Letter from Arnold Zweig to Sigmund Freud, December 2, 1930

Berlin-Grunewald
Zikadenweg 59
2 December 30

Dear Mr. Freud,

First of all, I perceive with relief from your letter that you are better, since you have written in your own hand and in your usual firm, calm style. I understand only too well your reservations and the reason for your refusal. I myself do not pin much hope on the result of the whole affair, but people from Russia arrived begging us to support their comrades in their struggle by means of our manifesto to which, unlike myself, they attached great significance. It did not seem humanly possible to me not to comply with the appeal of these valiant people.

You can see what I think of Stalinist Russia, if you care to read two essays1 which I published in the Weltbühne on the occasion of the most recent executions. A surge of arguments for and against ensued; the writers who want to seem up to date were enraged because for them everything connected with Russia is taboo. But the capitalistic economic confusion is not made any better because the Communist dictatorship has produced such frightful consequences, nor by the fact that for you in Vienna the ample comfortable standard of living of the middle classes, which the wretched war lowered