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ARTISAN REVIEW
Milosz in getting an academic appointment. Obviously, there was real
resistance and resentment that he had written
The Captive Mind .
Do you
think that this continues to be a problem?
Paul Hollander: Indeed, I primarily had Americans rather than Ger–
mans in mind. I think this is still continuing. The Communist ideas still
have a certain respectability which the bad things committed in their
name cannot entirely undermine. Some people say, "Isn't it wonderful
that the Soviet Union has collapsed, so now these ideas are no longer
tarnished by bad practice." I think that the matter applies to large seg–
ments of the intelligentsia. You mention Solzhenitsyn. A lot of hostility
to him had to do with the fact that he was evoking moral categories
and was prophetically condemning the people associated with Commu–
nism and the Soviet Union. A lot of Western intellectuals and opinion–
makers found this difficult to accept. I think that there remains an under–
lying reluctance to make a moral distinction between the Nazi and
Communist evils.
Carnes Lord: Thank you. Edith, I think you get the last word.
Edith Kurzweil: I just wanted to add something to Dr. Hollander's
point. Around
Partisan Review,
we frequently have had such experiences. I
organized a conference at Boston University in 1981; we brought to–
gether many of the dissidents, who then were living in Paris and Munich
and in different cities in America. Some still were afraid of the KGB, and
seemed, literally, paranoid. They attacked me during the first fifteen min–
utes we met, asking me unpleasantly, "Why did you bring us together?"
They were worried that they would be killed if they stayed in the same
hotel or took the same plane from Boston to New York. I had to ex–
plain that we admired their courage, and so on. Then they relaxed a bit.
Among the people in the audience, many did not quite believe what the
dissidents were saying. In the mid-1980s, I had a nineteen-year-old
woman from Russia as an au pair. She was a student at Wellesley Col–
lege, and when she told her roommates how things had been in Russia,
they accused her of being anti-Soviet, of not understanding what was
going on there. I could go on. This general view is pervasive - which, I
think, Paul Hollander was trying to convey.
Carnes Lord: Thank you all again, and I'd like to thank the panelists.
We will now adjourn, and there will be a reception at Alumni House,
which you are
all
welcome to attend.
