Pussy Riot: unfortunate connections

When commenting recently on what I might have blogged about had I bothered to write anything at all, I mentioned a few issues, but avoided the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow. The reason I avoided it has nothing to do with the issues raised by the case itself. I'll come back to it later – after a couple of bland observations that I hesitate to make without developing them (for which there isn't time).

First, Pussy Riot would still be anonymous around the world if Putin's boys and girls hadn't lost perspective. Putin will do the opposite of anything the 'old enemy' wants him to do – it's almost a matter of principle. So, the riot of disgust and anger around the world at the eventual sentences handed down to the three women won't cause Putin to lose sleep.

Second, the Moscow Patriarchate shows signs of being a little too close to Putin and his regime. This has clearly also led to a loss of theological perspective on its part. The ensuing global publicity about the Pussy Riot demo has simply drawn attention to questions the Church finds uncomfortable (or, at least, should do) and focused critical attention on its political allegiances and privileges.

Whichever way you look at it, Pussy Riot has managed to attract more attention to their cause than they could ever have dreamed of. And both the Putin regime and the Church look ridiculously self-regarding and over-sensitive. I wonder whose tables Jesus would have overturned…

Anyway, I am on an island holiday with almost no mobile signal and few places where I can get a wi-fi connection. I am also trying to avoid 'work'. So maybe this is the time to explain an unusual phenomenon that still surprises and amuses me.

Way back in 2009 I posted something entitled 'The rules of pizza'. It followed a bizarre experience in an Italian restaurant in London when the waiter, rather than asking me if everything was OK with the meal, instead observed that I “eat pizza funny”. The women on the next table were laughing. I said I wasn't aware there were any rules for how one should at pizza. So, I posted the piece and posed the question.

However, the odd thing is that I still get daily views of this particular post. Dozens every day – sometimes hundreds. I was amused early on after I had originally posted it that I was getting hundreds of referrals from a lesbian bondage website. This seems to be happening still. And I have no idea why or how.

So, you can understand why I hesitated before posting anything about Pussy Riot. Most referred viewers must have been really disappointed to find they got to a bishop discussing pizza. I dread to think what will happen to future referrals from exotic websites caught by the title of this post.

Or maybe they will all come from cat protection organisations…

 

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Back in the USSR

While checking in at Philadelphia Airport for the flight back to the UK I picked up a freebie copy of last Sunday’s Financial Times. The colour magazine is usually a good read. This time it was.

Twenty years ago (18 August 1991 to be precise) Mikhail Gorbachev was on holiday on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea when some old-guard Communists launched a coup aimed at preserving the USSR. Despite lots of inquiries and autobiographies, there are still a number of unanswered questions about what really happened and what the role of Gorbachev actually was. Was he held under house arrest or was he simply waiting to see which side would win before declaring his hand? As it happened, the coup failed, the USSR folded, Boris Yeltsin came to power and Gorbachev went down in history as the man who ended Communist tyranny and opened up the ‘Evil Empire’ to the fresh air of democracy.

The article in the FT magazine (by Charles Clover) describes events well – despite making the rather odd observation that the eight Party bosses and generals who launched the coup had “formed a state emergency committee, known by it’s clumsy Russian initials ‘GKChP’, to take temporary control of the Soviet Union.” Why are these initials ‘clumsy’? Not in Russian they aren’t. It’s a bit like a Russian suggesting that CIA is ‘a bit weird’ or MI5 ‘oddly English’.

Anyway, reading the article reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago over dinner with the former Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan (effectively the Vice-President). It was in the margins of a meeting of the Secretariat of an interfaith conference. I don’t often meet people who knew people who shaped that part of history, so – nothing ventured, nothing gained – I decided to ask the question that really puzzled me: why is Gorbachev revered in the West, yet Yeltsin- a drunkard and a buffoon – revered in Russia? I suggested that Gorbachev re-shaped history, but Yeltsin was an opportunistic joke, normally laughed at in the West because of his behaviour when ‘under the influence’.

The answer surprised me. ‘You are judging like a westerner. In Russia a man who can drink and hold his drink is respected; the weak man who gave away an empire is not.’ Or words to that effect. Apparently, I was misreading the culture. What I saw as weakness was seen ‘domestically’ as strength; what I saw as strength (from the outside) was derided as weakness at home.

