13.03.25. ConfusedHistory...
A fresh edition of the book appeared 4 months ago, which was created more than seventy years ago in consequence to our political situation at the time and to the author's related observations and experiences. Talk about The Enslaved head of Czesław Miłosz (Znak, Kraków, November 2024). Preface for fresh edit written by Timothy Snyder (Fr. Bartłomiej Pietrzyk), giving the title a paraphrase of the Descartes formula: I'm enslaved, so I am. We read in the entrance:
This is possibly the wisest criticism of communism made from within – by individual who himself tasted belief in the strategy and lost any friends after choosing freedom, emigrating to the West. The core of the book is the survey of the cases of these friends: their lives before the Second planet War, war experiences and yet the choice to become communists. Miłosz presents these biographies, which are actually part of his own, utilizing 2 spiritual images taken from literature: Murti-Bing and Ketman.
And then again:
The enslaved head is inactive a mind. The fact that he can be enslaved proves his existence. I'm enslaved, so I am. The enslaved head is inactive a mind. The fact that he can be enslaved proves his existence. I'm enslaved, so I am. The enslaved head is inactive a mind. The fact that he can be enslaved proves his existence. I'm enslaved, so I am.
We will besides find in this issue Footnote After Years, it is added in 1999, a complementary explanation of Miłosz himself. It sounds like this:
This book was written in 1951 and early 1952, full "cold war", by individual who refused to service russian propaganda, but not to service American propaganda. Since there were only 2 sides of the front at the time, keeping my thought independent, I exposed myself to suspicion of impartiality. Yes, in short, they looked like adventures. The Enslaved Mind, attacked for years for his fancy, as it was claimed, inventions. And I truly felt first of all astounded by Stalinism: that something like this could happen to a human species.
Human life is governed by the rule of forgetting. Certain facts, especially their aura or climate, cannot be reproduced or even imagined. This applies not only to young generations who cannot have firsthand knowledge. The participants and witnesses of the events besides take their memory distant from each other, insecure about whether they truly happened. There are known defence mechanisms. Read today, Enslaved Mind Looks like a fairy tale. It is easier, doubtless, to explain everything with the panic and fear of its victims than to admit that many citizens of the country were able to convince themselves of the rightness of doctrine by utilizing complex reasoning. due to the fact that sometimes the head drives itself into a blind street, and then it doesn't realize how he could think that.
The content of the book cannot be applied only to a certain period in the past of Poland, where classical leniism-stalinism lasted comparatively briefly. Heroes The Enslaved Mind There are as well Parisian intellectuals commending panic as their students in Vietnam and Cambodia, turning theoretical indications into practice. Brainwashing in China and the educational camps there besides come from the doctrinal assumptions described in the book. For these reasons, readers on respective continents found in the English version of my treaty an analysis of phenomena known to them. Therefore, Enslaved Mind a double life – Polish and international.
Currently, in 2025, since there are always suggestions in our public space that characterise the attitudes and actions of any politicians as post-communist or even communist, 1 could say that this is simply a "double life" The Enslaved Mind and its analysis refers to both the historical past and certain aspects of the present. In 1999, you could actually read Enslaved Mind like a fairy tale, but not necessarily today, and not only on our grounds.
“The enslavement of minds”, says Miłosz, above, is nothing little than a synonym for “brainwashing.” This word is known widely and utilized not only with an indication on politics, but besides on the functioning of advertising. Their motives and mechanisms—the pursuit of power and wealth— yet stay the same. The realities, media, techniques and circumstantial objectives of action are changing. In 2015, for example, a book on specified problems issued the late declared will to launch in our presidential election Piotr Szumlewicz. Her title is Big brainwashing. (Black Sheep Publishing, Warsaw 2015). The author of leftist positions described how the planet was portrayed on tv in accordance with political interests while working there. In fact, the publishing marketplace offers fresh analyses in this area.
Reading The Enslaved Mind In the context outlined above, however, it offers a good chance to ask what communism truly is, and what was erstwhile active in past by the large "H" and how are these matters today? Who, and how, strives for the planet revolution, duplicating Stalinist attitudes, and who, and how does this demonstration of forces promote?
Love as a means of a politically tamed new, imposed reality and enslavement of the minds included in it indicated in any event 2 basic methods: Murti-Bing's logic and Ketman's rules. It may be worth reminding you of their characteristics. It is played briefly in the foreword for the book Miłosz Snyder presented here. He writes:
Murti-Bing means a kind of sedative. Love drew this concept from Insatiableand Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Witkacy – as he was called – was 1 of the prominent writers of the Polish inter-war period, and the fresh combines themes strictly bodily (the title refers to the difference between men and women) with profoundly philosophical ones. Its author emphasized that doctrine would gotta take into account the matters of the body, and it is clear that Miłosz favors this position. However, in the game there is an invading army from the east, which prepares the ground for its triumph, giving distant Muri-Bing's pills. This drug does not solve any metaphysical dilemmas – it simply makes them seem irrelevant. Nobody sees the point of resisting invaders. Europe’s defenders who go to negotiations are cut off, but no 1 cares. [...] The communicative was on their side. So why resist? Hence Murti-Bing's logic: accept that past has more meaning no substance how terrible things happen around us. Let them become untrue. A higher value is what is to come, whatever it is. This needs to be adapted.
