Richard Pipes; grande historiador do comunismo sovietico, RIP

RIP Richard Pipes, the Great Scholar of Private Property

Richard Pipes, brilliant scholar and advocate of private property, has passed away at age 94.

Foundation for Economic Education, May 22, 2018

 

by Walter Olson

Richard Pipes, the great Harvard historian, has died at 94. Best known for his clear-eyed work on Russia and its Bolshevik Revolution, a topic on which so many thinkers over the past century have fallen short, Pipes also wrote a terrific 1999 book on private property as a cornerstone of civilization, Property and Freedom: The Story of How through the Centuries Private Ownership Has Promoted Liberty and the Rule of Law. It’s a favorite on Cato reading lists, including Tom Palmer’s on principles of liberty and Ian Vásquez’s on economic development. I reviewed it favorably at the time for the Wall Street Journal and noted its wide historical sweep, including Pipes’s account of the many schools and movements since Plato that have taken a stance hostile to rights of private possession. These include not only communists, syndicalists, and the like, but some romantic nationalists and even cultural anthropologists who, for a time, claimed (wrongly) that primitive peoples dispensed with ideas of mine and thine. 

Pipes always had his eye on the real-world consequences of these views for nations and their development. As I wrote, summarizing his argument:

The fork in the road between Britain and Russia, it would seem, came on the issue of whether the ruler could be said to own everything in the country. In England, this idea was challenged and then rejected with the revolutionary consequence that the king had no more right to trespass on an Englishman’s freehold than anyone else did. Nor (eventually) could he exact financial penalties from his subjects—or do much of anything else, such as take away life and liberty—without due process of law. The idea that rights were something prior to government soon made England the most property-oriented country on earth.

By contrast, in unhappy Russia, the czars’ claim to own everything carried only too much weight. The members of the Russian nobility often found themselves acting as collectors-of-tribute on highly revocable allotments. Serfdom persisted because the obligations of nominal landowners to the crown were too onerous to be met any other way. Whole categories of economic endeavor, such as coach inns and flour mills, were decreed to be the property of the royal family. When Lenin sought to ensure submission to the authority of his Soviets by ordering the pulping of old title deeds, he was acting in the tradition of the worst czars."

He was equally cogent when he stepped back for reflections of a more philosophical nature, as when he invoked David Hume on redistribution:

Render men’s possessions ever so equal, men’s different degrees of art, care and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check those virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and, instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.”

Whole review here. Ira Stoll rounds up several resources on Pipes’s work including his archive of writings at Commentary, where he reviewed such works as Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital, Tom Bethell’s The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and Eric Hobsbawm’s memoirs, being appropriately scathing about the last of these. A great mind and a great scholar, who chose for his life’s work subjects that could hardly be more important for humanity’s future. 

Reprinted from Cato at Liberty.

Robert Conquest: o maior sovietologo americano (1917-2015)

Apenas postando uma matéria da World Association of International Studies:

De: WAISForums@waisworld.org [mailto:WAISForums@waisworld.org] 
 

Enviada em: quinta-feira, 6 de agosto de 2015 14:17
 

Para: xxxxxxx@waisworld.org
 

Assunto: [wais] History -> Robert Conquest, 1917-2015 (Anthony D'Agostino, USA)

Anthony D'Agostino writes:



Sad to hear about the August 3rd passing of historian Robert Conquest, who wrote penetrating works on the politics of the Stalin era and championed Kremlinology. I worked closely with Conquest while at the Hoover institution in 1986-7, on a State Department grant to finish my Soviet Succession Struggles (1987). I thought Conquest the most knowledgeable of the Soviet historians of the time and hoped to get my views past him before publication. We talked almost daily about the lurid details of the purge era, who was shot, when, what faction benefited, how it affected foreign policy. All this according to an array of sources, official accounts, memoirs, protocol evidence, but not archival materials, which would not be open for several more years.

Conquest called Kremlinology "Soviet Namierism," for Louis Namier, the British historian who wrote the elegant study of the eighteenth-century British aristocracy. When he saw my MS, he said, "Well, that is the whole thing, isn't it"? We agreed on many things, but not on Margaret Thatcher. I did think he was right about the "revisionism" of the period in the works of J. Arch Getty and Robert Thurston. They suggested, in detailed and serious studies, that Stalin had not been the real power behind the purge, but that it had been a rather complex and spontaneous affair in which a lot of local scores had been settled at the expense of the apparatus victims. Even granting some of this, I still agreed with Conquest's more conventional version, with Stalin the puppeteer.

