The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz Pages 1-30

• "Socialist realism" is much more than a matter of taste, of preference of one style of painting or music rather than another. It is concerned with the beliefs which lie at the foundation of human existence.
  
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• "In the field of literature it FORBIDs what has in every age been the writer's essential task-to look at the world from his own INDEPENDENT viewpoint, to tell the truth as he sees it, and so to keep watch and ward in the interest of society as a whole."
  
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• "this book is at the same time a battlefield."
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• "It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy."

• intellectuals become useful, the bourgeois business-class is ostracized
  
• art is censored

• "It is no wonder that a writer or a painter doubts the wisdom of resistance."

• "If he were sure that art opposed to the official line could have a lasting value, he probably would not hesitate."(14)
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• "The work of really fine Western scholars and artists escapes notice."(16)
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• "Perhaps independent states are over."(18)
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• "Are Americans really stupid? It is despair mixed with the residue of hope." (25)
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• "Man tends to regard the order he lives as natural. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be and he laughs at the idea that he might be equally well in a Roman toga or medieval armor."
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• "Now he knows he must avoid the dark body lying in the gutter, and refrain from asking any unnecessary questions."(27)
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• "But the father of a family must go out in order to provide bread and soup for his wife and children; and every night they worry about whether or not he will return."(28)
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• "The nearness of death destroys shame. They copulate in public, on the small bit of ground surrounded by barbed wire-their last home on earth. Boys and girls in their teens, about to go off to baricades to fight tanks with pistols and bottles of gasoline, want to enjoy their youth and lose their respect for standards of decency."(28)
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• different perceptions: West is technologically advanced and materially wealthy, some Western intellectuals are Communists, Russia is technologically backward and the people are materially poor.
  

Introduction: V. I. Lenin's Life and Legacy, Introduction p. 1-12.

• Lenin was born under a divine right monarchy
• state was no longer chief owner and employer
• power went to Party officials from wealthy elites
• his rule was seen as an aberration
• system spread to China, Indochina, North Korea and Cuba
• it its heydey, the Soviet Union challenged America: technologically and militarily
• the Bolsheviks lauded Lenin as a secular saint-way to socialism.
  
• initiator and architect of the Soviet System
• left a long paper trail of written instructions

Youth

• grew up at a rebellious time
• Russia lost the Crimean War, painful memory of defeat
• Lenin's father was a school inspector-educated
• Tsar Alexander II carried out Great Reforms to address shortcomings:
  
• 1) abolished serfdom: 20M peasants freed
• 2) judicial system of trial by peers
• 3) fiscal reform
• 4) a liberalization of censorship
  
• 5) measures to improve and expand education
  
• 6) Universal Military Service Statute of 1874

• nobles, priests, merchants, and lower-class city residents were above peasants in a) law, b) education, and c) economic life.
  
• considerable growth> but Russian Empire was behind Britain, France, and Germany.
  
• Asia, Latin America, and Africa: stagnant economies
• Russia's borders went into the Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan(S.), China and Pacific Ocean(E), Artic Ocean(N), Germany, Austro Hungary and Romania(W, SW)
• 1913: only 1/2 of economy was agriculture
• 1914: Moscow is almost 2,000,000
• ostentatious displays of wealth-obscene with the grinding poverty of the day.
  
• more education, less likely to support the czar
• 1913: 68% of army recruits were literate
• 1910: 75% of St. Petersburg and 66% of Moscow were literate
• intelligentsia: critics of autocracy. Highly educated, critically-minded elites.
• liberals wanted a parliamentary democracy
• populists wanted an egalitarian society
• Tsar Alexander II was killed by populists
• the next czar, Alexander III rejected reform almost entirely
• Lenin began learning law but was expelled for belonging to a radical organization
• The German Social Democratic Party(SPD) believed in Marx, got 1.47M votes
• German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck(conservative) tried to crush the Social Democrats but he was unsuccessful
• populists valued morally committed individuals as agents of change (Social reform)
• Marxists believed state power was needed
• populists didn't want capitalist industrialization
• Marxists believed development went a) primitive, b) slave-holding, c) feudal, d) capitalist, e) communist
• Marxists wanted a classless Communist society
• 1) Russia would be rescued by revolutions in advanced industrial countries
• 2) Lenin wanted a socialist state in Russia alone
• 3) Lenin wrote anti-populist pamphlets
• Lenin was exiled to Siberia
• Krupskaia-skilled and loyal helpmate to Lenin
• Lenin wrote, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, gained him reputation as an economist
• peasants adopted iron plows, harrows and improved houses with brick stoves and tin roofs and wore machine made clothing
• founded the newspaper, The Spark (Iskra) and pamphlet, What Is To Be Done?
• professional revolutionaries would lead the masses to socialism
• Mensheviks(the minority), Bolsheviks(the majority)
• Revolution of 1905, spurred by unpopular war in Japan
• the czar fired on peaceful protests in Bloody Sunday
• czar promised basic civil freedoms as well as representative assembly
• moderates were pleased
• the trade union movement for an 8 hour day was ignored
• Lenin wrote for the Bolshevik, New Life
• Tsar Nicholas II ignored the October Manifesto and announced a more limited electoral system
• two State Dumas were democratically elected, the czar dissolved the two for being overly radical
• the bourgeois liberals failed to improve conditions for the workers
• Bolshevik activities were financed by bank robberies, etc.
  
• Lenin and wife left for Helsinki in November, 1907
• Lenin published "The Truth"
• Lenin wrote, Imperialism: The Highest Stage Of Capitalism and The State and Revolution
• he argued that imperialist wars would bring down European capitalism
• the second book was about a state that engaged in a social and economic revolution