Ketman's concept in turn came from a book by French diplomat Arthur Gobineau. He lent it to Miłosz in his time Józef Czapski to aid him realize how the russian planet works. The usage of the method described by Gobineau, signed with this concept, introduced to the life of the man applying it a kind of double: to talk and do what they say and to think their own. Snyder writes:
Ketman's concept in turn came from a book by French diplomat Arthur Gobineau. He lent it to Miłosz in his time Józef Czapski to aid him realize how the russian planet works. The usage of the method described by Gobineau, signed with this concept, introduced to the life of the man applying it a kind of double: to talk and do what they say and to think their own. Snyder writes:
Practicer Ketman believes that he outsmarts the authorities, doing everything their way, while at the same time surviving in harmony – at least internally – with the higher and better truth. Of course, in time it becomes rather likely that specified a individual is deceiving himself, as his own actions began to violate and alter the interior temple of freedom. All those who affirm communism, regardless of their private motives, make a sense of inevitability in others. That's how Ketman becomes Murti-Bing.
In any case, the pleasant functioning and influence of the communist introduced to Poland is shown on the example of his and his friends – literates. Individual chapters The Enslaved Mind signed with the titles: Alpha, or Moralist; Beta, or unhappy lover; Gamma, a slave of history and Delta, or troubadur. These include Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Borowski, Jerzy Putramento and Konstanty Ildefons Galczyński. It is worth noting, therefore, that 2 of these biographies, which is the work, have besides been produced in a large, very interesting way. Marty Byczkowska-Nowak Unsaved. Tadeusz Borowski (Znak Litera Nowa, Kraków 2025) – the first specified biography of the author The Stone World and Goodbye to Maria – and resume work from 2013 Anna Arno p.Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński. The Dangerous Poet (Republication Mark 2025). Nor should we forget about the biography entitled Love by Andrzej Franaszek (Znak, Kraków 2011) and about the reactions to the fact that the author The Enslaved Mind, initially politically active, even representing Poland for any time in a diplomatic position in France, decided to “sign out” of the fresh strategy and chose to emigrate. A communicative absolutely fascinating...
In this context and in view of what is happening present in different countries and in general in geopolitics, it may be interesting to repeat another reading. Recently, the Krakow Old Theatre organized a week of memories of the life and acting work of Jerzy Stuhr. As part of this action, you could watch a tv recording in the theatre a performance directed by Andrzej Wajad in the early 1980s, namely Crime and punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky. The main roles were played by Jerzy Stuhr and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz. Stuhr was Porfir Petrovich investigating the murdered debt shark and her sister a fewer days earlier. Radziwiłowicz played the function of Rodion Raskolnikov. They played great. The adaptation of the Dostoevsky fresh was limited mainly to their conversation. Porphyry Piotrowicz seems to fishy Raskolnikov of this murder, although there is no actual accusation yet. The subject of the discussion is, among another things, an article by Raskolnikov, which the Porphyry, as it turns out, had the chance to learn about, and the thought taught in it.
Numerous reviews of this performance, which were made after erstwhile presentations of the recording, are readily available on the web, but it may besides be worth reading an appropriate passage of this 1 published first in episodes in 1866 and entirely published in 1867. It seems that it would be rather easy to identify modern politicians who correspond to the concept outlined by Raskolnikov...
The conversation begins by Porphyry Piotrowicz, he is met by Raskolnikov, inserting his 3 cents Razumichin, a friend of Raskolnikov:
... it reminded me now, and I was curious in it in the past, 1 of your articles: “About crime” ... or, as it was in your case, I forgot the title [...] I was actually curious in only a certain thought thrown at the end of the article, but which, unfortunately, you only mention in vain, not rather clear... In a word, if you remember, there is simply a hint that there are supposedly certain people in the planet who can... no, not only can, but they have a full right to commit all of the misdemeanors and crimes and that the code does not apply to them. [...]
How? But not due to the fact that “the environment has warped man”? – Razumichin informed with any fear.
– No, no, not precisely because," replied Porphyry. – The full thing is that, according to Mr Raskolnikov's article, all people are divided into supposedly "normal" and "unordinary". The average should live in obedience and must not exceed the laws, and that is why you think they are ordinary. The extraordinary ones have the right to all crimes and transgressions, namely, due to the fact that they are unusual. Is that what happened to you? Am I right?
Raskolnikov smiled again [...] He decided to take the glove.
