first visit to the Soviet Union, Sartre had his apprehensions here as well.
These were justified in 1971 when his request for clemency for an
imprisoned Cuban poet, Heberto Padillo, was rejected by his former
hero, and Sartre found himself dismissed as one of those “bourgeois
liberal gentlemen...two-bit agents of colonialism...who dared to
criticize Cuba.”^28 The entire Sartre–Castro episode had the appearance
of a second-rate melodrama. Nonetheless, it was Sartre’s unflinching
commitment to socialism and freedom that moved him into Castro’s
orbit and just as thoroughly drew him out of it again.
The third revolution of this period was less parochial. It seemed to
involve the Great Powers and their respective spheres of influence even
more than the Cuban Crisis. The civil war between North Vietnam and
South Vietnam was an invitation for Sartre to join the underdog again
against the American Goliath who claimed to be threatened by the
“domino effect” that would topple all the democratic countries of the
region if South Vietnam succumbed to the Communist momentum.
Sartre had long been opposed to French colonialism in Indochina. This
time, he was invited by the world-famous philosopher and pacifist,
Bertrand Russell, who had paid his dues by being jailed for opposing
Britain’s participation in the First World War. The International War
Crimes Tribunal or “Russell Tribunal,” as it was also known, held its
first deliberative session from May 2 to 10 , 1967 in Stockholm, and its
second from November 20 to December 1 , 1967 in Roskield, Denmark.
It proposed to hear and weigh evidence against the United States and its
allies for war crimes alleged to have been committed in Vietnam. As its
executive president, Sartre announced in his opening address on May 2 ,
1967 : “the Tribunal would judge the crimes committed in Vietnam by
the definitions and standards of existing international law and particu-
larly the judgments of the Nuremberg Tribunal which judged German
war crimes in 1945 .”^29 Since their only authority was “moral,” they
hoped to appeal to public opinion by publicizing the “crimes against
humanity” that were now being ascribed to the victors of an earlier war.
Sartre published an essay “On Genocide” that was accompanied by a
summary of the evidence and the judgment of the International War
(^28) Speech cited by Birchall,Sartre against Stalinism, 205.
(^29) Arlette Elkaı ̈m-Sartre,“On Genocide” and a summary of the evidence and the judgments of the
International War Crimes Tribunal(Boston, MA: Beacon, 1968 ), 6.
306 Means and ends: political existentialism