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Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society
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Review
"A horribly funny book...to be kept close at hand and reread whenever we are told of a land where...the human soul is re-engineered and human nature uplifted." —The Washington Post "Professor Hollander has produced a book of illumination which is to a high degree entertaining...[he] brings to his task a useful detachment." —Edward Crankshaw, The Observer (London) "An important and timely book that will be widely read, reread and debated for years." —William J. Wilson. University of Chicago
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About the Author
Paul Hollander is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and center associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. His books include Political Pilgrims, The Many Faces of Socialism, and Soviet and American Society: A Comparison.
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Product details
Paperback: 526 pages
Publisher: Transaction Publishers; 4 edition (January 1, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1560009543
ISBN-13: 978-1560009542
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.7 out of 5 stars
14 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,117,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
For almost a century, many public intellectuals as well as many other not-widely-known intellectuals have bashed America because they feel our society is unjust, but then turn right around and oddly praise and even go so far as to travel to some of the most squalid Communist and totalitarian regimes on the planet (regimes filled with people who, of course, would flee and move to the United States in half a heartbeat if given the chance). In "Political Pilgrims," author Paul Hollander examines this bizarre phenomemon at length.Hollander wrote the book in 1981 during the Cold War, so the focus is on the intellectuals' embrace of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Communist China during different eras in the twentieth century. During that time, far too many Western intellectuals were exceptionally harsh when viewing their own societies but were overindulgent and gave every benefit of the doubt to totalitarian regimes that almost no American would want to live in and whose problems (including most problems found in capitalist societies) were vastly worse.The author notes the traits of the intellectuals that led to their estrangement from Western societies, noting that since the West has become more secular, intellectuals actually have the hardest time adapting—they see a lack of purpose and meaning in capitalist societies and adopt socialism as almost a sort of quasi-religion in response. These "pilgrims" traveled to some of the worst societies on earth to look for alternatives to the West and suspended their critical faculties when they arrived, glossing over the political imprisonments and the suffering of ordinary people endemic to socialist societies (the pilgrims purported to be searching for a more equitable way of life, but the Communist regimes they visited were even more stratified than their native societies).Hollander notes that many of the intellectuals succumbed to the flattery of their totalitarian hosts on their visits, even though many were at least middle-aged (viz., old enough to be clear-eyed enough not to fall for that approach). This 1998 version of "Political Pilgrims" contains the prefaces of each version released (four in all). The book is a bit repetitive in places and the book could easily have been, say, 10 or 20 percent shorter. Nonetheless, it is a worthy read and considered a classic treatment of the spectacle of those who take undue interest and pleasure in evil societies while simultaneously loathing their own much better, if imperfect, societies.
Western intellectuals like to think of themselves as men and women of reason who are better than common people. Paul Hollander shows how easily intellectuals have been fooled into completely false analysis of totalitarian regimes. As he has documented the intellectuals are as gullible or more gullible than the average person since their judgment is based mostly on their own emotional longs which completely overwhelm their reason.
Hollander hits an important nail on its head. Many members of the intellectual left have a horrible track record of either excusing or turning a blind eye to the brutality of socialist dictators. As such, many twentieth century leftists served as apologists for evil socialist dictators. Of course, these same people have no difficulty finding fault with the US and UK. No problem in the West is too small to warrant condemnation in their eyes.The sad truth is that the vision of an egalitarian society has been romanticized and popularized. Even today there are some who defend and even promote the USSR. Hollander counters this nonsense with evidence. Unfortunately, there are still some ideologues to whom evidence means nothing. We need more scholars like Hollander.
Hollander does a fine job of describing the silliness of Western intellectuals and their infatuation with the Soviet and other communist systems. The only shortcoming was possibly the author's effort to be clinical and objective prevents him from driving home the point quite as firmly as he might have.
Hollander's background is that of a Hungarian exile and as any exile of Communism, he explored the exasperating mindset of many Westerners. This study is undertaken in far more detail due to Hollander's academic interests and yet, the ideas are not new but the depth of coverage is slightly better than previous works.David Caute explored the phenomenon somewhat in The Fellow Travelers but it is only Hollander who attempted an entire study of not just specific fellow travelers but to explore a generalized psychology of such people. Some basic ideas are given but sadly, the actual scope of the information is limited by a failure to connect to research carried out then and since on Narcissism. The two are closely linked and the connection must await another book.Hollander nonetheless presents a convincing argument for what he has managed to put forward but this still rests on far too few primary sources for me to feel entirely comfortable with the basis for his arguments as stated. Later study would seem to support him but the connections that could have been made in the later editions did not take advantage of new research regarding psychology or ameliorate the coverage of Communist hospitality.This is a fine academic or popular resource but it suffers from a lack of detailed sources (personal experience may be true but hardly citeable), repetition at points, and some excessive verbosity. Several anecdotes serve to illustrate well where his explanations are not as easy to digest. This is well worth purchasing but a certain cynicism will likely arise when dealing with idealists if the book is well read.
Beautifully written update of a classic.
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