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Hobsbawm and Guilt
02 October 2012
Since leaving behind school and a great A level teacher, I have never been able to get on with history. I can’t fully explain why though it may be something to do with historians’ need to have opinions, ideologies or, as Catherine Merridale puts it in the Guardian today, “a moral compass.” I can’t see how any of those might help one to understand the chaos of the world. I do see that we all have a perspective which might, at a stretch, be called something like an ideology or whatever, but that would be just wordplay. It is ironic that the one profession that should avoid opinions at all costs is also the one most often called upon to express them.
All of which disqualifies me from writing about Eric Hobsbawm, who died yesterday, so I won’t, not directly at least. The only thing I will say is that he was plainly liked and admired and that there is a cloud over his career – his refusal to express any contrition for his support of Stalin.
David Aaronovitch, in a Twitter debate I had with him yesterday, offered the ‘in his shoes’ defence which is reasonable. Many of us, if we are honest, might have found ourselves supporting Hitler or Stalin in the circumstances of the time. The best of us would have pulled out as soon as the reality of these men became clear – which, in the case of Stalin, was at the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The British left, including Hobsbawm, went on supporting Stalin well beyond that, some still do. They should be clear what that means – it means not only do they support the Terror and the Gulag, they also support the Holocaust. I can think of no argument that would exculpate them.
They should be clear what that means – it means not only do they support the Terror and the Gulag, they also support the Holocaust. I can think of no argument that would exculpate them
Aaronovitch’s formulation obviously, therefore, needs a modification – ‘in his shoes, at that time’. David, graciously agreed. By that standard, of course, Hobsbawm is convicted. But there is a further, vaguer. defence often offered by the left. I came across this when I asked Ben Pimlott if he regarded the atrocities of Soviets somehow less vile than those of the Nazis. He said he did but could not or would not offer an explanation. The explanation probably would have been something like: the Soviets were well-meaning, attempting to build a better world and the Nazis were simply evil. This is barely worthy of consideration. Both Stalin and Hitler appealed to better world ideologies built on absurd theories of history and both thought they were justified in killing millions and imposing suffering on a scale never before seen. Even if we give some moral credibility to communism, the character of Stalin is enough to detonate any notion that he was pursuing some great cause.
If Hobsbawm had been a right winger who supported and continued to support Hitler, the coverage today would have been very different, yet, in my terms, there is no difference. Sentimentality and and easy nostalgia for the days of the Comintern infects the British left and prevent them being effective. (It also infects the American left. I know of two prominent academics who could not work there because they had merely hinted at moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin,) Blair did not destroy this legacy, he further inspired it. Miliband shows signs of being smart enough to move on while being genuinely left-leaning. He has said he will split the banks, if he also says he will deny limited liability to the investiment banks, he will have shown himself to be a better, truer conservative – one concerned, above all, with justice – than the Tories and he will have my vote
11 Responses to “Hobsbawm and Guilt”
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2 October 2012 at 8:11 am
I love history. As you point out you tend to project your philosophy on your reading of the data and facts, a lot like economics, Another non-science.
The rise of social sciences and its dominance by the left has created like a feedback loop the need for narrative, or shall we call it the ‘narrative bubble’?
Often in life narratives are week, most genuine poverty in the UK is a result of Mental health problems, poor education and family breakdowns, but economics and inequality are the stars of the show. Not saying they dont matter, they do but these are issue of perspectives more so than facts.
Maybe below every History professor’s door below their name we should add ‘shit happens’, it just might remind them.
2 October 2012 at 8:35 am
I don’t agree with what you’ve said Hobsbawm – I think it is a kind of easy moral posturing frankly. I think the argument that Hobsbawm – who’s organisation was destroyed by the Nazis and who lost family in the Holocaust – ‘supported the Holocaust’ is bizarre. I rather suspect you wouldn’t have said that to him in real life.
2 October 2012 at 9:19 am
I don’t usually agree Aaronovitch these days but unless you can fully imagine coming of age in a world where death by the million was commonplace – as Hobsbawm who grew up the two great wars did – you cannot begin to understand the framework in which he did his thinking. Of the many gifts he brought to the writing of history not least was his ability to imagine successfully the mindset of ordinary people living during a different epoch in history.
As for the equivalence argument: I agree that it is very difficult that he did not acknowledge to a fuller degree what happened under Stalin but again it is important to remember that in the context of the Thirties many within Stalin’s own party in Russia went along – even as they were shipped out to death in the gulag. The realization that they were no longer trying to win a world but had become enmeshed in an unimaginable tyranny came late to many – and is best understood by reading the fiction of Vasily Grossman and Lev Abramov.
The key thing for you to remember – and anyone else who is so quick to criticize the recently deceased – is Stalinism is not Socialism … just as capitalism is not freedom. The Soviet Union was an off the rails experiment in forming a more equal world that failed in everything. Nazi Germany was an experiment in racial world domination that succeeded in one thing: the annihilation of European Jewry.
Poles, Ukrainians and Balts have a different view of course. But on a recent reporting trip I found that in general those nations’ Jew hatred undiminished – indeed they don’t complain about Stalin, they complain about “Jew Communism.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/euro-2012-antisemitic-football?INTCMP=SRCH
2 October 2012 at 10:24 am
From Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” (pages 83 to 84). (I thought I knew a lot about Stalin’s crimes but the last few sentences really shocked me).
