1
Trotskyism in the Early Work of Saul Bellow
Judie Newman
Bellowâs enthusiasm for Trotskyism tends to be summarily dismissed as a youthful peccadillo, or as just one among many of the weltering ideas which populate his fiction. As Edward Shils commented, âIf thereâs a bad idea out thereâTrotskyism, Reichism, Steinerismâleave it to our friend Saul to swallow it.â1 Arguably, however, the later Bellowâs reputation as a neoconservative has obscured the importance to his life and writings of his early enthusiasm for Trotskyism. The 2010 publication of a selection of his letters opens with Bellow aged seventeen writing to Yetta Barshevsky, a fellow high school student who introduced him to Trotskyism. In the letter, the callow Bellow, disappointed in love, writes, âI sever relations with you,â conceding only that âWe may still be casual friends.â2 In fact, they stayed friends for more than sixty years. When she died, Bellow wrote her eulogy, describing how she had introduced him to world politics when they were in high school, and had given him Trotskyâs pamphlet on the German question.3
Bellow was still thinking about Trotsky in the 1990s in his correspondence with Albert Glotzer (his lifelong friend and at one point Trotskyâs secretary).4 Bellowâs involvement in radical left-wing politics, at Tuley High School and at university, produced his first publications (political pieces) in left-wing journals (the Beacon and Soapbox) and his first published short story, an antifascist fable. Although critics have tended to see Bellowâs Trotskyism as a product of his involvement with the Partisan Review group during that journalâs Trotskyist phase, he appears to have been recruited to the journal because of his established political reputation rather than for his as yet unproven literary talent. Writing to F. W. Dupee in 1941, the editor Philip Rahv described Bellow as one of the âapprentice writersâ he had met in Chicago.5 In fact, Partisan Review was the least radical of the journals to which the young Bellow contributed. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, Bellowâs literary output centered on the political specificities of the time, most notably in âThe Mexican Generalâ (1942), based on Bellowâs visit to Trotsky in Mexico, where he arrived within hours of the assassination.
In some respects, Bellowâs enthusiasm for Trotsky is unsurprising. Writing in 1993, Bellow pointed out that when the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, he was two years old and his parents, who had emigrated from Saint Petersburg to Montreal in 1913, followed subsequent events in Russia very keenly: âAt the dinner table the Tsar, the war, the front, Lenin, Trotsky were mentioned as often as parents, sisters and brothers in the old country.â6 Grandfather Bellow had taken refuge in the Winter Palace during the revolution; his motherâs relatives were famous Mensheviks. While the older generation assumed that the Bolsheviks would soon be suppressed, their children were keen to join the revolution, including the son of Bellowâs Hebrew teacher: âHe went off to build a new order under Lenin and Trotsky. And he disappeared.â7 Despite embracing Americanization, Bellowâs friends believed that âthey were also somehow Russianâ and read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, going on to Leninâs State and Revolution and the pamphlets of Trotsky.8 The Tuley High School debating society discussed The Communist Manifesto. Bellow read it and described himself as âswept away by the power of the analysis.â9 When a Commission of Inquiry was set up in Mexico in 1937 to consider the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow Show Trials (in which he was alleged to be a fascist collaborator, and condemned to death in his absence), Bellow and his Trotskyist friends âfollowed the proceedings bitterly, passionately, for we were of course the Outs; the Stalinists were the Ins.â10 Even much later in his life, Bellow still admired Trotsky, both for his politics and his culture: âHow could I forget that Trotsky had created the Red Army, that he had read French novels at the front while defeating Denikin? That great crowds had been swayed by his coruscating speeches?â11
Bellowâs political education began in earnest at âThe Forum,â a church hall on California Avenue which hosted debates between socialists, communists, and anarchists. He read Marx and Engels, âblasting away at Value, Price and Profit while the police raided a brothel across the street.â12 When the Young Communist League attempted to recruit him in the late 1930s, they were far, far too late. âI had already read Trotskyâs pamphlet on the German question and was convinced that Stalinâs errors had brought Hitler to power.â13 Trotsky wrote two major pamphlets on the German question. The first, in 1930, to which Bellow is referring, argued that the ideological error of the Comintern (Stalin) consisted in always seeing the main enemy as social democracy, and therefore not standing up to Hitler. Trotsky called instead for a united struggle against fascism, to include democratic forces as well as socialists, not an enticing prospect for the purists of the Communist Party. In the second pamphlet, written in 1932, Trotsky foresaw the radicalization of the American working class once the country began to emerge from its economic crisis.14 Reflecting his Trotskyist beliefs, Bellowâs early short stories, much more political than his novels, are marked by a profound ambivalence to war, distrust of democratic reforms, and a belief that capitalism had failed.
