Thr Captive Mind

This urgent message to the West on the Communist mentality and the tragic moral and intellectual condition of the men and women who live under Communism is at once fascinating and frightening. Milosz describes the moral and psychological consequences of the official philosophy of dialectical materialism, which today is being rigidly imposed on the minds of some eight hundred million people behind the Iron Curtain. That these consequences are much more complex and far-reaching than is usually thought is convincingly demonstrated. The Captive Mind is a disturbing book for the picture of spiritual slavery it unfolds. But it is also a hopeful book, for it shows that however total the mastery of the new faith over men's minds may appear to be, there remains an irreducible core of resistance to evil and complete capitulation. It is a profoundly interesting human document as well as a major conyribution to our understanding of the totalitarian mentality.