 The 1947 publication of Humanism and Terror responded to growing anti-communist sentiment in France fueled in part by the fictional account of the Moscow trials in Arthur Koestler’s popular novel Darkness at Noon. Merleau-Ponty sought to articulate an alternative to the choice Europe apparently faced in the solidifying opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Humanism and Terror criticizes Koestler’s portrayal of the fictional Rubochov, modeled on Nikolai Bukharin, for replacing the “mutual praxis” of genuine Marxism (HT: 102/18) with an opposition between pure freedom and determined history, the “yogi” who withdraws into spiritual ideals or the “commissar” who acts by any means necessary. Turning to an examination of Bukharin’s 1938 trial, Merleau-Ponty finds there an example of “revolutionary justice” that “judges in the name of the Truth that the Revolution is about to make true” (HT: 114/28), even though the historical contingency that this entails is denied by the procedures of the trials themselves. On the other hand, Trotsky’s condemnation of Stalinism as counter-revolutionary similarly misses the ambiguity of genuine history. Ultimately, the dimension of terror that history harbors is a consequence of our unavoidable responsibility in the face of its essential contingency and ambiguity.