"Olaf Stapledon - Light and the Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

They also issued a call to all freedom-loving peoples to rise against their tyrants. The Norwegians themselves were in a very
strong position. Not only did they control the Reich's main source of power, but also a large part of the mercantile marine and
Imperial Navy. The huge sea-plane force was also mainly on their side. Though at first the rebellion seemed a forlorn hope, it
soon spread to Britain and Northern France. Insurrection then broke out in Switzerland, Austria, and southern Germany. The
decisive factors were the revived passion for freedom and for human kindness, and also the new, extremely efficient and
marvellously light accumulator, which enabled not only ships but planes to be driven electrically. The new accumulator had been
secretly invented in Norway and secretly manufactured in large quantities in Spitsbergen. Even before the insurrection many
ships and planes had been secretly fitted with it. After the outbreak of war a great fleet of electric planes, far more agile than the
old petrol planes, soon broke the nerve of the imperial force. Within a few weeks the rebels were completely victorious.

With the fall of the German Reich the human race was once more given an opportunity to turn the corner from barbarism to real
civilization. Once more the opportunity was lost. The free Federation of Europe, which was expected to bring lasting peace, was
in fact no free federation at all. Germany was divided into the old minor states, and these were disarmed. This would have been
reasonable enough if the victorious Norwegians, realizing the precariousness of the new order, had not insisted on retaining
control of their own tidal generators and their air fleet, which, though disarmed, could very easily be turned into bombers. Thus,
they hoped, they would be able to control and guide the Federation during its delicate infancy. Inevitably the demand for 'the
disarmament of Norway' was used by the secret enemies of the light in their effort to dominate the Federation. After a period of
uncertain peace, full of suspicion and intrigue, came the great European Civil War between the Scandinavian peoples and the rest
of the European Federation. When the federated peoples had reduced one another to exhaustion, Russia intervened, and presently
the Russian Empire stretched from the Behring Straits to the Blasket Islands.

During the first, confused phase of my post-mortal experience I failed to gain any clear vision of events in Russia. I have an
impression of alternating periods of light and darkness. Sometimes the truly socialistic and democratic forces dominated,
sometimes the totalitarian and despotic. In spite of the grave perversion of the original generous revolutionary impulse, so much
of solid worth had been achieved that the Soviet system of states was never in serious danger of disintegration. During the long
peril from the German Fourth Reich the Russian dictator, who was now known as the 'Chief Comrade', enforced a very strict
military discipline on the whole people. When Germany had fallen, a wave of militant communist imperialism swept over the
vast Russian territories. Hosts of 'Young Communists' demanded that 'the spirit of Lenin' should now be spread by tank and
aeroplane throughout the world. The conquest of Europe was the first great expression of this mood. But other forces were also at
work in Russia. After the destruction of German power, true socialistic, liberal, and even reformed Christian tendencies once
more appeared throughout European Russia and in Western Europe. The Western peoples had by now begun to sicken of the
sham religion of ruthless power. Christian sects, experimental religious movements, liberal-socialist and 'reformed communist'




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Darkness and the Light




conspiracies were everywhere leading a vigorous underground life. It seemed to me that I must be witnessing the turning-point of
human history, that the species had at last learnt its lesson. But in this I was mistaken. What I was observing was but one of the
many abortive upward fluctuations in the long age of inconclusive struggle between the will for the light and the will for
darkness. For, though men utterly loathed the hardships of war, their moral energy remained slight. Their loyalty to the common
human enterprise, to the spiritual task of the race, had not been strengthened.

Thus it was that the movement which had seemed to promise a regeneration of Russia succeeded only in creating an under-
current of more lucid feeling and action. The power of the dictatorship remained intact and harsh; and was able, moreover, to