The essays of Czeslaw Milosz, brought together in a volume entitled "The Captive Mind," constitute at the same time a significant historical document and analysis of the highest order. Enslavement of spirit under totalitarian regimes is manifested outwardly in turns of expression, gesture, and daily conduct and inwardly by perceptible transformations in the individual. (p. 13)

Here is true discernment of issues usually regarded under the stark alternatives of falsehood and truth, betrayal or resistance. In astonishing gradations Milosz shows what happens to men subjected simultaneously to constant threat of annihilation and to the promptings of faith in a historical necessity which exerts apparently irresistible force and achieves enormous success. We are presented with a vivid picture of the forms of concealment, of inner transformation, of the sudden bolt to conversion, of the cleavage of man into two. We see through his essays, the monstrous result and the monstrous...