The Reek of Life: Lenin’s The Soviets at Work and Whittaker Chambers’ Crisis of History

This essay provides original, researched analysis of the effect that Lenin’s 1918 propaganda pamphlet The Soviets at Work had on Whittaker Chambers in 1925. Later as an American ex-communist and ex-spy, Chambers was a primary participant in the Hiss Case (1948–1950) and author of a best-selling memoir, which helped tee up the Second Red Scare. The essay argues that other writings, particularly Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, led Chambers to a viewpoint he called “crisis of history” that led him to welcome writings like Lenin’s The Soviets at Work. The essay questions whether Chambers was accurate in his later, specific recollection of Lenin’s pamphlet and offers a previously undetected alternative. It concludes by showing how Hugo and Lenin fit into Chambers’ thinking, as expressed in his memoirs Witness (1952) and Cold Friday (1964). It also shows how those works shaped his viewpoint in his last decade of life.