[Clips] Rosenberg Reruns

[R. A. Hettinga]

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  Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:02:59 -0500
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  From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] Rosenberg Reruns
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  <http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007878>

  OpinionJournal

  WSJ Online

  DE GUSTIBUS

  Rosenberg Reruns
  They were guilty, but the left can't give up their cause.

  BY JOSEPH RAGO
  Friday, January 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

  You would think, by now, with a half-century of scholarship behind us and a
  great deal of damning evidence on display, we would not have to be arguing
  about the guilt or innocence of various iconic figures of the late 1940s
  and 1950s: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White or, perhaps most notoriously,
  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But the martyr status of such figures seems
  irresistible, even today, to a certain kind of sentimental leftist. They
  still remain symbols of some malevolent American quality--never mind the
  truth of what they actually did.

  Such was the lesson of a forum last week in Manhattan convened to discuss
  the "artistic influence" of the Rosenbergs. The invitation to the event,
  sponsored by the Fordham Law School, referred to the Rosenbergs as "the
  accused." It was a tellingly exculpatory phrase. For the record, both
  Julius and Ethel were convicted as communist spies and executed for
  espionage in 1953.


  The stars of the evening were the novelist E.L. Doctorow and the playwright
  Tony Kushner. Mr. Doctorow is the author of "The Book of Daniel" (1971), a
  novel that centers on a couple loosely patterned after the Rosenbergs; Mr.
  Kushner wrote the play "Angels in America" (1993), which imagines the
  specter of Ethel Rosenberg returning to haunt various protagonists. Both
  works are highly sympathetic to the Rosenbergs' dilemma, if that is the
  right word.

  The forum was generally arcane and self-serious. Messrs. Doctorow and
  Kushner ventilated many concerns about the relation of culture to society,
  chief among them the obligation of the artist to accurately represent the
  past. The pair eventually settled on the definition of historical art as
  "an aesthetic system of opinions," as the good Doctorow put it.


  Fair enough. But why would "the artist"--let alone anyone--still be hung up
  on the Rosenbergs? To plow through the evidence for the millionth time:
  While the trial of the Rosenbergs was flawed by technical improprieties,
  their crimes are not uncertain or unresolved. Julius Rosenberg, with Ethel
  as his accomplice, was the head of a sophisticated spy network that deeply
  penetrated the American atomic program and relayed top secrets to Stalin's
  Kremlin. In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev noted that the Rosenbergs "vastly
  aided production of our A-bomb." Joyce Milton and Ronald Radosh wrote a
  damning account of their activities in "The Rosenberg File" (1983). And the
  Rosenbergs' guilt was corroborated by the 1995 declassification of the
  Venona documents, thousands of decrypted KGB cables intercepted by the
  National Security Agency in the 1940s.

  The notion that anyone would today deny their fundamental complicity in
  Soviet subversion is extraordinary, almost comically so. But comedy was not
  quite the mentality at the Rosenberg event. "Ambiguity is the key word, I
  think," said Mr. Doctorow, regarding our understanding of the past, though
  in this instance ambiguous is precisely what it is not.

  Mr. Kushner argued the Rosenbergs were "murdered, basically." Mr. Doctorow
  went further, explaining that he wanted to use their circumstances to tell
  "a story of the mind of the country." It was a mind, apparently, filled
  with loathing and paranoia--again, never mind the truth of the charges
  against the Rosenbergs or other spies of the time. "The principles of the
  Cold War had reached absurdity," he continued. "We knew that the Russians
  were no threat, but we wanted to persuade Americans to be afraid" and so
  impose "a Puritan, punitive civil religion." Pronounced Mr. Kushner: "Our
  failure to come to terms with a brutal past, our failure to open up the
  coffins and let the ghosts out, has led to our current, horrendous
  situation."


  The enduring artistic influence of the Rosenberg case, then, seems to be
  primarily allegorical. Guilt and innocence drop away (rather, guilt is
  converted to virtue) and the Rosenbergs are made into victims of "American
  fascism," to use Ethel Rosenberg's own phrase. Or to borrow the exquisite
  formulation of the scholar-apologist Ellen Schrecker, the Rosenbergs were
  guilty only of "nontraditional patriotism."

  The arts should not be judged entirely on political character, of course.
  But in considering an "aesthetic system of opinions" when the aesthetics
  are pointless bathos and the opinions are the whole point, politics ought
  to be taken into account. And for all the hand-wringing about fidelity to
  historical accuracy, the point is that Messrs. Doctorow and Kushner get the
  politics so wrong.

  As the artists turned the Rosenbergs' treason into dissent and then into
  patriotism, the audience was enthusiastically in tune. Present were the
  Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, who continue to contest
  their parents' Soviet entanglement, and the former editor of the Nation,
  Victor Navasky. When it came time to ask questions, the moderator warned
  off any "Cold War warriors" from asking "disrespectful" questions, like,
  presumably, how these authors could defend an ideology that took millions
  of lives. No one did.

  Mr. Rago is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's
  editorial page.

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  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'