hostile have tended to parrot Communist slanders from his believing the working class smelled to working for MI6.
Scenes From An Afterlife is essential reading for anyone interested in Orwell.