Fanatics and Absolutists: Communist Monsters in John le Carré’s Cold War fiction.
Toby Manning
Abstract
John le Carré‟s Cold War espionage novels were heralded as a realist antidote to the Manichean, good vs. evil simplicities of
James Bond and John Buchan. Rather than creating upright British gentlemen unmasking foreign grotesques, le Carré is held
to have demonstrated a moral equivalence between the Cold Warring sides.
To the contrary, le Carré creates British saints just as gentlemanly as Buchan heroes (George Smiley) who do battle with
Eastern devils, dehumanised by „ideology‟. This reflects anxieties about the continuance of a British „way of life‟, felt to be
under threat from expansionist Soviet communism from without and post-war social reorganisation from within.
In Call for the Dead (1961) East German villain, Dieter Frey, is a “Satanic” multiple-murderer who is cathartically
eliminated by Smiley. In Russian master spy Karla, le Carré created an enemy of mythic proportions for Smiley to battle in a
1970s trilogy. Implacable and brutal, Karla is an inhuman “fanatic”, potent combination of ideology and „evil‟. Karla never
speaking a word throughout the novels means that his monstrosity is enhanced, whilst his political ideology is effectively
silenced.
Modern twists on this Manichean monstrosity occur in the way multiple-murdering Nazi spymaster Mundt in The Spy Who
Came in from the Cold (1963) and Nazi war criminal Karfeld in A Small Town in Germany (1968) both transpire to be on the
British side. We see this also in the mirror-imaging of Smiley and Karla in Smiley’s People (1979). But in all cases, British
monstrosity is seen only as a copy of – and defence against – a Communist original. With „ideology‟ a central facet of enemy
monstrousness, the denial of ideology on the Western side is a key elision. However perhaps the unambiguous defeat of the
Communist monsters is, conversely, an indicator of political insecurity.
Key Words: Monster, Manichean, villain, Cold War, Soviet Union, Communism, ideology, socialism, satanic, Nazi, evil.
*****
Arriving at the chilly peak of the Cold War in 1961, John le Carré‟s Cold War espionage novels were heralded as a realist
antidote to the Manichean simplicities of previous spy successes, John Buchan and Ian Fleming‟s James Bond. With his
breakthrough novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), le Carré was claimed by critics to have demonstrated a moral
equivalence between the Cold Warring sides and sparked a new realism. In a typical response, The Scotsman declared of The
Spy, „There is a chilling authenticity about it: one feels that here truly are the monstrous realities behind the news paragraphs
which record the shifts and tensions of the Cold War.‟1 There is a contradiction in the language here that offers a salient
reminder that the „realities‟ of Cold War „tensions‟ – nuclear Armageddon – were both nightmarishly monstrous and the stuff
of everyday reality. But the tension between journalistic sobriety and adventure story drama also (inadvertently) suggests this
new „realism‟ wasn‟t quite the departure it appeared.
Le Carré‟s most famous spy, George Smiley may be dowdier and less gifted with girls than James Bond, but he‟s just as
much England‟s heroic champion (that Christian name can‟t be coincidental). While Smiley‟s enemies may be physically less
grotesque than Bond villains, they are nonetheless deformed by „ideology‟. Jerry Palmer claims that thrillers are always
concerned with a “conspiracy”: „It must be a transgression not just of civil law but of natural law […] against an immanent
order of the world […] a malum in se.‟2 Michael Denning adds that in espionage fiction „the thriller is based on paranoia and
conspiracy – all of these events fit a pattern which can be traced back to an evil source […] which must not only be revealed
but also defeated.‟3 In this respect le Carré is not a departure but sui generis. Such is the influence of Northrop Frye and his
structuralist inheritors that generic conventions are conventionally regarded as timeless and thus bypassing the political
considerations of their moment.4 But in the 1960s and 70s the Soviet conspiracy of Communist expansionism was certainly
perceived to be real in the West, while the Berlin Checkpoint Charlie standoff (October 1961) and Cuban Missile Crisis
(October 1962) had emphasised the realistic possibility of nuclear conflagration. Thus in le Carré‟s Cold War novels the
archetype of the monstrous villain is deployed to fit the historical moment not just the imperatives of genre.
