 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Norman Davies |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | History of Europe |
| Published | 1996 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-0060974688 |
Europe: A History is a 1996 narrative history book by Norman Davies.
| Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Norman Davies |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | History of Europe |
| Published | 1996 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-0060974688 |
Europe: A History is a 1996 narrative history book by Norman Davies.
As Davies notes in the preface, the book contains little that is original. Primary research was rarely required. Twelve chapters span European history from prehistory to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The chapters contain almost 300 so-called "capsules", texts describing separate terms that often exceeds the specific time frame (such as Coward, Hatred, Loot or Vorkuta). In the middle, Davies tries to avoid what he calls the bias of "Western Civilization" (neglect of Eastern Europe), and in the 20th century, he fights the "Allied scheme of history". Davies notes at the end of the preface that the book is "only one from an almost infinite number of histories of Europe that could be written" and that his work is "the view of one pair of eyes".
The book was on bestseller lists in London for several months [1] but received a famous scathing review in The New York Times by Theodore K. Rabb. [2]
In the book, Davies criticises, often in strong language, previous historians and alleges that they have promulgated cliches, which he calls "the Allied Scheme of History". Anne Applebaum, in her review, asserts that may be a cause of equally-acrimonious criticism of the book by some peers. [1]
A good deal of criticism was caused by Davies's drawing a parallel between atrocities carried out by Germans during the Holocaust, as exemplified by the case of Battalion 101 in Otwock, and Jewish postwar co-operation, with Communist atrocities, accusing him of equating both and thus of downgrading the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Davies rebutted that he had not equated but only juxtaposed them to invite comparison. Applebaum supports Davies in that respect and writes that she understands that as an example how ordinary people of any background may behave badly under certain circumstances. [1]
Davies's treatment of the political repression in the Soviet Union in the book has been disputed by the historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft of the University of Melbourne. Particularly, Wheatcroft claims that Davies made a series of misleading statements that greatly exaggerated the scale of Stalinist repression far beyond the estimates of Robert Conquest that Wheatcroft also considers too exaggerated. Further, Davies mocked "semi-repentant 'revisionists'", but Wheatcroft argues that Davies erroneously claims that "the highest estimates have been vindicated" since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wheatcroft asserts that the exact opposite is true and that the "view of the 'revisionists' has been largely substantiated" by the new data from the opened Soviet archives, as opposed to hearsay and journalism data Conquest and Davies were basing upon. [3]
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Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev thaw, de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin’s ideology begin to wane in the USSR. The second wave of de-Stalinization started during Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Glasnost.
The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.
George Robert Acworth Conquest was a British historian and poet.
The Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and deaths in labor camps and artificially created famines. The book was originally published in France as Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression by Éditions Robert Laffont. In the United States, it was published by Harvard University Press, with a foreword by Martin Malia. The German edition, published by Piper Verlag, includes a chapter written by Joachim Gauck. The introduction was written by Courtois. Historian François Furet was originally slated to write the introduction, but he died before being able to do so.
The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties is a book by British historian Robert Conquest which was published in 1968. It gave rise to an alternate title of the period in Soviet history known as the Great Purge. Conquest's title was also an evocative allusion to the period that was called the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. A revised version of the book, called The Great Terror: A Reassessment, was printed in 1990 after Conquest was able to amend the text, having consulted the opened Soviet archives. The book was funded and widely disseminated by Information Research Department, who also published Orwell's list collected by Conquest's secretary Celia Kirwan.
Soviet and communist studies, or Soviet studies is the field of historical studies of the Soviet Union and other Communist states as well as historical studies of the Communist parties that existed or still exist in some form in many countries, both inside and outside the former Eastern Bloc, such as the Communist Party USA. Aspects of its historiography have attracted debates between historians on topics including totalitarianism and Cold War espionage.
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John Archibald Getty III is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), specializing in the history of Russia and the history of the Soviet Union.
The actions by governments of communist states have been subject to criticism across the political spectrum. According to the critics, the rule by communist parties leads to totalitarianism, political repression, restrictions of human rights, poor economic performance and cultural and artistic censorship. Communist party rule has been especially criticized by anti-communists and right-wing critics, but also by other socialists such as anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, libertarian socialists and Marxists. Ruling communist parties have also been challenged by domestic dissent.
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union. Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, and forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization and a decreasing agricultural workforce. Sources disagree on the possible role of drought. During this period the Soviet government escalated its persecution against the kulaks. Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, had ordered kulaks, who were wealthy, land-owning farmers "to be liquidated as a class", and became a target for the state. Persecution against the kulaks had been ongoing since the Russian Civil War, and had never fully subsided. Once collectivization became widely implemented, the persecution against the kulaks increased which culminated in a Soviet campaign of political repression, including arrests, deportations, and executions of large numbers of the kulaks in 1929–1932. Some kulaks responded by carrying out acts of sabotage such as killing livestock and destroying crops intended for consumption by factory workers. Despite the death toll mounting, Stalin chose to continue the Five Year Plan and collectivization. By 1934, the Soviet Union established an industrial baseline, however it did come at the cost of millions of lives.
In 1932–1933, a famine known as the Holodomor killed 3.3–5 million people in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, included in a total of 5.5–8.7 million killed by the broader Soviet famine of 1932–1933. At least 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died as a result of the famine in the Soviet Union. Scholars debate "whether the man-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide," or whether it was intended to drive Ukrainian peasants into "collectives and ensure a steady supply of grain for Soviet industrialization."
Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticized. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Soviet Union, the Holodomor, and the Great Purge; the People's Republic of China and the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution; and Democratic Kampuchea and the Cambodian genocide.
Stephen George Wheatcroft is a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Russian pre-revolutionary and Soviet social, economic and demographic history, as well as famine and food supply problems in modern world history, the impact of media on history, and in recent developments in Russian and Ukrainian society. Wheatcroft speaks Russian fluently and has spent a good portion of his career researching in the Soviet archives, and he played a major role in publishing materials from the archives.
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The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a 1986 book by British historian Robert Conquest published by the Oxford University Press. It was written with the assistance of historian James Mace, a junior fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, who started doing research for the book following the advice of the director of the institute. Conquest wrote the book in order "to register in the public consciousness of the West a knowledge of and feeling for major events, involving millions of people and millions of deaths, which took place within living memory."
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Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine is a 2017 non-fiction book by Anne Applebaum, focusing on the history of the Holodomor. The book won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize.
"In his treatment of Stalinist repression Davies has been greatly misled by Conquest and others".
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