Lacking the archival evidence, no one had the clincher. But even with archival material available to the degree that it is today, I don't think many historians would say that Stalin was not the prime mover. The revisionists have gone on to establish, according to archival evidence, that the numbers of the executed was not, as Conquest had argued, in the millions, but in the hundreds of thousands. This is the question that everyone fixes on, and there they have had a small victory.

Conquest is, I think, still worth reading, especially his early work on the Khrushchev period.

JE comments:  Robert Conquest was a WAISer from the early days, although he never posted to the Forum during my editorship.  I did not have the pleasure of meeting him, although Prof. Hilton often spoke of him and his work.  

See, for example, this Christmas 1999 posting from RH:

http://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=64582&objectTypeId=58832&topicId=123

Robert was also an accomplished poet, especially known for his biting limericks.  Who can forget "There once was a Bolshie called Lenin"?  (Thanks here to Nigel Jones.)

http://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=56865&objectTypeId=51115&topicId=51

RIP, Robert Conquest, one of the greatest Kremlinologists ever.

This message has been published on WAISWorld.org forums. 

Posts:
 Robert Conquest, 1917-2015 (Anthony D`Agostino, USA)



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MI 49221 USA 

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Post

 History and Journalism (Ronald Hilton, USA, 12/25/99 2:14 pm)

Two WAIS Fellows, Robert Conquest and Brian Crozier, have been in the news recently, the first because of the appearance of his &IReflections on a Ravaged Century, the second of his Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, which parallels Conquest's books on the "great Soviet terror." Despite their common, supplementary interests and their age (Conquest was born in 1917, Crozier in 1918), their careers have been different.  
     Conquest was an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, after I was a Senior-Demy there. In those days, Oxford was very demanding academically but, devoted primarily to the humanities, it was lost in the clouds. In the hierarchy of subjects, classics ("Greats") was at the top of the pole. Modeled after it, my own major, Modern European Languages (which meant much more than languages) was less prestigious. Very France-centered, it tolerated Spanish, but ignored Portuguese and all things Latin American.  
     The present political world was academically not regarded as fitting for academic study, since it is too close to us for objective study. In view of the ignorant nonsense which emanates from some academic departments today, that attitude was understandable, but this is the world we have to live in. Journalists were scorned. Students going to fight in the Spanish Civil War boasted that they never read a newspaper. The Oxford Union provided a platform for political speakers, and some of the students were declared Communists. They really were all wet, admittedly from the rain of the great depression. The serious study of the contemporary political world was emerging in a new major called PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). The older generation viewed it with much suspicion or disdain. That Conquest chose this as his major was evidence that his interest was in that direction. After military service, he got to know the reality of international political life in the foreign service from 1946 to 1956. His mindset was decided by the four years he spent in the British mission in Bulgaria. His warnings about the reality of communism put him at odds with many academics and literary people, but now they are recognized as definitive, just as Burnett Bolloten's analysis of the Spanish Civil War, at first angrily dismissed by the "politically correct", is now viewed as unassailable.  
     Crozier´s background is quite different. Australian by birth, he traveled the world as a journalist and is reputed to have interviewed more heads of state than any other. He has been associated with The Economist, which is one of the few news magazines with a serious interest in international affairs. Thank heavens that our American edition is now printed in Merced, California. Serious public interest in foreign affairs in this country has diminished and weeklies are emphasizing "news you can use." Crozier did not have to escape from the academic and literary world in which Conquest grew up.  
     The international community of journalists devoted to world affairs performs an invaluable role, as we have so often stressed. They are courageous, bright people more likely to understand situations than diplomats and academics, protected as they are in their cocoons. There was no school or department of journalism at Oxford when I was there, and, if there is one today, I have never heard of it. American universities lead he way in raising journalism to a professional level. At Stanford, we are lucky to have the Knight Fellowships which bring young newspeople from around the world to spend a year with us. We learn from them, and we trust that they learn from their Stanford experience.

Comunismo: livro "O Retrato", de Osvaldo Peralva (2a. edicao)

