Transcribing the Past

    Through a Glass Rosily by George Orwell, Tribune , 23 November 1945 The recent article by Tribune’s Vienna correspondent[1] provoked a spate of angry letters which, besides calling him a fool and a liar and making other charges of what one might call a routine nature, also carried the very serious implication that he ought to have kept silent even if he knew that he was speaking the truth. He himself made a brief answer in Tribune, but the question involved is so important that it is worth discussing it at greater length. Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticises A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticise: or at least criticise “constructively”, which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and disto...

    The following is a commentary by George Orwell on the intellectual backing for dictatorship and oppression. It is in reaction to the 1945 publication of Arthur Koestler's book The Yogi and the Cossack, which is a collection of essays.  It first appeared in the September 1946 issue of Politics.   THERE is a theory which has not yet been accurately formulated or given a name, but which is very widely accepted and is brought forward whenever it is necessary to justify some action which conflicts with the sense of decency of the average human being. It might be called, until some better name is found, the Theory of Catastrophic Gradualism. According to this theory, nothing is ever achieved without bloodshed, lies, tyranny and injustice, but on the other hand no considerable change for the better is to be expected as the result of even the greatest upheaval. History necessarily proceeds by calamities, but each succeeding age will be as bad, or nearly as bad, as the l...