Niall Ferguson. Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist.

Niall Ferguson is a Harvard worthy who obtained his position without any recognizable body of scholarly work, probably due to the sheepish desire of the regents of the Bush-Cheney era "to get us some neocon." Next time, if he, for the replenishing of his already deep pockets decides to issue another long and highly inaccurate compilation about Rodrigo Borgia, he might call it "Alexander VI, The Celibate."

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands.

In view of immensity of the Nazi crimes very few even among Europe's right wingers deny the Holocaust. Only in Canada and Australia--the lands of asylum of many Eastern European Nazi criminals--old style denial is still extant. However, there are more sophisticated forms of whitewash of the history of the Nazi Europe. It can be classified into four tropes:

1. Victims were much fewer than it is thought;
2. Victims largely brought it upon themselves;
3. Perpetrators were motivated by noble goals and/or coerced into their crimes--in truth SS could not find enough spots for volunteers;
4. Perpetrators themselves were dealt with in inhuman and barbaric ways.


We leave now in a virtual world. There is no actual need to make anything for the nation to live well, thank you. Wealth is created out of nothing by the Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds, and material production is only a distraction from this "creation of value." Twenty-year olds (think Bristol Palin) write memoirs about how they got pregnant; even stranger that these memoirs are bought by somebody. Who may be interested in a ghostwritten life experiences of a twenty-year old brat? We fight virtual wars, in which there is no victory and no defeat, only a few rednecks dying to kill a few hundred thousands unarmed natives for whatever purpose the people, usually youngsters, who never fought or led soldiers in battle view as vital to our national security in their Foggy Bottom or Washington Mall offices.

This virtual world created a virtual history: the one in which WE (i.e. the Anglo-Saxon world, Captain America, Private Ryan, etc.) defeated Hitler and Stalin. Strangely enough, unlike the Third Reich, after its crushing defeat, USSR did not disappear but on the contrary, occupied Eastern Europe for half-a-century. One version is that there was evil Hitler and his comrades and a good Wehrmacht--who the commander-in-chief of that may be?--which invaded Eastern Europe exclusively to save it from the clutches of barbarian Russian Communism. Then it turns out that may be the fuhrer was not that bad, certainly better than the Uncle Joe, if it were not for his pathetic obsession with killing Jews. And so on, so forth. This version is not so new (e.g. see my review of S. Nelke http://oldpossumsbookreview.blogspot.com/2008/04/sonke-neitzel-tapping-hitlers-generals.html) and was invented by German generals in Allied captivity already during WWII. Equally probable is that this was an invention of the intellectuals of Oswald Moseley's party (K. Chesterton, J. F. C. Fuller etc.), when, after the Blitz, their base of working-class hoodlums could have provided them with a fair correction with metal chains and bars instead of cheering. Or "Generalissimo" Franco in dire need for postwar American aid. So what?

      Of course, most support for this garbage was taken straight from the lore of Eastern European supplicants of the Third Reich whose political heirs are now ruling the majority of the "New Europe" NATO members, who send mercenaries for America's colonial wars. But I cannot suspect that much Macchiavellianism in these opuses. Coddling the puppet regimes in Eastern Europe is a pure waste of effort: they are already being paid in hard currency.
      I suspect that the main motive behind such re-writing of history is the same as the motive behind military monuments in Vienna. Almost all of them were built not when the Empire was a continental superpower but after ignominious defeats, which started to pursue Austrians in the second half of the XIX century. And again, once Soviet Union started to succumb to bureaucratic senility of the late Brezhnev era, the erection of war monuments acquired monstrous scale. The decline of American Empire, probably, is the main cause of re-writing history of the World War II so as to present it as a unique American achievement.

Mary Beard, SPQR

I praised her Confronting the Classics: Tradition, Adventures and Innovation for naught. Her next opus is not so much a revisionist study of Rome as advertised on the cover as a hackwork (this is my imperfect translation of Russian khaltura, having no English equivalent). While most of her judgments on Roman history are sound, the book is so disjointed and garbled that its 600 pages cannot be viewed other than series of amusing anecdotes.