Le Carré‟s books channel contemporary anxieties about a British „way of life‟ felt to be under threat from without from
expansionist Soviet Communism but also from within, as the post-war domestic redrawing of the social map saw old
distinctions and old deferences decline. Meanwhile the international redrawing of the geopolitical map saw British political
and economic power decline. Clearly there is a connection between the threat without and the threat within here – it was a
Socialist post-war government, after all, that had overseen both the democratisation of British society and decolonisation.
Meanwhile, as the Long Boom began to recede and empire became a financial millstone, working class militancy posed a
threat that was inevitably associated in Establishment minds with the Communist threat of the Soviet worker state. Trades
unions were “the peril in our midst”, as a 1956 book title by Woodrow Wyatt had it, a volume sponsored by the British
government‟s secret propaganda unit, the Information Research Department.5 It can be no coincidence that the sole working
class character in le Carré‟s debut novel, Call for the Dead (1961), Adam Scarr, is a criminal rogue who (albeit inadvertently)
assists Britain‟s Communist enemies for material gain. But Scarr is by no means the most monstrous character in le Carré‟s
debut.
2
Fanatics and Absolutists: Communist Monsters in John le Carré’s Cold War fiction.
1. Dieter Frey
Dieter Frey in Call for the Dead is the first of an identity parade of Communist villains in le Carré‟s fiction. The novel‟s
sympathy for German Jews, Frey, and his accomplice Elsa Fennan‟s persecution by the Nazis is quickly overwhelmed by their
post-war conversion to Communism. In this we see, surely, a direct link to nuclear spy Klaus Fuchs. We never actually hear
what either character‟s beliefs are however: Elsa Fennan denies all, while Dieter only directly speaks two words throughout
the novel. Their Communism is defined as means rather than ends: a series of murders as they plot against their former ally
Britain. As mediator, we have to take Dieter at Smiley‟s word: and Smiley‟s word is consistently overwrought regarding
Dieter:
[Dieter] was the same improbable romantic with the magic of a charlatan: the same unforgettable figure which had
struggled over the ruins of Germany, implacable of purpose, satanic in fulfilment, dark and swift like the Gods of the
North.6
Where initially Dieter‟s limp was a focus of sympathy, it now becomes monstrous. On cue, Dieter will shortly callously
and riskily murder his accomplice Elsa Fennan at a theatre performance. As representative of Communism, Dieter has to be a
threat to British verities:
Everything [Smiley] admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. That was why he hated Dieter
now, hated what he stood for […]: the fabulous impertinence of renouncing the individual in favour of the mass.
When had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom? 7
That telltale “mass” suggests that fear of Communism is a cipher for fear of the working class. Raymond Williams once
wrote, “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” 8 Similarly we are only given, textually,
ways of seeing Communism as monstrous:
Dieter cared nothing for human life: dreamed only of armies of faceless men bound by their lowest common
denominators; he wanted to shape the world as if it were a tree, cutting off what did not fit the regular image.9
This rests on Hannah Arendt‟s contemporaneous evocations of totalitarianism which linked Soviet Communism with
German fascism. 10 With Dieter, Smiley‟s focalisation piles on the monstrosity: „Larger than life, undiminished by the
moderating influence of experience [Dieter] was a man who thought and acted in absolute terms, without patience or
compromise‟.11 „Absolutism‟, le Carré‟s favoured term for Communism is a synonym for totalitarianism, probably deriving
from Clement Attlee‟s 1948 national address, establishing Cold-War battle-lines after a period of attempted amity, suggesting
a Russian continuity with oppressive Tsarist absolutism, as well as fascism: „the absolutists who suppress opposition
masquerade under the name of upholders of liberty‟.12 Communism was itself „monstrous‟: evil. Arguably, for le Carré to
invoke ancient archetypes of „evil‟ avoided having to engage with the philosophical specifics of Communism and thus
Communism‟s challenging social implications.
2. Fiedler
Speaking of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), which begins and ends at the Berlin Wall, le Carré wasn‟t
unusual in his declaration that the Wall was „the perfect symbol of the monstrosity of ideology gone mad‟.13 What‟s revealing
about this statement is that, in a common cultural trope, „ideology‟ becomes something possessed only by the Communist East.
Asked what his philosophy is by Communist ideologue Jens Fiedler, hard-bitten Western agent Alec Leamas responds
impatiently: „“What do you mean, a philosophy? […] we‟re not Marxists, we‟re nothing. Just people”.‟14 Leamas makes it very
clear: Communists have ideology; Westerners are ideologically neutral. Communists, as such, implicitly, are not people but
ideological automatons. „Ideology‟ is thus a defining facet of enemy monstrousness. What‟s more, if the West has no ideology,
this usefully evades the necessity of having to defend capitalism as the philosophy – and „system‟ – of the West.
