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The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century — Transcript

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0:00Good afternoon and welcome to the Wilson
0:02Center. My name is Nida Gelazis. I'm
0:04senior associate for the European
0:05Studies program
0:07and I'm very happy to have a
0:10back with us today three three former
0:12scholars and one current scholar.
0:15So this is sort of a Wilson Center
0:17history and public policy reunion in in
0:20some sense.
0:22Christian Ostermann director of European
0:23studies and history and public policy
0:25regrets that he would he wouldn't be
0:26able to attend today the last minute so
0:28I'm pinch hitting for him
0:31and happy to do so. We're
0:34uh
0:34celebrating
0:36Vladimir Tismaneanu's latest book The
0:38Devil in History Communism Fascism and
0:40some lessons for the 20th of the 20th
0:42century. So we're very pleased to have
0:45you back today. Let me just quickly I
0:47think most of you are familiar with with
0:49all three of our speakers today but let
0:51me just quickly um
0:55present Vladimir Tismaneanu to you. He
0:57is the former he's a former Wilson
0:59Center fellow and professor of politics
1:01and director of the center for the study
1:03of post-communist studies
1:04societies at the University of Maryland
1:06in College Park. He's also the chairman
1:08of the presidential commission for the
1:10analysis of the communist dictatorship
1:12in Romania and the president of the
1:14scientific council of the Institute for
1:15the investigation of communist crimes in
1:17the memory of the Romanian exile.
1:21Was. Was. Okay.
1:23University of Maryland awarded him the
1:26distinguished scholar teacher award as
1:28well as the distinguished international
1:30service award. In addition to the book
1:32that we are going to discuss today
1:34Vladimir is also the author of numerous
1:35publications including the crisis of
1:38Marxist ideology in Eastern Europe the
1:40poverty of Utopia reinventing politics
1:42Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel
1:45Fantasies of salvation nationalism
1:47democracy and the myth of post-communist
1:49Europe Stalinism for all seasons a
1:51political history of a Romanian
1:53of Romanian communism Uh, which uh,
1:56incidentally was awarded the Barbara
1:57Yelavich Award by the American
1:59Association for the Advancement of
2:00Slavic Studies.
2:02Um,
2:04uh, most recently, uh, Vladimir was the
2:07author of The End and The End and The
2:09Beginning, The Revolutions of 1989 and
2:12The Resurgence of History and the and of
2:14course today's book, The Devil The Devil
2:17in History. Um, so let me turn the floor
2:19over to you and uh, we'll then hear from
2:21uh, Dennis Dell and Charles King.
2:24So, you have Okay.
2:25Okay, thank you very much. Thanks Neda,
2:28thanks Christian in absentia. Uh, thanks
2:32uh, those who during a
2:35very special day, uh, found the time uh,
2:39to come to the Woodrow Wilson Center for
2:40this uh, discussion on what I consider
2:44to be still very uh, very seminal
2:47issues. Uh, I should uh, start by simply
2:51saying that uh, this has been a
2:54uh, an enduring and uh, uh, quite
2:58uh, almost compulsive if you want uh,
3:00project for me.
3:01Uh, I've been uh, thinking about
3:04uh, the relationship between between
3:06what
3:07uh, a famous Polish writer once called
3:10Gemini Totalitari, the totalitarian
3:13twins. For practically all my uh, adult
3:17intellectual life. And uh, I think it
3:20remains one of the most
3:23uh, disturbingly
3:24uh, timely issues. After all, if I may
3:27start with a uh, reference to the
3:30recently passed away uh, historian Eric
3:33Hobsbawm, uh,
3:35and I'll probably share with you a few
3:38recollections about uh, Mr. Hobsbawm.
3:40Uh, he was right. He's not He was not
3:43the only one and we have at least two
3:45reviewers here of Hobsbawm's
3:47uh,
3:48life and works. We have Charles King who
3:50reviewed his memoirs in the in TLS and I
3:53have Ron Radosh who also wrote about
3:56Eric Hobsbawm. He was right in the age
3:58of extremes, I think, that indeed the
4:0020th century started with the
4:04the
4:06World War I and
4:08I would share with you my own
4:10recollection of the of the conference we
4:12had in Potsdam which was itself a
4:15emblematic for the problems that we
4:17discussed here. So, World War I started
4:22a new century. It was not the turn of
4:24the century but basically as Hobsbawm
4:26argued and I think he was right, it was
4:28the age of capitalism that basically
4:31lasted between
4:33or the age of liberal democracy or the
4:34age of imperialism or whatever you want
4:36to call it. Okay, revolutions and
4:38imperialists that lasted between the
4:39French Revolution and World War I and
4:41then you have the age of extremes that
4:43started with the with World War I and
4:47arguably ended with the revolutions of
4:511989-1991
4:54that basically
4:57ended or gave a closure to a certain
4:59cycle
5:01of European and global history. Some
5:04other historians would call it the long
5:06European Civil War that became a
5:09planetary war and here is not only Ernst
5:11Nolte but important authors like Sigmund
5:14Neumann, a German emigre who wrote about
5:16the globalization of Civil War in the
5:191930s so much earlier than Ernst Nolte.
5:23Okay. So, since I mentioned that
5:25conference where I spent quite a bit of
5:27time in conversations with with Eric
5:30Hobsbawm, it was quite interesting. The
5:32conference was organized and I'll go
5:33back into this was organized at the
5:36Einstein Forum in 2005 by two major
5:39scholars involved in European history,
5:42one of them and the other one interested
5:44in the problem of evil. The scholar
5:47interested in the problem European
5:49history was uh one of the three uh
5:52scholars to whom I dedicate this book
5:54The Devil in History and his name was of
5:56course Tony Judt. Uh, and I when I say
6:00of course because I think that Tony Judt
6:01was indeed a consummate European
6:03intellectual and uh emblematic as a
6:06historian of Europe uh for our times.
6:10The other person was Susan Neiman who
6:12runs the Einstein Forum in Potsdam and
6:14she wrote uh two books to the best of my
6:16knowledge on the problem of evil
6:17including the problem of radical evil.
6:19Among the participants in the in this
6:21conference in addition of course to I
6:24mentioned Eric Hobsbawm, Tony Judt,
6:25Susan Neiman, among the participants in
6:27the conference should have been but he
6:30couldn't make it a Spanish writer and
6:33former leader of one of the leaders of
6:34the Spanish Communist Party. I have in
6:36mind Jorge Semprún. Uh, Jorge Semprún uh
6:40that's how you know of course the name
6:42uh passed away last year.
6:44Uh, he was a uh uh came from an
6:47intellectual Spanish Communist uh well,
6:49his father was actually socialist uh
6:51family. As a young man he studied after
6:53the end of the Spanish Civil War he
6:55studied philosophy in France, joined the
6:57French Resistance, was deported to
6:58Buchenwald and wrote one of the most
7:00impressive books about Buchenwald is
7:03called The Long Voyage translated into
7:04English as A Long Journey.
7:06Uh, Semprún became a member of the
7:08Politburo of the Spanish Communist Party
7:10and you can read uh
7:12the translation of his book about his
7:14experience there. He was one of those
7:16who uh in a way or another discovered
7:18The God That Failed a little bit later
7:21and he wrote a book which is called in
7:22French the L'Autobiographie de Federico
7:24Sánchez in translated into English
7:26Communists in Spain during the times of
7:28Franco.
7:29Uh, he couldn't make it uh or at least
7:31that appeared that he couldn't make it.
7:33Probably he had problems that I didn't
7:35realize
7:36uh because among the participants was a
7:38person with the name Markus Wolf. Now
7:40some of you remember this uh gentleman's
7:43name, Uh, Markus or Misha Wolf, who was
7:46himself coming from a very famous German
7:48communist family and whose father was a
7:52doctor and and so and so forth. Okay,
7:54and the writer Friedrich Wolf. And Misha
7:57Wolf grew up in Moscow at the same place
8:01together with Wolfgang Leonhard, the
8:03author of Child of the Revolution. Then
8:06there is a wonderful chapter in Anne
8:07Applebaum's new book about the
8:10establishment or the takeover of radio
8:13in
8:14the Soviet zone of occupation.
8:16Now, I think this is absolutely
8:18fantastic because the first thing the
8:20Soviets did when they occupied Berlin,
8:22first of all, they made sure that the
8:24radio building would not be bombed. That
8:27was very important. The second thing is
8:28they occupied immediately. They brought
8:30a team from Moscow, Leonhard including
8:32and Misha Wolf, and they fired only the
8:35broadcasters who were particularly nasty
8:38Nazis, very few. I mean, they're all of
8:40them Nazi Party members, but very few
8:42were really very very vocal. So,
8:44therefore, those were fired.
8:47And then the operation continued, but
8:48this time as a communist propaganda
8:50operation with the same voices, the same
8:52speakers, etc., etc. Okay. So,
8:56so Misha Wolf was there and I watched
8:58him very carefully because he for me
9:00embodied some of the problems that I was
9:02dealing with when I started working on
9:04this project. By the way, I want to
9:06thank the Woodrow Wilson Center as as
9:09warmly as I can for offering me the
9:11possibility when I was a fellow here. I
9:13was working on two projects at that
9:15moment, but this took me over, so to so
9:17so to speak, seized my passion. And
9:21so I consider it very much as a result
9:23the book a result of my time at the
9:25Woodrow Wilson Center. As a fact, I went
9:28upstairs before coming here and I
9:30offered a copy for the library. Okay.
9:32So,
9:34so I
9:36at that conference we discussed and
9:37among the participants were Jan Gross
9:39and Timothy Snyder and other people who
9:41are very well known for their work on
9:43this topic. So, that conference I was
9:45very interested in how Markus Wolf is
9:47going to deal the the title of the
9:49conference was open wounds. Uh, so we
9:52deal with the problem of open wounds.
9:53So, and I personally would challenge the
9:57Hobsbawmian, let's say, approach and I
9:58would say that actually the 20th century
10:00is not over. So, if the 20th century is
10:03not over, we are discussing problems
10:05that belong to the 20th century that
10:07clearly spill over into the 21st
10:09century. So, I don't think this is a
10:11history book that I'm presenting that I
10:13wrote and that my distinguished
10:15colleagues are going to comment upon
10:17after I finish my 30 minutes
10:20designated time. Okay, so the book is
10:23basically, I think, very much a book
10:26about the 21st century
10:28and trying if you want, I don't want to
10:32go into the scene of
10:34of im- modest modesty as as Jan Plamper
10:38nicely called Stalin's behavior. Okay,
10:41so but I would simply say that I don't
10:44claim to have the lessons of the that
10:46was the initial title and then I
10:47realized that was hubris. I mean, to say
10:50that I know the lessons of the 20th
10:52century that's really that means I would
10:53be God or the devil. Okay, so
10:58the first thing I want to say, the title
11:00and then I'll go a little bit into some
11:02some thesis of the book that probably
11:04Charles and Dennis are going to
11:06highlight better than the author can do.
11:08The title is very much inspired and is
11:11actually used with the permission of the
11:12late
11:14Leszek Kołakowski. One of the texts that
11:16impressed me the most in Kołakowski's
11:19immense and immensely instructive work
11:22was an interview that he gave to George
11:25Urban. George Urban served for many
11:26years as director of Radio Free Europe.
11:28He
11:29was a philosopher, journalist and then
11:32political scientist, a very, very bright
11:34man. I say it was because I'm not sure
11:36that he's still alive. I hope he is.
11:38Okay, but anyway, so I the I used this
11:41term, and then I found several essays by
11:44Kołakowski that inspired me very much.
11:46As a matter of fact, this morning I
11:47received a message from somebody, uh who
11:50brought to my attention that there is a
11:51book published in the 19th century,
11:54probably in 1870, with the title The
11:56Devil in History. And uh it's about uh
12:00yes, it's called Satan's Steps in
12:02History, and looking at world history as
12:05the domain of the devil. Uh this is very
12:07Hegelian, if you want, because in Hegel,
12:10if you look into Hegel's uh philosophy
12:12of history, history basically advances
12:14through its uh through the wrong side,
12:16through the dark pages. Eventually, of
12:19course, there is a redemption at the
12:20end, because there is an end of history,
12:23and all and then we find out uh that
12:26reason needed the sec- sacrifices in
12:29with its cunning, with its developing
12:31history, uh and that's the reason to
12:34quote Hegel in the philosophy of
12:35history. That's the reason uh Alexander
12:37had to die of uh I don't know, typhus,
12:40and then uh Jesus had to be crossed, and
12:43Napoleon had to die in Saint Helena.