– At my place it is not rather like that – he started simply and modestly. I admit that you've put my thought almost strictly... [...] It's just that the difference is that I don't happen to gotta do all the bad things you called it. I don't even think this article would be published in print. I just pointed out that a "unordinary" man has the right... actually not an authoritative law, but he can in his conscience let himself to cross... any dams, and only if it requires the realization of his thought (sometimes he can be saved for all mankind). [...] In my opinion, if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, due to any circumstances, could by no means become known to people another than by the sacrifice of 1 man's life, ten, a 100 and so on, who would hinder or stand across this discovery, then Newton would have the right, yes, he would be obliged to... those 10 or a 100 people, so that all mankind could learn about his findings. But it does not mean that Newton has the right to kill whom he likes, not all day to bargain from stalls. [...] As regards my division into average and extraordinary people, I agree, it is simply a small arbitrary, but I do not stand by strict numbers. I only believe in my basic thought. It means that people under the law of nature are divided into 2 classes: the lower class, which is, so to speak, a material that is exclusively utilized to give birth to the like, and the right people, i.e. having a gift or talent that allows them to talk in their community. Of course, the subclasses are few, but the distinguishing marks of both classes are rather well known: the first class, or material, is mostly conservative, exemplary, submissive and their loveable submission. I besides think that they should be submissive due to the fact that they are meant to be, and there is nothing in it to humiliate them. People of the second class all cross the law, are stormers or are inclined to do so, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people, naturally, are comparative and multiracial; they most frequently request in various occurrences of demolition of the existing state in the name of the better. But if specified a man, in order to fulfill his idea, falls upon even the corpses, through blood, I think that he may, internally, in accord with his conscience, licence himself to walk even through the blood, which depends on this thought and its size, delight connote it. That's the only way I talk in my article about their rights to crime. [...] But there is no reason for large concern: generally, he barely always grants them that right, cuts them down, and hangs them (more or less) and thus rather rightly fulfills his conservative destiny, provided that in the next generations the same is mostly the ones cut down into pedestals and surrounds them with reverence (more or less). The first class is always the ruler of the present, the second class – the ruler of the future. The first preserve the planet and multiply it numerically; the others push the planet forward and direct it towards marked purposes. Both have a completely equal right to exist. [...]
Thank you. But tell me again, why should we separate the different from the ordinary? possibly there's signs at birth, huh? I mean, it doesn't should be a small more accurate, so to speak, more circumstantial externality; delight forgive me the understandable concern of a applicable and right-minded man, but would you not introduce a uniform, make them wear badges, or characterize themselves? ... due to the fact that you yourself will agree that if there is confusion, if a man of 1 class assumes that he belongs to the other, and starts to “remove all the barriers”, as you say very fortunately, then...
- Oh, that happens a lot. And your remark is even more witty than the last...
– Thank you very much.
– There is nothing for you to consider, but delight note that a mistake is possible only from the first class, or from the "normal" people (as I have called them may be very unfortunate). [...]
– Ha [...] Well, erstwhile 1 more poverty. Tell me: are there many “unordinary” who are allowed to slaughter others? Of course, I'm willing to turn my back on you, but you'll agree it's getting vague if there's quite a few them, right?
“As for this, be calm too,” Raskolnikov said. – In general, people with a fresh thought, people who are able to say something even a small n o in e g o, are born highly small until unusual takes as little. 1 thing is clear: that the mode of formation of these people, all these classes and subclasses, is surely governed by any circumstantial and unwavering law of nature. This law is most likely not known today, but I believe it exists and can be known over time. A vast mass of human beings, material, only to be present in the world, at last through any effort, through any mysterious trial so far, through any crossing of tribes and races to intensify themselves and to yet release 1 in a 1000 people into the world.
(Phyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. A fresh in six parts with an epilogue, Przecz. Czesław Jastrzębiec-Kozłowski, Wydawnictwo Plus, Warszawa; quoted passages: Part III, chapter 5., pp. 237-242).
It seems that it is not hard in Raskolnikov's ideology to admit the features and ways of reasoning of today's political right-wings not only from the country of Dostoevsky originating...
Thus, if, according to the customized practiced in these records, the question of education is to be addressed, it would should be said that reading the quoted passage of the Dostoevsky novel, like knowing the stories told by Miłosz in the Enslaved head and by the authors of the biography recommended above, suggests why read anything at all, and how to look at the surrounding planet and check out what in it to escape the full of various actions of brainwashing. This is why circumstantial educational suggestions arise: there is no point in reading in the school in order to “give” the past of literature and recite the findings of experts of these problems. It is better to read about the conversation read, that is, to enable learners to admit and call the essence of the surrounding reality and to construct for themselves attitudes toward the emerging from reading the image of the surrounding planet and its inhabitants. warrant that no Raskolnikov or the “unordinary man” designated by him will come to power here and there is no one, but possibly at least “brainwashing” will not be so effective, and this is something...
