CROWN, SEPTEMBER 2013Monod and Camus hit it off right away. Camus wanted to hear about Monod’s experiences as a Communist during the war and what Monod had learned about Lysenko. Monod in turn learned that Camus had been devoting a great deal of study to the situation in the Soviet Union. The two former resistants discovered an immediate bond in their respective condemnation of Stalin’s regime. Their friendship was cemented over drinks and conversation at La Closerie des Lilas and other Left Bank watering holes.
Camus had reached a conclusion similar to Monod’s about the “mortal decay” of Socialist thought in the Soviet Union, but his verdict was based on different evidence. One catalyst for Camus’s decisive turn against Soviet- style Communism was his meeting the ex- Communist writer Arthur Koestler. Born in Hungary, Koestler lived in Vienna, Berlin, Palestine, and Paris between the wars. A Communist activist for several years, Koestler quit the Party in 1938 over what he described as its “moral degeneration,” which was marked by Stalin’s purges of loyal Party members and Moscow show trials. From 1936 to 1938, hundreds of thousands of Russians were executed and millions were sent to labor camps. Even former revolutionary leaders were tried and forced to confess to absurd, fabricated ...
