Antikomunistické manifesty - Čtyři knihy, které formovaly studenou válku – Fleming John V. (2024)

The subject of Fleming's well-researched and engaging work is a quartet of influential books that shaped the Cold War: Darkness at Noon (1940) by Hungarian journalist and intellectual Arthur Koestler, Out of the Dark (1941) by German sailor and labor activist Jan Valtin, I Chose Freedom (1946) by Soviet engineer Viktor Kravchenko, and Witness (1952) by American journalist Whittaker Chambers. All authors were orthodox communists whose bitter disillusionment led them to turn away from their ideology; all wrote emotional testimonies about this reversal. *********** John V. Fleming places the stories of these four books and their authors in a broad historical context from the 1930s to the 1950s and analyzes them in various contexts, from political science and literary criticism to psychology. He particularly highlights the almost fatal illusions of the left and partly liberal Western European public regarding Stalinism, communism, and the Soviet Union, especially after World War II, as well as a similar situation among the American public, mainly during the war. The danger of the influence of Stalinist communist parties in the West and their sympathizers was generally underestimated. In exposing the murderous and inhuman nature of the Soviet...