12:45Okay, because history had to achieve its
12:48goals.
12:49Uh so, I tried to understand what is the
12:51province, what is this working of devil
12:54in history. Uh and the first thing I
12:56tried reading Kołakowski was to say to
12:58to I was wondering whether he's uh using
13:00a metaphor. Uh after all, Kołakowski was
13:03a very ironical writer, and he was a you
13:06know, not only a great philosopher, but
13:07he was also a very gifted writer, you
13:09know, fiction writer, including fiction
13:11writer. Uh so, uh parables and stuff
13:13like that. Okay, so, very Kafka-like
13:15parables. Okay. So, I I I I was
13:18interested whether he meant it as a
13:19metaphor or an allegory or a parable or
13:22whatever else.
13:24Uh and uh guess what? Uh he said very
13:26clearly, "No." Uh
13:28my generation, our generation,
13:30experienced the presence of devil in
13:32history.
13:33And then I realized that and as a matter
13:36of fact in this interview and other
13:37writings, Kolakowski says the following.
13:39Uh there are two devils in my account.
13:41First, history's stubborn inclination to
13:44frustrate and reverse human ambition.
13:48That's one thing and the second, Marx's
13:50chimerical utopian notion that the
13:53revolutionary movement of the world
13:54proletariat will somehow abolish all
13:57ideological, social, and economic
13:59contradiction of past society and usher
14:01in the golden age. So, this is
14:04basically, if you want, diabolical
14:06hubris or diabolical, uh to use the Mark
14:10Lilla's
14:11uh term,
14:12uh
14:13diabolical
14:14recklessness or whatever the best term
14:16for this would be. Okay, so this is the
14:20the title. Uh
14:21why do I bring together communism and
14:23fascism? Having uh
14:25been fully aware
14:27uh during my
14:29uh
14:30year, almost a year I spent in Paris in
14:32uh 19
14:3481 to 1982,
14:37uh I didn't have much money and I didn't
14:39but I have plenty of time at that
14:41moment. So, I attended some of the
14:43wonderful last series of lectures by
14:45Raymond Aron at uh at the I think it was
14:49the College de France.
14:50Okay, so at that uh moment,
14:53uh I remember because that's the moment
14:54when Raymond Aron publicly made a
14:57statement, not in front of me, but I
14:58read some of his and you can find it in
15:00his memoir, Spectateur Engagé or I don't
15:03know how it's translated into English,
15:04Engaged Spectator. Okay, uh in Aron's
15:07memoir, he said, "For many years in my
15:09life, I protested the attempts to put to
15:13bring together to put under the same
15:14umbrella communism and fascism." And the
15:16argument, let's call it the
15:18intentionality argument, was that
15:20communism has, Aron says,
15:22A very different intentions. It has a
15:25humanist intention or at least it can be
15:27claimed to be a humanist intention,
15:29while national socialist fascism in
15:31general
15:32does not have it. Uh
15:35now by the end of my career, I think I
15:37was wrong, says Arendt. And he basically
15:40elaborate on that. So I that's one thing
15:42that is very puzzling. Why the
15:44reluctance of the people, so it was it's
15:46it's a it's a question I have and I try
15:48to respond to it in the book. Why there
15:51is this reluctance of people to accept
15:54uh the very comparability.
15:57I don't speak here about, please don't
15:59misunderstand me. I never say in the
16:00book and I I can quote a lot from the
16:03book that the two systems, ideological
16:05systems or to use another term,
16:07ideocratic systems,
16:09uh praise be the memory of Martin Malia,
16:12uh okay, the two ideocracies or the two
16:15actually Malia used the term ideocratic
16:17partocracies because they were at the
16:19same time par- that party with Ryan's
16:21supreme and so on. The two systems are
16:24in many respects similar. For me, the
16:27more I started to look into that, the
16:29more surprised I was why this
16:30reluctance. Why this is a reluctance and
16:32there was no problem, for instance, for
16:34people like the great, probably one of
16:36greatest Russian novelists of all times
16:38and definitely one of the greatest of
16:40the 20th century, Vasily Grossman in his
16:42Life and Fate, the novel that I'm sure
16:45many people here read, uh he doesn't
16:47have this problem. Uh if you go into the
16:50great movie The Pianist, uh
16:53Polanski's movie, okay? So you have the
16:54diary of the Nazi officer, the guy who
16:57saves basically Szpilman in the film,
17:00and the text was published. This is a
17:01guy who was a um
17:04German officer who was not a committed
17:07Nazi. Actually, he was an educator, he
17:09was a teacher, high school teacher, and
17:10his diary basically discovers the
17:14similarity, to say it to put it very,
17:17very mildly, between the two. Okay. So,
17:21simply put, since I don't have more than
17:2210 minutes, I suspect. Okay, so I'll
17:25give you a few thesis about the book and
17:27then I'll listen very carefully to what
17:29the two commentators, who are both of
17:31them
17:33very highly regarded scholars and I
17:35thank them very much for coming here,
17:38have to say. So, first and the first
17:42thing. Okay, so why did I write this
17:43book? I wrote I wrote this book because
17:45I am a little bit tired of the
17:48uh
17:49attempts to dismiss the totalitarian
17:52paradigm, presenting
17:54you know, basically caricaturing it,
17:56turning into what it it never was or at
17:59least it never was in Hannah Arendt's
18:00writings. It never was in the great
18:03German emigre wave writings of people
18:05who had experienced it first first first
18:08hand,
18:10uh they the German experience. It would
18:12never was a
18:14uh caricature in, let's say, the great
18:17testimony that somebody like a survivor
18:20of both uh of both concentration camp
18:23systems, of both the Soviet one and the
18:25Nazi one, like the German writer and and
18:29witness who was Margarete Buber-Neumann.
18:32I mean, after all, she wrote a book
18:34which is called Under Two Dictators. I
18:36mean, and she was first arrested in the
18:39Soviet Union in the Great Purge,
18:41uh sent to
18:43uh to to Siberia, to the Gulag. And I
18:46try to avoid technical names and so on,
18:48sent to the Gulag and then after the
18:50signing of the
18:52uh of the pact in August 1939,
18:55basically together with other German
18:56communists, she was transported
18:59uh to an unknown destination and the
19:01unknown destination happened to be
19:03Ravensbruck.
19:05Okay, in which she basically shared at a
19:07certain moment her uh her uh barrack
19:10with Milena Jesenska, Kafka's friend,
19:13and actually she a wonderful book years
19:15later, which is called My Friend Milena
19:17Jesenska, who died in the concentration
19:19camp. And to say something about Milena
19:21Jesenska, those of you who know about
19:22EVM in Vienna, the Institute for the
19:25whatever it's called, for the Sciences
19:27of Man,
19:28know that there is a very famous
19:30fellowship for journalism in Vienna,
19:33which is the Milena Jesenska fellowship.
19:36And Milena Jesenska was a left-wing, she
19:39was Kafka's great love. Okay? So, the
19:41letters to Milena belong to the best in
19:43the history of 20th century literature.
19:46Okay? So, Milena Jesenska in 1939, when
19:49the pact was signed, was among those who
19:51said, "Basically, this is the end of any
19:53illusion I can have about these two
19:56monsters." Okay? So, there were people,
19:58there were lots of people basically, uh
20:00who understood
20:02uh what these two systems had in common.
20:04So, they represented two types of
20:06totalitarianism. I make an argument that
20:08we have to uh somehow revisit the
20:11totalitarian paradigm, and without
20:13making it turning into an absolute,
20:15because I think that there are points in
20:17the critiques of totalitarianism that
20:19have to be taken to account,
20:21uh especially the diachronic component
20:23of totalitarianism. That means the
20:26temporal component, the fact that
20:27totalitarian model was never frozen
20:30completely. So, I don't remember who
20:32said it, but said it very well. So, let
20:34take it I think it's Adam Michnik who
20:36said it. There's never a completely, or
20:38maybe Hannah Arendt, but it doesn't
20:40matter who is the author of this, but I
20:41think it's a perfect description.
20:43There's only one perfect totalitarian
20:46universe, and that's called the
20:47concentration camp. The concentration
20:50camp is the fully full-fledged,
20:52otherwise it's always imperfect
20:54totalitarianism.
20:55And, you know, even under Nazi, you
20:58know, the Nazi regime, it was imperfect.
21:00Even in Romania under Ceausescu, it was
21:02imperfect totalitarianism. Even in
21:03Romania under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in
21:05in 1950s, it was still imperfect. There
21:07were still things that the totalitarians
21:10wanted to achieve. The problem is the
21:13intention. Intentionally,
21:15totalitarianism was overwhelming and
21:19all-pervasive. That's the key element.
21:22Okay. Both were so communism and fascism
21:24for me represent two types of
21:26totalitarianism. Both were tested in
21:27Eastern Europe during the most violent
21:29and by Eastern Europe here I also mean
21:32uh the Soviet Union. So, the whole
21:33region. So, if you want to use Timothy's
21:36Timothy Snyder's uh term, in the
21:38bloodlands. Okay? So, uh brutal century
21:42recorded in human history. The legacies
21:44of these ideologies, movements, and
21:46regimes continue, I think, to
21:49uh haunt collective memory. So, we're uh
21:51just because of the
21:53uh the the work of memory has not come
21:56to an end. The debate around, for
21:59instance, the Prague Declaration, which
22:00was adopted uh it's very very
22:02interesting that those who criticize the
22:04Prague Declaration, which was adopted in
22:062009, if I'm not uh
22:09wrong, uh about unifying the two
22:11European memories and bringing together
22:14the memory of national socialism or
22:15fascism and the memory of communism,
22:18which by the way they had to change the
22:19term into the memory of Stalinism, which
22:21is completely wrong historically,
22:23because
22:24uh there were horrible massacres that
22:26took place under Lenin and this is fully
22:28documented today. But, okay, I
22:30understand the pressure, so they changed
22:31it to the memory of Stalinism, you know,
22:3310 years of Soviet experience were all
22:35obliterated easily from the memory,
22:37again. Okay. So, but the people say
22:39always it's very convenient to say that
22:41uh and I had some arguments on BBC and
22:43so on. I don't want to give names
22:44because they are not present here and
22:46it's not fair to criticize because they
22:49said, "Oh, this is the declaration that
22:50those Lithuanian and Latvians and so on
22:53put together and so on, but they are all
22:55nostalgics of national socialism." Uh to
22:58which I said, "First of all, the only
22:59Lithuanian, to the best of my knowledge,
23:01who was an author of the Prague
23:03Declaration, was President Vytautas
23:05Landsbergis, ex-president. He was not a
23:07nostalgic or national socialist,
23:09emphatically I said. Second, the two
23:12other persons who authored the Prague
23:14Declaration, the first signatories was
23:16Václav Havel and Joachim Gauck.
23:19So, the former president of the Czech
23:21Republic, a hero of East European
23:24descent, and a person whom nobody could
23:27suspect of any kind of nostalgia for
23:29either Stalinism, Leninism, or national
23:32socialism. And Joachim Gauck, who is the
23:34current president of Germany, and who
23:36was a dissident priest in East Germany,
23:39and who doesn't have any kind of
23:40nostalgia for either national socialism
23:42and so on. So, this what I'm trying to
23:44say is these are not simply arcane and
23:47obsolete issues. They continue to be
23:50part of the public discourse in Europe
23:53and not only in Europe.
23:56So,
23:57uh
23:58this would be a major point that I
24:00wanted to make. Second, both communism
24:02and fascism, the way I discussed them
24:04and there's a whole chapter here about
24:05in the book, both fascism and communism
24:08were purifying utopias. Both were
24:11expressions of what I would call uh
24:14millenarian, to use a easier term, or if
24:16you Sorry, this is a book that uses a
24:18lot of theological language and I had to
24:20go into that. Okay? So, I had to train
24:23myself into both theology and
24:24meta-theology
24:26So, basically, and to go to some of the
24:28great books I'm I was very pleased that
24:30I had to discover books by Norman Cohn
24:32and so on and so forth. So, I went into
24:34the classics of the '50s and so on. So,
24:36it was a very rewarding experience, I
24:38can tell you. Okay? So, both were
24:40expressions of chiliastic hubris, of
24:43anti-systemic outbursts of frustration.
