Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century - Hardcover

Tismaneanu, Vladimir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520239725 ISBN 13: 9780520239722

Verlag: University of California Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the authors personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth centurys experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of several books, including Stalinism for All Seasons: A History of Romanian Communism (UC Press), Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe, and Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel.

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“Vladimir Tismaneanu combines enormous erudition, sharp insight, and unique personal experience in this wide-ranging essay on the problems of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. The Devil in History is mandatory reading for those interested in the crucial questions of morality and politics posed by the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism.” —Norman M. Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnel Professor of Eastern European Studies, Stanford University



“The Devil in History is a lengthy essay on the intellectual origins, crimes, and failures of the twentieth century’s worst totalitarian types of regimes, fascism and communism. There are few scholars as conversant with this material, or as able to explain it as well, as Vladimir Tismaneanu, who gives a good sense of why utopian ideals meant to overcome the ills of capitalist, bourgeois democracy went so sensationally wrong and produced such massive evil.” —Daniel Chirot, co-author of Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder



"The Devil in History is a very important work of intellectual history that considers a basic question of the twentieth century and represents vast and ecumenical learning and well-considered personal experience. It has moments of indubitable brilliance." —Timothy Snyder, author of The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999



“In his revealing new study, Vladimir Tismaneanu traces the intellectual origins of the murderous twentieth century. The focus is on the ideologies of Europe’s totalitarian regimes identified most prominently with the names Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Although these characters were amoral and perhaps even psychopathic killers, the author rightly insists that such labels do not explain the popular appeal of the dictators, who were worshipped as if they were gods by crowds of true believers. Even after 1945, new Communist leaders pursued quests for utopia and mounted crusades of their own, all of them doomed to fail. Tismaneanu provides a compelling and convincing account of how this monumental tragedy came to pass.” —Robert Gellately, author of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe

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Vladimir Tismaneanu combines enormous erudition, sharp insight, and unique personal experience in this wide-ranging essay on the problems of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. The Devil in History is mandatory reading for those interested in the crucial questions of morality and politics posed by the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism. Norman M. Naimark, Robert and Florence McDonnel Professor of Eastern European Studies, Stanford University



The Devil in History is a lengthy essay on the intellectual origins, crimes, and failures of the twentieth century s worst totalitarian types of regimes, fascism and communism. There are few scholars as conversant with this material, or as able to explain it as well, as Vladimir Tismaneanu, who gives a good sense of why utopian ideals meant to overcome the ills of capitalist, bourgeois democracy went so sensationally wrong and produced such massive evil. Daniel Chirot, co-author of Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder



"The Devil in History is a very important work of intellectual history that considers a basic question of the twentieth century and represents vast and ecumenical learning and well-considered personal experience. It has moments of indubitable brilliance." Timothy Snyder, author of The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999



In his revealing new study, Vladimir Tismaneanu traces the intellectual origins of the murderous twentieth century. The focus is on the ideologies of Europe s totalitarian regimes identified most prominently with the names Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Although these characters were amoral and perhaps even psychopathic killers, the author rightly insists that such labels do not explain the popular appeal of the dictators, who were worshipped as if they were gods by crowds of true believers. Even after 1945, new Communist leaders pursued quests for utopia and mounted crusades of their own, all of them doomed to fail. Tismaneanu provides a compelling and convincing account of how this monumental tragedy came to pass. Robert Gellately, author of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe

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The Devil in History

Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century

By Vladimir Tismaneanu

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-23972-2

Contents

Foreword, ix, 
Prologue: Totalitarian Dictators and Ideological Hubris, 1, 
1. Utopian Radicalism and Dehumanization, 18, 
2. Diabolical Pedagogy and the (Il)logic of Stalinism, 53, 
3. Lenin's Century: Bolshevism, Marxism, and the Russian Tradition, 87, 
4. Dialectics of Disenchantment: Marxism and Ideological Decay in Leninist Regimes, 123, 
5. Ideology, Utopia, and Truth: Lessons from Eastern Europe, 161, 
6. Malaise and Resentment: Threats to Democracy in Post-Communist Societies, 193, 
Conclusions, 224, 
Notes, 235, 
Index, 297, 

CHAPTER 1

Utopian Radicalism and Dehumanization

We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's inhabitants. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.

—Grigory Zinoviev, Severnaya kommuna, September 19, 1918

For man, therefore, who despite a corrupted heart yet possesses a good will, there remains hope of a return to the good from which he has strayed.

—Immanuel Kant, "Concerning the Indwelling of the Evil Principle with the Good, or, on the Radical Evil in Human Nature."

In order to massacre them, it was necessary to proclaim that kulaks are not human beings. Just as the Germans proclaimed that Jews are not human beings. Thus did Lenin and Stalin: kulaks are not human beings. But that is a lie. They are people! They are human beings!

