New Books In History

In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that’s what the producers call it, anyway) “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.” Of course it’s absolutely loony. In fact, it’s so loony that I began to wonder if the director, Dylan Avery, wasn’t having us on. It’s hard to tell whether “Loose Change” is a you’ve-gotta-hear-this conspiracy theory or a tongue-firmly-in-cheek parody of a conspiracy theory. Maybe I’m just jaded, but it seems to me–particularly after reading David Aaronovitch’s excellent book Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in the Shaping of Modern History (Penguin, 2010)–that we’ve heard all this before: Satan’s children did it, the Freemasons did it, the Illuminati did it, the Jews did it, the the Commies did it, the Mafia did it, the John Birch Society did it, the Trilateral Commission did it, the Bilderberg Group did it, the Club of Rome did it, Skull and Bones did it, PNAC did it, and everyone else has done “it” whatever “it” happens to be. Every time one of these insidious plots “comes to light” it turns out to be a sickly-sweet cocktail of paranoia, anger, and don’t-let-the-facts-get-in-the-way-of-your-argument speculation. You’d think we’d have learned by now not to believe that “dark, hidden forces” are behind everything because, well, they demonstrably aren’t. But people want to believe these things, particularly when they seem to explain why something distrubing–say, the collapse of Germany in WWI, the high costs of rapid industrialization in the USSR in the 1930s, or America’s evident lack of preparation for 9/11–wasn’t “our” fault, but rather someone else’s. I would like to think that David’s wonderful book will put an end to loopy conspiracy theories so that we can get on with the important business of fixing things that matter. It probably won’t, but nonetheless Voodoo History is certainly a fine step in that direction and I applaud David for writing it (and you for reading it).

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, 9/11, Anti-Semitism, Assassination, CIA, Catholicism, Christianity, Communism, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Historiography, Hitler, Hoaxes, Intellectuals, JFK, Jews, Joseph McCarthy, Mafia, Nazis, Papacy, Paranoia, Politics, Popular Culture, Propaganda, Public Intellectuals, Red Scare, Soviet Union, Stalin, Trotsky, Witchhunts, Zionism by Marshall Poe
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Most people know what “appeasement” is. You know, the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi Anschluss with Austria, the Sudeten Crisis, Neville Chamberlain, “Peace in Our Time.” The Western democracies went (as Margaret Thatcher might have said) all “wobbly” on Fascism, with tragic results. But not everyone was fooled by the Fascists. Socialist and Communist parties all over the world recognized it as a dire threat as early as the 1920s, and they never wavered in this conviction (until the Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact, of course). So as much as we might want to blame the radical left for the many woes of the twentieth century, we should remember to give credit where credit is due. Joel Lewis does in his illuminating new book Youth Against Fascism: Young Communists in Britain and the United States, 1919-1939 (VDM, 2007). In the book, Joel tells the story of the communist youth movement in the UK and US. It’s a fascinating topic, and one that is little understood. Of particular interest is Joel’s excellent treatment of the transition from the Leninist generation of communists (1917-1933) to the Popular Front generation (1934-1941). The switch from the one to the other has too often been seen as entirely directed by Moscow. Joel tells a slightly different tale, one in which pressure from below among young communists played an important role in creating the Popular Front. It’s too bad this pressure wasn’t strong enough to convince the right and center parties to take Hitler more seriously than they did. If they had, World War II might have been avoided. (By the way, the Young Communist League is still around if you want to fight Fascism. And who doesn’t?)

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Tags: 20th Century, Anti-Fascism, Bolsheviks, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Foriegn Policy, Historiography, Hitler, Ideology, Intellectuals, Lenin, Nationalism, Nazis, Popular Front, Radicalism, Russia, Socialism, Stalin, Trotsky, War, World War I, World War II, Youth Movements by Marshall Poe
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I always assumed that the Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe to New York and created the massive Jewish American labor movement brought their leftist politics with them from the Old Country. But now I know different thanks to Tony Michels’ terrific Fire in their Hearts. Yiddish Socialists in New York (Harvard University Press, 2005).  As Tony explains, most of the Yiddish-speaking immigrants who arrived in New York were apolitical, or rather feared politics having come from a regime that punished open political activity (Tsarist Russia). These immigrants, then, learned socialism on American shores. Their teachers were Jewish members of the Russian intelligentsia who themselves had fled Tsarist oppression in the 1880s. These Russian Jews were radicals, but not necessarily socialists. So, interestingly, they learned socialism–or at least a new brand of socialism–on American shores as well. But who taught the Russian Jews socialism? Tony has the answer: German socialists who had immigrated to the Lower East Side (a.k.a Kleindeutschland) in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. So the chain of transmission begins in Germany with the rise of the German Socialist Democratic Party (1860s), moves to New York with the immigration of German socialists to the Lower East Side (1870s), picks up after the arrival and conversion of the Russian Jewish radicals to German-style populist socialism (1880s), and ends with the flowing of the Yiddish labor movement in New York (1890s-1900s). What a story! Along the way Tony introduces us to a huge cast of colorful characters, explains the origin of the modern Yiddish literary language, gives us a peek at the lively Yiddish periodical press, and shows us Jewish socialists fighting for the rights of workers along side their gentile brothers and sisters. Misconceptions are destroyed, myths exploded, and stereotypes dashed. Read all about it!

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, Anti-Semitism, Ashkenazi Jews, Communism, Eastern Europe, Exile, German Americans, Ideology, Intellectuals, Intelligentsia, Jews, Liberalism, Migration, National Identity, New York, Progressive Era, Radicalism, Russia, Soviet Union, Trotsky, Ukraine, Yiddish by Marshall Poe
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It’s hard to know what to think about the Russian Revolution of 1917. Was it a military coup led by a band of ideological fanatics bent on the seizure of power? Was it a popular uprising led by an iron-willed party against a bankrupt political order? Or something else?  The debate began immediately after the October Revolution and continues to this day. No one is in a better position to answer these and related questions about early Soviet power than Alex Rabinowitch. For over forty years he has been at the forefront of scholars trying to figure out just what happened in 1917 and the years that followed. His Prelude to Revolution. The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (Indiana UP, 1968) was “revisionist” before Revisionism and remains a classic of Soviet history today. The same might be said of his follow up book, The Bolsheviks Come to Power. The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (Norton, 1976; Haymarket, 2004). Now Professor Rabinowitch has treated us with yet a third installment in what is destined to become the standard work on the Bolsheviks in the Revolutionary period: The Bolsheviks in Power. The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Indiana UP, 2008). The book, as we might well expect, is terribly impressive. It does all the things critical history should: debunks myths, establishes facts, and sets the story in a framework that makes what happened understandable. Thanks to Professor Rabinowitch’s work, it’s now much easier to know what to think about the Russian Revolution.

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Tags: 20th Century, Bolsheviks, Communism, Eastern Europe, Ideology, Intelligentsia, Lenin, Russia, Soviet Union, St. Petersburg, Stalin, Trotsky, World War I by Marshall Poe
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