Tag Archives: historiography

Mussolini: Rome Revived or Rome Reviled?

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Is a politician’s image imposed externally, by admirers and critics located domestically as well as abroad, examining the politician within his respective surrounding context and time period? [Bottom-up] Or, on the other hand, does a ruler paint his own political picture, a self-created phenomenon, descending internally from the ruler himself? [Top-down] This is the question that R. J. B. Bosworth examines in a chapter of his 1998 publication, “Mussolini the Duce: Sawdust Caesar, Roman Statesman or Dictator Minor?”. Truly, as Bosworth illuminates based on multiple academic’s opinions of Benito Mussolini during and after his reign of power, a politician’s image is both a combination of self-determining propaganda and external popular evaluation.

Mussolini ruled as a charismatic leader, relying upon his positive public image to reinforce his extremist Fascist party ideology and state. While the Duce’s dictatorship and personality paled in comparison to Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (hence the Dictator Minor label), all three rulers shared in common a tendency toward the ‘Great Man’ approach. This approach to history evaluates a leader based on his heroism as the determining force of his historical impact. As Bosworth asserts, normally this approach to analyzing history is “well out of favor” but “to some extent, however, the history of Fascism and, more generally, that of twentieth-century European politics, is an exception to that rule.” ((B.J.B Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce; Sawdust Caesar, Roman Statesman or Dictator Minor?” The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism, London: Arnold, 1998, 74. 59 ))

Bosworth examines how over the course of Mussolini’s dictatorship from 1922 – 1943, the effective influence of Mussolini’s fascist rule lost power parallel to the decline of what Emilio Gentile calls, ‘the imagined Mussolini’. Passerini accepts Gentile’s view “that Fascism brought mythical thought to power.” (( Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce”, 61. )) Other historians, throughout Bosworth’s article, refer to this grandiose conception of Mussolini as ‘the myth of Mussolini.’ When Mussolini rose to power, he did so under the pretense of embodying the values of the Italian public, as a “medium of a mass age.” (( Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce”, 62. )) Public reverence for the heroic dictator reached levels of deep religious awe; Mussolini’s call for a New, collectivist, Italy resonated deep in the Risorgimento national spirit. Italy was traditionally a diverse and separated country, even after the Italian Unification of the 19th century  – Could Mussolini finally be the leader destined to bring together the Italian people into a united nation? Mussolini capitalized on the declining pre-modern Catholic papal influence to replace with a modern religious appreciation of the secular state. But after 1925, when Mussolini decided against ruling by the Italian Constitution and created his own pseudo-legal totalitarian state, public adoration turned to public crucifixion.

Especially when Mussolini – always an an advocate of aggression rejecting the doctrine of pacifism – joined the WWII offensive in June 1940, with a false consolation to the Italian masses that it would be a short-lived dispute, public opinion of him really fell out of favor when increasing global military conflict created a sense of betrayal within the Italian people. Bosworth extols this concept, “Figures blessed or afflicted by charisma may, of course, be hated as well as loved. Prayers to the good Mussolini were matched by anathemas to the evil one.” (( Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce”, 65 )) While the Duce may have been a master propagandist in his own right, his pervasive slogan, ‘Mussolini is always right’ will go down in history as an ironic catchphrase, as his resonant historical image, in the words of Bosworth, is as war-time Europe’s “failed dictator.” (( Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce”, 59 ))

Based on your understanding of each of the dictator’s cult of personality and their respective states (Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Stalin’s Communist Russia, and Hitler’s Nazi Germany), do you believe that Bosworth’s concluding assessment of Mussolini’s “image of a failed dictator, at least in contrast with Hitler and Stalin” (( Bosworth, “Mussolini the Duce”, 59 )) is an accurate evaluation?

Defining Totalitarianism: Total control or Non-existence?

