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