‘The Captive Mind’ Explores the Psychology of Stalinism
‘The Captive Mind’, by Czesław Miłosz, reviewed.
Under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in Moscow in 1939, the Nazis and Soviets carved up Poland, giving the east to the Russians and the west to the Germans. As a result of this — what is sometimes called ‘The Midnight of the Century’ — Czesław Miłosz lived under two of the worst occupying forces in human history. The fruit of the latter ordeal was The Captive Mind, a series of essays in which Miłosz, a poet and academic, attempts to explain why Stalanism carried such appeal for intellectuals. His book is a chilling study of how and why, to quote Witold Gombrowicz, ‘X suddenly becomes Y, changes his personality like a jacket and acts, speaks, thinks, and feels contrary to himself.’
His book opens with a discussion of Insatiability, a novel by the Polish writer Stanisław Witkiewicz. The novel describes an invasion by a new Mongol Empire and the pill that one of its philosophers, Murti Bing, creates. The pill, given to the people under occupation, eliminates all metaphysical concerns — all of the basic questioning that in the end underpins even our most shallow philosophising. At first, those who take the pill are pacified; soon, however, they develop split personalities. Miłosz compares the Murti-Bing pill with Stalinism in Poland and its effect with what he saw take place in the minds of the intellectual class of which he was a near-lifelong member.
The pill, given to the people under occupation, eliminates all metaphysical concerns.
This, and a short essay in which Miłosz explains why Western life was roundly seen as incomprehensible, sets the scene for the following essays. In an essay which uses Ketman (‘Taqiya’) as a framing device, Ketman being the habit of paying lip service to Islam while hiding secret opposition, Miłosz describes all the ways in which individuals lead double lives with apparent success. He then explores the lives and mental machinery of four friends and colleagues, wildly different individuals who nonetheless found solace, at least ostensibly, in the promises of Stalinism. Alpha, ‘The Moralist’, for instance, is an intense, melancholy type concerned with grand themes. Having first found these in Catholic writing, he becomes a Soviet propagandist, denouncing the Vatican and writing a novel in which a taciturn Russian stoically endures the horrors of the Nazis.
Miłosz describes all the ways in which individuals lead double lives with apparent success.
What sets the Captive Mind apart from other studies of Stalinism is not just that it was written, as it were, from the inside. It is that it is concerned with the life of the mind. Miłosz is quick to say that his defection was motivated not by principle but by his inability to write well in a language other than Polish and tradition other than Polish tradition. He is thus somewhat sympathetic to his subjects, even as he damns them; and describes Stalanist dogma as so sweeping and so consistent as to be difficult to resist. It is his throwaway remarks — ‘I am not sure that consistency is the most important thing [about thought]’ — that are among his most revealing. It is all too neat for Miłosz: life is messy, people are messy, and the sheer cleanliness of Stalanist ideology is why it is troubling. This calls to mind Michael Oakeshott’s idea of ‘rationalism’: a mindset that puts theory above practice: cookbooks above experience in cooking; and one which desires to reshape society according to abstract principles.
Miłosz writes in an elegant but humourless style, relieved briefly by his study of the absurdist poet ‘Delta’. We can hardly damn Miłosz for his failure to crack a joke, of course, and it is striking to read at the conclusion of the book that Miłosz thought it perfectly likely the Soviets would conquer the West. This points to his courage. Though, as I have said, he is quick to dismiss the notion he defected on principle, he defected nonetheless when most did not, and left everything behind in doing so. He did this for the simple reason that he needed to think for himself. If the book has a central message, it is perhaps that this freedom should not be taken lightly.