The greatest articulation the Communist other is given in le Carré‟s work is in The Spy, via Fiedler, Leamas‟s GDR
interrogator, upon his makebelieve defection. Fiedler is carefully depicted as personable and principled, and thus is a key
exhibit in the „moral equivalence‟ critical argument. But in fact, Fiedler as a Communist ideologue, is set up to articulate a
philosophy le Carré clearly regards as „monstrous‟. This is Fiedler speaking:
„A movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation – or the elimination,
Leamas – of a few individuals. […] I myself would have put a bomb in a restaurant if it brought us further along the
road. Afterwards I would draw the balance – so many women, so many children; and so far along the road.‟15
Patrick Dobel correctly notes that a „tension between a monstrous utilitarianism that dismisses all human costs as means to
a greater good‟ – as illustrated by Fiedler above – „and western respect for individual worth undergirds all the books‟.16
Communism, even in the discussion between Leamas and Fiedler, is never understood as a coherent, let alone utopian,
philosophy. Instead it appears much as Party ideologue O‟Brien declares in Nineteen Eighty-Four: „“We are not interested in
the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”‟17
Toby Manning
3
3. Karla
In Soviet master-spy Karla, le Carré created a modern Moriarty, a monstrous enemy of mythic proportions for Smiley to
battle in his 1970s Karla Trilogy. Karla is the mastermind behind the „mole‟ Bill Haydon (based on Kim Philby) in Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy (1974). Karla‟s brutal disregard for human life is a key characteristic: as he rolls up Western espionage
networks in Tinker, tries to protect his Chinese „mole‟ in Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and covers his own misuse of Party
resources in Smiley’s People (1979), the body count stacks ever higher. Smiley‟s colleague Connie Sachs queen of the files,
reveals of Karla‟s lover:
„One day she ups and gets ideas above her station […] soft on revolution. Mixing with bloody intellectuals. Wanting
the State to wither away […] He had her shoved in the slammer. In the end the old despot‟s love turned to hatred and
he had his ideal carted off and spavined: end of story […] he destroyed all records of her, killed whoever might have
heard, this is Karla‟s way, bless him, isn‟t it, darling, always was.‟18
As Michael Wood‟s review of Smiley’s People suggested, there‟s something rather simplistic about this characterisation:
„The Russians are monsters […] because they don‟t care about killing and we do‟.19 But in fact, the true monstrosity in the
novels is that the Russians don‟t care about killing because it‟s ideologically inspired:
„[Smiley] thought of Karla again, and of his absolutism, which at least gave point to the perpetual chaos that was life‟s
condition; point to violence, and to death; of Karla for whom killing had never been more than the necessary adjunct of
a grand design.‟20
You get the impression that a crime passionel would be more acceptable. As it is, we meet Karla only twice throughout the
trilogy. When Smiley interviews Karla in a prison in Delhi, Karla sits in implacable silence while Smiley tries to persuade him
to defect – for Karla is likely to be shot on return to Russia. Karla‟s inhumanity is consolidated by his immunity to the bounty
of the capitalist West. Here is Smiley on Karla:21
„I believed, you see, that I had seen something in his face that was superior to mere dogma, not realising that it was
my own reflection. I had convinced myself that [Karla] ultimately was accessible to ordinary human arguments.‟ 22
Karla opting to return to the East is seen as the ultimate inhumanity, the ultimate monstrousness. „“[Karla] would rather die
than disown the political system to which he was committed […] Karla is a fanatic”‟.23 „Evil‟ and „ideology‟ here blur in this
idea of „fanaticism‟.
However, by remaining silent – not just in this scene, but throughout the entire trilogy that bears his name – Karla never
actually articulates any ideology behind his monstrous actions. This despite this flagging up of his „fanaticism‟. Communism
as a philosophy is what Pierre Macherey would call the “not said‟ of the trilogy. 24 Thus the text‟s conflation of means as ends,
of power as Communism‟s only principle, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, is maintained. Communism is thus monstrous: evil.