—Vassily Grossman, Forever Flowing

La relation dialectique entre communisme et fascisme est au centre des tragédies du siècle.

—François Furet, "Sur l'illusion communiste"

Understanding the meanings of the twentieth century is impossible if we do not acknowledge the uniqueness of the revolutionary left and right experiments in reshaping the human condition in the name of presumably inexorable historical laws. It was during that century that, using Leszek Kolakowski's inspired term, "the Devil incarnated himself in History." The ongoing debate on the nature and the legitimacy (or even acceptability) of comparisons (analogies) between the ideologically driven revolutionary tyrannies of the twentieth century (radical Communism, or rather, Leninism, or, as some prefer, Stalinism) on one hand and radical Fascism (or, more precisely, Nazism) on the other bear on the interpretation of ultimate political evil and its impact on the human condition. In brief, can one compare two ideologies (and practices) inspired by essentially different visions of human nature, progress, and democracy, without losing their differentia specifica, blurring important doctrinary but also axiological distinctions? Was the essential centrality of the concentration camp, the only "perfect society," as Adam Michnik once put it, the horrifying common denominator between the two systems in their "highly effective" stage? (Zygmunt Bauman writes about our age as a "century of camps.") Was François Furet right in assuming that Communism's heredity was to be detected in the post-Enlightenment search for mass democracy, whereas Fascism symbolized the very opposite? Was Fascism, as Eugen Weber asserted, "a rival revolution" that saw Communism only as a "competitor for the foundation for power" (in the words of Jules Monnerot)?

Comparisons between Communism and Fascism and between Stalinism and Nazism are both useful and necessary. My comparative endeavor focuses on the common ground of these political movements, while also recognizing their crucial differences. Moreover, I agree with Timothy Snyder that "the Nazi and Stalinist systems must be compared, not so much to understand the one or the other but to understand our times and ourselves." Communism and Fascism forged their own versions of modernity based on programs of radical change that advocated homogenization as well as social, economic, and cultural transformation presupposing "the wholesale renovation of the body of the people." They were both founded upon immanent utopias rooted in eschatological fervor. To put it differently, the ideological storms of the twentieth century were the expression of a contagious hubris of modernity. Therefore, the lessons we learn by comparing and contrasting them have a universal, almost timeless meaning for any society that wants to avoid a disastrous descent into barbarity and genocidal forms of extermination. Contemporary dilemmas of a globalized world can only benefit from examination of the disastrous fallacies of the past.

THE LENINIST MUTATION

Here it is important to highlight the point made by Claude Lefort and Richard Pipes: Leninism was a mutation in the praxis of social democracy, not just a continuation of the "illuminist"-democratic legacies of socialism. Equally significant, precisely because he insisted so much on the "causal nexus" and counterrevolutionary anguish and fears, German historian Ernst Nolte did not fully grasp the nature of Fascist anti-Bolshevism as a new type of revolutionary movement and ideology, a rebellion against the very foundations of European modern civilization. Indeed, as Furet (and, earlier, Eugen Weber and George Lichtheim) insisted, Fascism, in its radicalized, Nazi form, was not simply a reincarnation of counterrevolutionary thinking and action. Nazism was more than just a reaction to Bolshevism, or to the cult of progress and the sentimental exaltation of abstract humanity symbolized by the proletariat. It was in fact something brand new, an attempt to renovate the world by getting rid of the bourgeoisie, the gold, the money, the parliaments, the parties, and all the other "decadent," "Judeo-plutocratic" elements. So Fascism was not a counterrevolution, as the Comintern ideologues maintained; rather it is itself a revolution. Or, to use Roger Griffin's more figurative phrasing, "The arrow of time points not backwards but forwards, even when the archer looks over his shoulder for guidance where to aim." According to the same author, Fascism was "a revolutionary form of nationalism.... [T]he core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence." At stake is the reaction to the "system," that is, to bourgeois-individualistic values, rights, and institutions. When Lenin disbanded the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, he was sanctioning a long-held scorn for representative democracy and popular sovereignty. The one-party system, emulated by Mussolini and Hitler, was thus invented as a new form of sovereignty that was contemptuous of individuals, fragmentation, deliberation, and dialogue. On January 6, 1918, celebrating the dissolution of pluralism, Pravda published the following:

The hirelings of bankers, capitalists, and landlords, the allies of Kaledin, Dutov, the slaves of the American dollar, the backstabbers, the right-essers demand in the Constitutional Assembly all power for themselves and their masters—enemies of the people. They pay lip service to popular demands for land, peace, and [worker] control, but in reality they tried to fasten a noose around the neck of socialist authority and revolution. But the workers, peasants, and soldiers will not fall for the bait of lies of the most evil of socialism. In the name of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520239725
• ISBN 13: 9780520239722
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 334
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland