Man of Ironncontinued from page 40nof Soviet literature is structured on an”boy-meets-tractor” pattern. Certainlyna few magnificent works of drama andnliterature have originated in the socialistnphilosophy—one recalls And QuietnFlows the Don or, in the movies,nPatomkin, The magnitude of Man ofnIron is that it is the first socialist-realistnmovie to carry a clear, fierce, unequivocalnand fully intentional antisocialistnmessage. Its main protagonistnis a flesh-and-blood worker, a true-bluenproletarian who pays little attention tonlife’s enigmas and ambiguities, whonloves his wife and child and who, withna superb, heroic, single-minded passion,ndevotes his life to the destruction ofncommunism in Poland. An intricatenlesson about socialist realism mustntherefore be drawn from AndrzejnWajda’s film: for the last 30 years thencritics, from right or left, who havenscoffed at, derided and scorned all thenridiculous socialist-realist sagas, benthey Soviet, Czech, French, Italian ornLatin American, have been missing thenpoint. Those socialist-realist “masterpieces”nwere stupid, clumsy and repellentnbecause they defended the wrongncause—the totalitarian lie, oppression,nknavery, Soviet-style despotism and corruption.nWhen the revolution was anjust cause, or at least a cause relatednto justice—like overthrowing the czarn—Eisenstein could make a convincingncinematic statement, like Patomkin.nBut the revolution quickly degeneratedninto the worst tyranny in history—andnhere comes Wajda, who gives a pictorialntestimony for a revolution against Eisenstein’snrevolution. Wajda’s cause is just,nand Man of Iron is a splendid, triumphantnsocialist realism which leaves nonone unmoved—and thus metes out anterrific blow to the Marxist-Leninist evil.nThe American liberal leftist—whosentepid denunciations of the Soviet reality,npower and historical role have alwaysnsounded unconvincing—will havea hardnChronicles of Culturentime watching this movie. The screennis replete with paraphernalia dear tonthe heart of every fellow traveler andn”progressive”: shipyards, plants, authenticnworking men and women, unfalsifiednpeople, poor-looking lower classes,nmachines, slogans on the walls, meetings,nsoap-box rhetoric in the genuinenunionist style, an avalanche of proletariannaesthetics. Not for a second doesnWajda allow the viewer to forget thatnthis working-class universe and ethosnis animated by one mighty impulse: tondestroy communism, to wage a life-ordeathnstruggle with the Polish commissarsnwho ruined Poland in the name ofnMarx and Lenin and on behalf of thenSoviets. Nor does Wajda let the audiencenforget that the fighting labor union goesninto battle carrying Catholic symbolsnand singing hymns to the glory of thenVirgin Mary. This movie will certainlyndiscomfort all those Ivy League professorsnwho still keep Das Kapital and thenworks of George Lukacs on the shelves,nall those Park Avenue leftists who stillnhave Che Guevara murals in their penthouses,nthe Hollywood progressivistsnwho make millions on pornography onlynto finance the Institute for Policy Studies,nand the tycoons of the cosmetic industrynwho are ever-ready to contributento the Weather Underground or the RednBrigades’ lunch program or the maintenancenof traitors like Philip Agee. Perhapsnthey should spare themselves indigestionnby staying away.nArt cannot be art, and literature cannotnbe literature, without a modicumnof moral truth. In a work of art, anynsin can be defended and any inhumannessnforgiven, but only when the painstakingnobservance of truthfulness opensnnew vistas to any kind of human experiencenand circumstances. Ultimatelynan unswerving allegiance to reality andnverity is transformed into deep knowledgenthrough a dazzling mind, fascinatingnintelligence, awesome insightfulness—whichntells us that to divorcennntruth from the rudiments of intellectualnethics will always end in either mediocritynor a rapacious swindle. That’s whyndimwits are such poor subjects for artnand literature, and why great writersnare always, first and foremost, very intelligentnmen and women. Without thenmagic of moral truth, art becomes onlynentertainment and literature merenwriting.nThere is little intimation in Reds,nwhich was made around the end of then1970’s, of that which is depicted innMan of /row-that is, the total subjugationnof a society to a monstrous communistntyranny whose most miserablenvictims are the workers. The creatorsnof Reds must have heard about Stalin’snslaughter of 20,000,000 people, of thenGulags’ horrors, of the brutal conquestnof Eastern Europe, of Budapest andnPrague. Yet in their movie, only EmmanGoldman—an anarchist whose reputationnwas due less to her brain than tonher ability to channel frustrated sexualityninto revolutionary fierceness—uttersna few trite warnings about the ficklennature of revolution. Actually, she wasncondemning neither communist doctrinennor its historical implementation,nbut the Russian mess. After 60 yearsnof leftist intellectual efforts to rendernjustice to Marxism, Leninism and theirnhistorical embodiments—after AndrenGide, Koestler, Silone, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn—allnthe “creators” oiReds canncome up with by way of analysis is annintolerable banality which, by the timenof Lenin’s death, was already considerednshabby, worn out, old hat. This, ofncourse, reduces the movie’s illuminativenvalue to that of a sociopolitical cinematicncomic strip.nWhen Doctor Zhivago was firstnshown behind what we used to call thenIron Curtain, its most lyrical, or dramatic,nmoments triggered waves ofnlaughter from audiences that knewnRussia, Russians and the Russian communistnreality by virtue of their proximitynto it, the condition of being neighbors.nNo less hilarity certainly must haven