24:45And here's a key word that I'm using and
24:48I try to develop. So, what kind of book?
24:50It's not a classic history book. I was
24:52extremely
24:53uh gratified to have a review in Times
24:56Higher Education written by one of the
24:58greatest historians of our times, who
25:00made sure to emphasize it's not a
25:01history book.
25:03Uh it's a political philosophical book.
25:04I mean Richard Overy,
25:06uh who is the author of the book
25:07Dictators. And so, you know, I was And
25:09it's was one of the cleanest
25:11uh reviews because, you know, I was I
25:13was very scared when I said, "Okay, how
25:15is Overy going to react to to that?" And
25:17it was a a very very interesting review.
25:19Both were, to use the term of a great uh
25:22scholar of fascism, those were movements
25:24of re birth or movements of uh revival
25:27or revivalist movements or movements of
25:29regeneration. Both saw the world as
25:31decadent, as decaying, as degenerate.
25:34And they used these terms specifically,
25:37and therefore the issue was to redeem
25:39humanity. How to redeem humanity? So,
25:41basically, one had a uh redemptive
25:44sociology, the other one had a
25:46redemptive biology. Okay? So, I'm using
25:49here I'm hinting to Saul Alfred Landers'
25:52uh explanation of Nazi anti-Semitism as
25:55redemptive anti-Semitism. This is his
25:58uh his term, and I think it's a very
26:00appropriate. Okay. Uh both were uh and
26:05here I pay tribute to one of the great
26:07inspira- source of inspiration for my
26:09own work, uh the late French historian
26:11François Furet. Uh okay? So, I took from
26:14from Furet in conversations I had with
26:16him on these issues.
26:17Uh I took both uh these two
26:20um
26:21ideologies and movements as as um
26:25uh fundamentally pathologies of
26:27modernity. So, uh I know, pathology is
26:30already I I it's normative. I buy it's I
26:33pass a value judgment, which I take
26:35responsibility for for. So, one was
26:38basically an universalistic pathology of
26:41modernity, and the other one was a
26:42particularistic. That's a theme that I
26:45borrowed from François Furet, whom, of
26:47course, I uh quote. Both had some
26:50relationship to the enlightenment and
26:53the enlightenment is a key element in
26:55discussing. Both were reactions to the
26:57enlightenment. Communism was a reaction
26:59pretending to fulfill enlightenment and
27:02fascism was fundamentally a reaction
27:05against enlightenment. It was the
27:06culmination of what Isaiah Berlin called
27:09a project of counter enlightenment.
27:12Another element which is extremely
27:13important for our discussion here is
27:16that both tried and this is very
27:18important for what the situation our
27:20situation or they'll say this to use
27:22Karl Jaspers' famous title, the
27:24spiritual situation of our times. Both
27:28tried to transcend what we call
27:30democratic capitalist liberal values.
27:32That's the that's a fact and that
27:35defines both movements to the surprise
27:37of many people and that's the way I
27:38approach them as revolutionary
27:40movements.
27:41Hitler was a revolutionary. I don't want
27:43to discuss here left and right.
27:45Because there are elements of the left
27:46in Hitler's project and there are
27:48elements the second person that I
27:50dedicate my book in addition to Tony
27:51Judt, the second person I dedicate the
27:54book is there are three of them. So one
27:57is Judt, one is Kolakowski and one is
27:59Robert C. Tucker. In his extraordinary
28:03unsurpassed Stalin biography
28:05unfortunately unfinished Stalin
28:06biography in the second volume of the
28:08Stalin biography, Robert C. Tucker who
28:10was my personal mentor so to speak or
28:12not so to speak to confess. Okay, so
28:15Robert C. Tucker discussed the concept
28:17of Bolshevism of the far right.
28:20And he discovered in Stalin's Bolshevism
28:23during the last stage of Stalin's life
28:26basically the resurgence of topics,
28:28themes, motives and obsessions that
28:30belonged to the Russian far right in the
28:33pre-Bolshevik
28:35pre-revolutionary times. So both were
28:38and this is an important element and I
28:40discuss extensively revolutionary
28:42anthropological projects. Both tried
28:44very hard to propose a vision of a um
28:49new human condition. And the price for
28:52this, to achieve this new human
28:54condition, would never be too high.
28:56Because this is such an extraordinary uh
28:58goal
28:59that fundamentally and eventually would
29:02sanctify somehow and would
29:05uh redeem basically all the huge
29:07sacrifices that were made in order to
29:10achieve it. Neither of national
29:12socialism nor communism, in its Marxist
29:16or any of other incarnations, we speak
29:18about modern communism, not about
29:19Plato's communism. Okay, or whatever
29:21Campanella's communism, uh okay. Neither
29:24of them had economic purposes as the
29:27chief purposes. Economy was a a means to
29:31achieve an end. Obviously, it was
29:33important, but it was a means. The years
29:36ago, uh three students of Georg Lukács,
29:39who broke with Lukács uh at a certain
29:41moment or posthumously, Ágnes Heller,
29:44Ferenc Fehér, her husband, and György
29:46Markus wrote a book which was called
29:48dictatorship over needs. The issue was
29:50to control human needs. That's the
29:52reason you establish a command economy.
29:55It's not because you are in love with
29:57command economy. The command economy is
29:59subordinated to the ideological goals of
30:02the system.
30:03This is the key element. People will
30:05say, "How about China uh today?" Uh all
30:08the market-oriented reforms in China, as
30:11we have seen from the fate of
30:14uh Xi
30:16Jinping or laws, whatever his name is,
30:18uh are reversible.
30:20All of them are based on state control
30:23over land and properties. So, yes, you
30:27have market incentives and so on, but
30:30when the party-state decides to step in,
30:33it can step in and change everything
30:35overnight. So, China, for me, it's still
30:38in the stage of post-totalitarianism,
30:41obviously. It It's a much more
30:44pluralized space than totalitarianism,
30:46but it's not by any stretch of the
30:48imagination a plural society. Okay. So,
30:52since I come to to the end, okay?
30:55Uh
30:56totalitarianism, what does it mean? So,
30:58how do I see it? I see it first of all
31:00as a an ideology. The key elements So,
31:02my question here it how was how was it
31:05possible?
31:06How was it possible? And the answer is
31:07it was possible because because large
31:10human beings under certain
31:12social, moral, political conditions can
31:15get intoxicated with ideology or
31:17inebriated with ideology. I think the
31:20key answer to this is, let's say, the
31:22ideological inebriation or the
31:25ideological opiate or the whatever to
31:27use Aron's famous term famous term. So,
31:29this is the reason I dedicated to these
31:31three persons because I think that
31:33ideology, basically, what does is not
31:35simply uh radical I don't mean any
31:37ideology. I don't speak here about, you
31:39know, kind of banal ideologies. I speak
31:41about uh I remember the late German
31:44political scientist for many years uh
31:46president of the LSE, London School of
31:48Economics, Ralf Dahrendorf said
31:49liberalism a cold project. Fascism and
31:52communism are warm projects.
31:54And they are warm. I mean, they make
31:55people
31:57palpitate, okay? So, they make the you
31:59know, the the the heart
32:01uh I don't know to say how to put it get
32:03warm and bleed. Okay? So, uh that's
32:06that's what makes them. So, both of them
32:09symbolize the sacralization of history,
32:11the celebration of an absorbing
32:13totality, be it the messianic
32:15proletarian class to be to be sacralized
32:19or the Aryan race or the Italian nation
32:23with its roots in in
32:25in the Latin
32:28let's say imperial age and so on and so
32:32forth. So, to conclude,
32:34comparing does not mean obfuscating the
32:36difference, but on the contrary
32:38highlighting them as as well as shared
32:42features.
32:43Uh I totally agree with what Tim Snyder
32:46once said that those who reject the
32:50comparison
32:51are already engaged in a comparison.
32:54Uh by simply rejecting the legitimacy of
32:57the comparison, you engage in a
32:59comparison. Okay? You say something
33:01about your own values, okay? Because
33:03comparing does not mean identifying does
33:07not mean con- forgetting the
33:09differences. And I always say, and it's
33:11one of the things that I've always
33:13thought about and with this I'll finish
33:15as I promised. Uh
33:18and there are two of my students,
33:19probably more, but two students here. I
33:21always emphasize that I say that the
33:23most important political document of the
33:2520th century uh obviously it's Mein
33:28Kampf, obviously it's
33:30State and Revolution by Lenin, but in
33:32terms of its effects, immediate effects
33:34was Khrushchev's secret speech at the
33:3620th Party Congress in February 1956.
33:39I remember having given a talk here on
33:41the 50th anniversary. Okay.
33:44Uh
33:44so
33:46uh
33:47for me
33:48I always said this is the way communism,
33:51you know, that came to power, came to
33:52the world by word, perished by word.
33:55Uh
33:56I'm not going to go into details.
33:58Kołakowski once said this is the moment
34:00when millions of true believers were
34:03told that he who had been celebrated as
34:06the greatest scientist, greatest
34:07linguist, greatest mathematician,
34:09greatest you name, you know, strategist,
34:11etc. etc. etc. turned out to be nothing
34:13but a
34:15uh genocidal sociopath. Okay? That's
34:18something shocking, okay? Some people
34:21committed suicide. They were run out of
34:23steam. The divorces of the 20th Congress
34:25and so on and so forth. Now, my
34:27question, and with this I'll finish, and
34:29I address it a little bit in the book.
34:31Could one imagine, and this is the
34:33beginning of a major difference
34:35between the two.
34:37Because I compare and then I contrast.
34:39Could one imagine
34:41that assuming Germany had won
34:44the war,
34:46uh
34:47and out of Hitler would have died in
34:491953.
34:51And Martin Bormann would have been
34:54uh elected
34:56Führer
34:57or anointed, better said, Führer.
35:00Uh in 1956, could one imagine the
35:02equivalent of the 20th Congress of the
35:04National Socialist
35:06Workers' Party of Germany
35:08in which Party Genosse Bormann
35:11to deplore
35:13the great violations of National
35:15Socialist legality
35:17overcoming the great traditions of the
35:20original doctrine that had been betrayed
35:22somehow by Hitler in the second part of
35:24his life, of course, not in the first,
35:26because initially he was a good Nazi,
35:28but then he became paraphrasing
35:30Khrushchev.
35:31Uh
35:32it's an open question. I think that's
35:35very hard to imagine such a thing.
35:37Because communism always had, and this
35:39is and here lies the problem. Communism
35:42had always had a refuge to go back to
35:46into something which was pure and
35:48humanist and intentionally good. The
35:51problem is, and here we go back into the
35:54meta-theology, to the
35:57philosopher who was
35:59that's what my friends, who are
36:00Dostoevsky scholars, say was the
36:02inspiration for Dostoevsky when he wrote
36:04uh The Brothers Karamazov, Vladimir
36:06Solovyov was the inspiration for Alyosha
36:08Karamazov. Uh Vladimir Solovyov said the
36:10problem is not
36:12uh that the devil
36:15uh abolishes the distinction between
36:18good and evil. The problem is that the
36:21devil falsifies good.
36:24And this is what I want to Thank you.
36:27THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
36:32NEXT WE'LL HEAR FROM UH DENNIS DENET WHO
36:35WAS A former senior scholar with the
36:36Cold War International History Project
36:38here at the Wilson Center and he's
36:39currently the visiting Jan Ratiu
36:41Professor of Romanian Studies at
36:43Georgetown University and
36:45Emeritus Professor of Romanian Studies
36:47at the School of Slavonic and East
36:49European Studies at the University
36:50College in London. I give you the floor.
36:52Well, thank you Neda and I'd like to
36:55thank the Woodrow Wilson Center for
36:57giving me an opportunity to return uh
36:59here to talk about Vladimir's uh most
37:02perceptive study. Um
37:05Vladimir has already admitted that his
37:08book is really a book about ideas uh and
37:11not about historical or specific
37:14historical events. I myself need to
37:16admit that I'm not a political scientist
37:18or I don't see myself as one. I'm rather
37:21a historian and that is the spirit in
37:24which I'll offer my observations on
37:27Vladimir's book. Uh Vladimir's already
37:30said that he owes much in treating this
37:33subject to
37:35uh Ernst Nolte and Francois Furet.
37:38Again, their approach to the genealogy
37:41of the two movements of fascism and
37:43communism is much more historically
37:45based than
37:46uh Vladimir's own
37:48ideological, one might say, approach to
37:51the comparisons and contradictions
37:54between communism and fascism.
