Milosz

“I’ll bet on this horse. He’s good. He’ll carry me far”

The historical context of any region in transition is by nature unique. The native son understood Eastern Europe as the final we, apart from which was to be exiled. In Stalinism a chilling orthodoxy was accepted and seemed eternal in 1951. Milosz documented for his generation how something so clumsy could become so vogue. This is the story of the spread of Russian communism to Poland and how it all seemed so inevitable to each in their own turn.
“A curious book appeared in Warsaw in 1932.” From the first page of the captive mind we begin a journey down the corridors and back alleys of a generation. We are confronted by an “internal longing for harmony that lies deeper then ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” The power of these deeper emotions presented in the Pill of Murti-Bing fuel by their nature historical transitions. The greatest fires burn in the “alienated intellectual who responded to the call of the new faith to be useful and to belong to the masses.” Each class met its own seduction, but it was the intelligentsia that created myths and presented ritual initiation to the citizens of the Imperium. Milosz describes them in his area of Eastern Europe: “the impoverished nobility the lower middle class.” This definition is problematic for westerners given the lack of a national middle class.
“Are Americans really stupid?” Milosz describes that question relative to the historical fatalism of the region. A sense of loss is present, in case they truly are stupid, and an overriding hope comes through in the chance they are not. In Eastern Europe the people had lost any sense of a natural occurring life. The theme of exile developed throughout the book supports the concept that regardless of historical realities, to leave a Polish speaking land was to exist in deficit for the intelligentsia. The importance of this truth can not be underestimated.
Milosz qualifies his statements almost without exception from his opening inscription. America is the “awkward raft on which everyone paddles in a different direction,” yet sails past the totalitarian ship on the rocks. One thing is clear, “the ‘stupidity’ which produced a technology immeasurably superior to that of Europe is not entirely a source of weakness.”
Central to the personalities in the Captive mind, is the concept of Ketman. The idea that “he who is in possession of truth must not expose his person, his relatives or his reputation to the blindness, the folly, the perversity of those whom it has pleased God to place and maintain in error. As a student I practice Ketman in my daily rituals. Presenting strong liberal beliefs to a conservative professor is clearly a matter of degree. Ketman’s focus is upon the future and creating a better tomorrow. In this aspect the idea of social realism may even have a found kindred spirit.
The quasi conversion of the citizens is supported by the various styles of Ketman described. Milosz holds real questions about the future and the impact of two-way televisions. The influence of Orwell’s 1984 on the time of publication is clear. A certain naiveté is clear from 2001 even as fears for our future continue. This is the true force of the Captive Mind in how complete victory seemed for the new faith. Milosz even mused about the eventual introduction of modern art to the Imperium by 2000. Under skeptical Ketmen he repeats a important theme, “ but is it not impossible that Russia will manage to impose her insanity upon the whole world and that the return to reason will occur only after two or three hundred years.” If any attraction can be understood for Eastern Europe to communism, it must be accepted first that it was a system imposed. The decisions once made by the intelligentsia seemed eternal or the equivalent feeling produced by three hundred years. Could it be that “the new faith is an indispensable purgatory; perhaps God’s purpose is being accomplished through the barbarian, i.e. the center, who are forcing the masses to awaken out of their lethargy.”
Milosz points out that the language and ideas of his contemporary Europe clearly lacked the possibility of capturing the mystery. Each member of the intelligentsia sought his life and dedicated himself to the future.

Alpha , The Moralist
“The History of the last decades in Central and Eastern Europe bounds in situations in regard to which all epithets and theoretical considerations lose meaning. A man’s effort to match up to these situations decides his fate. The solution each accepts differs according to those impalpable factors which constitute his individuality.” Alpha first finds solution in the Catholic Church. This religion with an almost Stalinist slant declares itself the one true religion. Life from this one decision turns. Alpha was the great catholic writer before the war, but in the transition only the deeper feelings remained.
“The Communist program offered more realistic arguments than did the program of the London-directed ‘underground state’: the country, it was fairly clear, was going to be liberated by the red army; with its aid one should start a peoples revolution.” There is common American understanding that possession is 9/10th of the law. Possession of the individual gave Stalinism the momentum in Eastern Europe.
The intellectual had “tended to become a radical in an effort to establish a tie with the masses.” Independently and in support of each other, numerous members of the intelligentsia had realized they were isolated from the masses and blamed the state. Alpha, the real person chose the new faith as he had the old: to leave his hat on a communal rack and catch his breathe.
“He crushed the fly only to be crushed in his turn by the second, patient giant.” The end of the London inspired uprising against Germany is no children’s story. This is a tale of man in all his splendor. “Blind loyalty encounters the necessities of History.” Perhaps the clearest settlement of a question in history. Add the death of a revolutionary generation and the attraction to the New Faith for the masses of Poland essentially exists in a vacuum. Inevitable perhaps as the sunrise of a new era the intelligentsia followed.
Any passion for truth that survived in the Polish Intelligentsia became less common by the hour. Alpha’s old weaknesses helped him in the new faith. Much like current weaknesses helped him in the old faith. “One compromise leads to a second and a third until at last, though everything one says may be perfectly logical, it no longer has anything in common with the flesh and blood of living people.”