There is little a reader can learn from Mary Beard's about administration, economics or military affairs of the Roman Empire. Again, when she touches these subjects, her opinions--except for the military--are usually competent but there is no way one can get any coherent picture from her book.

Pamela Katz. The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink.

Very good biographical study. The only (slight) criticism of the book is the political naivete of the author. She thinks that Brecht's lack of Communist Orthodoxy could lead him to a sticky end in Stalinist Russia (as, e.g. sister of Brecht's best friend and his lover, Carola). First, Bertolt Brecht was quite an Orthodox Marxist. From his prospective--as from the prospective of Stalin's victims among "Old Bolsheviks", e.g. Antonov-Ovseenko, V. Smirnov, Bokii--it was Stalinism with its imperialism, Anti-Semitism, oppression of workers, etc., which was a deviance. Second, no assurances of Communist Orthodoxy could spare anyone during the Great Purges. Similarly, she obviously assumes that if American MacCartyites were to realize Brecht's "quarrels" with the Communism, he would be treated differently. HUAC and the State Department could not care less about that. For instance, left-leaning industrialist's son Stefan Zweig who had not a Communist bone in his body was denied US visa, which led to his suicide in Brazil, while Lion Feuchtwanger, Stalin's apologist, was allowed to live happily in California. This, much milder repression, also depended on a particular case worker, visibility of the subject, her/his relationships with the neighbors and colleagues and their readiness to denounce him/her, etc.

Joseph Heath. Enlightenment 2.0

The author's well argued views can be summed up as follows. At least some of the problems of the modern society only admit highly complex and technical solutions. Yet, in the era of 24/7 news cycle and the social media, only 60 second sound bites and 150 character tweets can influence politics. This means that the public gets only simplistic and anti-intellectual view of the events and possible solutions. In Heath's view this benefits right-wingers with their highly cohesive electorate and well-oiled money machine.

This argument is entirely persuasive but factually wrong (I don't subtract from the other strengths of his book, which are nothing short of genial. Take, for instance, his observation of the propensity of American TV journalists to interview mainly other journalists or political operatives). Have you lived through McCain and Romney presidencies? I did not. Canadian Harper--the author is Toronto-based--kept himself in power by means little different from a state coup, rather than his demagoguery. Indeed he used intricacies of Imperial Era laws and Constitution to redraw electoral districts to his liking.

           The degradation of the intellect in politics is obvious--we view Dan Rather, or Bill Donahue, or even Brent Scowcroft--as relics of a bygone era, even if only the vocabulary is in question. Yet, "liberal" CNN, NYT and Washington Post are nearly as mindless, sensation-prone and abusive as Fox and WSJ. J. Heath specifically admits the role of the CNN in drastically lowering reporting standards.
            After Murdoch's takeover, the quality of writing in WSJ has subsided, but so did one in Time and Newsweek. Nobody can place 10-page New Yorker-style intellectual disquisitions in them anymore (as was the case in 1980s and 90s). Even the "Scientific American" instead of long in-depth articles by professional scientists, relies more and more on 2-3 page expositions written by editorial writers, with graphics displacing narrative content more and more.

What can I say? The Utopians of the XX Century assumed that there will be a crisis of possibilities (reduced energy consumption, food scarcity, proliferation of waste). Yet, we now observe the crisis of demand. Even a lower-middle class job in developed countries and many emerging markets now provides access to clean water, indoor plumbing, new clothes and plenty of food. An upper crust has resources comparable to mid-size nations at their disposal. This breeds complacency.

Andrew Small, Madness in Civilization

Erudite gibberish continuing his bizarre previous opus. Author--a sociologist--rants against psychiatry with his semi-medieval views and terminology, yet blaming psychiatric treatments of the past centuries with not attaining modern standards of secular humanism. There are no more "mad" people in 21 century than there are "pestilent" or "afflicted."