37:58Um I'd like to make uh seven or eight
38:00points and the first is that
38:03uh I'm going to quote from Vladimir
38:05himself. He writes, "Marxism as a
38:08political idea was a failure from the
38:09beginning because of its lack of
38:11sensitivity to the psychological makeup
38:14of mankind and because it underestimates
38:17the needs of many for deep spiritual or
38:20cultural sources of meaning, and thus
38:23the profound importance of the human
38:25right to privacy. That last uh part of
38:28the sentence, I think, is particularly
38:31important when we're looking at the
38:32impact of totalitarian regimes on
38:35society. This intrusion of both uh
38:39communism and fascism into the daily
38:41lives of people. And of course, it's no
38:44accident that both types of ideology,
38:47both types of regime had formidable
38:50secret police forces, which reside uh
38:53which relied very much on instilling
38:56fear into the population. Um fear is a
38:59great labor-saving device. And of
39:02course, we know from access to uh Soviet
39:05documents and the documents of uh
39:08fascist regimes, such as those in
39:09Romania, that the police relied on
39:12hordes of informers to make their work a
39:15lot easier. Um indeed, there are many
39:18Gestapo reports from Dresden, for
39:21example, from 1937-38, where officers
39:23actually say, "Isn't it great that we
39:26get so many denunciations from our
39:28fellow citizens? Uh we can take some
39:30time off this afternoon, for example."
39:33Um so, that's one point I'd like to
39:36make, which um
39:37Vladimir alludes to, I think, in his
39:39book, but perhaps could have developed
39:41uh a little more. The The second point
39:44was that,
39:46although Vladimir says that all fascists
39:48shared a common uh common bond in the
39:50idea of leadership, their abhorrence of
39:53liberalism and belief in
39:54ultranationalism,
39:56um perhaps he could have said more, I
39:58think, about what exactly German and
40:01Italian fascism
40:03uh had in common, or how different their
40:05were worldviews were. Um
40:09we know, of course, that Mussolini had
40:11little interest in racial theory, that
40:15the position of Jews in Italy was
40:18certainly easier, one might say than in
40:20Nazi Germany, and anti-Semitism did not
40:24reach the intensity that it did.
40:27Uh
40:27That is, anti-Semitism anti-Semitism in
40:29Italy didn't reach the intensity that it
40:31did in Nazi Germany.
40:34Um German National Socialism, I would
40:37say, although similar to Italian Fascism
40:40Fascism was marked markedly different to
40:43it.
40:44Uh National Socialism's ideology saw the
40:46party's role as corporately giving and
40:49demanding unconditional loyalty to the
40:52Führer, not only as the source of the
40:54party's ideology, but also as the
40:57embodiment of the people. And the
40:59function of the ideology was to
41:01establish the absolute authority of the
41:03Führer as the incarnation of the spirit
41:06of the German people.
41:08It was not to maintain constitutional
41:11law or practices. The German citizen was
41:14subordinated to this machine, and this
41:17machine to the party, the party to the
41:19Führer, and the Führer to his own demon.
41:23The Nazis tapped every hidden mental
41:26disposition in the German people's
41:28collective psyche
41:29that could be used to shore up their
41:31contention that Hitler and National
41:33Socialism represented Germany's deepest
41:36wishes.
41:38The Nazi Party was the institutionalized
41:40expression of the sovereign will, but
41:42the party did not claim to be sovereign.
41:45It claimed only to be the vehicle by
41:47which that will became reality.
41:50And with its emphasis on spontaneity, of
41:53mystical participation in the life of
41:55the state, of the virtues of initiative,
41:57of trust, the party had a degree of
42:00innate combustion unsuited to the state
42:03of forms of constitutional law.
42:06So, within Nazism, there could be no
42:09conception of a corporate leadership.
42:12Hitler's policies or his decisions were
42:14his own and could never be directed. And
42:17the internal
42:19politics of the Nazi party were
42:22therefore a struggle for Hitler's ear, a
42:25struggle that generally Heinrich Himmler
42:28won.
42:29Now, those points I've just enunciated,
42:31many of them are made by Martin Malia
42:33with whom
42:34um Vladimir quoted and mentioned um
42:38in his concluding remarks. And so
42:41they're not
42:42um
42:43original points of mine. I've taken them
42:45or adapted uh some of them, not all of
42:46them, some of them from Martin Malia's
42:48works. But I think they're points which
42:51Vladimir whom he who reveres Martin
42:54could have perhaps made mention of in
42:56his book.
42:58Um the third point, if communism and
43:00fascism merged into as Vladimir says a
43:03baroque synthesis,
43:05um there are key distinctions which
43:07Vladimir I think quite rightly points
43:09out. Bolshevism being of course a
43:11dictatorship of the proletariat, Nazism
43:15uh a dictatorship with a voting
43:18consensus behind it.
43:20Um point four,
43:22uh
43:23Vladimir's book I think offers a very
43:26moving analysis, a chilling analysis as
43:28one reviewer has said, of a century in
43:32which mankind aimed to reach the
43:34promised land through the power of
43:35ideas. And it reminds us that ideas are
43:39often translated into the most
43:41horrendous of deeds.
43:45A fifth point, uh Vladimir asks in
43:47chapter four, "So why did the communist
43:50regimes collapse?" And his answer is
43:53multicausal. I'm not going to read them
43:55all out. There are several, but one
43:58cause which perhaps I missed was the
44:02um admission by Gorbachev when he went
44:05to East Berlin in October 1989 that the
44:07Soviet Union would no longer prop up the
44:10East German communist regime. I think
44:13that sent a signal to several of the
44:17satellite regimes in East Central Europe
44:19that
44:21they were on their own, that it was up
44:23to them to uh cope with the
44:26uh economic situation that was facing
44:28them, with the
44:30disillusion that had permeated many
44:32sectors of society in um several of
44:36those countries.
44:38Our sixth point is a one that relates to
44:41contemporary ethnic nationalism, which
44:44again Vladimir mentions in chapter six.
44:49Um I quote from him, "To be sure, the
44:51past is often used to justify the
44:53resentful fantasies of nationalist
44:56demagogues."
44:57"This return of history is, however,
45:00more of an ideological reconstruction
45:02meant to respond to present-day
45:04grievances
45:05than a seemingly primordial destiny of
45:07nations destined to continuously fight
45:10with and fear with and fear each other."
45:13End of quote from Vladimir.
45:15Um I would argue here that since the
45:1819th century all nations have shown that
45:21they worry, that they fret about their
45:23history, and often they
45:25do so giving more importance to opinions
45:28than to facts. Before the advent of
45:32fascism and communism in the era of East
45:34Central Europe, many historians assumed
45:37the mantle of defending
45:40uh the idea of the nation-state, and it
45:43was that idea that
45:45all that a particular group of people
45:48who shared um maybe a religion, but
45:51certainly who shared a common language
45:54should live under a single political
45:56roof, and that idea was carried forward
45:59in much of the history writing
46:01uh of the 19th century in Europe. Um let
46:04me just quote from
46:07a Greek historian of the mid-19th
46:09mid-19th century, Konstantinos
46:11Paparrigopoulos, who wrote that history
46:15is not only a science, it is at once the
46:18gospel of the present and the future of
46:20the motherland. And indeed, we might
46:23look at Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech,
46:26Hungarian, Polish historians with that
46:29in mind.
46:31Um I might add here that although there
46:35has been a great deal of study of the
46:36manner in which communist historians
46:38perverted the historiography
46:41of the past in their countries, there's
46:43been very little
46:45analysis of how fascist historians
46:48looked at their own past and how they
46:50distorted it in their own turn.
46:54Finally, um
46:56Vladimir's most perceptive conclusion
46:58that political myths are to be are to be
47:01judged not in terms of their
47:02truthfulness,
47:04but of their potential to become true.
47:06Speaking about civil society led to the
47:09emergence of a civil society. And in
47:12East Central Europe, exhilarating new
47:14ideas such as the return to Europe
47:16destroyed obsolete ideas. And I think
47:19that's one of the many um fascinating
47:23and innovative points that Vladimir
47:26makes, um I think in this most um
47:29inspirational study. Thank you. Mhm.
47:33Thank you very much, Dennis. Um and
47:34finally, we'll hear from Charles King,
47:36who's a current uh Wilson Center Fellow
47:38and a Professor of International Affairs
47:40and Government at Georgetown University.
47:42Thank you. Thanks very much, Nina. Um
47:44delighted to be a part of this um panel
47:46and to congratulate Vladimir on on uh on
47:49a really remarkable book that I would um
47:52encourage you to read and perhaps more
47:54importantly, encourage you to buy,
47:56uh which is available outside at the end
47:59of end of our
48:00panel today. It's really a tour de
48:03force, I think, of political philosophy,
48:07a deeply learned, erudite commentary on
48:11the major ideas of the 20th century.
48:14The whole swirl
48:16of intellectual predispositions
48:19and ideas that informed
48:22the two great political movements of
48:24that of that century.
48:26And also the way in which those ideas,
48:30as Vladimir said in his presentation,
48:32have resonance even beyond
48:35the short 20th century, even beyond the
48:38end of communism in in Eastern Europe.
48:42Vladimir himself is of course someone
48:43who has been at the center of many of
48:47the debates that he that he speaks of,
48:49not only because he has known so many of
48:53the of the great thinkers of the century
48:55with whom he interacted,
48:57who were in some ways mentors to him,
48:59friends of his,
49:01but also
49:03because, of course, of his coming of age
49:05in one of the systems that he describes
49:08in in communist Romania during some of
49:10the darkest days of that version of
49:12totalitarianism.
49:14And then, of course, more recently his
49:16role in
49:18what I think in the future he will be
49:19known for, in addition to his
49:21scholarship, having chaired something
49:23that in Romania is now called the
49:25Tismăneanu Commission.
49:27That is the presidential commission that
49:29produced the first report on the history
49:32of Romanian communism,
49:34validated, if you like, by the
49:36president, debated in probably the most
49:39raucous
49:40parliamentary session ever held in in in
49:44Bucharest. And that marked, I think, the
49:47beginning of that country's departure
49:50from uh,
49:52indeed from the communist system and the
49:54beginning of its of its real serious
49:56reckoning
49:58with its own communist past.
50:00Uh, The Devil in History sort of,
50:02despite the title, I think is not
50:04principally, uh, in my mind about the
50:07problem of of evil, although I in in the
50:10world, although as uh, Vladimir said,
50:13one has to kind of have theology in mind
50:16when thinking about, uh, two systems
50:19that produced so much evil in the world,
50:21one can't help but ask that basic
50:24theocratic theological question of why
50:27evil exists and what, uh, what humans
50:29are meant to do about it. But it really
50:32is at base, it seems to me, a book
50:34about, uh,
50:36the role of ideas in the world. How do
50:38we understand the power of ideas to work
50:41themselves out in a Hegelian sense, um,
50:44in in the world? How do we understand
50:47two systems whose chief commonality was
50:51that they promised the idea of our own
50:54ability, humans ability, to think
50:56ourselves into a better world.
50:58Um, because there was a kind of, uh, and
51:01I'll come on to this in a in in a
51:02moment, there was at least the delusion
51:06of humanity at the core of both systems.
51:09Both systems talked about justice. Both
51:12of both of them talked about creating a
51:13more reasonable world, which was a a
51:16favorite fascist word, actually, a
51:19reasonable way of living in the world.
51:21Both of them, of course, talked about
51:23truth
51:24with a capital T. Both of them came out
51:27of particular readings, uh, of history.
51:30And this is this is the kind this is the
51:32the devil idea, um, I think, which, as
51:35Vladimir was saying, he owes to Leszek
51:37Kołakowski, the idea of the devil in
51:40history being an idea, a way of seeing
51:42the world working itself out in history,
51:46in the end for for nefarious purposes,
51:48but an a set of ideas that claimed to
51:51have a monopoly on justice,
51:53reasonableness,
51:55and truth. And both of these systems, of
51:57course, put a premium on ideas as an as
52:01a kind of actual material force in the
52:04world. Both of them privileged the role
52:07of ideas
52:08uh in in a way that perhaps it's it's
52:10even difficult for us uh to uh to to
52:14recall unless we're um ourselves engaged
52:17in the study of of these systems and of
52:19this of this period.
