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

First, few countries undertake a thorough self-examination on their
own. The country that has most successfully repudiated its past
has been Germany (and to a lesser degree Italy and Japan). This
happened, however, under the impact of a crushing defeat and
under the influence of systematic re-education by the occupying
powers, which was perceived as neither oppressive nor exploitative.
Even in the so-called Neue Länder of the former GDR, the influence
of the former Federal Republic was decisive in the reorientation of
political and historical education.
But even in these countries – except perhaps Germany – a resurgence
of and nostalgia for the past is increasingly apparent. In Italy
a lively debate on the nature of fascism has not prevented political
unanimity for the arco constituzionale and, more recently, the ascent
of a populist authoritarianism with fascist undertones.
The second, and perhaps most important dimension, concerns the
relation between rulers, nation and society or regime. For a regime
which is both autocratic and nationalist, the interests of the rulers,
of the nation and of the people necessarily coincide. From the point
of view both of historical truth and political freedom, they are distinct
and sometimes contradictory. It is difficult to find one’s way
towards a genuinely democratic regime if one is not able to recognise
what distinguishes its blemishes and crimes from the horrors
of Auschwitz or of the Gulag, or from the cults of Hitler and of Stalin.
Of course this is easier when liberation from political oppression is
also liberation from foreign rule and the rebirth of national independence.
It is harder when the most criminal dictatorship also coincides
with the moment of greatest national or imperial power.
A third connected element is that in Russia and in China the ruling
elite and especially the security structures, are the survivors or the
direct heirs of the previous regime. Their claim to legitimacy has to
be a combination of pragmatism (which may include a de facto conversion
to the most unbridled form of capitalism) and of continuity
with all previous autocracies in the name of national unity and of
imperial power.
In China the circle is squared, with the Orwellian official balance
sheet according to which Mao was seventy per cent right and thirty
per cent wrong.
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