It reminded me that we can only understand ‘the other’ when we learn to look though his/her eyes and see how the world looks through that cultural or linguistic lens.

It also helps explain how and why Vladimir Putin maintains such popularity inside Russia: the strong man who restored pride to Russia and flexed his muscles internationally in a way that most Russians thought they would never see again. It wasn’t for nothing that he allowed himself to be photographed half naked with a gun in the wilds of Russia.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Somewhere over the Atlantic

 

The fly and the elephant

As the mid-term election results come through in the USA it is evident that Obama has had a kicking. Not as hard a kicking as some had predicted, but that doesn’t make the pain any easier to bear for him and his party.

But, while the western news has focused on the latest unravelling of the American Dream, another event has hardly figured in the western media (as far as I can see at a cursory glance): Viktor Chernomyrdin has died at the age of 72. He was Acting President of Russia for less than 24 hours (5-6 November 1996) while Boris Yeltsin got his act together, was Prime Minister of Russia from 1992-98, and served as Russian Ambassador to the Ukraine from 2001-09. He then became a Presidential Adviser.

Chernomyrdin is the latest of a generation of people who grew up in the Soviet Union as Marxist-Leninists, became free market capitalists overnight while retaining power and shaping the next generation. What is usually missed out of such a judgement is that these were also the guys who – despite the rather startling volte-faces, quick-and-easy changes of radical conviction, and evident corruptions – managed the phenomenal changes brought about by the end of the Cold war and the collapse of Communism.

We know the end of the story; they did not. They created their new world without knowing whether or not it would work or simply condemn them to more misery. Which simply goes to show that even the weirdest examples of human inconsistency can also exhibit courage, noble determination, vision and political skill. Kazakhstan would not be where it is if it had not been for the vision, skill and determination of Nursultan Nazarbayev – even if there are huge questions about how he did it and why.

Populations are fickle. America has not seen all its problems solved in two years (during which the banking system brought the world to its collective knees… in the wrong sense). We don’t do long-term, do we? We complain that politicians are short-term thinkers, but we don’t allow them any long-term space for bringing real change. The American culture of instant gratification bites again. But, it isn’t possible in democratic America to do what Chernomyrdin’s generation did with steely determination in the former Soviet Union – democracy means more than giving people a vote, after all..

Anyway, the best thing about Chernomyrdin was his ‘skill’ with words. He was famous for his gnarled language and my favourite saying of his was:

Better to be the head of a fly than the buttocks for an elephant.

Surely this would have been worthy of an Eric Cantona or a Rafa Benitez? In a funny sort of way, it does describe what many in the old Soviet Union were trying to do: mutate from one to the other. If you see what I mean. Big is not always best…

Yeltsin has gone and now Chernomyrdin has followed him to the grave. Their generation will not survive for much longer. Amid all the critiques of such a flawed politicial elite I hope there will be room for some appreciation of those who, with limited vision and even more limited experience, tried to change their world. They didn’t get everything right; but they didn’t get everything wrong either.

 

Making my (romantic) mind up?

Every time I hear a politician or journalist use the phrase ‘making your mind up’, awful memories of Buck’s Fizz come flooding into my memory. Not the rather tame (but refreshing on a hot day) drink, but the of-its-time pop group who defrocked themselves while singing the chorus.

Observing the election campaign, I am beginning to wonder whether people have actually already made their minds up and the next ten days will just get a bit tedious with the repeated mantras that are supposed to invade our subconscious and steer our hand in the ballot box next week. Labour sound defeated, the Tories sound panicky/desperate, and the Liberal Democrats sound confident about changing the political landscape in the UK.

What I can’t make my mind up about is precisely which ‘Britain’ is being remembered when the parties – Tories (mainly) and UKIP/BNP/English Democrats/etc (manically) – promise to restore to Britain the greatness that is its birthright. The BNP have even superimposed Nick Griffin (looking as if someone is squeezing his balls below the picture to make him look serious) on Sir Winston Churchill – a ludicrous association if ever there was one. But, my question is a serious one: when was the ‘golden age’ to which we might aspire to return or re-create?

Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with the other question around at the moment: are Christians being marginalised or persecuted? The link between this and the first question is that both make assumptions about the past and both indulge in a rather embarrassing (and baseless?) romanticism.

