Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

I think that quite a lot of the young historians who worked on that
project were competent and not preoccupied with a certain reading
of history. But if the Kaczyńskis would do a museum on
Solidarność, that would be a total disaster. Wałęsa would probably
be washed out like Trotsky.
Q: Is there such a thing as objectivity in history? What do you take
as the basic rule?
I believe in the famous slogan of the Manchester Guardian: ‘facts
are sacred, interpretation is free’. If somebody wants to write that
the Second World War started in 1935 in Albania, most people
would say that is not all right. But if you want to analyse what happened
in the Second World War you need a bookshelf. It is
surprising that sixty years after the Second World War there is no
agreed textbook on what happened in the war.
Full objectivity is impossible. We must strive to objectivity, but we
can never quite get there. However, a historian should try to be
impartial and should try and look at every event from different points
of view. The best chances of getting near the truth, is to construct
different perspectives before making a judgement. A historian has
a duty to make a judgement, but also to state clearly ‘this is my
opinion and this is the evidence I put before you’. In other words,
historians should separate judgement from evidence.
Q: You say interpretation is free. So if a Romanian colleague tells
us a story about his interpretation of Romanian history, which we
think is totally absurd, we can conclude his story has no real value,
not even politically.
It depends on why you think it’s absurd. If you are talking about an
event, for example the participation of the Romanian army in the attack
on the Soviet Union and your Romanian colleague tells you no
Romanians fought in the Soviet Union you can say ‘forget it’. But if
we get to the question of why they were there, you are on difficult
ground. But usually nationalistic historical propaganda is very
stupid. It’s very easy to recognise things that are obviously false.
Q: What do you feel is the position of history in the European
project? Should we, as European politicians, deal extensively with
history? Or should we look to the future and leave dealing with the
past to historians?
44