This was the climate of the times: in his exposé of the Cambridge spy ring, Andrew Boyle called communism an „inhuman
philosophy‟,25 while Ronald Reagan would routinely reference the Soviet Union in mythic terms as an „evil empire‟.26
4. Mirrors Of Monstrousness
Modern twists on this Manichean monstrosity occur in the idea that the monster might be in the mirror, that in le Carré the
West is depicted quite as negatively as the East. The moral equivalence argument referenced earlier. In two 1960s novels le
Carré uses stereotypically monstrous villains to effect this trick: what less ambiguous villain than an unrepentant Nazi? In The
Spy who Came in from the Cold, Hans Mundt is the brutal head of the East German Secret Service but an overt anti Semite,
and murderer of Britain‟s East German spies. Leamas and his boss Control hatch a complex scheme to bring Mundt down. But
the twist here is that Leamas discovers that the monstrous Mundt is in fact „our‟ man, Britain‟s own „mole‟ burrowed inside the
Communist fabric.
Similarly, Klaus Karfeld is built up as the villain in A Small Town in Germany (1968), the leader of a fictional neo-Nazi
group tearing up West Germany with rallies and civil disturbances. A minor Jewish official in the Bonn British Embassy
discovers Karfeld is a War criminal. But the stinger is that the British already know, and have covered it up because Karfeld
has become a vital ally in helping the beleaguered British into the Common Market. What is the implication when the monsters
turn out to be on „our‟ side? Here le Carré‟s famed moral greyness starts to look more like uncertainty.
Because ultimately, for all The Spy‟s unease about such unsavoury alliances, a series of points made by Leamas‟s boss,
Control, early in the book, are never fundamentally overturned. Briefing Leamas, Control says, firstly. „“We are never going to
be aggressors […] We do disagreeable things but we are defensive”‟:27 i.e. the Russians started and perpetuate the Cold War.
This reflects standard Western propaganda: „Communism, personified by the Soviet Union, was consistently presented as
expansionary and offensive in contrast with the West, which was presented as essentially defensive.‟ 28 Such propaganda
nonetheless elides Western provocations like missiles in Turkey, the US nurturing European capitalism via the Marshall Plan,
West German rearmament, or in this fictional case, placing spies inside the GDR. Secondly, Control declares, „“we do
disagreeable things so that ordinary people […] can sleep safely in their beds at night”‟.29 Thirdly, Control carefully separates
„ideals‟ (the British „way of life‟) from government „methods‟ to protect this. Control concludes: „“You can‟t be less ruthless
than the opposition simply because your government‟s policy is benevolent, can you now?”‟30 This has a two-fold meaning:
that the British retain a distinction between „ideal‟ and „method‟: whereas Soviet „ideals‟ and methods („means‟) are the same:
Fanatics and Absolutists: Communist Monsters in John le Carré’s Cold War fiction.
4
„ideology‟ at best; pure power at worst. Thus Britain, in doing „wicked things‟ – like sacrificing Leamas‟s lover, Liz, to
safeguard Mundt‟s position – is simply keeping up with the Russians, authors of this „monstrous utilitarianism‟. This thinking
is often reproduced, unquestioned, by le Carré critics, e.g. „le Carré‟s novels indict an absolute loyalty to a cause as the most
dangerous of all characteristics to the values of the West‟. 31 Dobel is here making a distinction between „values‟ (like „ideals‟,
Western, benign) and „beliefs‟ (aka „ideology‟, Eastern, malign) which is identical to that of Control.
