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Vladimir Tismaneanu - Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century — Transcript

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0:00the main lessons of the 20th century
0:02that i try
0:03i've tried to highlight are that no
0:05ideological commitment
0:07no matter how frantically absorbing
0:09should ever prevail
0:10over the sanctity of human life and no
0:13party
0:14movement or leader holds the right to
0:15dictate the follow that followers
0:18renounce their critical faculties to
0:19embrace the pseudo-miraculous in fact
0:21mystically self-centered delusional
0:23vision of mandatory happiness that's a
0:26key element people ask me what lesson
0:27okay this is a lesson perhaps
0:31to jargon laden here but i i try to make
0:35it clear
0:36the main difficulty with the marxian
0:38project is its lack of sensitive
0:40sensitivity to the psychological makeup
0:42of mankind
0:43these obsessional social classes or what
0:46french sociologist lucian goldman once
0:48referred to as the viewpoint of trans
0:50individual historical subject
0:51a lucacion formulation to be sure the
0:54failure to take into account the
0:56infinite diversity of human nature
0:58the eagerness to reduce history to a
1:00conflict between polar social categories
1:03bourgeoisie and proletariat et cetera et
1:04cetera this is indeed the substratum of
1:07an ideology that
1:09wedded to a sectarian fanatic political
1:11movements has generated many illusions
1:13and much grief throughout the 20th
1:16century
1:17second thesis where is lenin coming so
1:20far it was marx
1:21lenin was not only the founder of
1:23political propaganda
1:24this is fact okay the supreme priest of
1:27a new ecclesiology
1:28of the omniscient infallible party but
1:31also the demiurge of a concentration
1:33camp system-based
1:34system and the apostle of universal
1:37terror i'm now reviewing a book by
1:38a guy called whatever neil ryan i think
1:40is his name and it's
1:42lenny's terror it's a perfect analysis
1:45of this
1:47of how it happened and its consequences
1:51if you want more in the book there is a
1:52lot of discussion about lenin
1:54and leninism this is relatively benign
1:57and known
1:58uh what is less benign and less known
2:00and it's
2:01provoked a uh you know an interesting
2:04discussion
2:05is how you know obviously leninism you
2:08know is the famous line
2:09when we say len what is lenin very
2:11important i said the new ecclesiology is
2:12the concept of the party
2:14the key element in leninism so you can
2:16live uh you know
2:17uh there's a famous line in uh one of
2:20the most important books of um
2:22of the marxist tradition uh 1923
2:25published
2:26girl blue coach history and class
2:28consciousness in history and class
2:29consciousness girl glucage
2:33there's one essay the subtitle of the
2:35book is essays in marxist dialectics
2:38and it became one of the accursed books
2:41of
2:41the marxist tradition it's a very
2:43important book in in which he said
2:46the following it's an essay which is
2:47called what is orthodox marxism
2:50orthodox meant in a positive way not as
2:52a pejorative term
2:54okay not dogmatic marxism orthodox means
2:57faithful marxism or uh authentic marxism
3:01or genuine marxism okay so he said a
3:04good marxist an orthodox marxist is
3:06someone who can
3:07leave aside all the practical
3:09conclusions of karl marx's philosophy
3:12every single sentence that karl marx
3:14wrote can be thrown jettison thrown away
3:17as long
3:18as the person remains faithful to the
3:20method
3:21some people call it the pan
3:23methodologism okay of lucac
3:26i would not discuss now the meaning of
3:29the look at his uh
3:32axiom i would simply postulate the pan
3:35methodological postulates so to speak
3:37okay i'll simply say that in lenin's
3:40case
3:41one can leave aside every single
3:43sentence that lenin
3:44produced in his life as long and one
3:48still remains faithful to lenin and
3:50leninism as long and one recognizes
3:52the sanctity the centrality the
3:55sacredness
3:56of the communist party in the leninist
3:58revolutionary cosmology
4:00okay this is the key element this is not
4:03i'm not original i quote in this
4:05very important book which is translated
4:07into english you can find it in
4:08published by columbia university press
4:10by one of the greatest political
4:11thinkers of the 20th century french
4:13political philosopher claude le thor
4:15which is called la complication in
4:17french especially question communist
4:19the complication an essay on the
4:21communist question it came out in friend
4:23in english translation from columbia
4:24university press so you are familiar
4:26with lefor's work on machiavelli
4:28and on bureaucratic institutions and so
4:31on
4:31and he emphasized okay uh to bring
4:34since we this is a center for russian
4:36and european studies i will
