Joel E. Dimsdale— When I tell people I am interested in brainwashing, I get mixed responses. “Isn’t that kind of a stale, musty topic—Communists, bad science, and all that stuff?” That’s fair: brainwashing has some of those characteristics. It is an old phenomenon, linked to religious conversion and torture. It
Laurence Senelick— Only in societies where art and literature are taken so seriously are they regarded as potent and dangerous. The Soviet conviction that culture matters was evident in the attention paid to even minor details of theatrical activity by the highest levels of the state bureaucracy. Unilateral decisions by