Nobody Can Rule Guiltlessly

From Darkness at Noon (1940), spoken in the context of the imprisoned commissar Rubashov's inner reckoning with his own career. Koestler's novel — written after he broke with the Communist Party in 1938 — dramatises how the logic of one-party rule traps every functionary in a cycle of sanctioned violence: those who order purges will themselves be purged. The quote captures the tragic position of the true believer who has acted on Party orders only to find himself condemned by the same system, unable to claim innocence because he never believed innocence was the point.