The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism

436 Pages·2009·1.34 MB·English

by  Michael Kimmage

HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES 165
Published under the auspices
of the Department of History
from the income of the
Paul Revere Frothingham Bequest
Robert Louis Stroock Fund
Henry Warren Torrey Fund

— T H E —
CONSERVATIVE
TURN
Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers,
and the Lessons of Anti-Communism
MICHAEL KIMMAGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2009
Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
all rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kimmage, Michael.
The conservative turn : Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the lessons of
anti-communism / Michael Kimmage.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-03258-3
1. Trilling, Lionel, 1905–1975—Political and social views. 2. Chambers, Whittaker—Political and
social views. 3. Right and left (Political science) 4. Communism—United States—History.
5. United States—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.
PS3539.R56Z83 2009
818'.5209—dc22 2008029729
for my mother and father

Petersburg, 1913. A lyrical digression: the last reminiscence of Tsarskoe
Selo. The wind mumbles, perhaps a recollection, perhaps a prophesy:
Bonfires warmed the yuletide,
Carriages fell from the bridges,
A whole city floated in mourning.
Unknown to what end,
With, or against, the flow of the Neva,
But away, away from its graves.
An archway crouched dark on Galernaya,
In the Summer Garden a weathervane hummed
And brightly over the silver age,
The silver moon grew cold.
Because, along all the roads,
Up to all the thresholds,
A shadow slowly crept.
The wind tore posters from the wall,
Smoke danced about the roof
And the graveyard smelled of lilac.
Cursed by Tsarina Avdotya,
Dostoevskian and demonic,
The city shrank into fog.
A rakish old Petersburg playboy,
Peered out once again from the darkness,
And the drum beat before the hanging...
The darkness before the war,
Frigid, prodigal, dreadful,
Filled with some future din,
The din was more muffled then,
It hardly troubled the soul
And sank into snow banks along the Neva.
Like a person, mirrored in a dreadful night,
Who rages and refuses
To recognize himself.
Along the embankment of legend,
It drew near—not on the calendar—
The real Twentieth Century.
—anna akhmatova, from “poem without a hero”
(translated by daniel kimmage)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Sons of the Bourgeoisie: Portrait of Lionel
Trilling and Whittaker Chambers as Young Men 15
2 Red Years in the Red Decade: Pursuing Soviet
Alternatives 46
3 Kronstadt: The Break 78
4 First Steps in an Anti-Stalinist World 109
5 Toward an Anti-Communism of the Left and an
Anti-Communism of the Right 140
6 Fictional Anti-Communism: Lionel Trilling’s
The Middle of the Journey 173
7 Witness: The Trial of Whittaker Chambers 203
8 Conservatism and the Anti-Communist Self 236
9 The Establishment of an Anti-Communist
Intelligentsia 268
Epilogue 303
Notes 315
Index 411