THE CAPTIVE MIND
67
internal voi ce, a voice whi ch said, ' It's better to sti ck with common sense and
the religion of the forefath ers than with dialecti cal hi storiosophy or patriot–
ic olthodoxy.'" Milosz didn 't know wh ether communism would turn out to
be a hi storical necessity. But common sense told him that even if
COITImU–
nism were to win , it wouldn't bring any good to people. He knew that even
though Li thuanian and Poli sh peasa nts may be illi terate, they're not repulsive
smelly idiots to whom Russian commissars will teach wi sdom. MiJosz says
to the reader, " It's better to li sten to an internal voice than to the voice of
the tempter who proposes Ketman and in thi s manner convinces that the
winning tyranny must be served just because it is the winning side." Thi s
sentence for many years helped me to live : ''I'm not interes ted in whether I
find myself on the side o f future winners or not." Milosz doesn't idealize or
glorifY anyone, least of all himself. Thi s shows that the book wasn't dreamed
up at a desk. It contains real pain , suffering, shame, anger, hot blood . ''I'm
homel ess," Milosz says, and in some way he stayed homel ess-even though,
for decades, he ca red for and built a new ho use for hi s native Europe. He said
that "eyes that have seen shouldn't be closed; hands which have touched
shouldn't forget when they hold a pen." At a certain moment, the conflicts
wi th a totali tarian dictatorshi p stop being a matter of intell ectual debate.
They become a tes t of character. Th e ONR [Radical N ationali st Camp] is
the heir of the Party and Milosz is the descendant of Mickiewicz, and
between them stood only governments worthy of contempt.
Robert Faggen:
T hank you ve ry much. All of you have said that thi s is an
unusual book o f politi cal science or politi cal sociology because it does not
blame a system or a set of ideas but emphasi zes the importance of the indi–
vidual who makes dec isions. And how has that characteri zed either th e
appea l or some of the resistance to th e book?
Andrzej Walicki :
I think it condemns all totalitariani st sys tems-tyranni es
that are no t merely external but attempting to impose mental captivity. So
I agree with Irena Grudziflska-Gross that thi s is not an expression of hate
but an attempt
to
understand Poli sh fell ow- travell ers as vi ctims of the sys–
tem rather than as individuals guilty of personal failures.
Edith Kurzweil:
I would say it's a bit of both insofar as it indi ca tes that we
all fun ction within a sys tem . But when that sys tem is coercive it's difficult
to be courageous. Still , ultimately we have to be courageous or ought to
be, so it's political science up to a point, but not really.
Irena Grudzilska-Gross:
I don't think that Mil osz presented these fo ur
characters as victims of communi sm . He showed how they reacted to and
