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Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
26. xi. 1930
Dear Mr. Zweig,
I have received two documents from you: a sheet headed ‘Manifesto’ and a memorandum dated ‘Berlin. Beginning of January.’ I assume that you want my signature just for the first of these. I would give it gladly, did not the manifesto contain an attack on ‘the capitalistic economic confusion’. For that would be tantamount to giving my support to the Communist ideal, and I am far from wishing to do that. In spite of all my dissatisfaction with the present economic systems I have no hope that the road pursued by the Soviets will lead to improvement. Indeed any such hope that I may have cherished has disappeared in this decade of Soviet rule. I remain a liberal of the old school. In my last book2 I criticised uncompromisingly the mixture of despotism and Communism. I do not know whether the Russian dictators pay any attention to the utterances of a few ‘intellectuals’—probably they do not give a brass farthing for them—but if they do, then the effect of the manifesto could only