I am still wading through Dostoyevsky‘s The Brothers Karamazov: 400 pages so far and nothing has really happened. (Only another 600 to go…). Before dying at an appropriate moment, the elderly monk (Staretz) Zosima speaks about the decline of Russia and how Russia, destroyed by her leaders, will be saved by her Christian people. And the divine destiny of the great country will be restored and guaranteed as the old, corrupt order falls apart. The future, however, also contains threats that must be avoided. Published in 1880 (when Lenin was 10 years old), it is hard not to read it with half an eye on subsequent (and then unimaginable) developments in Russia and beyond. There is too much to quote here, but you could read some of this stuff and no one would blink if you applied it to today – the same old romanticism.

Why do we all do this? We romanticise the past, bringing a certain order out of the chaos that we actually lived through, and fear the ‘monsters’ that lie in wait for us in the future. Every generation fears it might be the last. Every generation worries that it has sold its inheritance and that everything is now in decline. “AND IT IS SOMEONE’S FAULT!” But, look back in England to the post-war years of growth, optimism and massive technological advance in just about every field – the promise that reconstruction brings and the energy it commands. But also look at what became known as ‘the permissive society’ and the obvious fact that we write the script of history as we go, not always clear about the implications until much later.

While on sabbatical a few months ago I did a quick, inexhaustive and not-very-thorough internet trawl of newspaper reports and headlines going back a century or so. Every headline seems to imply that the world/country/government/society/Church is going to the dogs and the world is about to fall apart. It hasn’t. I did the same for Germany and its world did fall apart on more than one occasion. Most Germans do not romanticise the past century or more; the Brits do. And it is mindless.

As I have noted before, I used to baptise people in a Norman font and drink wine (Communion) from an Elizabethan chalice every Sunday in my old parish. During the time people have been living their lives in that community there have been civil wars, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, European wars, colonial wars, the rise and demise of the British Empire, the birth and death of the Soviet Empire, and so on. When this chalice was first used, America didn’t exist (except for the Indians who already lived there, but apparently don’t count when it comes to remembering American history). This is the sort of perspective we need to recover – not some romantic notion of a golden age that never existed other than in our ideological or emotional ‘memories’.

The election candidates will continue to frighten us with the fearful future and promise a recovery of the elusive past. All nonsense. The more the leaders bang on about the dangers of a hung Parliament, the more I want one. Call it a ‘coalition government’, have a look at some of our European neighbours (Germany, for instance) and ask what the fuss is about? Maybe the fear is only in the minds of party leaders who fear losing control and having to argue their case for policy implementation. I’m beginning to think that might be far preferable to some of the alternatives.

Making my mind up? I’m getting there. But I’m also getting fed up with the self-regarding fear-mongering being put about. We could just grow up and try something different for a change. Which, actually, is what happens all the time, in every generation, in some part of life or other. We make it happen as we go. There is no other way.

 

Central Asian uprising

The President of Kyrgyzstan is refusing to resign despite the take-over of the country by the opposition. This might sound like a local skirmish a million miles form anywhere interesting, but this could turn out to be deeply significant. I write with a close knowledge of Kazakhstan and note that the British Ambassador in the region does the job for both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Central Asia had all the potential for catastrophe. Among other factors, its infrastructure had been dominated by and run for the benefit of Moscow and the ethnic mix had been engineered by Moscow over 70 years to integrate European Russians in the Central Asian territories. The end of the USSR brought huge challenges to the region.

When Kazakhstan declared independence in 1991 it was cut adrift by Russia. Its economy, no longer subsidised by Moscow, fell apart and it had to invent new symbols of identity, currency, political and economic structures. Continuity was provided by the General Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party (Nursultan Nazarbayev) becoming the first President of the Republic and driving (ruthlessly) the changes needed to establish a new economy. Crucial to this was the ownership and exploitation of oil and gas.

However, Kazakhstan faced several other challenges: (a) it borders on China and there was/is a powerful fear of Chinese expansionism – hence the move of the capital city from Almaty in the south to Astana in the centre; (b) as a landlocked country, the need for access to the sea – necessitating the recovery of good relations with Turkey; (c) its location between the unstable and less developed other southern republics (including Kyrgyzstan and the bizarre Turkmenistan) and a growling Russian bear to the north and west (with Chechnya not far off).

