Part 3/10:
Joan Chesneaux, a former communist defector, articulated a vital facet of this issue in his early 1950s work, "The Captive Mind." He challenged the prevailing view in the West that individuals succumbed to communism solely due to coercion. Instead, he pointed to a fundamental aspect of human nature—the longing for harmony and meaning. Post-war exhaustion pushed many Eastern Europeans toward the perceived promises of communism, not necessarily out of coercion but from a weariness of constant turmoil and a desire for a sense of belonging.