{"product_id":"2026100007277-secondhand-historys-carnival-a-dissidents-autobiography","title":"History's Carnival: A Dissident's Autobiography","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: repr.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Worn\/faded, no tears\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehind the Iron Curtain, one man dared to speak truth to power — and paid a devastating price. History's Carnival is the unflinching memoir of Leonid Plyushch, a Ukrainian mathematician and Soviet dissident who was arrested by the KGB, subjected to forced psychiatric detention, and ultimately expelled from the USSR, chronicling his extraordinary journey from idealistic communist youth to one of the most courageous voices of Soviet-era dissent. With a contribution from his wife Tatyana Plyushch and translated by Marco Carynnyk, the narrative moves with raw urgency through the machinery of Soviet repression, detailing the Kafkaesque horror of punitive psychiatry used as a political weapon against those who dared to dissent.\n\nPlyushch's account stands as a landmark document of Cold War-era human rights testimony, placing it alongside the great dissident literature of Solzhenitsyn and Ginzburg. His prose — even in translation — pulses with intellectual clarity and moral outrage, refusing sentimentality in favour of searing, precise observation. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, this autobiography is not merely a personal testament but an indictment of a system that sought to erase the very concept of individual conscience. For anyone seeking to understand how totalitarianism wages war on the human mind, this remains an essential and haunting read.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130979655899,"sku":"2026100007277-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/3a3743ec-d7ee-4773-aed0-d34f63a6dc16.png?v=1786593474","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100007277-secondhand-historys-carnival-a-dissidents-autobiography","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}