Look at the map and you can see why Kazakhstan has worked hard to establish itself as a buffer between Europe and Asia, between China and Russia, and in distinction from its southern neighbours beyond whom are Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan to the south. This is not insignificant territory for global security – as both the Chinese and the Russians know.

So, ructions in Kyrgyzstan send vibrations through the other republics and into the surrounding powerful nations with their potential for expansionism. It isn’t yet clear how the situation in Kyrgyzstan will develop – let alone resolve – but its importance might be greater than the ‘oddball country somewhere over there’ treatment by the western media might initially suggest.

 

The end of the world

I’ll do a review of the responses to my Radio Times article once I know I can post the article itself on this blog. In the meantime, I’ll just say I have been inundated by comments in various media – most of them reasonable in their judgements.

Easter Day began for me in a hospital chapel where easy platitudes about ‘healing’ don’t work. When people are facing their mortality in more than philosophical ways, easy language has to be avoided. We had a great celebration of Easter, rooted in the conviction that ‘God raised Christ from the dead’ – so there is hope.

But, an article in today’s Independent on Sunday struck me and brought back other memories. Titled ‘A ringside seat to the Russian Revolution’, the article is based on an interview with a brother and sister who lived through extraordinary times and now have reached their century. It is a fascinating interview.

It brought back to my memory a man I met in 1980 when I was learning Russian. Dr Vlod Ototski , then in his late seventies (?), came in several times a week from his home in London and gave us conversational practice. He would occasionally slip into Polish, but then come back into Russian. (If I remember correctly) he had been born in Russian-occupied Manchuria, witnessed the Russian Revolution, fled to Poland (because he was on the wrong side), escaped from Katyn, joined the British forces, was on the wrong side of post-war Poland and lived as a member of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London until his death.

He was a remarkable man – the sort whom you know it is a privilege to meet and from whom you can get glimpses of history while it remained one man’s memory. First-hand recollections of the Russian Revolution were hard to come by even in the 1980s for ordinary young people like me.

What struck me, however, was his recognition that when people speak of the ‘end of the world’, they forget that this represents the experience of people in every generation: those millions who died during the Revolution itself and the ensuing decades of Stalinist brutality; the ordinary people of Central Europe who were moved across Europe from one oppressor to another; the officers slaughtered at Katyn; and so on. Each individual had a story, a network of relationships, a potential future – and worlds were torn apart every day in the most brutal ways.

But he also saw that every generation has to make its own history and shape its own character. People survive the most appalling cruelties and losses and go on to live fruitful lives, have families, build new societies and create hope for a different future for their children and grandchildren.

One of the messages of Easter is that death, violence and destruction do not have the final word in this world – even when they seem to be insuperable. And that is one of the powerful messages of the Gospels as well as one of the challenges Jesus poses to our notions of might.

 

Light intruding on heat?

Russia is reeling from the suicide bombings in Moscow, bringing back awful memories of the attacks on London on 7 July 2005. This puts into fresh perspective some of the other nonsense going on in the world and claiming our attention. Interesting to see that tonight’s online Pravda puts this story alongside the problems going on in Gaza and Obama’s nightime visit to Afghanistan. The juxtaposition itself is interesting, but it also says that the local has to be understood in the context of the global – however powerful the local story, it isn’t the only important one. And no mention (at least that I could see) of the ‘chancellors debate’ on UK telly this evening…

I wonder if such debates do anything to change people’s minds ahead of an election. Or is it just another beauty parade in which the ‘star quality’ outweighs argument? I wonder if people listen to the arguments or take their steer from the interpretations offered by the observers online, in broadcast media or in newspapers.

What I did find interesting today was Charles Moore’s review in the Daily Telegraph of Peter Hitchens’ new book about God and his brother (Christopher). In The Rage Against God he takes issue with his brother’s loud atheism and particularly the assumption that to be religious you must be stupid – a mistake made by many of the new atheists. I just thought Moore’s piece was measured, wise and interesting – which is why I thought it welcomed a discussion that generated light rather than heat. Take this, for example:

Surely any dispassionate observation would suggest that utterly brilliant people can be believers, as they can be agnostics or atheists. The Church has not proved the most durable of all the institutions in the history of the world by being stupid. But it is also a key part of Christian understanding that truth is not necessarily discerned by an intellectual elite alone. Christianity’s radical and paradoxical message is that weakness is strength, poverty is wealth, giving is receiving, dying brings life. In the story of the Passion, commemorated this week, the most intelligent person, apart from Jesus himself, is Pontius Pilate. His brain power does not lead him to make the right decisions.

