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A tremendous experience
May. 23rd, 2005 09:40 amThere is no eulogy in the English language more radiant than the one that the journalist Bernard Levin wrote in 1976 for the Russian writer Alexander Solghenitsin after meeting him during a BBC interview. And until yesterday, Levin’s passionate and obviously sincere account of the great writer was the main reason I had to admire the man.
As a historian, I feel that I know quite enough of the monsters who polluted the twentieth century. I tend to avoid eyewitness accounts of the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and less famous fiends such as King Leopold II (whose hideous rule in the Congo may well surpass Hitler and Stalin’s worst excesses, and for far meaner motives) or Plutarco Calles of Mexico. When I read statistics that speak of millions of dead, or describe a permanent shortage of males in the Russian population through fifty years of Soviet governance, I do not feel the need to recreate the experience of those victims. I already know what to think; and at any rate, I have seen and read enough not to want to see or read any more.
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As a historian, I feel that I know quite enough of the monsters who polluted the twentieth century. I tend to avoid eyewitness accounts of the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and less famous fiends such as King Leopold II (whose hideous rule in the Congo may well surpass Hitler and Stalin’s worst excesses, and for far meaner motives) or Plutarco Calles of Mexico. When I read statistics that speak of millions of dead, or describe a permanent shortage of males in the Russian population through fifty years of Soviet governance, I do not feel the need to recreate the experience of those victims. I already know what to think; and at any rate, I have seen and read enough not to want to see or read any more.
( Read more... )
