Josef Vissarionovich Stalin was born in 1979 in Gori, Georgia. Attracted to Bolshevism from an early age, he played a prominent part in the revolutionary movement. He became General Secretary of the Communist Party of The Soviet Union in 1922 and stayed in that post, which he made the most powerful in the government machine, until his death in 1953. Gustáv Husák was born in Dúbravka, once a small village, now part of Bratislava, in 1913. Attracted to communism from an early age, he played a prominent part in the revolutionary movement (e.g. in 1938 he attended an International Congress of Students in 1938 in Glasgow). He became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1969, becoming in addition President in 1975, stood down as First Secretary in December 1987, resigned the presidency in December 1989, was expelled from the Communist Party in February 1990 and died on 18^th November 1991. According to the obituary in The Times (19^th November, 1991, p. 16) "on the 8^th November 1991 he was given the last rites by a Roman Catholic priest and at the request of his sister, a practising Catholic, was confessed by the Archbishop of Trnava".

Both leaders started out from humble and provincial origins, eventually coming to govern in the first instance countries of which they were not natives. This is not without precedent: one thinks of the Austrian Adolf Hitler, the Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte and the Welshman Lloyd George. Both Stalin and Husák spent time in prison before reaching political heights.

These appear to be some of the bare facts relating to the careers of these two communist rulers. How one interprets their careers is a good deal more problematic. Regarding Stalin one reads:

The Times for 6^th March 1953 announced on its front page the "Death of Mr Stalin" and its obituary (p. 7) opened: "The death of Stalin, like the death of Lenin 29 years ago, marks an epoch in Russian history. Rarely have two successive rulers of a great country responded so absolutely to its changing needs and piloted so successfully through periods of crisis."

A book devoted to Husák, published in 1986 by Pergamon Press (owned by Robert Maxwell) and with an Introduction by Robert Maxwell, contains an interview with Husák, conducted by Robert Maxwell. Maxwell informs us that "Husak, lawyer, journalist and writer, but above all fierce nationalist and fighter for his country, believed, like Beneš and all other postwar Czechoslovak leaders, that Czechoslovakia had no alternative, after Munich, other than to turn to the Soviet Union as guarantor of its independence […] This impressive man […] has brought stability and economic progress to his country (pp. xi-xii).

However, The Times's obituary has a different angle, informing us that he "presided over his country's spiritual debasement and brought it to the brink of economic ruin". It also states that Husák was more servile to Brezhnev than Hácha was to Hitler.

Addressing the issue of how creative writers approach recent historical figures, we have not unsurprisingly, a problem of disproportion. There have been literally thousands of depictions of Stalin in fiction, poetry and drama. I know of only one extended fictional portrait of Husák, though there is an interesting precursor of a kind. I am alluding to Klíma's Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light and Ladislav Mňačko's The Taste of Power.

The various portraits of Stalin range from the unbridled eulogies of the type Surkov could turn out ("The aged Cossack shook his head at Stalin's words to wisdom wed") to the more sober but still adulatory kind to be found for example in Chakovsky's Blockade; and then on to the out and out irreverent satires as produced by say, Voinovich and the thoroughly negative, though conventionally realistic, depictions, notably for example that in Children of the Arbat by Rybakov. Rosalind Marsh's Images of Dictatorship argues that of all these the most successful is Solzhenitsyn's in The First Circle and she offers an exhaustive analysis of it.

The purpose of this paper is to not to refute or supersede Marsh's treatment, but to point up some parallels and divergences between Klima's and Solzhenitsyn's portrayal of the respective tyrants under whom the two novelists laboured. A first reading of Klima's novel suggests a good deal of similarity with Solzhenityn's, as far as the historical personages are concerned: Stalin and Husák both suffer from paranoia, both are arrogant, both are lonely, both rely on an immediate underling for human contact, both are driven to contemplate death and immortality, both are feared, both have failing memories, both are at bottom banal and somewhat pathetic. Elsewhere in his fiction Klima has shown an interest in Stalin's biography ("The Truth Game"), and it is more than likely that he has read The First Circle.

