Critical Analysis of a Document

Critical Analysis of a Document

‘Lev Kopelev (1912-1997): The Party Faithful?’

The primary document I have chosen to analyse is an extract taken from

Lev Kopelev’s book, ‘No Jail For Thought’ written in 1977. In this

extract he vividly expresses his views and attitudes held during the

time surrounding the communist rise in Russia during the 1930’s and

early 40’s. Kopelev was born in Kiev and grew up as a keen believer of

communism, later joining the communist movement. A strong mindset was

instilled into him early in his years working in the communist party

that he must not diverge from the party’s vision of victory at any

cost, stating ‘quarrels that served to distract us from our main goal

were inexcusable’ (Kopelev 1977). His main work in the 30’s was to

participate in the enforced collectivisation of agriculture, which was

part of a rapidly changing economic plan at the time orchestrated from

the top of political powers. Although it was originally the Bolshevik

Party led by Vladimir Llyich Lenin that brought about the Russian

Revolution in 1917, the dominant and strangling effects of communism

were not established until 1934 when ‘Stalinism as a system of rule

began in the Soviet Union’ (Lovenduski & Woodall 1987). This period

ran right up into World War Two, in which Kopelev also participated as

a major in the Red Army. Despite having never faulted from his fight

for the communist movement, Kopelev was arrested in 1945 in East

Prussia and subsequently spent nine years in a Soviet labour camp.

Even after such adversity he remained a true communist as a party

member. After his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1968, he still

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of Karl Marx who ultimately envisioned a ‘harmonious classless

society’ (ed. Bridgewater & Kurtz 1968). Right throughout his piece he

maintains that his belief in a socialist future was never crushed

recalling that ‘on the first day of my arrest, when I was in the back

of the car, gazing at the starry sky and being rushed off to prison, I

thought of it again.’ This relentless hope illustrated in his message

and that of original communist intentions displays how incredibly

ironical the result of the Party’s destructive method of completing

such a goal was. One feels in the end Kopelev is left with nothing

more than a betrayal of what he had set out to achieve and poetically

concludes with the notion that ‘I still believed it, but I also had

come to understand that form seeds like these come poisoned fruit.’