Last night’s class session deepened my understanding of the piece by Judt and Hollander. During our discussion I got clarification on the intellectuals’ self-abnegation with the working class. The intellectuals wanted to align themselves with the working class, as then they could be less critical. The intellectuals idealizing the working class comes from a basic understanding of human relationships. As human beings we like to find individuals or groups that we can associate ourselves with because they have all the right values and good qualities. This can be likened to hero worship which is seen in athletes, entertainers, and for this course politics.
When we mentioned hero worship for athletes, this caught my attention. Oftentimes we put athletes on this pedestal and want to be them and expect them to perform at the highest level at all times, and fail to recognize that they are also human. Recently, athletes have been advocating for their mental health and some have taken a step back from competing. These athletes are then criticized by the media, and sometimes portrayed as a failure. I think that with hero worship of athletes, we forget that they can struggle and cannot be perfect all the time.
In the piece that I introduced last night by Hollander, a reason as to why intellectuals were fascinated with Stalin was because of hero worship although slightly different context from professional athletes’ “flaws”. They refused to recognize the human suffering or the planned famines. By ignoring Stalin’s mistreatment of citizens, these intellectuals were able to view Stalin as a leader who ignited social and political change as well as industrialized an underdeveloped country.
Although some intellectuals thought Stalin provided a power revolution, others believed that they were barriers to the working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie. I thought that this was interesting that intellectuals wanted to align with the working class, yet could by definition be considered elite. These individuals were getting paid by the wealthy to have a profession of discovering the “truth” in their respective field. I find this situation to be ironic, much like Communism being considered a quasi-religion.
At the end of class we started to discuss how Communism could be considered to be a quasi-religion. A reason that many of the intellectuals idealized Stalin and Communism was because they felt empty in their own class. This is similar to how many religious individuals turn to God because they are able to believe in power higher than them and the religious community brings them fulfilling relations. These intellectuals who idealized Communism always had a response to any criticisms. There was always a justification to support the idea. I thought that this was an interesting perspective of Communism. I believe that not many other courses at Bucknell that talk about Communism would refer to it in this way. I think this is part of my appeal to this course because intellectuals and other topics of the class are discussed in a new manner that changes my perspective.