For Bellow, 1933 marked graduation from Tuley and entry into the University of Chicago, where he and Isaac Rosenfeld organized âCell Number Fiveâ of the Trotskyist Youth Group. As Alan Wald records, the Socialist Club of the University of Chicago published Soapbox, a sixteen-page magazine with a quotation on its masthead from William Randolph Hearst: âRed Radicalism has planted a soapbox on every campus of America.â15 Under the leadership of Nathan Gould, Soapbox made no secret of its political allegiances. It hailed Trotskyâs fifty-seventh birthday enthusiastically and attracted endorsements from Max Shachtman, James T. Farrell, Sidney Hook, and Meyer Shapiro, among others. Bellow published political commentary, including âThis Is the Way We Go to Schoolâ in December 1936, under the pseudonym John Paul.16 Bellow had moved to Northwestern University in Evanston in 1935, and may have used a pseudonym to deflect undue attention from his instructors.17 The piece attacked a local resident of Evanston who had published a âhandbookâ for patriots, giving an exposĂ© of Communist activity in the United States. Bellow was scathing about bourgeois Evanston and Northwestern, which he described as âintellectually flat-chested,â and supplied details of the poor working conditions and pay of the grounds and building staff.18 In 1934, the general strikes had produced a new mood of activism in America, and Bellow rode the rails with his friend Herb Passin to see for himself, cheering on the sit-in strikers at the Studebaker plant from a boxcar. âOf course, I sympathized with the strikers.â19 When his old friend Sydney J. Harris founded a journal, the Beacon, which featured articles about local political disputes and union activities, he appointed Bellow as associate editor. For the young Bellow, however, Harris was not nearly radical enough, and he was incensed when Harris allowed the Stalinist Young Communist League to advertise in the journal. In 1936, âSaul Gordon Bellowâ had reviewed J. T. Farrellâs A World I Never Made in the Beacon, applauding its left-wing politics. Writing to Farrell in 1937, he complained: âEditorially I canât push the magazine to the left because Harris is a shrewd opportunistic bastard who wonât permit it. However, if we load the magazine with Bolshevik writers of national reputation, we can have Harris hanging on a ledge before long.â20 In this, however, he was sadly mistaken; it was Bellow who would leave the Beacon.
Bellow also published pieces for the radical student newspaper the Daily Northwestern. âPets on the North Shoreâ (1936) again targeted the Evanston bourgeoisie via their pampered pooches. More importantly, Bellowâs first published story, âThe Hell It Canât,â appeared there in 1936. The story takes its title from the response of a character in Sinclair Lewisâs novel It Canât Happen Here (1935) to the suggestion that America could never turn fascist.21 In the novel, âBuzzâ Windrip, the populist leader of a âpatrioticâ movement in America, creates his own militia (the Minute Men, or âMM,â modeled on Hitlerâs âSSâ), seizes power, and sets up a fascist dictatorship with martial law and concentration camps. The hero writes for a radical paper and survives to see Windripâs power waning. Lewisâs novel was more optimistic than Bellowâs story, in which Henry Howland is seized in the night by a group of paramilitary âpatriotsâ and taken away for a brutal whipping which is still in progress as the story ends. Set in Chicago (the hero recalls friendly neighborhood exchanges about the Cubs), the story draws its horror from the absolute familiarity of the surroundings, emphasizing that militarism and fascism could be right at home in America. As the story opens, the enemy is already within the door. Henry hears a bell ringing, a hinge creaking, boots on the stairs, and the door of his room flying open. The action then consists entirely of the walk along the familiar street, past everyday landmarks, with Henry longing for a familiar face to appear, to witness his fate, âNow they were about to end him.â22 The story ends âhe was five blocks from homeâ (8). The street teems with military activity, including young soldiers fresh from âsome high school camp,â who ignore Henryâs plight, their faces âyoung, hard and unforgiving.â âThey were getting them young now, and well-trainedâ (5). The walls are plastered with propaganda posters, âFight. Donât Be An Enemy At Homeâ (5) runs the caption to the face of a soldier with a bayonet, in front of a girl holding bandages. In the background, men sing war songs in saloons, chorusing âit wonât be long till weâre thereâ (5), with âthereâ meaning London, Lisbon, or Rome. Whereas in Lewisâs novel, Windrip decides to invade Mexico and introduces the draft, Bellowâs emphasis is on the European theater of war. Henry recalls newsreels of Austrian troops on the run, and French troops leaving a fortress. Henryâs crime is to have opposed ...