D. Lieven. The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution

Lieven had to exculpate his sins of writing something positive about Russia ("Russia against Napoleon") in the eyes of British academia. So he embarked on writing a political pamphlet, which predicts imminent Russian collapse--another time--if it dares not to capitulate to Anglo-American compact on Ukraine. His new book is an erudite but pointless polemic dressed up as a historical study.

The preface illustrates a "straw man" argument so beloved by the English. Lieven speaks of "bad choice" of the rulers of the Russian Empire to begin the war with Germany as the Empire was not ready. In August 1914, the only choice for the Russian military leadership was to start war with the Central Powers immediately with France and England in the field, or wait until France will be defeated and BEC evacuated from the Continent. He supports his argument by a memo by Admiral Grigorovich suggesting (correctly) that the Russian Baltic Fleet was no match for the Germans. Yet, the brave admiral was pointing that in connection with his inability to protect St. Petersburg from naval bombardment by German dreadnoughts, which never materialized, because of treacherous Baltic waters even in the darkest days of 1917. Nor the successful German assault on Riga relied on the naval power to any extent.

Lieven's description of motives and handling of the British foreign policy and the conduct of the war before and during the First World War is a Polyanny-ish description worthy of foreign policy Pravda editorials during late Brezhnev. As a British liberal arts professor, he is particularly inept in qualitative, statistical matters.

While prosecution of the war by the Russian generals was pathetically inept, the handling of the war by everyone else was not much better. In particular, British losses during the Great War were 60% of the Russian Empire's--not counting Aussies, Canadians and New Zealanders--yet, except disaster at Gallipoli, UK fought only Germany and Turkish irregulars in the Middle East. In contrast, Russia fought on the three full-blown theaters: Austro-Hungarian, German and Turkish. Statistics of losses alone hardly justifies his elevated opinion of the British high command.

His strongest suite is as usual, is ethnic relations among elites. Lieven correctly identifies Tsars/Stalin's desire to attach Galicia and Transcarpathia to Russian Novorossia and to create "Ukraine" out of them as a monumental stupidity. However, Austro-Hungarian drive to Balkans and encouragement of "Ukrainian" nationalism was equally stupid. If Ukrainians could secede from the Russian Empire, what could prevent Hungarians, Czechs and Croats to secede from Austria? And they did.

Some of his off-hand remarks are pretty silly. For instance, he suggests that Germany "was destined to win the war." Nothing can be further from the truth. Churchill correctly said that "Russia fell on its face in a step from victory." By the end of 1917, human and material resources of Germany were largely exhausted, not to speak of its shambolic allies (Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey).  Yet, the resources of British, Russian Empires and the US were barely touched. In fact, once the war turned from a German-planned Blitz to the war of attrition, only gross errors of the Allies and the avoidance of these by the Central Powers, could help victory of the latter.

All in all, the Great War demonstrated a simple fact--namely, that in the industrial age of mass armies, land empires with semi-feudal militaristic elites in charge of foreign policy (Austro-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Empire and Russia) were unsuitable ways to organize society. And they all collapsed.

D. M. Lasansky (ed.), The Renaissance.

A daring (for the American historians) attempt to make art history relevant for a present day. Renaissance influences are discussed, with various diligence, from McMansions to porn to Sopranos. An excellent book.

Steven Frazer. The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power.

Liberal polemics and should be evaluated as such; but well argued and very sad. The author predicts that the American future consists of the unlimited power of the few oligarchs and huddled but docile and slowly pauperizing masses.

Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams. Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and other Planets.

Too popular for a scientist and too thick for a general reader but altogether great.

Link

Michael Harris. Mathematics without apologies.

