Experimentul sovietic

La Multi Ani pentru domnul Mihai Şora!

https://tismaneanu.substack.com/p/rezistenti

Lumina-i steagul nostru-n zare

Bolsevismul a fost o cultura politica revolutionara, scria Robert C. Tucker. S-a nascut prin rusificarea doctrinei occidentale, de sorginte hegeliana, a materialismului istoric. O alchimie in care traditia social-democrata era bulversata, contestata, desfigurata. Lenin a fost fondatorul noului amalgam revolutionar metamorfozat in radicalism apocaliptic planetar. Se vesteste venirea Omului Nou. La Marx, revolutia antropologica este una implicita. La Lenin, ea devine explicita. Axiomele leniniste sunt codificate in noua religie politica, logocratica, mesianica si soteriologica. Transformism universal, lupta eterna dintre Vechi si Nou, falsificarea Binelui despre care a scris Vladimir Soloviov. Miscare fara vreun repaos, miscarea comunista este progresul insusi, omenirea zeificata. Nicio mila pentru cei invinsi. Locul este in Cosul de Gunoi al Istoriei. Comunismul romanesc a fost un leninism real: intransigent, fanatic, intolerant, profetic, sectar, elitist, voluntarist. Un totalitarism de clasa. Trec randuri, randuri muncitorii…

Un catafalc pentru cine?

Summit in Uzbekistan

Monarhii, republici, imperii coloniale

Teza dupa care institutia monarhica este in chip iremediabil compromisa de colonialism ignora faptul ca imperiul colonial francez a existat si s-a extins in plin regim republican. Monarhia britanica, asemeni celor din Olanda, Belgia, Spania, a patronat sisteme coloniale profund nedrepte, rasiste si exploatatoare. Dar, in anii 50 valul planetar al decolonizarii a marcat finalul imperiilor moderne occidentale. In 1957, fosta colonie britanica Ghana devenea stat independent. Exact in acea perioada A Patra Republica franceza ducea un razboi feroce impotriva independentei Algeriei. Abia revolutia din 1974 a consfintit sfarsitul imperiului colonial al Portugaliei. Cred ca aceste precizari pot servi unei discutii rationale despre lectiile secolului 20.

The Last Marxist Revisionist

Mikhail Gorbachev went far beyond Nikita Khrushchev’s “Back to Lenin” approach. When he came to power in March 1985, he tried to instill new life into a dying body. This explains the inconsistencies and blunders of the first three years (1985-1988). He knew from his mentor Yuri Andropov that touching the Stalin question would inevitably open a Pandora box. And yet he did it.

Glasnost meant the return of repressed memories, the rebirth of pluralism, and the return of civil society. It meant telling the truth about the horrible crimes of the past. It meant admitting that the regime contained violence against society in its deepest matrix. By the end of the 1980s, Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Georgy Shakhnazarov and their supporters realized that liberalization was not sufficient. The next step was democratization. But an intrinsically authoritarian culture like Bolshevism be democratized without renouncing its defining features? The answer came in August 1991 with the anti-Gorbachev putsch and four months later with the end of the USSR. Altogether, he was a world-historical personality attuned to the turbulent and perplexing times in which he lived. No hagiography would do him justice. The same can be said about endeavors to negate his real merits.

Spiritul democratiei britanice

In Memoriam Queen Elizabeth II

The Agony of the Putin Regime

Fear of humiliation by others leads to the need to humiliate, persecute, and even destroy the challengers. Of all the things that Lev Trotsky said about him, nothing annoyed Stalin more than having been called “the most blatant mediocrity on the Central Committee.” The Soviet propaganda state was dedicated to fostering the Stalin myth. Boris Souvarine, a former French communist of Russian origin and a luminary of the anti-totalitarian Left, published his Stalin biography in 1935. It is still one of the most illuminating ever written. He liked to quote this passage from Chateaubriand. It is about the vainglorious dreams of any tyrant, Putin included:

“When in the silence of abjection, the only sounds that can be heard are the chains of slaves and the voice of the collaborator, when everything trembles before the tyrant, when it is as dangerous to curry his favor as to merit his disgrace, the historian appears, charged with the vengeance of the peoples. Nero prospered in vain, for Tacitus was already born during the Empire; he grew unknown beside the mortal remains of Germanicus, and already Providence, true to her character, had given to an unknown child the glory of the master of the world.”

https://quillette.com/2022/08/31/the-agony-of-the-putin-regime/?fbclid=IwAR0_3eTcXrO1RDBAmCGzFUq_PvcX0Gga9T9cTSid6lcxv60vpVGdShV_5Ko

Mihail Gorbaciov, Eliberatorul

Happy Birthday, Adam Volo Tismaneanu!