Jacob Mikanowski

Czesław Miłosz’s 1953 book The Captive Mind made Ketman—a term originally derived from Islamic law, describing the duty of believers to conceal their true beliefs when threatened with persecution—a byword for the myriad strategies of self-effacement used by the inhabitants of the Soviet bloc. However, Miłosz did not come to this era-defining idea alone; a whole web of interlocutors and correspondents in the Polish diaspora helped him to formulate the concept, while a related network of readers, publishers, and government agencies spread his work across Cold War Europe. At the Institute, Jacob Mikanowski plans to extend his previous work on the publication and reception history of The Captive Mind by focusing on three distinct areas: the dissemination of The Captive Mind across the Iron Curtain through covert means; the use of ideological disguise by citizens of the Polish People’s Republic; and finally, the role of Kultura and its editors in inspiring Miłosz’s work and its reception among the journal’s readers.