I'm John Batcher, visiting with the author Joseph Tarigian. His new book is a very careful look at the life of one revolutionary communist in the 20th century, a critical way to look because this is not Mao, this is not dung, this is not the paramount leader. This is a man who served them all,

was persecuted, jailed, his family was very much mistreated, and yet he remained a very devoted

communist to making a revolution. Joseph Terrigan is here to help me understand this transformation of human beings into subservient to an idea or an ideology or in this case the word revolution.

Sometimes, Joseph, while reading a book, I was reminded of Arthur Kessler's fiction about darkness at noon.

There is a scene somewhere early on when our hero,

she, is arrested and persecuted, though he knows he is not guilty. He's usually persecuted for being

a rightist. I don't remember. It might have been being a leftist at this point. And he said,

if they condemn me, that is the party and it's right.

Do I compare that to how Kessler presented the show trials of the Soviet Union about the

same time in the 1930s?

Absolutely.

And I thought about that novel quite a bit when I was writing my book. There are dramatic points in that novel in which loyal revolutionaries who are being sent to their death by Stalin are saying love with Stalin. And to understand why people had that mindset requires us to put ourselves in the mind of an individual who believes that

he is serving a political organization that is a manifestation of a world historical force.

So revolutionary organizations believe that their victory was inevitable, that it was legitimate,

and therefore if the party says that they're wrong,

the party is always right.

And so there is this belief that when you suffer at the hands of your own party, it's

something you can take pride in.

Because by not losing faith in the party and by remaining loyal

to the party you show just how dedicated and motivated you are it reveals something in you

it shows how much metal you have it's a way of putting aside your own selfish personal

interests for something bigger than yourself?

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