Just Finished Reading: The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz

I’m not entirely sure why I bought this. It certainly isn’t my normal sort of read. Maybe it was because the blub sounded interesting, or that I found the cover picture [The bronze sculpture Listening to History by Bill Woodrow] intriguing. Maybe I just felt the need to read outside of my normal comfort zone. In any case I had no real idea what I was letting myself in for.

The Captive Mind has several strands to it. It is part autobiography, part history and part socio-psychological analysis. The author, writing in Paris in 1950/51 after defecting from his native Poland – then under Soviet rule – tries in an almost defensive manner to understand why he felt the need to leave his homeland and choose a life of self-imposed exile. He is, in effect, attempting to come to terms with that life changing decision. On one level the whole book is his justification to himself of why he was writing in Paris and not Warsaw. To justify such an event he calls upon the mindset of those who have adapted, or have attempted to adapt, to life under a totalitarian Soviet style Communist regime. In a series of detailed case studies of men and women he knew well the author describes the hoops that each has had to jump through and the positions they bend their minds in to accommodate the new way of thinking. Those who failed early on were often killed by the authorities (either directly with a bullet in the back of the head or worked to death in camps). Those who, through luck or effort, managed to live a double life – outwardly conformist but inwardly free – went mad with the pressure and either cracked in public (and then where executed or internally exiled) or ended up committing suicide. The few who could bend their minds to think dialectically survived in some form but effectively killed their personality to do so. The author – both unable to submit but likewise unable and unwilling to contort his own mind – decided on external exile as the only reasonable option left open to him.

The autobiographical strand of this book was often harrowing. Growing up in Poland in the 1920’s and 30’s he saw his country grow weak and internally divided. He experienced both the German and Russian invasions and lived through both Nazi and Soviet occupation. The things he saw, the things he and his friends witnessed can hardly be described in words. It is a wonder that anyone can stay sane under those conditions. With the end of the war and as a recognised poet, the author had, for a time at least, a privileged position in Soviet society as long as he wrote in a way that he was directed to write – using Soviet Realism. No other form was allowed. No expression of individuality was allowed or countenanced. Freedom of thought could not exist even in your own head. Slowly the parameters of free expression narrowed until nothing was left. It was, he felt, the very death of the spirit. So he had no other choice and left everything he loved behind.

Of course this book was hugely controversial at the time – especially amongst those who heaped praise upon the Soviet experiment. Milosz was less than popular with the Left which, of course, deepened his isolation. However, as his book won the Nobel Prize for Literature it seems that he was doing something right. Indeed he was. Often beautifully written this is an amazing work. Deeply personal, greatly incisive and often disturbing this is a must read for anyone who thinks that the worlds problems can be solved by the imposition of any State ideology that is divorced from common humanity. It is an important book that should be taught in schools across the world. Not just for its devastating critique of Soviet Communism but for it’s championing of human freedom. Highly recommended.