4:38uh am i right okay so uh the i would
4:41emphasize
4:42also the importance in lenin's
4:44centralism
4:45the party is the most central point
4:48and there's a superb analysis of the
4:51meaning of centrality
4:52in the communist cosmology by jan
4:54plumper in his wonderful book
4:56about the cult of personality of
4:57stalin's cult of the cult of personality
4:59in russian
5:00in soviet culture where he said the
5:02central means in the soviet cosmology
5:04means sacred
5:06uh how stalin appears in his analysis
5:09iconological
5:10analysis of different paintings in the
5:12stalin's cult
5:13the book was published last year by yale
5:15university press
5:16and it's called it has a wonderful title
5:18that doesn't come to mind exactly
5:20the alchemy of power okay stalin's cult
5:22the alchemy of power it's a superbook
5:24ian plumper
5:26it's also superbly published i mean it
5:28has fantastic reproductions
5:30it's it's a beautiful book in addition
5:32to being a great book okay so if you
5:34look for gifts for i don't know birthday
5:37christmas and so on
5:38i promote it okay so tell jan i reviewed
5:41it in international affairs and gave
5:42a glowing uh glowing review okay so with
5:45lenny and leonardism as relatively
5:46so jan plumper uh the alchemy of power
5:50the cult of stalin okay so um
5:54with learning and learning is relatively
5:56simple the problem is when you go
5:58into the comparison and here we enter a
6:02minefield because of course this can be
6:05very easy the discussion about
6:07or the analogy between communism and
6:09fascism
6:10can be very easily politicized and
6:14it is it has been very politicized and
6:16it has been used for political purposes
6:18and i'll
6:19try to discuss a little bit later so
6:21what i say here fascism and communism
6:24as political movements were resolutions
6:26to a painfully and universal
6:28universally felt sense-making crisis
6:31throughout europe
6:34born out of the cataclysmic barbarism i
6:37want to emphasize that the concept of
6:38barbarism
6:40or barbarous in explaining the rise of
6:43fashion of communism and fascism
6:45although we know
6:47some people here are students of his of
6:49political ideas and history
6:51no of course the roots of fascism are in
6:53the 19th century so the approach that
6:55fascism
6:56says that fashion was a response to
6:57communist the noltean approach
6:59is ignoring to some extent the fact that
7:02there were for instance that zev
7:04sternel's work
7:05on the french roots of fascism for
7:07instance
7:08which are 19th century okay or the
7:10russian roots of fascism which existed
7:12in the 19th century
7:14needless to speak about the german roots
7:15of fascism and so so that's before
7:18lenin's gulag
7:19that appears very much in the nalt
7:21explanation and
7:22his famous theory of the causal nexus
7:25okay uh inaudible the european civil war
7:29okay it's even before so it's yeah so i
7:32have a problem with the causal nexus
7:34because not
7:34because of some of the discussions but
7:36because i think it's ignoring
7:38a previous tradition that fascism was
7:41very much coming from so and
7:42in common so born out of the cataclysmic
7:45barbarians the concept of barbarism is
7:46extremely important
7:48i participated in in 2005 at
7:52a conference organized by susan neyman
7:54worked extensively on radical evil
7:56and she's running the einstein forum in
7:58in in potsdam and by tony judd
8:01and the conference took place in potsdam
8:03it was the 100th anniversary of the
8:05theory of relativity i think or
8:06something like that so it was linked to
8:07einstein
8:08okay so uh and uh the conce
8:12you know i discussed speaking of the
8:13relativity in my paper there was about
8:15moral
8:15relativism communist fascism and moral
8:18relativism
8:19it was a very interesting experience
8:20because among the people who were there
8:22was eric hopson
8:23uh which was a quite interesting
8:25conversation that followed tim schneider
8:27uh which i still have on my you know
8:30wall there picture with steve snyder
8:31myself and eric hopson
8:32okay hey house one team snyder myself to
8:34be more more uh
8:36you know to engage in comrade stalin's
8:38immodest modesty that's the
8:40that's the concept that plumper comes
8:42with uh that's my favorite line when
8:44stalin adds to his short biography by by
8:47hand
8:48instead in comrade stalin is known for
8:51his boundless modesty written by him
8:54and plumber has a superb term for that
8:56stalin's immodest modesty
8:58okay so okay so uh okay and
9:02i took from hopsbom with whom i disagree
9:05on many many issues
9:07especially when the way he saw marxism
9:09but he was right in order to understand
9:11the coming of the advent of the
9:13bolshevik revolution one needs to
9:14understand
9:15the barberization of the world in world
9:17war one
9:19things that were unthinkable or
9:21definitely unacceptable
9:22until 1914 household argued in his book
