Bittersweet about the Blacklist

Throughout the reading of this memoir, I was really struck by Bernstein's love/hate relationship with his situation. On the one hand, he was devastated by not being able to work freely and under his own name and he was frustrated by having to work with fronts, especially because he went through several. On the other hand, he described feeling a sort of guilty joy from the community that arose from the blacklist. For all its negative consequences, the blacklist gave Bernstein and his fellow censored colleagues a concrete reason to band together. In a way, it empowered them and gave them a common bond that may not have formed simply because they all shared Communist beliefs. Bernstein described this phenomenon himself as, “We found ourselves drawing closer together. Before, we might assemble for politics or fund-raising; now we went to one another’s houses simply for comfort” (173). Much of his memoir is spent describing the people he worked with while blacklisted and how they were an invaluable resource for exchanging ideas and providing support. It sounds like Bernstein was incredibly lucky throughout his ordeal (he was, after all, still able to work behind his fronts). He probably would not have had the same attitude about his situation had he not been able to work, but given that he was so lucky he sounded almost bittersweet about the eradication of the blacklist. In fact, when the blacklist was discarded he says, “My friends would still be my friends, but we were no longer held together by the cement of repression. We were no longer a community” (277). I suppose my point is that it is interesting, but understandable, how Bernstein could have mixed emotions about his experience with the blacklist and if his memoir serves as anything it is an example of people coming together through strife.