I propose replacing much-abused Einstein's maxim on madness with the following. "Madness" in a colloquial sense is one's inability to control speech behavior and to put things in orderly progression. Michael Harris may be very smart but is undeniably mad in the sense of above definition. The text is interspersed with long French and German quotes--yes, we understand, he knows these languages--sometimes even Russian and Arabic, and has no logical order to think of. In his ability to make simple things complicated he rivals another algebraic geometer, genial Yuri Manin, [who is not mentioned in his book despite Manin's co-author Drinfeld figuring prominently.--see comments for correction]

P.S. There is an absurd "love" equation on p.357 of notes. There should be time derivatives somewhere!

Boris Rybakov. Paganism of the Ancient Slavs (in Russian), 1988.

Boris Rybakov's research suffered an unfair fate. As a true son of the Party he participated in all its campaigns, including Anti-Semitic cleansing of academia in the early 50s. His contemporary papers lavishly cited Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and he tried to prop nationalist agenda of late Stalin's and late Brezhnev's regime. Because of that, his scientific work--similarly to another Party toady--physicist Blokhinstev, acquired, in some circles, a reputation similar to Lysenko's. I cannot vouch for Rybakov's veracity of archeology of the ancient Slavs, but Blokhinstev certainly was a world-class physicist and a brilliant teacher of physics.

Posthumously, the fate of his research was even worse. Some of the Russian Aryan Brotherhood-modeled cults used his reconstructions of the Old Slavic pantheon to bolster their heinous ideology. Without attribution, this rot propagated to Scandinavia where Norse mythology currently feeds nationalist movements.

After the fall of the Communism, he was accused of peddling so-called "autochthonous" theory of Slavic origins, by which his detractors tried to blacken his reputation even further. Indeed, he avoided a slippery question of Norman (i.e. Germanic) origins of the recorded Russian statehood for most of his career. However, now the existence of Slavic quasi-states before the Norman conquests on the island of Rugen and on the Danube is not much in dispute.

Yet, in 1988, during wild Perestroika times, he published his Magnum Opus, Paganism of the Ancient Slavs remarkably free of ideological garbage he tried to uphold over the years.  This is not surprising that, given his limitations (he never fully absorbed structuralism, and its stepmother, comparative linguistics) that some of the "Paganism..." does not correspond to the modern standards of scholarship (how many English humanities' studies are?). Many of the threads were left unfinished reflecting his decline with the old age. Yet, it is absolutely amazing how many of his conclusions based on archeological studies now can be confirmed by the mytochondrial DNA analysis unavailable at the time (see Manco, 2014).

Slavic studies are currently in the deep decline. During Havel years, Czech academics were reportedly required to deny the Slavic origin of Czech and invented Mid-Western-European group of languages instead. In Poland, citing Russian sources means the end of the academic career. So we all have to wait before some Polish or Slovak (i.e. NATO-approved) researcher comes up with similar conclusions and further propels his studies.

J. Canales. The physicist and the philosopher.

Another hanger-on to Einstein's fame and persona, telling the story of relativity as a parallel to Bergsonian philosophy.

The book depicts Einstein as a petulant brat basking in rays of his own popularity. Certainly, he was a Prussian man of his generation--for instance, thinking that a wife's rage at her man's infidelities--is a "usual" female hysteria. But he was unusually enlightened for his day and age.

I cannot vouch how accurately the author reproduces Bergson's concepts of time and space but her understanding of relativity and its place in contemporary science is superficial.

Michael Benson. Cosmigraphics.

A beautiful book-album. Illustrations of Trouvelot--Harvard-French draftsman of celestial phenomena are pure marvel.

Joan Breton Connelly. The Parthenon Enigma.

This book is a tacit proof that they do not give McArthur Fellowship for nothing. While it is not particularly useful if one wants to learn more about Ancient Greece, the author's hypothesis is so obvious and stunning that it bears ring of truth arguments notwithstanding. Her command of military realities (suggestion that cavalry was outdated by the time of Pericles when it was still widely employed in Franco-Prussian war) and questionable aesthetic judgment (Sir Alma Tadema a great painter) do not subtract from her monumental (no pun) achievement.