9:25of age of extremes but i this
9:27during this long conversation i had with
9:28him in possum remained very important
9:30and i used it in my own approach so this
9:32i don't have an ideological approach so
9:34i can vote without any problem eric
9:36hospital
9:37okay so the apocalyptical movement
9:39proclaimed the advent of the millennium
9:41in this world or to use political
9:43philosopher
9:44eric fergulin's formulation they tried
9:46sorry for the jargon to emanate
9:48he monetized the eschaton or basically
9:51to this is the essence of any
9:53fundamentalism and i see
9:55political uh teleologists like the ones
9:58that i discuss in this in this book
10:00i see them as attempts to um
10:04sorry it's political philosophy uh the
10:07uh to abolish
10:08the distinction between the city of god
10:10and the city of man
10:12or that's to immanent immonentize the
10:15escaton escarton being the sacred and
10:18world beyond the well beyond and to make
10:20it this worldly
10:22okay this is the story okay that i'm
10:24trying and that's fergalin in his
10:26uh book on political religions when he
10:28speaks about when he analyzed fascism as
10:31a political religion and
10:32he used exactly this term the
10:35immonentization
10:36of eschaton of the eschaton of the
10:38sacred
10:40okay so um this is a for a book about
10:43the incarnation now
10:44you'll ask me what is the devil in the
10:46story the devil has seen
10:47in all the story and it's a concept that
10:50i borrowed basically the title is
10:51borrowed from leskovsky
10:53it's a very famous interview that
10:54kokowski gave in the 1970s to george
10:57urban it's
10:58including the volume stalinism and its
11:00impact on the world by edited by george
11:02urban
11:03and it's also in kolakowski's collection
11:05of essays including in the
11:06my correct views on everything uh it's
11:09the title being exactly the devil in
11:11history
11:12you'd ask me if i had permission yes i
11:14did okay so uh
11:16i was in touch with professor kwalkowski
11:17before his death as a matter of fact i
11:19was one of the
11:20uh interesting three persons who wrote
11:22the obituaries for calculating gazeta
11:24butcher when he passed passed away and
11:27it was very interesting because the
11:28other obituary was by somebody whom i
11:30deeply disagree with
11:32and he's mentioned quite frequently in
11:34the book although i appreciate his early
11:36writings very much
11:37obviously i have in mind or less
11:39obviously the slovene philosophers
11:40lavoisier
11:42okay so i always have a problem and you
11:44know why zizek wrote a
11:46beautiful obituary of karkovsky never
11:47mentioned kolkovsky in his writings
11:50uh knowing very well what kokowski wrote
11:53because it's very hard
11:54to engage in the type of return to
11:56leninis that zizek is uh presenting
11:58these days
11:58uh if you take karkowski seriously okay
12:01so uh there are two shijaks zizek writes
12:04the obituary for krakos in gazette bulge
12:06and polish
12:07okay and of the whatever it's called
12:11the latest book uh less than nothing
12:14okay
12:14so um
12:17the the devil of course uh when asked
12:21when asked if he meant the devil uh in a
12:25metaphorical way or he meant the devil
12:27as a uh reality koalkovsky responded was
12:29a great
12:30those who've read the karkovsky note
12:31that the man had an extraordinary sense
12:33of humor
12:34and his answer was without any joke
12:37whatsoever he said i mean it as
12:38literally as you can take it
12:40okay because anybody who has read and as
12:42a matter of fact this is very important
12:44anybody who has read probably the most
12:46important book about the great terror
12:48which is
12:48obviously historical speaking that i can
12:52give you three books
12:53about the great error the most recent
12:55one the superb by carl schlegel moscow
12:571937
12:58then you have the great terror by romer
13:00conquest and probably i don't know other
13:02books that i can
13:03come with but the greatest book about
13:05the greater moscow night katarina clarks
13:07about moscow capital whatever
13:09the force the false fourth rome
13:13and so but the greatest book about that
13:15and i think that
13:16uh schl does the wish logo starts his
13:18book is of course master margarita
13:21okay so you know the best book ever
13:24written about moscow in 1936 37
13:27and it starts with who is visiting
13:29moscow in 1937 that's the starting point
13:32how many people read here
13:35okay master margarita starts with the
13:36visit of the devil in moscow in 1936 37
13:40and my friend christina vatulisk and
13:42here's a recent book which is a
13:43wonderful book that i recommend
13:44uh here police aesthetics starts with
13:47this
13:48you know this what is amazing is that
13:50bulgako's wife was keeping a diary that
13:52makes
13:53for me this that's the challenging thing
13:55how could people keep diaries in moscow
13:57in 1937.
