Past Present Future· Staffel 20· Folge 276

Political Conversions: Communism – The God That Failed

Sonntag, 29. März 2026 · 56 min

MP3

Shownotes

In today’s episode David talks to political historian David Klemperer about a group of writers and other intellectuals who embraced and then renounced Communism before and during the Second World War. Was the pull of Communism really comparable to the experience of religious conversion? Why did so many who took up the faith at the start of the 1930s become disillusioned with it by the end of the decade? How did they justify their renunciation and what did it cost them? Why were writers and intellectuals so vulnerable to changing their minds?

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Next Time on Political Conversions: From Trotskyism to Neoconservatism

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