To summarise Solzhenitysn's image of Stalin: the version of the novel published in the West in 1968 differs in several respects from the version which Solzhenitsyn restored once he was in exile in Vermont. Briefly the 1968 text gives a slightly more sympathetic picture of Stalin because at the time Solzhenitsyn had some reason to believe that there was some chance of a "softer" version of the book being published in the USSR. That said, on reading this version, Tvardovsky, according to Solzhenitsyn, told him: "If I were running this country I'd lock you up!" The longer text (96 chapters as against 87) of 1978 is more thorough-going in its damnation of the dictator. It offers a lengthy biographical note which stands in stark contrast to the official Kratkaia biografia, which Stalin is so fond of, not least in pressing the as yet unproven assertion that Stalin worked for the Tsarist secret police. One notes that Solzhenitsyn himself confessed in The Gulag Archipelago that he too was pressured into working briefly as an informer, while in the camps.

In three key chapters Marsh discusses the historical accuracy of Solzhenitsyn's portrait, then its philosophical dimension and finally its literary qualities. She places her analysis in a broad context of the historical novel. Of course in the case of Russia Solzhenitsyn's task is all the more important because of the lack of historical evidence and because of the fallacious official views of Stalin in the Soviet era. In The First Circle Solzhenitsyn's task is the same as the one he sets himself in The Gulag Archipelago, namely a "literary investigation", in a situation where much historical evidence has been destroyed and a mendacious version has for decades held sway. Marsh makes out a case for Solzhenitsyn's portrait of Stalin being the most successful of any. The earlier version of the novel led some critics to disparage the Stalin chapters for running too close to caricature and abandoning the author's usual commitment to traditional realism. The fuller version might leave the work even more vulnerable to such charges; but Solzhenitsyn's feat is surely that he raises the question of whether conventional "realism" can cope with a figure as monstrous as Stalin. Many other writers and artists have abandoned realism in their attempts to come to grips with the dictator: Voinovich, Aleshkovsky or the director Abuladze in the film Repentence.

Without going into great detail over Solzhenitsyn's portrait, let us note simply that its creator employs a combination of interior monologue and external narrative and he sets the scene at night. The picture that emerges is one of rampant arrogance, paranoia, isolation and moody contemplation of death, all of which are coupled with a vision of the bottom circle of Hell. Critics have argued that Solzhenitsyn's Stalin bears a strong resemblance to Dante's Satan (Canto XXXIV), who together with other notorious traitors, occupies the last circle. Of course, the main protagonists in The First Circle, Nerzhin, Rubin, Sologdin, Spiridonov, are marked by honesty, bravery, candour and loyalty – despite the differences, ideological and temperamental, between them.

In the case of Klima, it is instructive to consider briefly The Taste of Power. Published in full only in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it surveys the life of a head of state, both unnamed, through the eyes of his close friend, now an official photographer, covering his funeral. This friend, Frank, has accumulated a private archive of unused and unusable photos and possesses a unique insight into the private life of this very public man. As young men they fought, literally, over the same girl, and they fought the Germans as partisans together. They had the same political ideals. Frank is close to the head of state's first wife and his son by that marriage and to his second wife.

The head of state is seen as an excessive drinker, who hates the intelligentsia, fears the head of Security, one Galovich, who will certainly assume the reins of power once the head of state is dead. Frank knows only too well that his friend's beautiful, young second wife is routinely unfaithful to him, and that he has no close friends. He has betrayed many of his old comrades, and his resolution when fighting the Germans has now been transferred to repressing villagers in his own country who are reluctant to conform to harsh economic demands from central government.