“The kulak operation involved shooting from the beginning to the end. Yezhov reported to Stalin, with evident pride, that 35,454 people had been shot by 7 September 1937. During the year 1937, however, the number of Gulag sentences exceeded the number of death sentences. As time passed, new allocations tended to be for execution rather than exile. In the end the number of people killed in the kulak operation was about the same as the number sent to the Gulag (378,326 and 389,070, respectively). The overall shift from exile to execution was for practical reasons: it was easier to kill than to deport, and the camps quickly filled to capacity – and had little use for many of the deportees. One investigation in Leningrad led to the shooting (not deportation) of thirty-five people who were deaf and dumb. In Soviet Ukraine, the NKVD chief Izrail Leplevskii ordered his officers to shoot rather than exile the elderly. In such cases, Soviet citizens were killed because of who they are.”
Yet Eric Hobsbawm died of natural causes aged 95.
2 October 2012 at 12:19 pm
Snyder again, demolishing the “at least the communists weren’t racists” argument (page 111):
“As of the end of 1938, the USSR had killed about a thousand times more people on ethnic grounds than had Nazi Germany. The Soviets had also, for that matter, killed far more Jews to that point than the Nazis.”
2 October 2012 at 12:46 pm
“unless you can fully imagine coming of age in a world where death by the million was commonplace – as Hobsbawm who grew up the two great wars did – you cannot begin to understand the framework in which he did his thinking.”
The trouble with this “in the context of the time” argument is that millions and millions of people with much the same experiences as Hobsbawm did not idolise Stalin (or Hitler). Maybe because they weren’t “intellectuals” blinded by their pet ideologies. Martin Heidegger could have used a similar excuse for his support of Hitler.
Hermann Goering: “I have no conscience. Hitler is my conscience.”
Eric Hobsbawm’s attitude to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact etc.: “I have no conscience, Stalin is my conscience.”
“Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.” (Vaclav Havel)
2 October 2012 at 5:13 pm
Bryan,
This a hell of a lot more sophisticated than Michael Burleigh’s Torygraph rant. Such a good historians deserves better than the company of Daily Mail ‘Right Minds’.
Now – even if it was true that Hobsbawm refused to criticise Stalin and the Terror, and it isn’t, that doesn’t make him an apologist for the Holocaust. How?
The argument that Nazism and Communism even in its Soviet form, which changed radically between 1917 and 1936, are morally equivalent is too crude – the idea is unsustainable.
Snyder DOESN”T ARGUE FOR EQUIVALENCE. His book has been grossly exploited by far right neo fascists in Eastern Europe.
Hobsbawm, a Jewish refugee, was much too intelligent to maintain the same line on Stalinism. The fact is that his views of Communist history were nuanced.
Some basic fact checking needed here comrades!!
2 October 2012 at 7:23 pm
Criticism of Hobsbawm’s support of Stalin may be valid, but how does this support equate to support of the Holocaust? That opinion seems completely random and unjustified in this article.
2 October 2012 at 7:38 pm
“Hobsbawm, a Jewish refugee…”
…who supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Of course, Hobsbawm wasn’t actually stupid enough to move to the USSR where he might have ended up like the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist League, for instance.
“Hobsbawm did not deny the horrors of Stalin’s Soviet Union – for him the moral values of Communism remained incorruptible. ” (From Chris’s blog).
Which is repulsive doublethink. One definite advantage Nazism had over Communism was that it was effectively dead after 1945. Partly because people like Hobsbawm perpetuated the “incorruptible idea”, Communism went on to kill tens of millions in China, Cambodia, Ethiopia etc. and is still killing now in North Korea.
Czeslaw Milosz on the reaction of French Stalinists to revelations of Stalin’s crimes: “…I was surprised. No, not so much at their breakdowns and disillusionments, but more at the ease with which they immediately mended their shattered faith in the wise movement of history, without drawing any conclusions.”
“All good historians and decent people will mourn the passing of Eric Hobsbawm” (blog again).
Guess I must be an indecent person, a “pygmy”, a “shallow minded inhabitant of Dailymailworld” and a “Torygraph” reader to boot. That’s the only explanation. Heh.
2 October 2012 at 7:40 pm
Pedantic footnote: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Anti-Fascist_Committee
2 October 2012 at 10:46 pm
I like history. I like its mix of grand sweep and intimate nuance. I think of it as God’s novel — God’s pastiche of Tolstoy.
I think it’s still easier to call yourself a communist than a fascist because communism is superficially about asserting equality and fascism asserts inequality and the former is more conciliatory, more sociable. Of course in practice communism is implicitly unequal in certain regards because it requires massive subordination of people to government, thereby maintaining or increasing political inequality for the sake of economic equality.
This might seem worthwhile in the short term (the peasants were initially better off under Castro than Batista) but in the long run you lose more than you gain because the system needs constant oppression to quell desires for freedom and economic advance. Collectivist systems have to control desire to maintain equality, that’s their big weakness, that’s why we have a contradiction between the permissive society and the welfare state, the unbridled desire of the former is killing the latter.