Peter Hitchens’s case is that militant atheists dimly sense this truth, and this is what makes them so angry. If God does not exist, after all, why the rage against him? God’s really unforgivable characteristic is that he is alive and well and quite impervious to the assaults even of people as brilliant as Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Nuff said.

(But, as I read after posting this, read George Pitcher for more light on a ‘cross’ issue.)

 

The Russians are cunning…

It has been a strange week. Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, grand imam of the Al-Azhar mosque and head of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo (Sunni Islam’s pre-eminent centre of learning), died on Wednesday 10 March while staying in Saudi Arabia. Tantawi was an enigmatic man – but be careful of quotations taken out of context - and one of courage and vision. He was one of Islam’s leading spiritual authorities to champion Islamic moderation across the globe – incurring the wrath of Muslims who took a more militant approach to their faith. A good obituary can be found in the Guardian.

I met Tantawi several times in Kazakhstan at the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. He was always rather inscrutable, but he handled challenge extremely well. In July 2009 when the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, stood to speak – driving the Iranian delegation to loudly evacuate the room – he maintained his presence and took what could have been seen as provocation in his stride (at least publicly). Several years ago he refused to rise to the deliberate provocation by Chief Rabbi Metzger and maintained his position. Whatever differences some of us might have had with some of his views, he certainly gained respect by his behaviour in such circumstances.

Tantawi will be missed. It will be interesting to see if his shoes will be filled by someone of equal spiritual authority, political wisdom and personal courage. Moderate Islam needs it and so does the rest of the world.

Last night I went from ruminating on Tantawi to the presentation by the Russian Ambassador to Archbishop Rowan Williams of the Russian Order of Friendship, for his “outstanding contribution to the cooperation and friendly relations between Russia and the UK”. The Archbishop

The honour, which was awarded by Russian presidential decree by President Dmitry Medvedev, was presented by the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, His Excellency Mr Yury Fedotov, who said “What the Archbishop is doing helps tremendously to establish better understanding and to set a better climate in relations between Russia and the UK.” Dr Williams is hugely respected in Russia for his interest in and mastery of Russian religious philosophy. He has written and spoken widely throughout his career, notably in his doctoral thesis on the theology of Vladimir Lossky, on Sergii Bulgakov (Towards a Russian Political Theology, 1999), and his recent book on Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction , 2008).

It was – as they say – a good gig at the Residence of the Russian Ambassador in London. The honour, which was awarded by Russian presidential decree by President Dmitry Medvedev, was presented by the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr Yury Fedotov, who said

What the Archbishop is doing helps tremendously to establish better understanding and to set a better climate in relations between Russia and the UK.

 Rowan responded with (as usual) an erudite and witty speech (without notes), remarking that:

The depths and challenges of the Russian world have continued to play a crucial part in my own life, in my mind and in my heart… It is a very special personal honour, and an immense personal privilege to be recognised in this way so unexpectedly.

 My wife and I went to support Rowan, but also because I continue to be intrigued by what Rowan referred to as “the new Russia still being built”. My own background in Russian language and politics was something best kept quiet about, but it was a really good evening among some very interesting and nice people. The Russian diplomatic hosts were generous, welcoming and open to all the questions I (at least) asked. A nice touch came at the end when the Director of the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, Dr Ekaterina Genieva, surprised the Archbishop with the presentation of a special bilingual edition of his selected poems printed in Moscow for the occasion. All guests came away with a signed copy – and I am already struggling with the Russian translations. I have forgotten too much…

Just for the record, my conversations with Rowan about Russia have usually ended up with me being embarrassed. After a dinner several years ago during which we discussed Zimbabwe, we eventually got on to Russian literature. I could blag my way through Tolstoy, Lermontov and Turgenev, but then blew my cover with Dostoyevsky. I mentioned that I had attempted Crime and Punishment three times and never got beyond page 82: it was boring and nothing seemed to happen except in the head of the ‘hero’. After a short – pregnant – silence Rowan said: “I’m about to write a book on Dostoyevsky…”

I’m sure he’s been suspicious of me ever since…

I decided that my next conversation had better be a bit better informed. So I have now read everything Dostoyevsky wrote – OK, I’ve got the last half of The Brothers Karamazov to finish.

