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Beyond Diversity
which is what constitutes the vitally dynamic core of life. Thus, only statements
that harbor inner contradictions are deemed “vital” and hence true.
That is why Stalin-era thinking automatically championed contradiction to
the detriment of the consistent statement.
Such great emphasis on contradictoriness was of course a legacy dialectical
materialism had inherited from Hegel’s dialectic. Yet in the Leninist-
Stalinist model, as opposed to Hegel’s postulates, this contradiction could
never be historically transcended and retrospectively examined. All contradictions
were constantly at play, remained constantly at variance with one
another, and constantly made up a unified whole. Rigid insistence on a single
chosen assertion was counted as a crime, as a perfidious assault on this unity
of opposites. The doctrine of the unity and the struggle of opposites constitutes
the underlying motif and the inner mystery of Stalinist totalitarianism—for
this variant of totalitarianism lays claim to unifying absolutely all
conceivable contradictions. Stalinism rejects nothing: it takes everything into
its embrace and assigns to everything the position it deserves. The only issue
that the Stalinist mindset finds utterly intolerable is an intransigent adherence
to the logical consistency of one’s own argument to the exclusion of any
contrary position. In such an attitude, Stalinist ideology sees a refusal of
responsibility toward life and the collective, an attitude that could only be
dictated by malicious intentions. The basic strategy of this ideology can be
said to operate in the following manner: If Stalinism has already managed to
unite all contradictions under the sheltering roof of its own thinking, what
could be the point of partisanly advocating just one of these various contrary
positions There can ultimately be no rational explanation for such behavior,
since the position in question is already well looked after within the totality
of Stalinist ideology. The sole reason for such a stubborn act of defiance
must consequently lie in an irrational hatred of the Soviet Union and a
personal resentment of Stalin. Since it is impossible to reason with someone
so full of hatred, regrettably the only remedy available is reeducation or
elimination.
This brief detour into the doctrine of Stalinist dialectical materialism
allows us to formulate the criterion that intrinsically determined all artistic
creativity during the Stalin era: Namely, each work of art endeavored to
incorporate a maximum of inner aesthetic contradictions. This same criterion
also informed the strategies of art criticism in that period, which always