AUDIO

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Paul Hollander of the Davis Center and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst will deliver the March Bradley Lecture.

Why did many well-known supporters of communist states become disillusioned with these systems and their ideals? How did disillusioned supporters in communist societies differ from those in the West? Why have some notable Western intellectuals resisted disillusionment with these ideals and ideologies? Paul Hollander explores these matters with special reference to political morality, a sense of identity, and the relationship between personal and political attributes and motives. Much of the information he will present was obtained from autobiographical and biographical sources, as well as interviews.

Paul Hollander grew up in Hungary, which he left following the defeat of the revolution of 1956. He taught at Harvard for five years and has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for thirty-two years. He has been an associate of the Russian Research Center at Harvard (currently Davis Center) since 1963. He is the author of numerous books, including Soviet and American Society (Oxford University Press, 1973), Political Pilgrims (Transaction Publishers, 1981), Anti-Americanism (Oxford University Press, 1992), Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism (Yale University Press, 1999), and The End of Commitment: Revolutionaries, Intellectuals, and Political Morality (Ivan R. Dee, 2006)