The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. - book reviews

National Review, July 31, 1995 by David Pryce-Jones

Solzhenitsyn is cunningly belittled as someone who came up through the system. Nobody could discover from this book the brute Soviet reality. Nationalism runs counter to the doctrine of class warfare; thus small nations and their cultures are special targets of hate in books such as this. Never mind the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the Baltic states are judged to have no historical identity but were simply ``acquired'' by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1944, only to ``secede'' in 1989.

No mention of the repression of the Balts, which was not far short of genocide. The whole of Eastern and Central Europe between 1944 and 1949 euphemistically ``broke with capitalism'' and ``moved into the socialist camp,'' as if by choice. No mention of Katyn Forest. No mention of the murder and suppression of democrats in every so-called People's Republic. When at last the liberation for which all these peoples had longed arrived in 1989, it seemed to Hobsbawm only to create ``an international void between Trieste and Vladivostok.'' So much for them too. America was the class enemy, and its democracy was therefore ``unfortunately'' more dangerous to the world than the Soviet Union. The Third World had managed to free itself from Western imperialism, only to be kept by America as ``a zone of war.'' Communism collapsed for two reasons. ``The heart had gone out of the party,'' meaning that its leaders were no longer killing people as before. And the free market in the West had led to ``the globalization of the economy,'' which was not only discreditable in itself, and unfair, but a threat to all future existence. No mention of the subversion and espionage by which the Soviet Union had skillfully globalized its politics. In the collapse of Communism, peoples of very different backgrounds rejected the doctrine of class war and everything that went with it. How, one wonders, can an undoubtedly intelligent and diligent man have remained within a mindset so exploded by experience? The psychology driving this book is of far greater interest than anything in its content. Personal touches and footnotes reveal that Hobsbawm believes in revolution as a supreme value in itself, as unchangeable as an act of worship. From Lenin to Castro and Guevara, and assorted guerrillas and urban terrorists, his heroes are those willing to kill for this supreme value. Murder passes as self-sacrifice. What can be the source of such monstrous contempt for human beings? It was as well for us all that this natural commissar never found the circumstances in which to express his inner self through deeds rather than words.