Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler

Darkness at Noon is the third novel by Anglo-Hungarian author Artur Koestler. Published in 1940, it was written following Koestler’s resignation from the German Communist Party due to his disillusionment with Stalinism. Set in the late 1930s, the novel is a dystopian, allegorical representation of the Stalinist Great Purge and the Moscow show trials which aimed to obliterate the Party’s political opposition.

The plot centres on the arrest, imprisonment and torture of the old Bolshevik revolutionary and bureaucratic leader Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov in an unnamed totalitarian state. The protagonist awakes from dreaming about his arrest, only to be detained, imprisoned, and tortured in reality for crimes he did not commit. Rubashov’s imprisonment stirs a series of reflections on the irreconcilable contradictions in the ideology he dedicated his life to. The narration alternates with extracts from his diary, presenting his meditations on history, the dangers of idealism and the morality of his own life choices in service of the state. Rubashov crosses paths with characters representative of the different “faces” of the opposition, including his cell neighbour No 402, with whom he communicates through a language of tapping on the wall. No 402 is an old Tsarist, arrested for supporting the pre-revolutionary monarchy. Despite his initial condescension to No 402, over the course of the novel Rubashov comes to build an empathic and humane relation with his fellow prisoner. 

During his imprisonment, Rubashov revisits his life and faces his role in the perpetuation of the regime’s violence. His memories of betraying innocent people in the name of the Party, such as his denouncement of the young Party member Richard for daring to adjust the Party’s pamphlets and his role in the death sentence of his former secretary and lover Arlova, are accompanied with a pulsating toothache – an analogy of his consciousness and newfound sensitivity to individual pain. As the ultimate aim of Rubashov’s imprisonment is to extract his confession, he is subjected to a series of interrogations. Ivanov – the first interrogator and Rubashov’s comrade from the Civil War – believes in his innocence and attempts to convince him to sign a statement confirming his membership to the opposition to avoid execution. However, Ivanov is soon superseded by Gletkin, a younger interrogator representing the new generation of Party followers, characterised by an unshakable and uncritical belief in the totalitarian logic. Gletkin tortures Rubashov until a confession is obtained, which subsequently leads to the protagonist’s death sentence. While awaiting his execution, Rubashov’s toothache stops as he categorically condemns the “end justifies the means” logic of the Party for corrupting the ethical promise of the Revolution’s ideology, morphing it into a system of oppression.

Koestler’s anti-totalitarian novel presents a perspective to the violent reality of Stalinist Soviet Russia, focusing on the collapse of the Revolution’s ideals as expressed in the mass executions in the Moscow show trials. In the field of perpetrator studies, the novel provides a valuable perspective to the figure of the Soviet perpetrator and its historical and cultural specificities, such as the characteristic open-endedness and dynamic interchangeability of the victim-perpetrator subject positions in the totalitarian context of the Soviet Union. 

Author of this entry: Bilyana Manolova

Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon. Vintage Books, 2004.