13:59and several other people kept diaries in
14:00an interesting story okay
14:02so this is a book about the incarnation
14:04of diabolical nihilistic principles of
14:06human subjugation
14:07and conditioning in the name of
14:08presumably pure and purifying goals
14:11i didn't ask you for nothing about
14:13vladimir soloviov because my whole
14:15concept of interpreting this is vanessa
14:18view was a russian
14:19christian existentialist if you want a
14:21writer philosopher
14:23and some people argue i'm not sure i
14:25read it but i might be wrong that
14:27actually dostoevsky met him and it was a
14:30source of inspiration for alyosha
14:31karamazov
14:32okay so in karamazov brothers so okay uh
14:35there is a book that brought you know i
14:37read his antichrist and i read a lot of
14:39sylvia but then
14:40i read french political philosopher and
14:42historian alembos on song and he has a
14:44wonderful little book which is
14:45translated into english
14:47which is called the falsificacion de
14:48bien so the falsification of the good
14:51so the answer that i found is a
14:53comparison between solo violent orwell
14:55it's a great little book 140 pages and i
14:58loved it okay
14:59so uh
15:02and in that book i think i found because
15:04all the time i said like most of my
15:07fellow thinkers on this topic of
15:09communism and fascism i said
15:10communism basically or fascism abolish
15:13traditional distinctions between good
15:15and evil
15:16that's the classic line and then the
15:18more i thought about that and this book
15:20is basically a testimony to my
15:22own process of understanding what i was
15:24writing about and i think that i've read
15:26most most of what one could read about
15:28that
15:30is that the issue is not simply
15:32abolishing the
15:33distinctions but basically substituting
15:37the concept of good and by consequence
15:41the subs
15:41that's what the work of devil in history
15:44is
15:44to introduce a falsified concept of good
15:47and i
15:48give a number of examples you have
15:50examples
15:51you know when for instance one of my
15:53examples is himmler's
15:55speech in 1943 in poznan or pozen
15:58when he speaks about things that we
16:00cannot utter
16:01things that we cannot say we know that
16:03they are good
16:05but humanity is not prepared to
16:08receive our message we'll
16:11act knowing that this is good that means
16:13the final solution
16:15will purify humanity we'll get rid of
16:18the vermin
16:19and one day will come maybe we'll not
16:23experience that moment but our heirs
16:25will
16:26experience it and they will be thanked
16:28by humanity for what we've done
16:30this is not simply abolishing the
16:32distinction be good and evil it has a
16:34vision of
16:35good this is the other day i saw
16:39uh one of the most disturbing films
16:44it's called enemy enemies of the people
16:47it's a film about the khmer rouge regime
16:50got the best documentary from sundance
16:54festival and so on i thought you can
16:57find it it's online and
16:59enemies of the people and i talked a lot
17:01to shabbat with the
17:02sabbath okay so is the director
17:06and the main character in the film it's
17:08a long discussion between him
17:10who lost his mother father and brother
17:14in the killing fields and the number two
17:17of the khmer rouge regime
17:19so that happened last week so it's not
17:21in my book but uh
17:22whenever i give this presentation i'm
17:24not on the lecture search it so i give
17:26my presentations every week
17:27so i add things because i saw this film
17:29and he came to one of my presentations
17:31and he really i'm going to bring him to
17:33my class i teach a
17:34class on revolutions authoritarianism
17:36and film and i want
17:38my students to to see it it's the
17:40discussion with this guy
17:43his name was
17:48[Music]
17:49the number two he was the deputy general
17:51to paul pott
17:53uh who accepted to speak i'm not going
17:55to i'm a great
17:56film spoiler my students tell me i tell
17:58them from the beginning what's going on
17:59and they said
18:00this is the most interesting class but
18:02you should not tell us the beginning
18:03what the film
18:04how the film concludes and so let's do
18:07it after the class okay so i'm not going
18:08to tell you more but
18:09enter you know google and just put
18:11enemies of the people
18:12and uh his name is sabat essay
18:17i think whatever not like a sabbath i
18:19don't have the or
18:20you'll find it it's very so khmer rouge