52:20Well, the similarities are clear, and
52:23the book goes into them in great detail.
52:25Two systems that were deeply
52:26anti-liberal, that were deeply
52:28anti-democratic. In fact, that believed
52:31that they were the successors, in a way,
52:33to democracies. That democracy had a
52:35role in the world, had a role in
52:36history, um but of course, democracy had
52:39had reached the end of its uh of its
52:42historical role, and either fascism or
52:44communism were going then to to to take
52:46over in human history.
52:48They romantically sought a kind of total
52:52sense of community. They were totalizing
52:54ideologies in in this sense. They
52:56believed, at least in theory, that they
52:59had the power to control all of human
53:01society and reshape it.
53:04But in the end, they had a commitment
53:05also not just to reshaping that society
53:08or reshaping the state, but also to
53:10remaking human nature. Both ideologies
53:13or sets of ideas were amazingly
53:15optimistic then about the ability of
53:18states, of parties, to reshape humanity
53:23itself, to reshape the the fundamentals
53:26of of human nature.
53:29Uh totalitarianism as a word is also, I
53:33think, resurrected in Vladimir's book.
53:36Some of you will recall the debates in
53:38political science in the 1980s and 1990s
53:41um about that very term. That in fact,
53:44um, a
53:46a
53:47degree of caution in the political
53:49science of that era about even using the
53:52term, rejecting it for authoritarian or
53:55autocratic or extreme authoritarian. One
53:58in fact in political science discussions
54:00now about transitions to democracy,
54:03um, very rarely if ever do you see the
54:06word totalitarianism even
54:09even mentioned. And I think Vladimir is
54:11right to res- to resurrect it. It would
54:13seem very odd, of course, not to put a
54:15Hitler or a Stalin or an Eichmann or a
54:18Beria, um, in some category other than
54:21totalitarian. What other label could you
54:23possibly use? Authoritarian simply
54:26doesn't doesn't do do the trick.
54:29Uh, and I think he's also right to to
54:32point out that that comparison itself is
54:35kind of the beginning of of
54:37understanding. Uh, in in in his
54:39presentation, Vladimir was quoting, uh,
54:41Tim Snyder, who has, I think, a very
54:42good line on this, a very funny line,
54:44actually, on it. Tim's What Tim always
54:46says is that when you talk about the
54:49incomparability
54:51of communism and fascism or in the
54:53incomparability,
54:55uh, of mass killing under fascist
54:57regimes and mass killing under communist
54:59regimes, what one is really saying there
55:02is I've compared the two systems and I'd
55:04prefer that you didn't. Um, it's one's
55:07not making any other logical statement
55:09other than that as Vladimir said, I've
55:10already done the comparing for you and I
55:13would rather that you didn't do it for
55:14for yourself.
55:16Um,
55:17and I think what also these debates
55:20about comparability or incomparability,
55:23I think, uh, lead us to is, in fact, a
55:25mistake in the way that we, uh, that we
55:27view the 20th century. And Vladimir's
55:29Vladimir, I think, is very very good
55:31about pointing this out. That one way of
55:34thinking about the 20th century, and
55:36it's, in fact, a way that I think, you
55:38know, school children in the United
55:39States often are taught 20th century
55:42world history, is that the great
55:44struggle, the great ideological
55:45struggle, the struggle of systems was
55:47between communism and fascism. When of
55:50course
55:51for so many of the thinkers that
55:53Vladimir deals with in in in this book,
55:57that really wasn't the issue at all. It
55:59was It was this
56:00sort of Popperian distinction between
56:03open societies and closed societies.
56:05That this was actually the great
56:06dividing line in the 20th century. And
56:09open societies took a particular kind of
56:11form, closed societies took multiple
56:14forms actually, but the divide was not
56:16between communism
56:18and fascism. They actually fell on the
56:21same side of the open closed divide.
56:27Having said all of this, let me raise
56:29two sort of baskets of of questions that
56:32perhaps Vladimir can deal with in the in
56:34the discussion period and
56:37and will will launch us into a wider
56:40ranging conversation.
56:43First of all,
56:44is the question about whether we are
56:46best to understand the history of
56:48totalitarianism as a problem of ideas.
56:53Um
56:55whether Vladimir is arguing that in fact
56:58that's the our principal window into
57:00this problem or simply the window that
57:02he has chosen to go through in this
57:06particular book. And of course, he has
57:07written in his other work about the way
57:09in which these systems work themselves
57:11out on the ground in a very micro way.
57:13But I wonder whether ideas in fact are
57:17um
57:18not not just the best way, but perhaps
57:20even a good way of approaching the
57:22history of these of these
57:24two systems. Because
57:27the particular historical context that
57:29both systems evolved through and out of
57:33seems to me to matter a great deal as
57:35well.
57:36For example, communism was a system we
57:39have to remember that came to power
57:40through war in both
57:44uh the uh Soviet case in the Russian
57:46Civil War and in the East European
57:48context through either Civil War in
57:50Albania or Yugoslavia or war and
57:52occupation for most of the rest
57:55of the region. Fascism, on the other
57:57hand, was a system that came to power in
57:59order to make war. War was itself one of
58:02the tools of the system rather than one
58:05of the contexts in it in in in which it
58:08came to power.
58:10And I think this is
58:11a very important distinction to make
58:14between the two systems because I think
58:16that historical context accounts for a
58:18great deal of the difference between the
58:21systems as they developed, not just as
58:23systems of ideas or ideologies, but
58:24actually really existing political
58:27systems in the world that affected uh
58:29people's lives. In fact,
58:32one can read in read the early history
58:35of communism in both the Soviet Union
58:37and in East Central Europe as
58:40an effort from the very beginning to
58:42adapt a system born of war to the
58:46demands of peacetime governance. That is
58:49the transition, for example, from war
58:51communism to the new economic policy,
58:53the transition from collectivization
58:56through the dizzy with success speech to
58:59uh what came later, the transition from
59:01the Great Patriotic War to
59:03de-Stalinization.
59:05This is a system that constantly sought
59:07to readapt itself after the
59:11war-generating experience that made it
59:13into
59:14into a really existing political system.
59:17There's no similar history, it seems to
59:19me, for for fascism. Fascism was a
59:22rather different thing. It didn't come
59:24uh to power on the heels of war and
59:26therefore had at its core no need for
59:30constant reinvention and re-adaptation.
59:33That's a another way of answering in a
59:35sense the question the very important
59:38question, provocative question I think
59:40of Vladimir Pozner's, which is why is it
59:42so difficult to imagine a revisionist
59:45fascism?
59:46Certainly possible to imagine, in fact
59:48really existed, revisionist communism,
59:51even revisionist Stalinism for for for
59:53that matter. It seems a sort of
59:55contradiction in terms, ridiculous to
59:58think about of revisionist fascism. Or
1:00:00if there is such a thing, it just
1:00:02reduces to Italian nationalism or German
1:00:04nationalism. Um the opposition to Hitler
1:00:07comes from old conservative
1:00:08nationalists, not from revisionist
1:00:11fascists, if if you like. Well, one way
1:00:14of answering that question is to to stay
1:00:16in the realm of ideas. For example, that
1:00:19it's very difficult to adapt the
1:00:22Führerprinzip, the leadership principle,
1:00:25the Führer principle. How could you
1:00:26possibly adapt that in a revisionist
1:00:28context? I mean, if your system is so
1:00:30focused on the power and the place
1:00:33of the individual leader,
1:00:35um thinking of a revisionist version of
1:00:37that, at least while that leader is
1:00:38still alive and in power, is difficult
1:00:41to to to think through. Or you could
1:00:44make the uh the Aaron argument, which
1:00:47which uh Vladimir pointed to as well,
1:00:49that that's a key distinction between
1:00:51these two systems was that one was uh
1:00:54evil by its very nature, the other was
1:00:57evil in its implementation. That is to
1:00:59say, it had a kind of core humanity to
1:01:01it that was eventually, in its
1:01:03implementation,
1:01:05perverted. There is, in other words, no
1:01:07equivalent of the 1848 manuscripts of
1:01:10Marx that that you could sort of appeal
1:01:12to if you were a revisionist
1:01:14uh fascist.
1:01:16I'm skeptical about staying in the realm
1:01:19of ideas and explaining this, and
1:01:21perhaps more optimistic about our
1:01:23finding an answer in the way in which
1:01:25these systems evolved on on the ground
1:01:28for one simple reason, and it and it and
1:01:30it has to do with the way in which the
1:01:33makers of these systems below the level
1:01:35of the ideologists and the party leaders
1:01:38thought about what they were doing. Um
1:01:40if you you haven't had a chance to see
1:01:41this new book that Dennis and I were
1:01:43just talking about a bit earlier,
1:01:44Soldaten, which is the
1:01:47uh the a remarkable new book on the
1:01:50that is taken from the German POW
1:01:53transcripts that were
1:01:56uh of of recordings that were made in
1:01:58secret
1:01:59uh of German POWs by uh both British and
1:02:03American interrogators during the Second
1:02:05World War.
1:02:06What do you see is what you have there
1:02:08is a kind of window into the way in
1:02:10which uh both Wehrmacht and SS average
1:02:14soldiers and officers
1:02:16were thinking about what they were up
1:02:17to. And what is so chilling about
1:02:20reading those transcripts is the idea
1:02:23that
1:02:25from the perspective of those on the
1:02:26ground actually making the killing,
1:02:29doing the occupation in uh in in Poland,
1:02:32Ukraine, and elsewhere, is the idea that
1:02:34they believed they had a core humanity
1:02:37uh at the base of what they were they
1:02:39were doing. A sense of humane regret. It
1:02:42was awful, of course, what one had to do
1:02:44to the Jews. It was awful what one had
1:02:46to do to partisans or Bolsheviks, but at
1:02:48the end of the day one had a kind of
1:02:50historical burden
1:02:53to bear.
1:02:54Um and that the world would become more
1:02:56just, the world would become more
1:02:58reasonable,
1:02:59the world would be filled with more
1:03:01truth and beauty if they could bear this
1:03:04burden and stand it long uh long enough.
1:03:07A kind of core and perverted morality
1:03:11that they believed that they were uh
1:03:13they were in in inhabiting.
1:03:15A moral core that they um, in some ways
1:03:19felt that they had to felt that they had
1:03:21to over overcome.
1:03:24Um,
1:03:25so
1:03:26to me I think there is a great deal that
1:03:28we can learn obviously by by looking at
1:03:30the way in which a set of ideas interact
1:03:32with each other, but I think we have to
1:03:34have to marry that in a way if we're
1:03:35going to have an understanding of what
1:03:36totalitarianism was as a system with
1:03:39what the makers of it at all kinds of
1:03:42levels believed that they were doing at
1:03:44any given time and the real world
1:03:46constraints
1:03:48uh, that they faced as they were trying
1:03:50uh, trying to to to implement
1:03:53um, these systems.
1:03:54Second basket of issues
1:03:57um, has to do with the um, not with the
1:04:01onset of totalitarianism, but in fact
1:04:03with its fate with with what ultimately
1:04:06happened to these systems um, in the
1:04:08end.
1:04:09Um,
1:04:11I think for for Vladimir in in this book
1:04:14The End of Communism is really about the
1:04:16evaporation of self-confidence. It's
1:04:19that the the end of this kind of
1:04:21commitment to utopia. The system, the
1:04:25ideas that that motivated these systems
1:04:29um, ultimately ran out of steam. There
1:04:32was a not enough revisionism to revive
1:04:35them. There was not enough faith in them
1:04:37to keep them going.
1:04:38Uh, Stephen Kotkin uh, makes a kind of
1:04:41an allied argument if you like when he
1:04:44says in his last book that the system
1:04:46decayed from the top rather than from
1:04:49below. We were enamored of of course
1:04:51thinking about crowds in the in in in
1:04:54the street in in 1989 in particular as
1:04:56being about a popular uprising, but in
1:04:59so many ways 1989 had at its core 1956.
1:05:03That is to say a a
1:05:06the sense at the top of the system that
1:05:09the that the ideas that had motivated it
1:05:12simply could not
1:05:14hold uh any longer.
1:05:16But to me again, I think the the
1:05:19structure and context are supremely
1:05:22powerful here. And perhaps if if if I
1:05:25were weighing things, I would say
1:05:27structure and context might matter more
1:05:29than the ideas at the core of the
1:05:31system.