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In Friedrich and Brzezinski’s “Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy” (1957), they posit that the two terms should be used interchangeably to define a regime that is led by a singular leader who agrees upon, if he himself does not create, all official state decisions. The leader is defined as an autokrator: “the ruler accountable only to himself.” (15) The main goal of a totalitarian leader, explained through the ideological-anthropological theory, is to attempt to create an utopian society through “total control of the everyday life of its citizens.” (16) To accomplish this vast goal, totalitarian rulers utilize the political tactic of “totalism”, which attempts to completely restructure mass society through an all-encompassing ideology using state terror, a centralized government and economy, and finally, a monopoly on communications and weapons. Friedrich and Brzezinski elaborate that totalism is only successfully employed with the use of modern technological and organizational bureaucratic devices. In the eyes of the totalitarian ruler, his absolute leadership would transform his weak country into a highly advanced nation. Stalin himself said, as Friedrich and Brzezinski quote, that he believed his vision of Soviet totalitarian society created the “perfect democracy”. However, Friedrich and Brzezinski see autocratic totalitarianism as attempting to replace pure democratic societies with their “perverted descendants”. (p. 26) They concur that, “the effort at total control, while not achieving such control, has highly significant human effects.” (17) As later historiographers would point out, this definition, among the first in the field, reduces totalitarianism in an overly-simplistic fashion. On a similar overly deconstructed note, they agree that fascism (here they include National Socialism) and communism, as the model totalitarian regimes led by Hitler and Stalin, are “basically alike”. (19)

On the other hand, Walter Lacqueur’s more contemporary commentary piece “Is There Now, or Has There Ever Been, Such a Thing as Totalitarianism?” (1985) completely overly complicates the definition of totalitarianism. While he attempts to create a ‘crude definition’ declaring totalitarianism as “any regime attracting 99% of the votes in an election”, (1) he does not create any sort of valid conclusion of what totalitarianism is — or if it even exists at all. While never settling on his own definition of totalitarianism, what he contributes through this article is historiographical comparison of multiple historians’ perspectives. In favor of Friedrich and Brzezinski’s six components of totalitarianism, he prefers Bracher’s four criteria, which he sees as the “shorter and simpler” as well as more accurate version, as he points out flaws in Friedrich and Brzezinski’s theory. Further, Lacqueur supports Bracher’s declaration of despotism and freedom as the “fundamental dividing line in recent history”. (3) Lacqueur then examines Linz’s comparison of authoritarianism versus totalitarianism; he cites the main differences as authoritarianism allowing pluralism while lacking the state-sponsored ideology and forced mass political participation directed from above, both characteristic in totalitarian regimes. While he successfully synthesizes multiple perspectives on totalitarianism into one piece, what Lacquer really over complicates is his application of totalitarianism to communism and the Soviet Union. He asserts early on that totalitarianism may be applied correctly to the character of nazism but not to the character of communism (2); he then spends a good amount of time deciding whether Lowenthal’s fascism-communism comparison or Hassner’s “post-totalitarianism authoritarianism” definition better aptly fits the Soviet bloc experience. While Friedrich and Brzezinski’s definition of totalitarianism is overly simplistic, at least it does not confuse through round-about arguments in the style of Lacqueur.

The Lagging Gulag

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Professor Wilson Bell’s article on the Gulag comes as a response to the expanded use of the term in present time. Originally, the Gulag was a Soviet administration body that oversaw labor camps and later special settlements. The term Gulag has been used by Amnesty International in reference to Guantanamo Bay, by Al Gore when describing Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and by other academics to to describe work or incarceration camps throughout the modern age. Bells tracks the complex and irregular history of the Gulag to whittle down and refine the term to a more precise end.

Bell chiefly examines the motivation behind establishing the Gulag as a means to arrive at its more accurate definition. He identifies three main genesis theories supported by various Gulag historians: economic, socio-political, and ideological. Many historians believe that the Gulag supplied the rapidly industrializing Soviet Union with crucial cheap labor. However logical, this argument falls apart in Bell’s eyes when you examine some of the more economically “dubious” labor projects, sites, and the composition of the labor force. This last point leads many scholars to attach a strictly political agenda to the Gulag, a system by which unwanted classes (criminals), thinkers, or ethnicities could be isolated. Again, this notion unwinds when one identifies the Gulag’s semi-colonial value (in establishing new towns and settlements) and its re-education goals (somewhere between 20-40% of prisoners were released back into society). Bell’s thesis mimics his dismantle of others’. He believes that the three main approaches to the Gulag’s establishment are not mutually exclusive but include parts of one another. Nevertheless, he ultimately ends by saying that far more research needs to be done on the Gulag. It’s hostile environment, diversity, and other nuances, remain enigmatic to the world.

I learned that producing a thorough historiography requires the historian to delve into each deep lead he finds. Bell does not just discuss the fact that political revolutionaries or counter cultural thinkers were targeted by the Soviet Union he moves deeper, researching their distinct experience, their numbers in relation to the entire labor camp population, and the changes of the aforementioned over time. History is not one dimensional, it permeates throughout, affects and is effected by society. One must meticulously track minute changes over time because progress is often an entities most defining feature.

