Following the collapse of communism in Europe and the conversion of China from Marxism-Leninism to an unpleasantly authoritarian version of Market-Leninism, the reputation of Wilfred Burchett, the most controversial and influential communist in Australian history, seemed destined gradually to sink. Oddly enough, this has by no means been the case. At present two Australians, Ross Fitzgerald and Simon Nasht, are reported to be making films on Burchett. In the past three or so years, Melbourne University Press has published a long pro-Burchett biography, Tom Heenan's From Traveller to Traitor; the University of New South Wales Press, an enormous unabridged autobiography, Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist; and Cambridge University Press, an anthology of Burchett's work, Rebel Journalism: The Writings of Wilfred Burchett. The reception to these publications revealed that Burchett is, in general, still supported by leading Australian left-wing academics, like Stuart Macintyre, Gavan McCormack and Ben Kiernan; by some of its most prominent expatriate left-wing journalists, like John Pilger and Phillip Knightley; and by some talented student Leftists as well (last year a stridently pro-Burchett thesis won a University of Sydney undergraduate prize).
The recent rise in Wilfred Burchett's reputation is not difficult to explain. Part of the reason lies in the determination of George Burchett, who has been an intrepid defender of his father's literary legacy and political standing. Part of it lies in the rise of anti-American sentiment among the Australian intelligentsia, following the unlawful and catastrophic invasion of Iraq. Part of it lies in the parochialism of many members of the Australian Left, who seem to be more shocked by the injustice of the Menzies government's denial of a passport to Burchett after his exploits during the Korean War than they are by Burchett's lifelong apologetics on behalf of a string of murderous regimes.
But there is more to it than that. The Burchett revival is founded upon a distinctive form of post-Cold War intellectual inertia, an unwillingness to re-examine judgements made during the Cold War. There are three main reasons for this inertia. The first is vanity or pride. Those who have once been utterly convinced of a cause do not find it easy to admit they were wrong. The second is rancour. Many people find it galling to make retrospective concessions to old enemies over matters on which they had once dug in. The third concerns the peculiar nature of political friendships formed in times of intense ideological dispute. People feel that breaking ranks with old political comrades on whom they once relied involves betrayal or breach of faith. For these reasons many of Wilfred Burchett's supporters seem unwilling to reconsider the Burchett question, despite everything they know about the human catastrophe of communism, the cause on which Burchett gambled in his youth and to which, despite the pyramids of corpses, he clung for the entirety of his adult life.