On April 19, 250,000 Indonesians paid public homage to the memory of Sutan Sjahrir, the Sumatra-born socialist leader of the early Indonesian Republic and its first premier. He had spent the last four years of his life as a prisoner …
At the 1950 meeting of the Catholic Press Association, the featured speaker of the program was a man at the peak of his influence—Senator Joseph McCarthy. When he was accorded a standing ovation only two people kept their seats, the …
Accused of distributing a 128-page pamphlet “detrimental to the interests of the Polish state and dealing with political and social relations in Poland,” over a dozen members of the Polish Communist party were arrested in Warsaw in April 1965.* In …
The state mental hospital system, which took shape in the late 19th century, was extravagantly heralded as a cheap and humane solution for the problem of mental illness. But this high hope proved unjustified: the mental hospital merely became a …
That Lionel Abel misinterpreted Peter Weiss’s Marat/ Sade is entirely forgiveable, though not a little pitiful considering the play’s straightforwardness and clarity of intention. But that Mr. Abel should have based a criticism of contemporary culture, more particularly of modern …
East Berlin, June 17, 1953: The workers’ uprising is seething in the streets; on stage, the “Boss”—artist and man of the theatre, a figure clearly modeled on Bertold Brecht—is rehearsing his new production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. At the close of …
Historically, it has been a basic premise for socialists that because the trade union constituency is composed of workers, unions must play a progressive role in society. This assumption was rarely challenged, especially since unions for many years did exercise …
The end of civilian rule in Nigeria, a country regarded as a happy exception to the trend toward one-party dictatorships in newly-independent countries, has far-reaching political implications. The popular Western version of Nigeria—a showplace of democracy in black Africa—was a …
The limiting case of the President’s generalization is the CIA’s enrollment in—or, perhaps, enrollment of—Michigan State University’s Vietnam project. In this extreme instance the university was used as a tool, though as a rule the academic community is handled more …
One supposes that when raw nerves are exposed there will be some sort of reaction. All too often such reactions are like the flailing of arms by a patient in a dentist’s chair. Mr. Simon behaves like the patient. Mr. …
In the 1930’s, when it became unwise—even dangerous—for Soviet historians to concern themselves with Russian revolutionary history, the custodianship of this profession passed to a dwindling group of emigres. The greatest representative of the exiled historiography is Boris I. Nicolaevsky …
On March 18, 1966, an Ad Hoc Commission on the Rights of Soviet Jews held a full day of hearings at which a series of expert academics and eyewitnesses testified. The Commission was chaired by Bayard Rustin and the other …
Since liberalism has a long agenda of needed action, it is crucial that we put the important items first, and not be diverted by imaginary bogiemen. Criers of alarm— notable among them Don Michael, Mary Alice Hilton, Robert Heilbroner, and …
It is a pleasure to be commended by George P. Elliot,* whose style is quite as good when he praises as when he is finding fault. Elliot finds this fault in my Maratl Sade piece: I went too far, he …
The modern world is full of things which, contrary to what we tend to think, have never been seen before today. It does not seem, for example, that the ancient world knew the disconcerting and, in some ways, terrifying phenomenon …