1:05:32The communist system, for example, was
1:05:34committed to reforming itself from the
1:05:37very beginning, or at least from the
1:05:39beginning of the idea of socialism in
1:05:41one country. It was
1:05:44committed to the idea of adapting itself
1:05:47to local conditions. Or another way of
1:05:49putting it is communism was a kind of
1:05:51universal system
1:05:53that found itself by dint of history
1:05:55forced to become particular, to adapt
1:05:58itself to the individual circumstances
1:06:01once after 1919 or 1920 or so, the idea
1:06:05of a universal revolution spreading out
1:06:08from the Russian center uh the rest of
1:06:10the world uh was was clearly um defunct
1:06:14as an idea.
1:06:15Fascism was a very different thing.
1:06:17Fascism was a deeply particularistic
1:06:21system
1:06:22that, by dint of history, forced itself
1:06:25to become imperial but not universal.
1:06:28Imperial is the sort of language that
1:06:29Mark Mazower uses in his Hitler's Empire
1:06:32book. It had a different set of
1:06:35constraints on it and a different set of
1:06:38um
1:06:38uh in a way imperatives built into the
1:06:42system.
1:06:43Um
1:06:45in some cases, this the the the these
1:06:48reformist trends or these adapt adaptive
1:06:52trends within communism actually forced
1:06:54communism to become deeply national. Um
1:06:57and and of course Vladimir knows this uh
1:06:59better than anyone else, the the the the
1:07:02the real second life of totalitarianism
1:07:06came within the communist system. Um
1:07:09uh it particularly in Southeast Europe,
1:07:11uh when communist leaders discovered
1:07:15that by becoming more particularistic,
1:07:17by becoming more national in the way
1:07:19that they thought about their own ends,
1:07:22uh they could actually preserve
1:07:23themselves, steel themselves against the
1:07:26threat
1:07:27of revisionist uh communism.
1:07:31So, in this sense, I wonder if if we're
1:07:33looking for precursors of 1989, one way
1:07:36to think about things is that the
1:07:38precursors lay in the long history of
1:07:41humane socialism. The precursors to 1989
1:07:44let lay in revisionist communism, in
1:07:47Eurosocialism,
1:07:49uh in philosophical approaches uh to
1:07:51Marxism. They lay in the 1848
1:07:53manuscripts. They lay in some of the
1:07:55great leftist uh thinkers and in in uh
1:07:59uh revisionists in in Hungary, in uh
1:08:02Czechoslovakia, in France, um
1:08:04uh and elsewhere.
1:08:06Or, you might say, as as of course the
1:08:09makers of 1989 on the ground felt the
1:08:11real precursor to 1989 was 1968. That
1:08:15that had represented the culmination of
1:08:18a set of ideas about humane socialism
1:08:20that was ultimately uh a set of ideas
1:08:22that was ultimately destroyed uh by uh
1:08:26by conservatives
1:08:27within the uh within the party and state
1:08:29elite. But, I wonder if in fact the real
1:08:32precursors to 1989 lie perhaps not in
1:08:361968, but in 1948 and 1958. That is to
1:08:39say, much earlier efforts of this system
1:08:43to adapt itself to local needs. In 1948,
1:08:47the uh Tito-Stalin split, uh when you
1:08:50already have the communist system uh
1:08:52giving up um any pretense of being uh
1:08:56any more than a a set of allied
1:08:58movements in the world rather than part
1:09:00of a single totalitarian system. And or
1:09:03in 1958, I simply picked 58 because
1:09:06that's when the last Soviet troops leave
1:09:09Romania
1:09:10and allow the country to begin to go
1:09:13really go its own way and indigenize
1:09:15itself
1:09:16in
1:09:17in ways that had only been seen
1:09:19previously in Albania
1:09:21and Yugoslavia.
1:09:23So in other words, I think um
1:09:26the debate is still open about the role
1:09:29of ideas and accounting for the power of
1:09:31totalitarianism, the trajectories of
1:09:34totalitarianism. Vladimir I think gives
1:09:37a brilliant account of the way in which
1:09:39both systems relied on a set of common
1:09:42assumptions, a common trajectories,
1:09:45common phobias and obsessions if you
1:09:47like when it comes to the role of ideas
1:09:50in the world.
1:09:51I wonder though if if we need to add to
1:09:55that a sense of structure and context if
1:09:58we're trying to understand the ways in
1:10:00which the ability of people to think
1:10:02themselves into a better world turned
1:10:05out to be far less than they than they
1:10:07might have imagined.
1:10:09So just it remains for me just to
1:10:10congratulate Vladimir on on what I think
1:10:12is a deeply intelligent, a deeply
1:10:14erudite
1:10:15and perhaps most importantly, and this
1:10:17is a word that we don't often use in
1:10:18scholarship, but a deeply humane
1:10:21approach to understanding what at the
1:10:23end of the day was some of the most
1:10:25monumental human suffering
1:10:28of of the century.
1:10:30Thank you. Thank you very much, Charles.
1:10:32We have about 20 minutes left and I'll
1:10:34open the floor for discussion. So if you
1:10:36have a question, please raise your hand.
1:10:38And wait for a microphone to be brought
1:10:40to you. Any any takers?
1:10:43Yeah, let's start up here. Please also
1:10:45introduce yourself for the benefit of
1:10:47our speakers. Yeah.
1:10:51Yes, Ron Radosh, Hudson Institute.
1:10:56Thank you for a really brilliant
1:10:58presentation, absolutely wonderful book
1:11:00as well, which I'm not quite through
1:11:02reading, but will be soon.
1:11:04Uh
1:11:06I want to address myself to to some of
1:11:07the questions Charles
1:11:10King made on Vladimir's talk. Uh
1:11:16and the question that Vladimir raised,
1:11:18could could there be
1:11:20uh could there have been a
1:11:23equivalent of the Khrushchev speech by a
1:11:25Martin Bormann or another Nazi leader?
1:11:28Uh
1:11:30But you do have, as Charles said in
1:11:33Marxism, a a whole group of
1:11:36people who call themselves Marxist
1:11:38humanists who claim, I mean, Eric, the
1:11:41late Eric Fromm in America, came from
1:11:43Germany. They put their emphasis on the
1:11:45economic and philosophical manuscripts
1:11:48on the theme of alienation.
1:11:50And they say that is the true Marx. That
1:11:54this Marx
1:11:55uh was an individualist
1:11:57who believed in freely created
1:11:59association communities. It's Leninism
1:12:02that created uh the error in misreading
1:12:06of Marx. And they claim
1:12:09that uh
1:12:11theirs is the real Marxism.
1:12:13And the others are false. Uh so I'd like
1:12:17uh
1:12:18a dis- discussion of that. The other
1:12:20thing that occurs to me, just a theme in
1:12:23Vladimir, when I was on the left in the
1:12:25on the communist left half a century ago
1:12:27almost, uh
1:12:28I remember going to a talk by a now
1:12:31thankfully forgotten uh pro-communist
1:12:35journalist named Anna Louise Strong, who
1:12:38edited in Moscow in the '40s and '50s
1:12:41Moscow News, the propaganda organ in
1:12:44English for pro-communist Americans to
1:12:47glamorize the Soviet Union. And then she
1:12:49went to to after the Chinese Revolution,
1:12:52uh got in trouble, was expelled, went
1:12:54back to Russia, and was about to be
1:12:56arrested. She I forget the details of
1:12:58how she got out to the United States,
1:13:00but I did go to hear her speak in New
1:13:03York City.
1:13:04And
1:13:06the whole pro-communist press and media
1:13:09in the United States, which still had
1:13:11some force to it,
1:13:13called her a traitor and uh totally
1:13:16would have nothing to do with her, but
1:13:17she managed to rent
1:13:19a hall in New York and give the speech.
1:13:21And she said that
1:13:23she didn't care if she she herself had
1:13:26been arrested, tortured, and killed, it
1:13:28would have been
1:13:30valid because
1:13:33communism is like an express train going
1:13:35down the track reaching its destination.
1:13:37As the train goes down the track,
1:13:40it fl- it
1:13:42passes fly flies on the track and it
1:13:45kills them as the track goes over the
1:13:47flies. And I'm just like a fly on the
1:13:50path to communism. And if I had to be
1:13:52killed, if I had not got out to the
1:13:53United States, it would have been right.
1:13:56Uh
1:13:57I remember that because it was such to
1:13:59me one of the things that began to open
1:14:01my eyes, such a chilling, insane
1:14:03comment.
1:14:06Uh maybe we can collect a couple more
1:14:07right up here. Okay.
1:14:09We'll take.
1:14:13My name is Stephen and I must echo Mr.
1:14:15Raddish's comment, something I might not
1:14:17have thought I'd ever would do, but um
1:14:20but but you there is the strong
1:14:22religious component. I'm reminded of it
1:14:26was certainly a patholo- by pathologic
1:14:28religion, but nonetheless, these were
1:14:31these religions had millions of
1:14:33adherents. I'm reminded of Koestler's
1:14:35Darkness at Noon, where Rubashov goes to
1:14:37his death thinking that his death is
1:14:41for the good of the party. That having
1:14:44essentially the party as the sole
1:14:46arbiter of good, that why on earth
1:14:48resist the party because his own
1:14:50resistance is
1:14:52uh
1:14:54uh uh not fulfilling the greater good.
1:14:56So, I think it I don't know how much
1:14:59religion um um goes into is used in your
1:15:02book, but I cursorily certainly quotes
1:15:05the minds of the inquisitors of the
1:15:06Council of Constance who you know who
1:15:09who said that you know leave morality
1:15:11aside, we'll do whatever we need to to
1:15:13um so it one could think of both fascism
1:15:17and communism as
1:15:19the as as pathological excesses of
1:15:22religious belief.
1:15:24Do you want to take those questions
1:15:26then?
1:15:27Do you want to? Let's take another one.
1:15:29Okay. Um I saw a hand on this side and
1:15:31then uh in the back of the room. Okay.
1:15:35Um thank you so very much for this
1:15:37presentation. Um
1:15:38so, if looking fast forward and uh the
1:15:41notion of um transition away from um in
1:15:45that case communism and the process of
1:15:46reconciliation, if we take the a look at
1:15:49Romania cuz I understand that uh you
1:15:52have that case study in common. Um after
1:15:5522 years of democracy, it seems that the
1:15:59the country still has um a lot to do
1:16:02with in uh on on the way to
1:16:04reconciliation.
1:16:05Um and Professor King mentioned the work
1:16:07of Professor Tismăneanu uh and the
1:16:09commission and how rocky and polarizing
1:16:11the process can be. And so, how would
1:16:14you see that unfolding? And is is
1:16:17is has time come for that
1:16:19reconciliation? And what what would what
1:16:21would the process be away from
1:16:23a totalitarian
1:16:25um regime such as communism?
1:16:33Thank you, Ken Dante. Just to refine the
1:16:35religious question, could you look at it
1:16:36as a messianic movements of the 20th
1:16:39century and even kind of industrial
1:16:42mechanistic uh messianic movements that
1:16:45attempt to recreate mankind in
1:16:48almost machine-like form so that
1:16:51everything works around this
1:16:53machine-like center but messianic
1:16:54movements almost robotic I guess.
1:16:57Robot Messiah.
1:17:06Uh my name is Richard Kidderminster and
1:17:08I'm in
1:17:09intern here and
1:17:13I guess my my main
1:17:15question is where is do you see any kind
1:17:18of resurgence of fascism
1:17:22or communism in the future because the
1:17:25basically because the narrative that I
1:17:27got
1:17:28in grade school all the way up to high
1:17:30school is that fascism and communism
1:17:33were defeated in the mid to late 20th
1:17:36century fascism in the middle of the
1:17:37century communism at the end of the
1:17:38century and things like Fukuyama the
1:17:41idea of liberalism being triumphant and
1:17:43now we're more internationalized but do
1:17:44you think that
1:17:46fascism or communism could come back
1:17:48either distinctly or some or some kind
1:17:50of conflated totalitarian ideology?
1:17:57Well, okay. We have what? 5 minutes?
1:18:00Okay.