18:21and you'll find the
18:23including fragments of the conversation
18:24with the was the executioner
18:27a man who is now
18:30indicted he's in prison and so on who is
18:33basically responsible for the
18:34assassination of 1.8 million people
18:39okay uh
18:42so the book that you're going we can
18:44discuss here is not a historical truth
18:46is although history is present on every
18:47page but rather politically
18:48philosophical it's a book of history of
18:50ideas
18:50and one of the things that i emphasize a
18:52lot is that without
18:54understanding the role of ideology we
18:55don't understand these two experiences
18:57this is i think the key element that
18:59professor richard ovary who reviewed
19:01this book in times higher education
19:02emphasized
19:03that ideology is and he's the author of
19:06one of the most admired and respected
19:07books on hitler in stalin
19:09okay so i was extreme and you know it's
19:11one of the best thing that can happen to
19:13an author
19:14is to have your book reviewed by
19:16somebody admire enormously whom you've
19:18never met
19:19in your life you know i've never had
19:21anything but
19:22admiration for professor rovery so to
19:24suddenly get this okay so that's for me
19:26a great thing okay
19:28so um it is a political philosophical
19:30interpretation of how maximalist utopian
19:33aspirations
19:34can lead to the nightmares of soviet and
19:36nazi camps epitomized by colima
19:38and auschwitz basically the main
19:41questions i will not be able to go into
19:43too many details but the main
19:44questions here for me and we can discuss
19:47it if we have time
19:48is how was it possible that two systems
19:50based on two
19:52very very different ideologies
19:55extremely different in terms of their
19:57own origins
19:58and presumably of their intentions or
20:01intentionalities
20:03if you want presented striking
20:05similarities in terms of structure
20:08and results they're all the party and
20:10other
20:11elements that i emphasize as being v
20:13structurally similar but
20:15most important in terms of their results
20:17mass murder
20:19that's the question that's the big
20:20puzzle for me how was it possible
20:23and why do i approach this topic i
20:25approached this topic because i became
20:27increasingly aware
20:29by a paradox that tony judd once
20:32formulated very well
20:34and i think you find it in his
20:36conversation with timothy snyder the
20:37book that came out last year
20:39and which is why
20:43in the west comparing communism and
20:45fascism usually creates a sense of
20:48uneasiness to put it this way
20:52while in the east this uneasiness
20:56creates an uneasiness
20:59okay what is happening
21:03and why can't we somehow go in the
21:06direction of let's call it
21:08unifying european memory
21:11and show the same type of compassion
21:16or allow for the presence in the moral
21:17imagination of humanity
21:20or both mass horrors or mass crimes
21:24to be present without one overshadowing
21:27presumably the other one this is the key
21:30elements what is
21:31the problem here
21:34and then we have the problem so again
21:37counter factually or less counter
21:40factually
21:41because now i just mentioned yesterday i
21:44finished reading a book i am reviewing
21:46it by andy nagorski
21:48one of the most brilliant american
21:49journalists the book is called
21:52hitler land and it's about american
21:55journalists and diplomats in
21:56nazi germany between nine in the 1930s
21:59it's a very interesting book i'm not
22:01going to say more because i don't want
22:02to spoil
22:03i recommend the book okay
22:07it is quite interesting that you had
22:10much less readiness to engage in
22:14mismaking
22:15making about the nazi regime from that
22:18moment on
22:19among the americans there there's a lot
22:21of open-mindedness and lucidity and
22:23clear-mindedness
22:25yes there are some naives and some
22:27idiots and so on but
22:29in general the approach is very lucid
22:32they know what's going on well you have
22:35a very different
22:36approach to the soviet union at the same
22:38moment at the same time
22:40well we know for sure i don't know if
22:42tim snyder lectured here but most of the
22:44people read his book bloodlands
22:46we know for sure that in nine let's say
22:481936
22:50there is no comparison whatsoever in
22:51terms of number of victims
22:53between the soviet regime and the nazi
22:55regime no comparison
22:57we cannot compare simply the soviet
