Something that really stood out to me is the dramatic irony of a line that Rudolph says. When asked if he could be arrested, he claims that “cannot happen” (Kovály 102) and “people cannot be held in jail for no reason at all” (Kovály 102). I don’t blame him for being hopeful, as everyone wants their government to be fair. He does mention previously though that when a man from his office was arrested, he was shocked because the coworker seemed to be a “decent fellow” (Kovály 95) and one would never have guessed that he was a traitor. I feel like it is wishful thinking to believe that a seemingly normal man would be a traitor and not believe that the government was arresting those who dissented.
Additionally, his wife even begged him to quit his job and brought attention to the fact that most of the people who were arrested were Jews; however, he completely dismissed those remarks. This also highlights certain gender roles, where a husband may not take his wife seriously when she is raising valid points. Why did he not listening to her reasoning? Could Rudolph have avoided his fate if he had listened to his wife and quit his job? Also, with Slansky’s arrest and famous show trial, I can imagine that many people would begin to be a little more careful about what they say and do.
I am not trying to blame Rudolph by any means for being arrested, but I do think it raises questions about how aware the public was of the doings of the government and the show trials. Were a majority of people, like Rudolph, trusting of the government until they were the ones being questioned? Did they see the wrong doings but ignored them? I feel a possibility is that he had wishful thinking and despite of everything going on, he wanted to pretend that the government was not mistreating its people.
I think your point about people like Rudolph ignoring the signs is really important. If I remember correctly, Kovaly mentioned that people refused to doubt the validity or the trials or doubt the system to solve its problems unless it was someone close to them that they were sure was innocent who was in trial. It seems that only in these cases (and not even always, as we saw a wife refusing to speak to her husband and calling him a traitor before his death), were people able to finally be awakened from the “haze” as someone else referred to it and see the truth. I believe that Rudolph, like many, saw the bad things in the Party. However, Rudolph had such strong faith that the justice and fairness believed to be inherent in Communism would prevail and these bad things would be resolved. Instead of questioning arrests from the beginning, it seemed as if there was such a strong belief in the trial system to sort through the guilty and the innocent. And, this strong, blinding faith was coupled with time dedicated to the Party. In a singular ideology, what else was there to support? How could anyone truly imagine anything better when they only remember the past (which in many cases, was viewed as bad if not worse than the present)? Rudolph, and many others, dedicated their time and energy to the Party; giving this up would not only be admitting that the ideology was wrong, but that they were wrong. Looking at this from a psychological perspective, no one wants to accept that they are wrong and will intentionally only take in information that supports one’s prior beliefs or values. This “confirmation bias” as it is referred to may have been a contributing factor in what appeared to be ignorance.