The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History

Gale Stokes: Purposes of the Past

Gale sTokes Purposes of the Past History is not a thing, an objective reality that is revealed through study, contemplation, or ecstatic inspiration, as so many nationalists appear to believe. It is a human construct. All history writing or speaking, all memory for that matter, is shaped by the framework of its time and by the purposes of its creators. Thus it is important to know who is producing a historical narrative, and for what purposes. What academics consider “proper history,” as Aviezer Tucker puts it, is that which has been agreed upon by “an uncoerced, large, and uniquely heterogeneous community of historians.”1 This kind of history is amenable to modification through the introduction of new evidence, a change in the interpretation of existing evidence, or the introduction of a new set of values. Tucker contrasts this scientific history with what he calls “therapeutic history,” which is typically propagated within a homogeneous community that resists changes to its standardized version, and often backs up its interpretations by threats and accusations against those who question it. The idea behind therapeutic history is not to identify truth (although that is usually the claim of those practicing it), but rather to make those who profess or follow it feel relevant, recognized, or innocent. It is prone to conspiracy theories that absolve the favored community on whose behalf the history is produced from responsibility for notorious or dreadful events that took place in the past. 1 Aviezer Tucker, Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 47. 36 THE END AND THE BEGINNING In the immediate aftermath of 1989, some believed that the collapse of public order in Eastern Europe2 might mean that a return to the dominance of therapeutic history was imminent; that Eastern Europe would shortly be rent by vicious nationalist rhetoric and possibly even a return to fascist solutions.3 A completely opposite view was put forward by Francis Fukuyama in his famous, or perhaps notorious , book, The End of History and the Last Man.4 One of Fukuyama’s points was that the two great political and social experiments of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism, failed, leaving the third experiment, which I call pluralism and he called liberal democracy, standing. I think this is an accurate statement of what happened, but a fundamental misunderstanding of Fukuyama’s work is the perception that this was his main point; that the book was merely a triumphalist justification of Ronald Reagan, neo-conservatism, and the Washington Consensus. I do not think this is correct. “To equate Western liberal 2 I find Sorin Antohi’s justification for the use of the term “Eastern Europe” useful: “In this text, ’Eastern Europe’ is shorthand for the ‘region formerly known as Eastern Europe.’ It includes approximate symbolic-geographical (sub)regions such as Central Europe, South Eastern Europe, [and] Eastern Europe. More technically, Eastern Europe has come to mean the former Soviet Union area. While this book only covers six countries from Central and South-Eastern Europe, we decided to use as a common descriptor the less precise, but more evocative and less cumbersome phrase, ‘Eastern Europe.’” I do the same. Sorin Antohi, Balázs Trencsényi, and Péter Apor, eds., Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (Budapest–New York: Central European University Press, 2007), xxi. 3 “[M]ost of those who did make predictions [immediately after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe] saw a dark future. The rise of virulent, angry nationalism was forecast by more than one expert. Others foresaw the rise of anti-Semitism and the growth of neo-Nazism, Germany was going to become ‘the Fourth Reich.’” Anne Applebaum, “After the Wall fell: Central Europe’s success deserves more attention,” Washington Post (November 9, 2009), A17. 4 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2006). Fukuyama’s original article, which created an uproar, is “The End of History?” National Interest 16 (Summer 1989): 3–18. For many years a stalwart of neo-conservatism, Fukuyama became disillusioned by the policies of George W. Bush and in 2006 wrote that “I can no longer support” neoconservatism (America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006], xi). In the presidential election of 2008, he supported Barack Obama. 37 Purposes of the Past democracy with the Reagan-era antigovernment ideology,” John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney write, not...