 

Who started the War?

Just as the contribution of the Beatles to the downfall of Communism and the Soviet Union is being recognised (!), there’s a big row going on in Eastern Europe at the moment and two connected things have set it off: (a) Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian Presidential face of Vladimir Putin, has called for the teaching of history in Russia to reclaim the marvellous achievements of Stalin and (b) the Baltic states are lumping the Soviet Union together with the Nazis as invaders of their countries and oppressors of their people.

The last couple of months have seen (among others) the anniversaries of:

• the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 24 August 1939 (which carved up Eastern Europe between the Nazis and the Soviet Union)
• Operation Barbarossa which saw the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Germans on 22 June 1941 (which ended the non-aggression pact mentioned above)
• the twin invasion of Poland (by Germany and the Soviet Union) that began on 1 September 1939 (followed by the declaration of war by Hitler in the Reichstag: ‘Seit 5 Uhr 45 wird zurueckgeschossen!’)
• the declaration of war against Germany by Britain, the Commonwealth and France on 3 September 1939.

Medvedev and Putin are now a bit fed up that Stalin’s Soviet Union is being lumped together with Germany as joint launchers of World War II, maintaining that it was Stalin who had ‘ultimately saved Europe’. The USSR apparently had no option but to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin bore ‘no responsibility’ for starting the Second World War. In this context – and following accusations by the Baltic states that Hitler and Stalin were equally responsible for the war – Medvedev and Putin have set up a commission in Russia aimed at re-writing the history to make it conform to the orthodoxy they wish to affirm. (Not surprisingly, perhaps, the commission appears to be dominated by members of the intelligence services and not by professional historians – 28-3, if you want precise figures.)

Now, before all the Commie-bashers’ eyes turn red and brains fall out, let’s remember that these guys won’t be the first politicians to want to re-write the history books. History is always (a) written from a particular perspective – that of the ‘winners’ – and (b) written to justify contemporary power concerns – in this case Russia’s claim to ‘privileged interests’ in its post-Soviet neighbours. As Jonathan Steele wrote in a useful corrective to simplistic interpretations of history:

History is too complex and sensitive to be left to politicians. First they manipulate anniversaries, then they move to textbooks, and the slide gathers speed.

What is interesting about all this is the wide debate it has sparked about history itself and who decides which interpretation is to be regarded as ‘orthodox’ rather than ‘revisionist’ (terms also bandied about in the Church to label dissenters from ‘my’ view as traitors to the cause). Irina Filatova says:

But history is a strange discipline – for as long as it has existed it has been pronounced dead. But it comes back with a vengeance, meting out its own sentences on those who try to silence it.

And, in an interesting reflection on the current debates about Afghanistan, Simon Jenkins impatiently states:

History is like the law. It offers raw material for anyone who wants to plead a cause or make some money … History is not bunk. It is a glorious seam of human experience from which leaders can seek guidance on their present conduct. But its parallels are never exact and are easy to distort, while its lessons are quarrelsome.

This is where the teaching of history becomes so important and why history teaching in our schools and universities is so vital. Like the monument to Soekarno in Jakarta, Indonesia, (described locally as ‘Soekarno’s last erection’ but officially known as Monas) – which has an exhibition of dioramas telling the story of Indonesia’s history, beginning with prehistoric boats sailing from Sumatra to Java flying the flag of modern independent Indonesia! – it is always tempting to tell the story from the present back to the past, giving it a thread of inevitability that justifies the present political reality.

But, history can never be reduced to a simple statement of facts. It will always involve interpretation by subjects and observers and will need to be treated with a certain scepticism as to the motives, assumptions and commitments of those who either write or authorise the ‘history’.

For example, it would be really interesting (and there must be a book in here somewhere) to tell the stories of the Bible from the perspective of the ‘losers’: the Egyptians prior to the Exodus or the Canaanites subjected to the ethnic cleansing of the Conquest, for example.