#whatireadovershabbat Czesław Miłosz's The Captive Mind, translated by Jane Zielonko (1953; Vintage International, 1990)
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989; the Soviet Union dissolved two years later. My whole life postdates the Cold War. Hence my appreciation for The Captive Mind, which transports you to the 1950s, when not only was state-sponsored Communism ascendant—it seemed to point the direction of the future. Miłosz depicts the brutal takeover of Poland by the Soviets, offering incisive portraits of friends who bent a knee to the New Faith. His book is a searing study of collective submission, wrought by terror, torture, and naivety. Three decades after the Fall of Communism, it is yet again essential reading. Its lessons may gird you against the calls of a new New Faith.
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