Namely, her hypothesis is that the friezes of Parthenon are the depiction of the founding myth of Athens--namely, the human sacrifice of daughters of Erechtheus (or Kekrops?) to Poseidon. While her insistence on strict delineation between contemporary procession of Panathenaic ceremonies and story of the original myth might be discarded by any Levi Strauss scholar, her insistence on centrality of Erechtheus daughters is commendable.

Francisco Bethencourt. Racisms.

A controversially argued, but altogether great book. He traces beginnings of the racial (bloodline-based) persecution of Jews in Iberia as a beginning of modern racism. Here, I must digress. For all of the human history the stranger being from another village was a sufficient reason to hit his head by a hard rock. Only when this reasoning started to be challenged, "racism" appeared (witticism of one Belgian historian).
            A beginning of colonial expansion induced application of racial criteria from the peoples on the bottom of European ethnic pile--stateless Jews, Gypsies but also Finns, Latvians, etc. because the existence of the national state was the prima facie of civilization--to colonized peoples. Yet, in "natural" classifications of XVIII century (Linnaeus, Buffon, De  Pauw) race is largely equated with geography in a fashion of a geographic map (whites--Europeans, yellow or brown races--Asians, red--Americans and black--Africans).
            Only in mid-19 century Englishman Knox in "A philosophical inquiry on the influence of race over the destiny of nations" invented racial classification from the highest (Anglo-Saxon) to the lowest (Bushmen, Hottentots and Gypsies). Yet, Knox was against European colonialism, which he saw as a dilution of the white race.
            All in all, in XX century, racism was repugnant. In XXI century, in view of modern genetics and linguistic studies, it is simply ridiculous. Yet, many policies are still in thrall of this garbage indicating the rise of the early modern nation state.

Stephen Kotkin, Stalin Vol. 1

This book is so squeezed by ideological strictures emanating from the Hoover Institution Party Committee that it is completely schizophrenic in terms of its worldview and it ends more as a negative mirror image of Stalinist mythology than a historical study.

First, there is only one successful model of society, namely Anglo-American "neoliberal" capitalism and all recipes of social reform are only as successful as they imitate this model (see Fukuyama and the rest of the crowd).

Second, Russians is the nation of drunken brutes possessing no creativity or energy. This is now a symbol of faith uniting all media starting with NPR and ending with Fox News.

Henceforth, if USSR could successfully resolve some of its problems, it could be attributed only to superhuman will and foresight of its Georgian tyrant, Iosip Bessarionovich Jugashvili, aka Stalin. Following this absurd legend, Kotkin singles out Stalin as a leading force behind the rise of Communist Party much earlier than the mainstream historians but in full accordance with Stalinist propaganda initiated with Lavrentii Beria's ghostwritten "History of Communist Organizations in Transcaucasia."

Wherever there are factual inconsistencies in his narrative, Kotkin declares them fakes and forgeries. For instance, he declares Lenin's testament as fake written by Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife. While nobody can be sure to what degree Lenin ever was in control of his faculties c. 1923, the testament bears striking resemblance in proposed solutions and style to his contemporary writings such as "How to reorganize Workers-Peasant Inspection." Were they also forged and for whatever purpose?

Kotkin fully subscribes to the Stalinist propagandist dogma of "Stalin as the Lenin today." While certainly, Communist methods and ideas were common for Lenin and Stalin (as they were common also for Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and Kirov not to speak of lesser comrades) two men hated each other and had deep differences in personality.