22:59regime said already
23:01during the holomore and whatever
23:03happened
23:04millions of victims in the early 1930s
23:08this is not to excuse the nazi regime
23:11but
23:12after 1939
23:15when it becomes basically a genocidal
23:17regime
23:18it is not actively engaged in genocide
23:21before 1939
23:23it's engaged in lots of reprehensible
23:25activities
23:26but it is not genocidal we can go into
23:29if it was intentionally or
23:30non-intentional genocidal
23:31what it was there but it's not the
23:32purpose of of my
23:34talk here so that i see a paradox how is
23:37it possible for a political project
23:39called communism meant to lead to
23:41universal emancipation
23:42to have as it's outcome as the last
23:45lines of karkoski's trilogy and marxism
23:47says the uh
23:51climax of human bondage and abysmal
23:54atrocities that's something that one
23:57needs to
23:58understand how therefore for instance
24:03part of the answer is propaganda
24:06it played a very important role but
24:09propaganda
24:10nazi propaganda was also very powerful
24:13and
24:13never achieved the same type of
24:15extraordinary accomplishments
24:17in the public awareness in the west as
24:20the soviet propaganda mental counter
24:23factual exercise
24:25in 1937 one of the most famous at that
24:29moment
24:30german emigre writers novelists and very
24:33influential figure leon foreigner
24:35goes to moscow he's invited to
24:39attend in the audience the
24:42second moscow show trial the trial of
24:45piatakov
24:46radik rakovsky and so
24:49we are in march 19th i'm not from march
24:511937.
24:53uh he had witnesses then he goes and has
24:56a conversation with stalin
24:59uh the result of the conversation was
25:02starting the result of his trip to
25:04moscow the result of his trip to the
25:05soviet union is a book called
25:06moscow 1937 which came out in russian
25:09translation and became an important
25:12part of the soviet propaganda
25:15in which he basically endorsed the
25:17soviet official line on the show trial
25:19center
25:21i repeat german jewish writer member of
25:24not a communist not member of the
25:25communist party member of the
25:27anti-fascist
25:28exiled german exile imagine now this is
25:32the counterfactual
25:34that uh in 1939
25:38after no that in november 1930
25:42uh 8
25:46a writer goes to berlin
25:51a week after or during the kristallnacht
25:56has a conversation with hitler after
25:59that
26:00publishes a book with the title berlin
26:021938
26:04in which basically he shows how the jews
26:06were
26:07destroying the german economy and
26:08deserved what happened to them that
26:10probably there were some excesses but
26:12definitely the fueler had no idea about
26:14them and when he heard about them he
26:16stopped everything
26:17uh and so he would have been forever
26:22the um beneficiary of universal disgrace
26:27forever not the case so here again a
26:31paradox why
26:33so this is very much the book that i
26:35bring to your attention is very much an
26:37attempt to uh overcome
26:40what i find to be extremely disturbing
26:43the double standards
26:44in dealing with these uh two systems
26:48uh some people may not be happy you know
26:51it's not my
26:52i've i've leave 30 years of my life
26:54under mandatory happiness
26:56so i don't want everybody to be happy
26:58it's not my purpose
26:59uh i know some people who say that the
27:02comparison
27:03uh is illegitimate uh
27:06let me say very clearly that i agree
27:08with stimulus snyder those who say that
27:09the comparative comparison is
27:11illegitimate have already made a
27:12comparison and decided
27:14in one particular direction okay so
27:17that's not
27:18uh necessarily a disingenuous position
27:23uh or an honest position better said
27:26okay so the
27:29power of the communist propaganda is
27:32something that of course deserves to be
27:34discussed
27:34here the communist international
27:37propaganda machine which was never
27:38reached by
27:39anything similar from the other side
27:42for one simple reason because communism
27:44was international and international is
27:46national socialist could be
27:48international but never internationalist
27:51that's the starting point
27:53ireland does a very good job in
27:54discussing that in the origins
27:57when she says that any movement which is
27:59based on
28:00race is made it's based on a limitation
28:04it's basically impossible to become a
28:07planetary movement
28:09to attract the kind of global appeals