Gulag Historiography

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Bell’s piece focuses on the historiographical analyses of Gulags. He notes that the term “gulag” has taken on several meanings throughout recent history and the term has even been applied to more recent examples such as Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. However for the purpose of his paper he defines a Gulag as Soviet-era prison camp.

The focus of his paper is on the developments amongst scholars about the possible motivations of these forced labor camps. He cites scholars such as D. Dallin and B. Nicolaevsky who argued that there were economic motives behind the development of the Gulag as a result of rapid industrialization (Bell, 4). Other scholars have argued that the Gulags provided expansion into unsettled territory. Another argument discussed is that Gulags were used with political motives as a way to subdue unsettled citizens. Much of the evidence for this argument relies on the first-hand accounts of survivors (Bell, 6-7). There are other historians such as G. Alexopoulos who argue that Gulags acted as a penal system for the Soviet government (Bell, 11). Finally, Bell looks at the argument that Gulags were an attempt at social engineering. He cites S.A. Barnes as a proponent of such engineering theory. Barnes argues that the Gulags were important in the government’s attempt to “purify society” (Bell, 12).

As the author, Wilson Bell creates his own narrative amongst the presentation of the historiography by evaluating which scholars made particularly weak arguments and which made strong and well developed arguments. He also brings in several different scholars to provide depth not only to Bell’s writing but also to the conversation between historians about this topic.

One thing that I found particularly interesting is how access to new information and primary documents can create a deeper understanding of a particular subject. This is evident when Bell references that prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union historian relied mostly on memoir and first-hand accounts of Gulag conditions. However, after the collapse many archival documents containing reports, documents and statistics became available to historians (Bell, 9).

Through-Lining Historical Perspectives: The Approach of an Historiographer

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Wilson Bell’s article on the machinations of the Gulag draws from and interprets a great many viewpoints, with the primary argument being that though the term “Gulag” has been used to encompass a wide berth of topics, its primary use is to describe the Stalin-era concentration camps. Bell touches on various points of contention between different historiographers while attempting to find common threads of agreement that can stand on their own as fact in relation to the topic of the Gulag. He begins by discussing how the settlements of relocated peasants have only recently been inducted into the broader scope of the Gulag in a historical sense, moving on to the various possible motivations for the Gulag as an economic tool to bring in cheap labor, a politically repressive bureaucracy, and a method of isolating the outliers of Stalinist-Utopian society. Bell brings up several differing perspectives, supporting points by other historiographers such as Ivanova, Khleuniuk, Alexopoulos, and Klimkova, while drawing their arguments under a common theme of the inefficiency and harshness of the Gulag. Some relatively unfounded claims are made- see Alexopoulos’s supposition that prisoner release implies a high level of Soviet/prisoner interaction with little supporting evidence other than base conjecture- but overall this piece serves as an excellent introduction into the model of historiography. In particular, I took away that historiography focuses primarily on bringing bits and pieces of previous research together to support or contradict one another and develop a new historical perspective. Bell assertion towards the end of the piece that there is plenty of research to be done underlines this historiographical approach.

My stern opinion

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While reading Stearns’ full work, I couldn’t help but feel the same lack of faith towards delving into ‘history-ing’ children as a discipline, because I again found Stearns’ focus to be more about the impacts adults and society had on children during their respective eras rather than of the childhoods themselves. For example, Stearns spends a good deal of time examining various punishments enacted on children for misbehaving acts. Similar to our discussion last week, studying punishments (frankly) is convenient! They’re convenient because they have been acts enacted by older generations who can easily recall how they punished youngsters.

Stearns also spends a lot of time discussing issues of inheritance, which I understood but also didn’t understand. I felt like (again), delving into issues like inheritance is a fairly ‘convenient’ way to explore the history of childhood, because again, children aren’t known to be responsible for the handing down of inheritance – they simply are on the receiving end – and usually these children make decisions about their respective inheritances when they are significantly older (no longer children). This, again, to me at least is confusing because is Stearns really getting at a history of childhood by examining aspects of childhood that are essentially placed ‘on’ children by adults – which adults then use to examine the histories of childhood that they create. Stearns also focuses on when children, across a plethora of cultures, begin attending educational institutions. Maybe I’m getting carried away here by labeling these sources as ‘convenient’ and accusing these historians on founding their histories on a seemingly pseudo-basis, but employing enrollment statistics to help delve into the history of childhood is yet again using a source formed by adults to serve their adult needs; but isn’t that what part of the goal of examining the history of childhood is? To essentially examine the roots of adults’ own mannerisms and desires.

