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.
Nick Baines's Blog 
September 5, 2009 at 4:27 pm
It all depends what type of books we talking here though I suppose. History books will need one or two historical sources, like a DVD showing Moses parting the sea or something.
A good movie would be the last moments of everyone who never made it onto the ark with Noah. I suppose it would be similar to the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’.
September 5, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Nick,
I think that history is poorly taught and understood in todays world. I remember it being a favourite subject at School, but taught from a particular perspective.
Being brought up RC, our education on English History had a bias towards the RC perspective on the reformation and in particular the English Martyrs – which now much older and looking from a CofE perspective, can see omitted much history concerning Mary and her “bloody” reign.
This clearly demonstrated to me that history is interpreted differently depending on your perspective or position. What I find unique is the English Martyrs are remembered in the CofE lectionary, no matter whether catholic or reformers.
I have found that getting an unbiased historical perspective is quite difficult and each of us will need sound judgment and discernment to read between the lines to try to get an accurate understanding of what happened.
Perhaps just like reading the Mirror or the Mail, both reporting the same news from diametrically opposed positions.
Having been born after WW2, with parents and uncles etc, who had fought through the war in one guise or another, our perspective on Germany and Japan was biased by their experiences, related to us as children.
It was not until I actually lived in Germany for 4 years that I came to understand that they, like us suffered enormously during and after the war, and of course, they were on the losing side.
My thoughts were concentrated during visits to places like Belsen Concentration Camp, to help me to come firmly to grips with the recent history of Europe in both WW1 and WW2.
In the end nobody wins wars. Millions needlessly lose their lives purely due to mans free will to destroy each other for no reason which could ever be morally justified.
September 5, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Jim, please, no! It couldn’t be as bad as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’! Surely?
September 7, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Nick,
I’m a bit late to the party on this one but I think you’ve touched on a really interesting subject.
As a History and Politics graduate I think it’s worrying to see how contemporary British politicians are constantly re-writing history to suit their own agenda.
The rush to war in iraq is the classic example. When it became clear Saddam had no weapons of mass distruction, all of a sudden our leaders told us the war had always been about freeing Kurds and Shiites from the dictator etc.
On another note, after a year of interregnum, our new vicar arrives this week.
Yesterday’s sermon was esentially a history lesson about our church from one of the wardens. It was a brilliant move. More than 125 years of mission and outreach was detailed and we were encouraged to create the next chapter. How inspiring.
September 12, 2009 at 12:45 am
Interesting that you suggest telling the stories of the Bible from the perspective of the ‘losers’. Because you could say the Old Testament was written by the ‘losers’; the people whose land (the Belgium of the Middle East) was overrun by armies whenever neighbouring powers became restless, eventually evicted and allowed to return (in much smaller numbers than their written records claim), to have a much diminished existence until the centre of their world was destroyed. If the deaths of Egyptians and Canaanites that are so ghastly when you read them in church and say ‘Thanks be to God’; if those deaths are actually fiction rather than history – wishful thinking to encourage future boldness rather than a true record of the past – then perhaps the ‘losers’ who might have written their story ‘from their perspective’ didn’t actually exist.
September 13, 2009 at 8:04 pm
John, good point about the writers of the history actually being the ‘losers’, but the way they write their history is teleologically ‘interesting’, isn’t it?