Frank, as a photographer and friend to the head of state, fulfils the functions in the work that Solzhenitsyn's inner monologue and external narration do. Given the dimensions that Stalin achieved in world history there is no need for Solzhenitsyn to strive for any greater universality. Mnacko, in keeping the head of state anonymous, liberates his text from any provincialism and endeavours just as assiduously as Solzhenitsyn to penetrate the psychology of his subject:

Like Solzhenistyn's portrayal of a tyrant, one suspects that Mnacko's went through quite a long fermentation period. Clearly the impetus must be the death of Stalin on March 5th 1953 and the death of Klement Gottwald on March 14th of the same year. It is well nigh impossible that Mnacko knew Solzhenitsyn's novel, but he may well have known of it after the 1967 Congress of Soviet Writers, when Solzhenitsyn's "Open Letter", of which several Czech delegates had obtained copies, had complained about The First Circle manuscript having been confiscated by the authorities back in September 1965. (see Writers against rulers). Incidentally, Antonin Novotny, Gottwald's successor, and his family were allegedly infuriated by Mnacko's novel, seeing the character Galovich as a scurrilous depiction of the incoming head of state. (see Writers p. 133).

Coming to write his novel Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light in the early 1990s Ivan Klíma would certainly have had these two precedents – and no doubt many others – in his consciousness somewhere. Uppermost in his mind, though, would have been the image of a reclusive and pathetic President Husák, having relinquished real power some two years before and now a mere figurehead, utterly overwhelmed by events in Moscow, Berlin, Warsaw, Bucharest and now Prague.

Briefly, Klima's portrait of "The President", which is interspersed throughout the book and occupies a greater proportion of the text than does Solzhenitsyn's Stalin in The First Circle, is as follows: he can never get to sleep before midnight. He is deeply affected by the death of his wife and this leads to morose thoughts about his own imminent death as well – he keeps seeing a funeral bier – one intended for him now. He has been told that he should have an operation, but he is not sure if his doctors are really doctors (pp. 48-50). His valet, a maly, hubeny clovecik (p.50), - note the derogatory tone, as Solzhenitsyn reserves for Poskrebyshev, Stalin's personal aide – is his only human contact. His comrades, he feels, are increasingly intriguing against him (jeho soudruzi proti nemu stale vice intriguji a znamymi cesty pasuji pomluvy mezi lid (p. 50). He fears intruders breaking in and has a clear image of an executioner (p. 58). He convinces himself that he is not responsible for a series of industrial accidents that have led to fatalities (p. 55). He has no interest in television unless he is on it. He resents having to meet a foreign delegation from the third world (cerne huby). These motifs are repeated throughout: Jak to ma poznat, kdyz nevi, ktery z lekaru je opravdovym lekarem a ktery jen jednim z mnoha prevlecenych katu? (p. 102). Much of the gadgetry that he is surrounded with relates to his own security (pp. 104-5). He is pretty much senile, rather than merely absent-minded, asking his valet about his previous employment and his wife (pp. 54-5). Much of this picture of the president is presented through a series of "filmove povidky". The hero of the novel is a film maker, whohas impressed the president with a documentary he made about rattlesnakes, and sees the head of state at close quarters, so the combination of interior monologue/stream of consciousness and exterior portrayal is very similar to Mnacko's use of a photographer.

Two major incidents in the plot underline another cardinal feature of the president's mental state: his arrogance. A hijacker of a bus has been sentenced to death, and the president's valet at the request of his wife, asks the president to grant him clemency. The president wants to interrogate the prisoner personally before pardoning him and to demonstrate to the African delegation's leader (that savage p. 163) what power and sensibilities he has. The plan does not go through because the hijacker escapes while being transported. In an unmistakable reference to the death of Husak's wife in a helicopter crash, Klima's president notes mentally that transport accidents are "their favourite trick" (p. 163). The president has also summoned the film-maker and when he appears at the official reception the head of state, in a fit of total senility, mistakes him at first for the hijacker and starts to berate him. A flunky (ušatý skřet – note again the disparaging tone) temporarily puts him right (pp. 180-1). However, this does not prevent him from launching into a diatribe: "Vím, co chcete vy všichni […] Milost, svobodu a moc. Ale k čemu? Abyste utekli svým povinnostem […] Já jsem ten, kdo může udělit milost […] a jediný, kdo zná, kdo uznává svoje povinnosti" And to the hero film-maker Fuk: "Udílím vám milost. Kat může odejít." (p. 181). The author by now is referring to him as pomatený stařec (deranged old man)

