The Captive Mind
by Czeslaw Milosz
Milosz is trying to explain how it is possible that his generation of liberal intellectuals came to collaborate with and work alongside the Communist party
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“The Captive Mind isn’t a straight memoir. Although Milosz is writing about his own life and his past, he is also grappling with a larger subject: How his generation of liberal intellectuals came to collaborate with, and work alongside, the Communist party. And he is trying to understand his own behaviour: Why did I act that way?” Read more...
The best books on Memoirs of Communism
Anne Applebaum, Historian
“Milosz tried to explain – as the title suggests – how thinking people could accept communism from inside the communist system. How does one not resist or just endure, but actually place one’s mind in the system? He points to a number of ways in which the mind can adapt. You can accept one larger truth that guides your interpretation of all of the smaller untruths, accept a vision of the future that is so bright that it drives away the shadows of the various dark acts of your own time and place. Or you can collaborate on the outside but preserve an inner core of yourself that does not collaborate on the inside.” Read more...
Timothy Snyder, Historian
