Reflections on a Ravaged Century - Hardcover

Conquest, Robert; Conquest; Weil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048187 ISBN 13: 9780393048186

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

Robert Conquest has been called by Paul Johnson "our greatest living modern historian". As a new century begins, Conquest offers an illuminating examination of our past failures and a guide to where we should go next. Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell. Conquest assigns responsibility for our century's cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism. The final, sobering chapters of Reflections on a Ravaged Century concern themselves with some coming storms, notably that of the European Union, which Conquest believes is an economic, cultural, and geographical misconception divisive of the West and doomed to failure.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Conquest is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His other books include The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow.

Reviews

In a book that is as cantankerous as it is insightful, historian Conquest (The Great Terror, etc.) takes grim stock of the bloody fruit of 20th-century political ideology. "We cannot do without ideas; but we should not make ideas into Ideas. We should note the catastrophes due to fascination with fantasy, addiction or absolutes." Accordingly, he offers withering critiques of Marx, Lenin and anybody who took seriously the idea that the complexities of human social life could be adequately explained by any one theory. With great passion and a formidably wide array of references, he describes the intellectual mediocrity of Marxism and Marx: "outside his sect few serious philosophers accepted his philosophy; few economists accepted his economics; few historians accepted his theories of history." To the extent that his target is not just communism but the very notion that any theory could explain and predict human social behavior, Conquest aspires to the same kind of humanistic perspective championed by Isaiah Berlin or Hannah Arendt, and, like Berlin, he celebrates pluralism and civil society as the sane antidotes to ideological purity. But both Arendt and Berlin took account of the idealism that led so many people who should have known better into complicity with evil regimes. These authors understood that the road to hell could be paved with the best of intentions, and they managed to honor those intentions while still calling hell, hell. They were thus able to convey the moral tragedy of the 20th-century romance with ideology. In these pages, Conquest often writes with such contempt for those who seized on Ideas that, in the end, he doesn't so much analyze history as scold it. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A stimulating analysis of the role ideology has played in shaping our murderous century. Conquest (Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; The Great Terror, The Harvest of Sorrow, etc.) has reworked old essays and added some new ones to produce this treatise. In the first part, entitled ``Mindslaughter,'' he concentrates on his specialty, the Soviet Union. The fallacies of Marxism and Communism are exposed in all their weakness. Conquest demonstrates the inconsistencies of the Marxian utopian vision, contrasting it with the grotesque violence the idealists Lenin and Stalin visited upon their own people in the name of building Socialism. He chronicles the corruption of the Soviet system, and shows how pathological lying at all levels of society made the U.S.S.R., with its revolutionary ideology and military might, a menace to world peace. For Conquest, the power of ideas joined the force of a restrictive mindset to make the Soviets a world power, but also kept their economy backward, leading ultimately to the nation's demise. However, the Sovietologist stretches credulity in Part Two, entitled ``Facing the Consequences.'' He advocates for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, mocks as folly the concept of a ``United States of Europe,'' and denigrates the modest achievements of the U.N. In addition, his advocacy for an ``Association'' of Albion and its inheritors (the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as the best way to spread progress in the world smacks of xenophobia. He discounts the impediments that geography imposes, and downplays the internal problems and differences inherent in Anglophile nations. Regrettably, he excludes Western Europe and Japan from this ``Association,'' assuming that it makes more sense for the Anglo cousins to continue holding hands with the mother country than to join in spreading the gospel of civility and freedom to their neighbors, even though the many economic and political crises since 1989 clearly show the need for shining lights in all areas of the globe. This ideological polemic, which asserts that British colonialism was not all that imperialistic, and that the McCarthyites were right because the Soviets were intent on the West's destruction, mars what is otherwise a perceptive and informative set of essays. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Renowned historian Conquest (Hoover Inst., Stanford Univ.) is the author of over 25 books, including fiction, poetry, and several standard works on the Soviet Union and its leaders (e.g., The Great Terror). Now he reviews the political upheavals and dangerous ideologies of the 20th century, offering sober warnings and advice for the future. His early chapters, especially those on Marxism and the totalitarian state, resonate with the reflective wisdom of a senior historian; they are rich with examples, analysis, and references. In the last section of the book, Conquest assesses post-Soviet Russia, the new responsibilities of the West, and the folly of the European Union. Finally, he argues for the formation of a more homogeneous international grouping of English-speaking countries, which he feels could lead to a more effective world order. An important work of history and ideas that belongs in all academic and most public libraries.AThomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393048187
• ISBN 13: 9780393048186
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336