1:18:02This should be another
1:18:04another
1:18:05whole session. Okay, so
1:18:08uh
1:18:09I'll try to wrap up a little bit and
1:18:11I'll say the following. Okay, yes. Uh
1:18:16There's a collection
1:18:18of books quite interesting stuff there
1:18:21uh published by a British
1:18:23British publishing house and it's called
1:18:26I think the whole collection is called
1:18:28uh the idea of communism. That's the
1:18:30title of the collection and you have
1:18:32there
1:18:33books little books by uh, Tariq Ali by
1:18:36Slavoj Žižek
1:18:38by there's a very interesting book about
1:18:39the, uh, Indonesian coup d'état in
1:18:42September 1965. So, it's a collection,
1:18:45clearly, with a particular, uh,
1:18:48direction.
1:18:49Uh, in that collection, Tariq Ali, who
1:18:52is a well-known, uh, scholar and scholar
1:18:54of Stalinism and philosopher and many
1:18:57other things, probably many other hats
1:18:59he's wearing,
1:19:00uh, wrote a little book which is, you
1:19:02know, about what remains of the idea of
1:19:04communism. And he quotes an Italian,
1:19:07one of the most interesting Italian
1:19:09Marxist and, you know, uh, one has to
1:19:11admit that in the 20th century, when
1:19:14Marxism got so stultified and so
1:19:16ossified and so fossilized, Italian
1:19:18Marxism remained one of the less
1:19:21stultified, fossilized and mummified,
1:19:23whatever you want to call it, petrified,
1:19:25okay? So, this particular guy, who broke
1:19:27with the Italian Communist Party, they
1:19:29created the group of Manifesto, Lucio
1:19:31Magri, very intelligent guy.
1:19:34Uh,
1:19:34when asked, you know, basically,
1:19:38uh, the what remains of the communist
1:19:40idea after all was it defeated once or
1:19:42your question, hm?
1:19:43He went back to a parable, a poem by
1:19:46Bertolt Brecht.
1:19:48And, um,
1:19:50uh, it's the history of the, I apologize
1:19:53for those who know it, I find it
1:19:55excellent. So, Bertolt Brecht was the
1:19:57author, the other day we went to, my
1:19:59wife is there, Bethesda, to a French
1:20:01restaurant, I was listening to the music
1:20:03on the street and it was, of course, the
1:20:04Three Penny Opera. So, Bertolt Brecht of
1:20:06Three Penny Opera reputation, if nothing
1:20:10else. Okay, so, Brecht in one of his,
1:20:13uh, pedagogical poems, uh, says the
1:20:15following story. It's a poem prose, it's
1:20:17not a, uh, rhyme poem, okay? So, he says
1:20:20this is the story of the tailor of Ulm,
1:20:22a city in Germany. Germany was a multi,
1:20:26you know, multi-state, uh,
1:20:29empire, if If want. We are in the Age.
1:20:32There were 500 principalities or so, and
1:20:34in the city of Ulm this tailor goes to
1:20:36the bishop and announces to the bishop,
1:20:39uh I can fly.
1:20:41And the bishop says, "Really?" And the
1:20:43guy says, "Absolutely, I can fly." So,
1:20:46the bishop says, "Okay, let's call all
1:20:47the citizens of Ulm to go to the main
1:20:51square and you are going to fly from the
1:20:54top tower of the church and show that
1:20:57you can fly."
1:20:58So, the tailor of Ulm, he was a tailor
1:20:59by profession, okay? So, he goes to the
1:21:02top
1:21:03place there and starts attempts to fly.
1:21:06Right? And what happens? He doesn't fly,
1:21:09he falls down and dies. Okay, he's
1:21:11crashed.
1:21:12What is Brecht's conclusion to that? 500
1:21:15years later, planes were flying in the
1:21:17skies.
1:21:19Got the point?
1:21:21Okay.
1:21:22Uh so,
1:21:23Okay, so for those who want to believe,
1:21:27the belief system remains because
1:21:29communism and fascism respond and I'm
1:21:32grateful that you mentioned Arthur
1:21:33Koestler here. I I engage in a deep
1:21:36dialogue, I hope, with one of the most
1:21:38important intellectuals of the 20th
1:21:40century and in the book and not only
1:21:42there. Uh you know, communism there's a
1:21:44very famous scene that you can find it
1:21:47in uh
1:21:48actually in some who wrote the biography
1:21:50of Whittaker Chambers, something like
1:21:52that, right? Okay.
1:21:54Uh at a certain moment, uh Arthur
1:21:56Koestler,
1:21:57Whittaker Chambers,
1:21:59and Margarete Buber-Neumann, all the
1:22:01three with impeccable anti-communist you
1:22:04know, credentials,
1:22:06get together in a French bistro in 1961
1:22:09or 1962.
1:22:11At a certain moment, one of them may
1:22:12say, let's say Whittaker Chambers says,
1:22:15uh
1:22:17"And still, do you remember when we
1:22:19called each other comrade?"
1:22:22So, these guys, after so many fights and
1:22:25suddenly still have something in memory
1:22:27of and this is the basic question that a
1:22:30book that I quote less on this but it's
1:22:33my my one of my favorite books. And this
1:22:35is about the 20th century. It's the book
1:22:37by
1:22:39a book of conversations between
1:22:42a Polish poet about whom by the way Tim
1:22:44Snyder's wife wrote the wonderful Massey
1:22:47Massey Shore about caviar and ashes
1:22:49about the generation of Alexander Wat.
1:22:51Some of you may have read. It's a
1:22:52wonderful book. Conversation between
1:22:54Czesław Miłosz who is the interviewer
1:22:56and Alexander Wat W.A.T. Okay, Alexander
1:23:00Wat was a
1:23:01modernist Polish poet who became
1:23:03communist and so on. And asked what is
1:23:06the mystery there and is the same
1:23:07mystery why people engage in religious
1:23:11leap of faith.
1:23:12The mystery there is you know remember
1:23:15how the essay by Koestler starts in The
1:23:17God That Failed.
1:23:19You do not join a religion in a rational
1:23:22way.
1:23:23Religion, you know, it's a conversion.
1:23:25Conversions are infra-rational things.
1:23:28You know, you don't argue with the true
1:23:31believer. You don't argue with Osama bin
1:23:33Laden rationally. Okay? So, it's a very
1:23:35complicated element there. So, to try to
1:23:38understand that's what Dostoevsky tried
1:23:40to teach us in The Demons.
1:23:42Which I think it's the book I tried with
1:23:43my students. It didn't work very that
1:23:45well in my graduate seminar because I
1:23:46think it's the most important book for
1:23:48understanding the mind of the terrorist.
1:23:50I think that in addition to all the
1:23:52other things that we study about
1:23:55terrorist structure and context and deep
1:23:57roots and so on and so forth, I think
1:23:59that it's very important to understand
1:24:01what kind of mindset operates there.
1:24:03What is the mindset of you know what is
1:24:06the title of Doris Lessing's book The
1:24:07Good Terrorist, okay? What is the what
1:24:10what is mobilizing? What is the driving
1:24:13force there? So,
1:24:14okay.
1:24:16The
1:24:17question that Flavius Mihaies came was
1:24:20the
1:24:20problem of
1:24:21reconciliation after So, let's
1:24:24post-traumatic memory.
1:24:26Uh this is a major problem in Germany
1:24:28and as we know Germany has still is
1:24:31still in the process of This is not
1:24:32First of all, this is not happening
1:24:34fast.
1:24:35It took France, your country, original
1:24:38country, it took France the period
1:24:40between 1945 and 1995 as Annette
1:24:43Wieviorka demonstrated in her
1:24:45presentation at the conference we
1:24:46organized here at the Wilson Center two
1:24:48two years ago, no? Okay, it took France
1:24:51the whole period between the first de
1:24:53Gaulle government and Jacques Chirac in
1:24:551995
1:24:57to apologize in the name of the French
1:24:59state for the
1:25:02Vel' d'Hiv for for you know, there's a
1:25:04film is playing now and you know, about
1:25:07the the rafle la rafle how to translate
1:25:09rafle Flavius the blood rafle Okay, the
1:25:12the the the big round up round up round
1:25:15up Okay, the big round up, okay, which
1:25:18entered French memory. Everybody knew
1:25:20about that, but the French state did not
1:25:22say sorry until Jacques Chirac in 1995.
1:25:25Neither de Gaulle, the great figure of
1:25:27resistance, nor Mitterrand with his very
1:25:29ambiguous relationship to resistance and
1:25:31then collaboration and so on, nor
1:25:33whoever Giscard d'Estaing, Pompidou,
1:25:36whoever
1:25:37Mendes France, nobody. The Fourth
1:25:39Republic, I mean, people with impeccable
1:25:41democratic credentials like Pierre
1:25:42Mendes France, no, wouldn't touch the
1:25:44issue. So, Vichy was a kind of
1:25:46parenthesis, occupation was a kind of
1:25:48parenthesis and so on. We know the
1:25:49reactions to the film by Alain Resnais,
1:25:52you know,
1:25:53and Marcel Ophüls and all the rest. So,
1:25:55I think that for this for this the what
1:25:57Germany realized was a kind of let's
1:25:59call it
1:26:00national atonement. It was it has
1:26:03happened in Germany. It is not happening
1:26:06in the in Russia. In the post-communist
1:26:09societies, there is a wonderful book I
1:26:10reviewed it in the National Affairs by
1:26:12David Satter. Uh
1:26:15uh that came out actually it's Alexander
1:26:17Etkind that reviews it in the most
1:26:19recent TLS. And the title says
1:26:21everything.
1:26:22Uh, it's called It took place a long
1:26:25time ago, and anyway, it doesn't matter.
1:26:29It took place a long time ago, and
1:26:30anyway, who cares? Okay, so, uh, the
1:26:33point is that Satter makes, and
1:26:36uh, apropos of ideas, to respond to,
1:26:38thank you very much, both Dennis and
1:26:39Charles for the comments, and I wrote
1:26:41very detailed, I took very detailed
1:26:43notes.
1:26:44Uh, I think that, you know, of course,
1:26:47this is always a matter of, you know,
1:26:49it's like, how do I say, what was first?
1:26:52Obviously, ideas do are generated by
1:26:55structures and contexts, and they change
1:26:56structure and context. Uh, probably as a
1:26:59reaction, which is a normal thing, since
1:27:02I was
1:27:03uh, fed with Marxist ideas and Hegelian,
1:27:06no, Hegel had
1:27:07a different approach to ideas. Okay, so,
1:27:09I think that I tend to emphasize, and
1:27:12because of, of course, I'm, you know,
1:27:14very much influenced by Aron and by
1:27:16Isaiah Berlin, and so on, and we just
1:27:18published in translation to Romanian of
1:27:20The Power of Ideas by Isaiah Berlin. So,
1:27:23it's very, very much, I do think that I
1:27:25do, that's the way I think. Okay, let
1:27:28me, let me put it this way. We had, we
1:27:30have one student here. We, I'm teaching
1:27:31now a seminar,
1:27:34uh, and he'll say it's a great seminar
1:27:35because he has no other choice.
1:27:37Okay, about film,
1:27:39whatever it's called, Dictators,
1:27:40Dictatorships, and Film. And one of the
1:27:41films that I presented to them, very
1:27:44interested, since you mentioned
1:27:45Fukuyama. Fukuyama is on, uh, on the
1:27:47record with, he reviewed some book in
1:27:49the New York Times Book Review, and he
1:27:51said in that review that his students at
1:27:53Stanford at this moment couldn't care
1:27:55less about 20th century history. If you
1:27:57remember that, we found it, the
1:27:58quotations. I mean, truly, they are not
1:28:01interested in that. I don't have this
1:28:02experience at the University of Milan.
1:28:03I'm wondering what your experiences are
1:28:05at Georgetown. Uh, mixed, no?
1:28:07Mixed. Okay, probably at our school,
1:28:10also, mixed. Anyway, I presented the
1:28:12film Pokayaniye Atonement, which is a
1:28:15film the Atonement, which was a What was
1:28:17translated? Repentance. Repentance.
1:28:19Repentance.
1:28:20It was the most important the title
1:28:22basically of Leon Aron's new book, which
1:28:25is called Road to the Temple. Okay? Leon
1:28:28Aron is a scholar at American
1:28:30Enterprise. You know he is. Okay, the
1:28:32Yeltsin biographer and so on. So, Leon's
1:28:34new book published by Yale University
1:28:36Press is called Road to the Temple
1:28:37because the last metaphor in the film is
1:28:40precisely
1:28:42an old woman who comes I'm sure people
1:28:44remember that was the great film of
1:28:46glasnost.