Despite the difficulty I have wrapping my head around the foundations of the history of childhood and the history of children, I found an interest in the importance of children’s happiness. Part of this interest stems from a point I made in class last week that apparently made its way into Stearns’ pages. My point in class last week was that because historians have acknowledged the difficulty in processing the history of childhood, some may have delved into it during the 16th-18th centuries but gave up. Stearns acknowledges this when he mentions discussions of children’s happiness occurring during the early 1800s. Stearns writes, “…actual discussions of children in terms of happiness surfaced surprisingly slowly. There were some references in England, around 1800, but nothing very systematic” (157)… in my eyes, this means that the historians at the time gave up because the task seemed too challenging, which leaves our class with a lot of work to do.

 

Escaping the “Adult Gaze”

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Maynes, Mintz, and Stearns

The first three readings seem to collectively address how contemporary society has been able to shape how childhood and its’ history is looked at. Maynes begins emphasizing the importance of first-hand life stories and accounts in the history of childhood (and in her case women, too). So few sources actually come from children that it leaves their stories up to be subjectively told. Maynes then leads nicely into the Mintz reading by describing how the forming of one’s identity is “rooted” in childhood. In one of the most eye-opening passages of the three articles, Maynes quotes Kath Weston in regards to gender on page 21:”Talk to someone in the United States about gender for more than twenty minutes and you’re likely to walk away with a childhood story.” This quote complements the Mintz reading nicely because Mintz essentially compares and contrasts age and gender as categories of history. What is masculine or feminine? What should a child’s responsibilities entail at a certain age? The answers to these questions are culturally and socially constructed and defined–simply unnatural as Mintz argues. Stearns finally delves into one of these norms that have been built up by society over the years–“the innocent child” and the idea that all children should be happy. Is this notion of happiness the lone and most construed aspect of childhood? No; Stearns concludes that parents being morally obligated to make their child’s childhood one of happiness is “only one among many factors shaping childhood in recent decades, and a challenge for further analysis is to figure out how it interacts with other influences.” Most of said influences being formed not by the children of the time period, but by the culture engulfing them.

Wilson and Pascoe

Wilson and Pascoe set out to critique the past historiography on children and childhood. Wilson specifically dealing with Philippe Aries and Pascoe centering on the more recent work on the children of Australia. The biggest problem Wilson has with Aries is his “present centeredness” approach, “the condition of viewing the past exclusively from the point of view of the present.” Through all his scrutiny, Wilson does not condemn Aries, but simply states that his argument is not false, but falsely conceived. After all, Wilson and Pascoe seem to agree, Aries book was essentially the first stage in the study of a new field. Wilson’s views on Aries’ “present-centeredness” poses a question. Isn’t every single human being naturally present-centered in some capacity? I understand where Wilson is coming from, but no matter what he writes, he did in fact write in the present.

Pascoe has different causes for concern with the historiography of children. He mentions the lack of sources authored by children themselves; a theme eminent throughout our entire week’s readings. He also describes the tendency amongst adult authors to romanticize children, and even get sentimental in their writing. All adults, historians included, tend to look back on childhood happily, and it hinders their writing. What solution, if any, does Pascoe recommend? He proposes “that we can enrich our historical research by borrowing insights from other disciplines,” chiefly material culture, archaeology, folklore, geography, and oral history. Pascoe writes my favorite quote in the reading when stating the utilization of these outside, yet similar, disciplines will lead to “the recovery of children from the scrapheap of the past.”

Davin and Rhodes

Davin and Rhodes provide a nice conclusion for this week’s readings. They both discuss useful sources for the study of childhood, but each author emphasizes a different variety. Davin delves into concrete sources–four in specific. These sources are school records, voices of authority (the privileged), voices of the working class, and her “jigsaw strategy.” Her jigsaw strategy kind of ties in with the Pascoe reading in that the jigsaw strategy pieces together clues from different sources, casting “a wide net.” This allows for the “steady accumulation of snippets, anecdotes, references, and examples; the piling up of details, which allows closer understanding.”

