In 1957, Doris Lessing published a story in the New Leader called, “The Day That Stalin Died” (later improved as “The Day Stalin Died”). The story is set in England on March 5, 1953. A crushing excerpt:
I was just settling down to work, when comrade Jean rang up to say she wanted to see me during lunch-hour. Jean was for many years my self-appointed guide or mentor towards a correct political viewpoint. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she was one of several self-appointed guides. It was Jean who, the day after I had my first volume of short stories published, took the morning off work to come and see me, in order to explain that one of the stories, I forget which, gave an incorrect analysis of the class struggle. I remember thinking at the time that there was a good deal in what
she said.
When she arrived that day at lunch-time, she had her sandwiches with her in a paper bag, but she accepted some coffee, and said she hoped I didn’t mind her disturbing me, but she had been very upset by something she had been told I had said.
It appeared that a week before, at a meeting, I had remarked that there seemed to be evidence for supposing that a certain amount of dirty work must be going on in the Soviet Union. I would be the first to admit that this remark savoured of flippancy.
Jean was a small brisk woman with glasses, the daughter of a Bishop, whose devotion to the working class was proved by thirty years of work in the Party. Her manner towards me was always patient and kindly. “Comrade,” she said, “intellectuals like
yourself are under greater pressure from the forces of capitalist corruption than any other type of party cadre. It is not your fault. But you must be on your guard”.
I said I thought I had been on my guard; but nevertheless I could not help feeling that there were times when the capitalist press, no doubt inadvertently, spoke the truth.
Jean tidily finished the sandwich she had begun, adjusted her spectacles, and gave me a short lecture about the necessity for unremitting vigilance on the part of the working class. She then said she must go; because she had to be at her office at two. She
said that the only way an intellectual with my background could hope to attain to a correct working-class viewpoint was to work harder in the Party; to mix continually with the working class; and in this way my writing would gradually become a real weapon in
the class-struggle. She said, further; that she would send me the verbatim record of the Trials in the thirties, and if I read this, would find my at present vacillating attitude towards Soviet justice much improved. I said I had read the verbatim records a long time ago; and always did think they sounded unconvincing. She said that I wasn’t to worry; a really sound working-class attitude would develop with time.
With this she left me. I remember that, for one reason and another, I was rather depressed.