Beta, The Disappointed Lover
“His attention is fixed not on man -man is simply an animal that wants to live- but on ‘concentration society’.” The brutal facts of class warfare are basic to life for a certain population throughout history. He stumbles through the worst of history well fed and dressed. His ability to function in extreme conditions is based on a societal hierarchy of beliefs. With no personal hierarchy, he was able to adapt better than most. Beta would become a force in any transition of Poland..
“Beta had no faith, religious or other, and he had the courage to admit it in his poems.” His declaration, “they were merely countering German nationalism with Polish nationalism,” about the confused early nationalists in Poland reflected his rejection of “a battle for battle’s sake.”
The communist quickly understood the value of his equations: “Christianity equals Capitalism equals Hitlerism.” From his experience Beta held a “rare and precious treasure: True hatred. What a relief for Beta who could conceive of no belief that was eternal. Useful hatred, hatred put to the service of society!” The communists needed transitional figures and offered steady work. Beta had returned to Poland to avoid the position of the exile, such a common choice. “Where, outside his own country, could he find readers of books written in his native tongue.”
Beta was valuable to the Imperium in explaining “man’s impotence against the laws of history: even people with the best of intentions had fallen into the machine of Nazi terror and been converted into frightened cave man.” Circumstance, not design, was the key to success. For the short-term after the war Beta’s prospects were bright. Mature social realism would arrive in Poland eventually. Beta would become more concerned about the “Mayakovski case.” Others similar to Beta accepted their losses, ensuring the transition to mature Stalinism and their strengths to weakness.
Beta believed in the idea of a new era, “when he put down his pen he felt he had accomplished something.” As he saw himself receding too far from a bright new day, he killed himself. Beta lost all hope in the horse he bet on. “His talent, intelligence and ardor drove him to action while ordinary people temporized and rendered unto an unloved Caesar only so much as was absolutely necessary.”

Gamma, the Slave of History
This story brings first to light a small but significant influence. Gamma’s mixed Russian-Polish heritage is not unique. Ethnic groups throughout Europe were making myths and legends of their history. Poland, allowed to exist only at the whim of the great powers, developed a sense of dread in the necessities of history. Each state was developing what Herder called volksgeist, their national spirit. The mixed minority population lacked their own stories. Perhaps they are naturally inclined to staunchly support whatever system is in power against the unknown.
Gamma was not alone in his uncertainty and his heritage was not the dominant force in even his life. The entire intelligentsia was in revolt. Milosz argues that the majority of “revolt against one’s environment is usually shame of one’s environment. The social status of all was undefined.” They saw there own class as a relic of the past. “It was oriented to the past rather than the future.”
Gamma had vaguely defined national revolution for himself as had his generation. “In practice, this meant a hostile attitude towards their Jewish comrades, who as future lawyers and doctors would be their professional competitors.” Gamma’s family is killed by the Russians and he manages to prosper under their new faith. He couldn’t have saved them, but the fact that he was able to make a rational choice is shocking somehow to western sensibilities. There would be “reward for those who knew how to think correctly, who understood the logic of History, who did not surrender to senseless sentimentality!” Poland was liberated and a new government was to be formed. Gamma could handle the dirty work and he would last the long term for “this was what came of betting on a good horse.”
“We must remember that five and a half years of Nazi rule had obliterated all respect for private property.” Every favorable circumstance was needed to ensure victory of the new faith. “The entire state was gripped by a single emotion: hatred. Peasants, receiving land, hated; workers and office employees, joining the party, hated; socialists, participating nominally in the government, hated; writers endeavoring to get their manuscript publish, hated.” Gamma believed he signed a pact with the devil in being a servant of History. “He knew too much to retain any illusions and despised those naïve enough to nourish them.”
If Gamma “considered himself a servant of the devil that ruled,” is he not by definition evil. Certainly each government has attracted, for lack of a better term, an evil element of society. A bad cop in Los Angeles and a censor of Poland, are there certain theoretical considerations in common? Could it be “the devil to whom men sell their souls owes his might to men themselves, and that the determinism of History is a creation of human brains.”

Delta, The Troubadour
This drunkard, poet and word gypsy had always needed a patron. As a respected voice of his generation he “always distributed his mockery evenly over all the groups.” A surprising conversion to nationalism demonstrated ultimately “in order to live he needed a patron, a person who would force him to write, fight his drunkenness and, in short, control and care for him.”
The new faith needed to win the right and left. Delta’s connection to the right made him very attractive to the calculating and efficient party members. Having rallied them for Polish nationalism, he could present the new faith as the next logical step. The Imperium gained through association. Delta’s ability to sing praises about gloomy Moscow made his intention unclear for “it was impossible to tell if he was lying or telling the truth … because he constantly used exaggeration as his artistic tool, his opponents could prove nothing against him.” Eventually they would.
Delta is a personality perhaps lost in time, the old bard. “ In order to exist as a poet he needed a genial, amused seigneur who believed that neither government nor anything in heaven or on earth deserves to be taken too seriously, that song – half serious, half scoffing – matters more.” Doomed to the first half of the twentieth century, Delta’s existence was provided by the Imperium; a wild card that those in control could bring to the cultural table at whim. To exploit, disown and most likely reform again for another task. Cultural Stalinism defined.

Man , This enemy
The intelligentsia faced an oppressive confusion about their place in society. The former nobility in Poland was never able to stabilize under the earlier Nationalist period. A historical fatalism gripped Milosz’s generation leaving Russian domination the only feasible outcome.
Let us not forget that the connection between the New Faith and Marx is rather superficial…the workers are the only class capable of organized action – that Marxist principle has never been forgotten. No action, however, is possible without its leaders. If the leaders reason correctly, that is, if they understand the necessities of the historic process, then the workers as a mass will be unable to protest.

Milosz becomes the exile that his generation fears more than all. And he could only watch with the west: “crimes in the name of the new and radiant man; crimes committed to the sound of orchestras and choruses, to the blare of loudspeakers and the recitation of optimistic poems.” Milosz explains that the west finds great pleasure in finding fault in the new faith, but rarely offers any new alternatives. America prizes only individuality and lacks the final we historical fatalism has granted Eastern Europe. How could Russian domination have been avoided? It seems all those who could have opposed her found more immediate problems to solve. After all worse case scenario 300 year of domination plus or minus.