The other incident involves his resignation from the presidency, which in the chopping and changing that Klima occasionally employs, occurs earlier than the episode cited above. The speech is a routine series of cliches, which the cameraman records dispassionately, as he might film snakes, mice or a store of dangerous waste (p. 140), while asking himself what his life would have been like without this president. The latter says: "Já osobně jsem od mládí věřil stále týmž světlým ideálům a věřím jim dodnes […] Chyby jistě byly, ale byly v lidech, ne v ideálu." The former muses: "Co by se stalo, kdyby se tento vládce nevynořil z temnot, do nichž se právě vracel? Kdyby se neobjevil a nepotřísnil můj život, nepotřísnil životy všech, kdo žili v této zemi?" (p. 140).

As tyrants go, Husak is pretty small beer, especially in comparison with Stalin. He was in fact, of course, no more than a neo-stalinist quizling, who had the good fortune to die a natural death out of office – not the usual fate of a real tyrant. Both in his real life and in the literary portrayal of Stalin there is a good deal of emphasis on the dictator's belief in his own historic mission and indeed on his immortality. There are also unabashed intellectual pretensions, not just in Stalin's ideas on politics and history, but in The First Circle in the tyrant's notorious excursion into linguistics and his dismissal of Marr's extreme view of language development. By contrast, Klima's Husak seems to be largely bereft of intellectual curiosity and cultural values: his advisors brief him that the Head of the African state studied Law at Cambridge, though they shouldn't talk about law in this African state, that ideally the president should keep the conversation to economics, that the African likes classical music (Grieg, Beethoven, Wagner etc) (pp.108-9), also that he has a practice of granting clemency to a criminal once a month.

Yet it is clear that the portraits of Solzhenitsyn's and Klima's respective oppressors have a great deal in common. They identify accurately the overriding character trait of the dictator, namely narcissism. One can do worse than quote from Alan Bullock's monumental study Hitler and Stalin – Parallel Lives:

Bullock distinguishes between this personality disorder and any other (paranoia, schizophrenia, psychopathic condition) since these would normally affect the sufferer's ability to function on a day to day basis, let alone allow him to achieve what Hitler and Stalin did. From the examples we have in Solzhenitsyn and Klima it would seem that the creative writer can tell us as much about mind of the tyrant as can the psychiatrist or the historian.

One final question: both our tyrants seem to have started out with some degree of idealism and sense of destiny. In the case of Stalin, as perceived by Solzhenitsyn, these qualities become perverted into a God-like notion of immortality and infallibility. In the case of Husak, as seen by Klima, there is hardly a trace of such early idealism – the resignation speech is shallow and trite in the extreme. The president comes across as a cynic and opportunist, exhibiting a combination of racism, boorishness, callous indifference and sentimenatity. In terms of morality the results are the same: the debasement of a society. Thus boith writers - inadvertantly? - raise as a moral lodestar the standard of if not healthy scepticism then at least an uncertainty factor, as displayed in their most successful works. The real heroes of The First Circle are the questioners (Rubin, Nerzhin, Sologdin); the real heroes of Waiting for the dark, Waiting for the Light are the film-maker, forever compromising in order to survive but with some sense of decency and integrity. It is ironic that tyrants, so convinced of their own immortality, are so frequently, paranoically afraid of death; similarly, it is ironic that Solzhenitsyn and Klima, both increasingly preoccupied with conscience and clearcut moral divisions, are at their most engaging when presenting us with seekers rather than finders.