1:28:48I mean, that really set the agenda of
1:28:50glasnost,
1:28:51you know. And actually he took it as a
1:28:53title of his film Road to the Temple
1:28:56because the question is an old woman
1:28:58it's in a post
1:29:00it's an imaginary public which could be
1:29:02Georgia under Stalin or Italy under
1:29:04Mussolini or whatever under Beria,
1:29:06sorry. Okay? So, the main character is a
1:29:08dictator that combines Mussolini, Beria,
1:29:11Stalin, Hitler. You remember it, okay?
1:29:13So, and after so many years it was very
1:29:15refreshing to see it, you know, it still
1:29:17works, okay? It being a masterpiece it
1:29:19works, okay? So, so the old woman at the
1:29:22end comes with the question what Where
1:29:24is the road to the temple?
1:29:26To the church actually. What is the road
1:29:28Where is the road to the church? And
1:29:29somebody says
1:29:33there is no road to the church. I think
1:29:35that's the last line, no? And she says,
1:29:37"If there's no road to the church, what
1:29:40is life for?"
1:29:43Okay? So, Leon being, you know, probably
1:29:45the the editor Yale being very correct
1:29:49changed the church into the temple.
1:29:51That's In the film it's to the church.
1:29:52Sorry. It should have It should have
1:29:55remained the church even if we wanted.
1:29:57But of course we know that Yale
1:29:58University Press has always this, you
1:30:00know, very very, how do I say, purifying
1:30:03more of editing and, you know, so it
1:30:05became the church became the temple.
1:30:07Very universal. Okay? So, the road to
1:30:09the church, that was the question. So,
1:30:11where what is the road to the spiritual
1:30:13salvation? Okay? So, the spiritual
1:30:15salvation, you know, that that's a thing
1:30:18that happens in one's in in the human
1:30:20soul and also it involves the state. The
1:30:23problem of involving the state and here
1:30:25since Charles mentioned my role in the
1:30:27truth No, it was the truth commission in
1:30:29Romania, not quotation marks. It was
1:30:31truly the
1:30:32It was a truth commission. And truth
1:30:34commissions are very controversial.
1:30:36Truth commissions are not an easy job. I
1:30:38always say and Charles wrote a review of
1:30:41our report in Slavic Review, a wonderful
1:30:43review. I always said if I had known
1:30:46all the
1:30:47implications of that, probably I would
1:30:49have had
1:30:50very serious reservations. Especially if
1:30:53I had known Francis I if I had read
1:30:54Francisco Goldman's
1:30:56uh
1:30:57novel about the truth commission in
1:30:59Guatemala and the title is The Death of
1:31:01the Archbishop,
1:31:03who was the head of the truth
1:31:04commission. And after the truth
1:31:05commission presented its report, the
1:31:06archbishop drove home and was shot dead
1:31:09in the garage of the building. That's a
1:31:11fact.
1:31:12Okay? So, truth commissions are not
1:31:14just, you know, done You know, as Lenin
1:31:17used to say, life is not just a
1:31:18promenade on Nevsky Prospekt. So, truth
1:31:21commissions are not just a walk on Fifth
1:31:23Avenue. Okay? So, it's a very serious
1:31:26thing and you provoke Okay, we still
1:31:28have I wanted to ask Messianic versus
1:31:31mechanistic. That's a very interesting
1:31:33question.
1:31:35The problem
1:31:37uh both both and we cannot of course My
1:31:39commentators were wonderful in
1:31:41summarizing and and and and offering I
1:31:44think very thoughtful
1:31:45suggestions. Not I don't take them as
1:31:48criticism, but suggestions.
1:31:50Both ideologies that we deal with
1:31:54probably less so Mussolini.
1:31:56But let's leave it because I here I
1:31:58focus primarily, although I have a lot
1:32:00about Mussolini served me very, very
1:32:02well because he gave the best definition
1:32:04of fascism.
1:32:05So, I don't need an extra definition,
1:32:07but the reviewer in The Daily Beast says
1:32:09Vladimir doesn't come with a new
1:32:10definition. Why would I have a new one
1:32:12when Mussolini gave me the perfect
1:32:13definition of fascism? Okay, I'm very
1:32:15happy with that definition. I don't need
1:32:17an extra one. Okay. So, but seriously
1:32:19speaking, uh the
1:32:22both movements, of course, they were
1:32:24youth-oriented and so on. It's a very
1:32:26complicated thing. Uh if I may among
1:32:29other things, one of my hats is a
1:32:31political philosopher. So,
1:32:33uh in his uh in his
1:32:35um
1:32:38Specters of Karl Marx, the late French
1:32:41uh post-structuralist philosopher
1:32:43Jacques Derrida
1:32:45uh starts with a superb analysis of uh
1:32:48the
1:32:49the myth of the ghost or the phantom or
1:32:52the specter, and he compares the specter
1:32:55in the Communist Manifesto to the
1:32:56specter in the first act of Hamlet.
1:32:59It's a superb piece of literary
1:33:01criticism. I don't discuss it
1:33:02differently. But, what he says is
1:33:04basically that the specter in uh the
1:33:06Communist Manifesto is a future-oriented
1:33:09specter.
1:33:10The specter of communism looks into the
1:33:12Okay. If you just allow me to think of
1:33:14Hamlet's father being a specter of
1:33:16romanticism and National Socialism being
1:33:19a neo-romantic in many respects, a
1:33:21neo-romantic movement, okay, it's very
1:33:24much a past-oriented. Even if they
1:33:26project the the future is a recreation
1:33:29of the past, okay, in the National
1:33:31Socialist ideology. Okay, so uh to
1:33:34answer the question about messianic,
1:33:36both have the messianic Both replace the
1:33:39human time,
1:33:40which Now, it's 5:05. That's human time
1:33:44into they introduce the messianic time,
1:33:46which is a very different. We go into
1:33:48philosophy here, and this is basically
1:33:50where people like Carl Schmitt on that
1:33:52side and Walter Benjamin on that side,
1:33:55both of them dealt with the problem of
1:33:57Messianic time. And contemporary
1:33:58philosopher Giorgio Agamben and other
1:34:00people are working on this problem of
1:34:02mess- What is Messianic time? The
1:34:04revolutionary time. The chiliastic time.
1:34:07When time concentrates or whatever very
1:34:09differently that under normal
1:34:10circumstances.
1:34:11Both were scientific movements. Both
1:34:13claimed to have scientific answers to
1:34:16human human Both Karl Marx by finding
1:34:19the objective laws Remember, I always
1:34:21tell my students what is the
1:34:23uh you know, Andrew's there. Uh
1:34:26Engels's speech to Karl Marx's grave. I
1:34:29always say, "Go and read it." Whom does
1:34:31Engels compare Karl Marx in the speech
1:34:33in 1883 at Highgate Cemetery when they
1:34:36bury Karl Marx? To Charles Darwin.
1:34:39He was the Darwin of social science. So,
1:34:42basically, he was a scientist. Hitler in
1:34:45Mein Kampf, or if you want to go into
1:34:48more sophisticated people like Houston
1:34:50Stewart Chamberlain and the sources of
1:34:52Hitler, they claimed to have discovered
1:34:55scientific laws.
1:34:57The re- laws of race are seen. Eugenics,
1:35:00euthanasia, and so on. They're all part
1:35:02of this. Now, I uh Charles. And then
1:35:05I'll continue the discussion when I'll
1:35:07get together for lunch or dinner and we
1:35:09can discuss this.
1:35:10I read and we both write and read
1:35:14the T- TLS.
1:35:16Uh you're familiar with the uh recent
1:35:20uh discussions about who were the
1:35:22majority of the people who worked for
1:35:25RSHA, which was the most important
1:35:28directorate of SS.
1:35:31Okay?
1:35:32Uh SS Hacha, okay? Uh so, those were the
1:35:35people who made up the
1:35:38um whatever Einsatzkommandos.
1:35:40Those were the people who committed if
1:35:41Tim Snyder is right, and he is right,
1:35:44most of the crimes which were not
1:35:46recorded for a long time that took place
1:35:48in Soviet who saw whatever Everything is
1:35:50illuminated or read a book. Okay? The
1:35:53crimes that took place in the killing
1:35:55fields of Ukraine and Belarus, not at
1:35:57Auschwitz, not at Bergen-Belsen, not at
1:36:00whatever Treblinka, but in the killing
1:36:02fields and unrecorded and
1:36:05pro- It's what Snyder and you called him
1:36:08is called what? The Holocaust by
1:36:10Bullets. The Holocaust by Bullets. Okay?
1:36:13Uh
1:36:14Okay, the majority of those people
1:36:17were
1:36:19law PhDs.
1:36:21They held law degrees before 1933 or
1:36:25immediately after 1933. In law, they
1:36:29were highly educated and they were true
1:36:31believers.
1:36:33Okay? So, the power of ideas and with
1:36:35this I'll finish. We presented among the
1:36:37films that we present, we presented
1:36:38Downfall to the I present to my class.
1:36:41And some of you remember Bruno Ganz's
1:36:43extraordinary performance and so on and
1:36:45so forth.
1:36:45There is the moment when Magda Goebbels
1:36:47basically poisons her five children.
1:36:50And the doctor, the SS doctor, whoever,
1:36:52says,
1:36:53"Are you sure you want to do it? I mean,
1:36:55why do you want?" And her answer for me
1:36:58encapsulates the whole problem.
1:37:01Her answer is, "I don't want them to
1:37:02live in a world without National
1:37:05Socialism."
1:37:08A mother poisoning and otherwise she's
1:37:11perfectly normal. Her all her behavior
1:37:13is perfectly normal.
1:37:15That's what ideology can do. The person
1:37:17behaves perfectly normal.
1:37:19Uh Svetlana Alliluyeva in her memoirs
1:37:21describes Vasily Blokhin, the worst
1:37:24executioner in
1:37:25uh in Stalin's Russia, as the nicest
1:37:28guy. She She was playing with him and he
1:37:30was bringing her very nice dolls and so
1:37:32on.
1:37:33Okay, this is the guy who
1:37:35executed He was very happy because in
1:37:37one day in Katyn, he personally murdered
1:37:40and you remember the end of the film,
1:37:42okay? He personally murdered, I think,
1:37:441,000 people.
1:37:45Okay, just bullet in the
1:37:48Yeah. Okay, so
1:37:51he was totally convinced that he was
1:37:53doing the right thing.
1:37:55Uh
1:37:56rethinking of the all this, I went back
1:37:58to one of the best books written about
1:38:00Hitler and Stalin. It's Alan Bullock's
1:38:02parallel biographies of of of Hitler and
1:38:05Stalin, the great Hitler biography. And
1:38:08when it's in Ron if you go into Ron
1:38:11Rosenbaum's book explaining Hitler.
1:38:13And he interviews Alan Bullock. He says,
1:38:15"At the end of the day
1:38:18this great British historian who
1:38:20published his Hitler biography, the
1:38:21first
1:38:22edition in '58 or something like that, a
1:38:25classic, Hitler or apropos of mechanism,
1:38:27the mechanisms of tyranny.
1:38:30Okay, so the
1:38:32he says
1:38:33the question is did he believe it? He
1:38:36was convinced and he said he was a
1:38:38mountebank, that's exactly his term, but
1:38:41he was the most convinced man mountebank
1:38:44ever. And that's Khrushchev when asked,
1:38:46"Did Stalin believe
1:38:48that he was a genuine Marxist Leninist
1:38:51when he was doing that?" And Khrushchev
1:38:53responds, "It's
1:38:54yes, and therein lies the whole
1:38:56tragedy."
1:38:58Okay, so Khrushchev who
1:39:00didn't was not particularly
1:39:01sophisticated, but he had this kind of
1:39:04you know, deep, let's say
1:39:07humane understanding of certain things.
1:39:10So it's a
1:39:11this is the whole problem. I mean, do
1:39:13the terrorists who attack us think that
1:39:14they are
1:39:15doing evil? No.
1:39:17They're doing the good.
1:39:18This is the whole problem. This is the
1:39:19problem of the devil in force.
1:39:23Uh that what is the line that always
1:39:26tries to do the
1:39:28I know it in German.
1:39:31It's the motto to Ma- Master and
1:39:33Margarita by Bulgakov. Okay, so it's er
1:39:36ist ein Teil jener Kraft, so he is a
1:39:39part of the that force
1:39:41uh die stets das Gute will that always
1:39:45wants the good and Nudas Boseschaft
1:39:48and only the evil creates.
1:39:52Thank you very much.

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