Because Russians by definition were absent of any creativity save artistic, he recalls Communist mythology of Imperial Russia as a medieval village (of course, Communists used this mythology to justify low living standards in the USSR). In fact, Imperial Russia was fifth or fourth industrial power in the world, which he grudgingly recognizes (and probably outstripped France by 1917 because alone of great European powers it experienced growth during WWI). Low rates of literacy and average lifespan compared to the European states are specious evidence because Russia's colonies were contingent to the core Imperial territory. If one were to compare not the Russian Empire to the British isles or the Continental France but their empires on the whole, the picture would probably be much similar. Literacy and longevity statistics of central gubernias of Russia probably were still lagging behind, though not as much, from the most developed of European nations but perfectly comparable to Austro-Hungary, its Western neighbor.

In keeping with Hoover Institution dogma on market economics, he unfavorably compares Soviet industrialization with Mussolini's Italy, which applied many market-based techniques, some well ahead of its time. True, but neither Italy, nor Pilsudsky's Poland, nor Ataturk's Turkey became self-sufficient industrial powers. Inability of Italy to arm and supply its own army during the WWII mightily contributed to the disillusionment of soldiery and the fall of the Fascist regime.

Evil Communists cannot (except Stalin and some less known "bourgeois deviants" like Sokolnikov) possess any positive qualities such as military prowess or organizational capacity. That's why he denigrates Trotsky, founder of the Red Army, and Dzherzinsky, the head of the Secret Police and Kuibushev, head of the Central Planning Body, the VSNKH. In fact, despite their brutality and ideological limitations, all three were highly efficient leaders.

Finally, when nothing works, he invokes blind luck, as in the case of the Great Depression, which alone, he claims, saved the USSR from collapse from the invasion of superior Western powers (such as Poland and Romania), which (the threat of invasion) he dismisses elsewhere as an example of Soviet paranoia.

While the 900+ pages of this opus magisterium contain enough amusing anecdotes to keep reading--not a small distinction--it should be read as a work of historical fiction rather than the outcome of scientific research and analysis.

Christopher Hill. Outpost. Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir.

Christopher Hill is a dinosaur of American diplomacy and I mean it in a good sense. Revolution of the last two decades brought to the upper echelons of the diplomatic/national security boys and girls with little experience in anything except campaigning and fundraising.

Of course, memoirs of a professional diplomat, Bismark included are always elliptic to the degree of secular mysticism; and what is omitted is frequently more important than what is there. But what is there is remarkable enough. Hill does not mention that almost all missions he was tasked by Washington were spectacular failures: one Iraq is sufficient to obliterate a career of anybody. But he earnestly tried to make bad situation (and even worse instructions) better and more palatable. Chris Hill more frequently than not was an honorable man in service of impossible and dishonorable cause.

For instance, Hill, in his capacity of Ambassador to Macedonia assisted Holbrook in dismembering Yugoslavia and creating one of European "black holes" of banditry and terrorism out of Kosovo. Yet, from his memoirs it is pretty clear that so-called Kosovo Liberation Army did not represent a significant fraction of Kosovo Albanians being cobbled together from disparate bands representing mostly Dranica clans. He writes in detail how Rugova, an obscure Albanian politician, was enthroned as a leader of Albanian independence movement. In fact, his "representatives" were not even allowed to enter talks of Albanian field commanders.

A wonderful passage mentions Cheney citing some "intelligence reports" and such in support of his position after Bush started to doubt superhuman wisdom and assurance of his Vice. After silent prodding by Condi Rice--hopefully not including leg kicking under the table--Bush proclaimed that he read that document and it contains nothing Cheney cited as fact. George Bush reading some obtuse foreign policy document is as inconceivable as Chernenko (senile Secretary General) but Cheney instead of arguing his position, just shut up. Psychopaths cannot be convinced by arguments, but, in my experience, they frequently cave in when forcefully confronted.

His characteristics of colleagues are mostly superlative, yet many make clear his real views. Joseph, an obscure neocon put by Bushies in charge of non-proliferation, always looked for situation where "coercive methods" (i.e. sanctions and war) have to be applied. So one can wriggle true meaning of his elliptic descriptions with no fault of his present. True diplomat!