28:12or to exert the the type of global
28:15appeals
28:16that communism could exert and for such
28:18a long period of time it was simply
28:20uh doomed to be limited
28:24uh a great historian
28:28francois fiore some of you read of
28:29course the passing of an illusion or his
28:32writings on marx and the french
28:33revolution and his book on of course
28:35uh rethinking the french revolution uh
28:38francois furis said that both
28:39and as a matter of fact this is a
28:41starting point in my own analysis is
28:43that to the two projects
28:45where or are to be seen
28:48as
28:52failed i don't like the translation
28:54failed derailed
28:56that's the real transaction because in
28:57french is devoid
29:00okay derailed so he said communism is
29:04a derailed project derailed offspring
29:07of the enlightenment and
29:10fascism is a derailed offspring of the
29:12counter-enlightenment
29:14if you take or also from communism is a
29:17pathology
29:18of universalism fashion is a pathology
29:21of particularism
29:24because leave pathology aside okay
29:27uh particularism cannot be it's by
29:30definition particular it cannot be
29:32universal
29:32it's it's very definition emphasizes a
29:35certain group
29:36as being the beneficiary of all the
29:39great achievements of humanity and so
29:40forth
29:41the nobility and so on in this case the
29:43aryan nation the
29:44germanic nation and so on communism is
29:47ecumenical it's uh
29:50in the etymological sense catholic
29:54okay universal so since we are coming uh
29:58getting closer to one o'clock i'll
29:59finish with there are many things that i
30:01could have said i took only point one of
30:04this list of
30:05discussions but i'll uh finish with
30:10some lines from the book or about the
30:12book or about the topics of the book the
30:14communist international propaganda
30:15machine defended human rights against
30:17the abominable atrocities perpetrated by
30:19the nazis
30:20obscuring the fact that i mentioned
30:21before that until 1939
30:23most mass crimes in europe were in fact
30:26committed by the stalinists in the ussr
30:30so therefore i tried to discuss
30:33to explore to examine political passions
30:36radicalism utopian ideals and their
30:38catastrophic consequences
30:40in the 20th century experiments in
30:42massive social engineering both regimes
30:44were involved in
30:46enormous in the case of the soviet union
30:48things are not
30:49a surprise they define themselves quote
30:51the great experiment they
30:53that was the experimental notion was at
30:55the heart of the soviet if
30:57you want to understand sovietism and
30:59this is exactly what steve corkin does
31:00in his book
31:01about soviet civilization what is you
31:03know magnetic mountain
31:04uh basically it was an experiment in
31:07creating a
31:08new civilization uh some of you are
31:10familiar with the
31:11one of my favorite
31:14let's say situations intellectual
31:17situations the webs the webs were sydney
31:19and batteries web
31:20very well known intellectuals britain
31:22fabian society et cetera et cetera
31:24progressives with all the good things
31:26about the progressives
31:27uh the webs went to the soviet union in
31:29the 1920s published their first book
31:31which was called the ussr a new
31:33civilization question mark
31:36in the 1930s they revisited the soviet
31:39union
31:40and they they published a book
31:43the ussr a new civilization and they
31:46deleted the question mark
31:49were the webs aware of what was going on
31:52or not
31:54that's a key element in the please those
31:56who have not read i recommend very
31:58strongly a book by michael david fox the
32:01recent book by michael david fox who
32:03teaches was my colleague at maryland now
32:04he's at georgetown
32:06the book is called showcasing the great
32:08experiment
32:09it's about soviet cultural diplomacy in
32:12the 1930s
32:14it's a fabulous book based on archives
32:16the archives of the
32:18whatever soviet association for uh links
32:21with the
32:22what was the vox right works the
32:25v-o-k-s okay uh which was i had no idea
32:28that the first president of oaks was uh
32:30caminov's sister
32:32you know so communist wife and trotsky's
32:34sister olga kamini
32:35and some very interesting stuff okay so
32:38uh
32:39beatrice webb was more aware of what was
32:41going on
32:42and as a matter of fact but they were
32:44completely controlled mentally
32:45controlled by the soviet ambassador ivan
32:47maeske
32:48to a great extent their information and