Something similar occurs in the mirroring of Smiley and Karla in Smiley’s People (1979). Christopher Booker saw the
novel dramatising a psychic „battle with the inner monster which lies in each of us.‟32 For Al Alvarez, Smiley himself was now
„a bit of a monster.‟33 Parallels are built up between the two spies – as Karla becomes humanised via love of his errant
daughter, so Smiley is dehumanised by entrapping Karla via the love of that daughter. But for all this, Karla remains the more
monstrous of the two. Firstly, as in The Spy, the text makes clear that the West‟s ruthlessness is simply defensive, that, again,
the Russians started it. At another Berlin Wall finale, as he waits for Karla to defect, Smiley, agonises about his „methods‟:
An unholy vertigo seized [Smiley] as the very evil he had fought against seemed to reach out and posses him and claim
him despite his striving, calling him a traitor also; mocking him, yet at the same time applauding his betrayal. On Karla
has descended the curse of Smiley‟s compassion; on Smiley the curse of Karla‟s fanaticism. I have destroyed him with
the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. 34
Note the language here: „evil‟, „fanaticism‟, and most notably the clear statement that the ruthless „weapons‟ „are his‟, they
originate with Karla, thus with the Soviet system. So when Connie says, in an oft-quoted speech, „It‟s grey. Half-angels
fighting half-devils. No one knows where the lines are‟35 what initially appears an assertion of moral equivalence is, on closer
inspection, not that at all. If there is a neutral moral line, then half-angel is halfway to beatitude, half-devil is halfway to
damnation: there is a vast gulf between them. If there were any doubt about which side is which, Smiley has, one scene
previously, dubbed himself „Mr Angel‟, while „devil‟ is used of servants of the Soviet system. 36
The grand designs here belong only to Communism. George Orwell accused Dickens of not being able to see capitalism
as a system:
„It was quite beyond him to grasp that, given the existing form of society, certain evils cannot be remedied […] in reality
his target is not so much society as „human nature‟. It would be difficult to point anywhere in his books to a passage
suggesting that the economic system is wrong as a system.‟37
The same is true of le Carré: Communism is just bad human nature – men behaving monstrously. Possessing no ideology,
no system, the West possesses no home-grown evil, only imitative monstrosity. But perhaps there‟s a hint of uncertainty inside
the very certainty with which these „monsters‟ are always defeated. Such victories were by no means guaranteed in real life.
Kim Philby, unlike his fictional counterpart, Bill Haydon, was never caught, never interrogated, never killed. He was
exonerated in the House of Commons, kept on the British payroll, and allowed to escape and defect to the Soviet Union to
gloat. No wonder we need Saint George Smiley to slay the monster, to resolve and put to rest this cultural and political anxiety,
not just to quell British blushes, but to quell doubts about the British system.
Notes
1
Patrick Gaffney, “Crime Calendar”, The Scotsman, 6, 21 Sept, 1963
Jerry Palmer Thrillers: Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre 185 (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)
3
Michael Denning, Cover Stories, 46 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987)
4
See; Bruce Merry, Anatomy of the Spy Thriller 132 (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1977); Lars Ole Sauerberg, Secret Agents
in Fiction: Ian Fleming, John le Carré and Len Deighton, 22; 59 (New York: St Martin‟s, 1984)
5
John Jenks, British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War 106 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)
6
John le Carré, Call for the Dead, 131 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985)
7
Le Carré, Call, 138.
8
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 300 (London: Hogarth, 1993)
9
Le Carré, Call, 138.
10
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism [1950] (New York: Harcourt, 1994); 1961 New Yorker columns.
11
Le Carré, Call, 131.
12
Andrew Defty, Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945-53: The Information Research Department
42 (London: Routledge, 2003)
13
Le Carré, Afterword to Lamplighter edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1989) 208
14
Le Carré The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 133 (London: Pan, 1964)
15
Le Carré The Spy, 133-34
16
Patrick J Dobel, “The Honourable Spymaster; John le Carre and the Character of Espionage”, Administration & Society 194
17
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four [1949] 301-302 (London: Penguin, 2013)
18
Le Carré Smiley’s People [1979] (London: Pan, 1980), 184
19
Michael Wood, “Spy Fiction, Spy Fact”, review of Smiley’s People, 16, New York Times, 6 Jan 1980.
20
Le Carré, Smiley’s, 220
21
Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 215 (London: Sceptre, 1999)
22
Le Carré, Tinker, 221
23
Le Carré, Tinker, 222
2
Toby Manning
5
24
Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, 84 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978; French version 1966)
Andrew Boyle, Climate of Treason [1979] (London: Coronet, 1980)
26
Ronald Reagan, Address to the National Association of Evangelicals, 8 MARCH 1983:
http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/, retrieved 15/5/2014
27
Le Carré, The Spy 20
28
Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War 128 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998)
29
Le Carré, The Spy 20
30
Le Carré, The Spy 20
31
Dobel, 198
32
Christopher Booker, “Spymasters and Spy-Monsters”, review of Smiley’s People in The Spectator 16, 9 Feb 1980
33
A. Alvarez, “Half Angels versus Half Devils”, review of Smiley’s People, The Observer, 39, 3 Feb 1980
34
Le Carré, Smiley’s, 332.
35
Le Carré, Smiley’s, 182
36
Le Carré, Smiley’s, 8
37
George Orwell, „Dickens‟, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1: An Age Like This, 457
(London: Penguin, 1976)
25
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Toby Manning is a PhD candidate in the English School of the Open University and a freelance journalist.