Rhodes is similar in that she emphasizes the importance of examining all varieties of sources. The difference is that for Rhodes, the sources she is referring to are experiences. Like many of the authors we we have just read, Rhodes believes that the history of childhood and the role of children in society are “too often defined by perceptions of adults.” She proposes that we, as historians, “explore the range of experiences and environments in which the child operated and engaged with in the adult world.” What I found most interesting is Rhodes’ opinions on photographs as sources. Though she admits their importance, one cannot rely that heavily on them because they are often under “adult gaze.” Photos are rarely, if at all, taken by children themselves, which reinforces the fact that the history of childhood is too often seen through the eyes of adults. I do believe that Rhodes is on to something, but I also believe studying experiences has its’ limitations. I’m sure that one would be able to find some first hand accounts, but wouldn’t that pool of sources be fairly limited? Even when analyzing these first hand accounts, wouldn’t many of the risks associated with other more subjective sources still remain? A blend between the strategies presented by both Davin and Rhodes–and all of the seven authors for that matter–is what is necessary to have any shot at recovering the history of childhood.

Gulag Historiography

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Wilson T. Bell’s article on Gulag historiography does not seek to define what a Gulag is. Instead, it is a fascinating effort to clarify the several definitions of Gulag in addition to the speculated reasons they existed. He states that there is no clear agreement among scholars and proceeds to list several definitions and contexts that have been explored. Bell also goes through the often debated economic and political motives behind the Gulags. His last statement, and perhaps his the most important, is that there is far more research needing to be done on this topic to add to the motives, goals, and contexts of a Gulag.

The part I found most interesting is the excerpt on just how disgusting these were. While he makes a point to differentiate them from Nazi death camps; “they were not death camps, there was a desire to keep the prisoners alive” (15), the human rights offenses were not few and far between. He believes that the human rights offenses have not been brought to enough attention through historian work. In general, human rights offenses tend to be disregarded either because they are unfathomable or guilt-ridden. With this, what other explorations of the Gulag, be it life in the camp, or Soviet motives, need to be explored?

Critical Review of Mazower

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The first four chapters of Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent offer readers a look into the European political, economic and social developments of the Interwar Era. Mazower’s main argument is that many factors influenced the political path that Europe followed: meaning that democracy was not an obvious or guaranteed form of government on the continent.

The changes that were rocking the continent at this time are clearly explained in the book using comparisons as many similarities were seen in countries across the continent. Mazower’s analysis of the way in which both right and left wing political movements gained traction during this period made especially good use of comparison to illustrate the trends throughout Europe. Through this level of comparison, Mazower displays an in depth understanding of the continent’s complexities. These nuances are presented to readers without becoming entirely overwhelming—a difficult task.

The book illustrates a deep understanding of the period in its use of anecdotes and quotations, but these details are very dense to read. Because so many quotations and examples are used, there is a lot of information to process and comprehend while reading. Moreover, the fluidity of Mazower’s own analysis is continually interrupted. Mazower assumes some level of knowledge on the part of the reader, especially in his explanations of events. He refers to many different political figures of the era, with little or no description of who they were and what they did.

Dark Continent does, however, address all of the major themes of the period with a sense of completion that is difficult to find. The book was published in 1998, and was very well received for the originality of many of its arguments. Since it’s publication, it has become a book that has informed many other historians and the perspectives present in their work. Mazower’s analysis of the political movements of the 1920s and 1930s has been used to explain political evolution in works about the Interwar Period and World War II. Julian Jackson’s France: the Dark Years (2003) addresses many of the same themes that Mazower touches upon.

The book does have some weaknesses that impact how the book should and must be read and received. The lack of bibliography at the end of the book prevents readers from being able to see his sources organized by type. The endnotes do reveal that Mazower relied heavily upon secondary sources, listing a very limited number of primary sources. This does not detract from the level of interpretation and study illustrated in the book; however, this does change the way in which the book needs to be read and studied, because it is not largely based on original research—which is surprising given that he wrote in the late 1990s about the Soviet Union, when Soviet archives had opened up to foreign researchers.

Despite the limited number of weaknesses displayed in the book, Mazower’s Dark Continent is an incredible resource for students and scholars studying inter-war Europe.

The Usual Suspect

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Carl Becker would be rather proud of Detective Grant—rather than a bespectacled academic pondering a weighty tome, the historian hero of Daughter of Time is a gruff, battered, longtime veteran of Scotland Yard who by his own admission gave little and less thought to history after his schooling. However, he finds himself unraveling a mystery of a rather different sort when a portrait of Richard III makes him question everything he thought he knew about the key.

Grant’s attempts to discover the truth behind Richard are quite interesting, demonstrating many historian’s techniques and thought processes, all from his hospital bed, with the aid of his American friend Brent. So too does he demonstrate the pitfalls of historical accounts relying on one another, with the case of More’s inaccurate portrayal of Richard being used by everyone else after him and thus tainting the truth of the man.