ARTHUR KOESTLER'S TRAIL OF DARKNESS of history who ultimately must play the role assigned to them. He wants to reveal how and why the human soul-when infected by the totalitarian virus-becomes so willing to embrace such a singular self-abnegation. Rubashov is one eminently convincing portrait of the totalitarian mind as it attempts, but ultimately fails, to escape the ideological chains that bind it. N icolas Salmanovitch Rubashov is a hero of the revolution. He has had a distinguished and varied career of service to the Party-occupying posts outside the country (positions entrusted only to the most reliable Party members). He has been sent on difficult, clandestine missions to manage sister parties abroad where fascist dictatorships have come to power. Indeed, during one such mission Rubashov was arrested and imprisoned for two years-upon his return he received a hero's welcome. In this sense Rubashov seems a kind of model revolutionary and Party member. He has dedicated his life to the Party and has suffered in the service of his devotion. In communication with another prisoner shortly after his arrest, Rubashov says he does not regret his killing of somewhere between seventy and one hundred counterrevolutionaries during the civil war. He would do it all over again, even knowing that the product of the revolution would be the coming to power of No. 1 (the Stalin-like figure in the novel). So Rubashov seems a man thoroughly devoted to the revolution without illusions about what he has done. We also know that the past two years have been difficult for Rubashov. He has become uncomfortable with the deaths for which he considers himself responsible. Not the killing during the civil war but the deaths that have been a product of his clandestine activities now seem to cause him to question the moder nagejour nal .com 53http://www.modernagejournal.com