Austrian economists in the post-WWII intellectual culture they inhabit tend to emphasize the courage of Mises and Hayek in resisting the intellectual and scientific trends of their times and offering a bold alternative vision. But there are several other brave souls who bucked the culture to pursue truth and reveal the human tragedy that was unfolding before their eyes. Robert Conquest is one of these figures and his latest book, The Dragons of Expectations (Norton, 2004) explores the intellectual traps which prevented us from the seeing the tragic consequences of socialism and still prevents us from seeing the real challenges that we face in the world of human affairs.
When I was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford my office was located next to Robert Conquest's and we spoke almost daily. He gave the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment of the Humanities that year (1993), and in 2005 he won the Presidental Medal of Freedom, but Stanford's History Department has yet to let him teach a course to their students! On a personal note, Conquest is the classic gentlemen, never once did he exhibit any bitterness toward the world of ideas, and he did nothing but encourage young scholars like myself to work hard and pursue the truth as you see it. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to get to know him and to talk with him about the rise, practice, collapse and transition from socialism in the former Soviet Union.
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