32:50they were shocked by the pact in 1939
32:53but they decided classic case for fellow
32:55travelers they decided not to speak up
32:57because that would bring
32:58greece to the middle of the
32:59reactionaries and so
33:01so they kept their disappointment very
33:04private
33:05okay so they allowed for the illusions
33:07to go on
33:08so uh it is important therefore to
33:12to try to map and explain what hanaren
33:14called
33:15the ideological storms of a century
33:17second to none in violence
33:19hebrews ruthlessness and human
33:21sacrifices
33:23now uh three final quotes and then
33:26we can have any questions you have
33:33koakovsky the devil invented ideological
33:36states
33:37that is to say states whose legitimacy
33:39is grounded in the fact
33:41that their owners are owners of truth
33:44if you oppose such a state or its system
33:47you are not simply
33:48an anti-state person like in a
33:52other type of dictatorship you are or
33:54you become quote from kolkovsky
33:55an enemy of truth that explains
33:59the um how do i call it
34:04almost sectarian but it
34:07there should be another term there if
34:09you're under the quasi-talmudist
34:10type of struggles that take place around
34:13the particular sentence in lenin
34:15in the 1920s or a particular how lenin
34:18discusses when he wants to smash
34:20the renegade kawatsuki in his famous
34:22pamphlet the proletarian revolution the
34:24renegade kowski
34:25the interpretation of the meaning of the
34:27war dictatorship of the proletariat
34:29there are pages and pages there that he
34:31goes
34:31on and on what it means the dictatorship
34:34of the proletariat okay
34:35so that for any lay person's ear
34:40sounds absolutely lunacy i mean why
34:42would people
34:43engage in this type of debate because
34:45these were idiocratic systems if you
34:48don't
34:48see the role of ideology as defining the
34:51truth then
34:51we miss the point about basically what
34:53kind of systems
34:55we talk about second
35:00it's a very interesting uh quotation i
35:03found it from
35:04one of my favorite writers he is a
35:07british australian whatever uh cultural
35:09critic clive james those who read
35:11you know tls and so on i mean he's a
35:15very very smart guy so he says a measure
35:18of our slowness to face up to the real
35:20history of the soviet union is that the
35:21expression
35:22kirov ballet does not strike us as
35:25obscene
35:26the expression himmler used orchestra
35:28would
35:30imagine a trip to washington dc at the
35:33kennedy center of the himalayas
35:34orchestra
35:36nobody has a problem with the kill of
35:37ballet well we know for sure that kirov
35:39was
35:40one of the top bolsheviks involved in
35:44most of the bolshevik atrocities and so
35:46on and far from being the
35:48great guy described by a certain type of
35:50historiography
35:51okay and the last one it's from
35:55a review in tls of my book by one of my
35:58favorite
35:58political thinkers john gray who wrote
36:02the following
36:02blindness to the true nature of
36:04communism is an inability to accept that
36:07radical evil can come from the pursuit
36:09of progress
36:12this is the problem and i'll end up with
36:15one of my favorite
36:16lines which i sent after that to john
36:18gray after he published this
36:20great review in tls and i said you know
36:23that really
36:24struck a very responsive chord with me
36:26because i
36:27always had a problem with the concept of
36:29progress especially the mechanical
36:31deterministic vision of progress
36:33and in one of my favorite books that i
36:35quote in in
36:37the devil in history and probably
36:40one of the two or three most
36:41devastatingly important
36:44analysis of what communists meant in the
36:46soviet union i have in mind the two
36:48volumes of memoirs by nadezhda mandel
36:51uh now there's amanda so
36:54who tells her they talk about progress
36:57at a certain moment and she said
36:58i was five and i was in kiev when i
37:01first
37:01heard the word progress and i started to
37:04cry
37:06uh really now there's some understand
37:09memoirs
37:10it's very interesting uh we know that
37:12poets have a uh
37:14even at the age of five have a very very
37:16different uh
37:18relationship with with reality they see
37:21things before
37:22you know poets are seers as they say and
37:25at the age of five i think that
37:26panderstein had premonitions that other
37:28people could not have had

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