Este livro já era famoso, e esgotado, "inencontrável", quando eu estava me iniciando no marxismo, no início dos anos 1960. Tinha sido sabotado pelos comunistas, do Partidão, e pelas demais correntes de esquerda, e nunca foi reimpresso ou reeditado.
Tive de aproveitar uma ida ao Rio de Janeiro, em algum momento muito depois, para ler o exemplar original na Biblioteca Nacional.
Sempre tive excelente impressão dessa obra, muito sincera, pois conhecia o caso de outros "renegados" do comunismo soviético, e sabia exatamente o que tinha sido o stalinismo e o comunismo soviético.
Acredito que vale a leitura ainda hoje, sobretudo pela introdução de Antonio Paim, outro dos jovens "comunistas" que deixaram de sê-lo depois de uma viagem a Moscou e ao travar conhecimento direto com a fraude que era o regime socialista soviético, um sistema de mentira, de fraude, de opressão, de mediocridade, exatamente como são os companheiros ainda hoje.
O título da matéria da Folha é execrável: "virar casaca" significa trair uma causa, abandonar a postura que se tinha, em troca de alguma vantagem material. Não parece ao autor do título que o jornalista em questão apenas descobriu que a realidade era muito diversa, o contrário, do que lhe pintavam antes.
Nesse sentido, o título correto da matéria deveria ser:
Jornalista descobre a fraude do comunismo soviético, ao conhecer a realidade do stalinismo
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

FolhS. Paulo, 06/05/2015 - 16h22

Jornalista comunista vira a casaca depois de visitar a URSS de Stálin

da Livraria da Folha

Isonomia e liberdade do proletariado que se emancipou dos grilhões do capital. Era isso que o jornalista Osvaldo Peralva queria ver quando foi estudar em Moscou em 1953, mas descobriu um governo autoritário fundamentado na violência e no medo.
Em "O Retrato", a narrativa autobiográfica de uma desilusão, Peralva descreve a experiência na União Soviética e apresenta um panorama do Partido Comunista no Brasil.
O autor, que conviveu com os famintos que vagavam pelo interior da Bahia, entrou no PCB em 1942. Apaixonado pela ideologia marxista e pela militância no partido, ele foi à URSS como representante do Kominform, organização que controlava os Partidos Comunistas de todo o mundo.
Peralva foi o quarto homem na hierarquia do Partido, atrás do chefe do PC em Moscou, de Luís Carlos Prestes e do secretário-geral Diógenes Arruda Câmara. A Escola em Moscou não se limitava ao ensino dos fundamentos teóricos do marxismo-leninismo e a formar revolucionários de tipo bolchevista.
Segundo o autor, o curso era uma espécie de lavagem cerebral, que buscava produzir agentes capazes de executar "as ordem mais absurdas", sem vacilar, e que "não tentasse pensar, a não ser por meio de chavões, para evitar desvios da linha do Partido, fixada pela direção suprema".
"Através da pressão ideológica e do próprio regime de internato, onde se fazia a apologia da obediência cega e do endeusamento de tudo que fosse soviético", conta, "buscava-se transformar cada aluno em um indivíduo despersonalizado, sem quaisquer interesses ou vontade que não fosse os interesses e a vontade da direção do Partido".

Divulgação

Um dos mais contundentes relatos políticos brasileiros do século 20

A decepção o acompanhou na volta para o Brasil. As contradições do PCB, que reproduzia o terrorismo ideológico e o culto à personalidade, destruíram a ilusão do jornalista.
No 20º Congresso do Partido Comunista da União Soviética (PUCS), em 1956, Nikita Kruschev revelou os crimes do período em que Stálin governou a URSS (1924-53). O Relatório de Kruschev, também chamado de "relatório secreto", provocou uma crise no comunismo quando o texto foi divulgado.
Os militantes se dividiram. Alguns refletiram sobre a própria ideologia, outros preferiram acreditar que se tratava de uma fraude elaborada pela CIA. Peralva rompeu com o comunismo no fim da década de 1950.
"A leitura de 'O retrato' pode contribuir para que pessoas de bom senso revejam esse tipo de opção", escreve Antonio Paim na apresentação à edição.
Nascido na Bahia, em 1918, Osvaldo Peralva escreveu para os jornais "Última Hora", Correio da Manhã" e Folha de S.Paulo. Apesar de o autor ter abandonado o comunismo, ele foi preso e exilado após o AI-5, em 1968. Viveu na Alemanha Ocidental e regressou ao Brasil com a Lei da Anistia, em 1979. Morreu em 1992, no Rio de Janeiro.

*

O RETRATO
AUTOR Osvaldo Peralva
EDITORA Três Estrelas
QUANTO R$ 59,90 (preço promocional*)
Políticos são iguais em todo lugar. Eles prometem construir pontes mesmo onde não há rios. Nikita Kruschev

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Comentário de 

Carlos U Pozzobon

1 dia atrás  -  Compartilhada publicamente

 

Tenho uma edição dos anos 60, em formato de bolso. O Peralva assumiu com dignidade os erros cometidos no Kominform e conseguiu relatar com serenidade uns 15 anos de militância no PCB, a maior parte convivendo com comissários do Comitê Central. Fornece detalhes preciosos sobre a vida clandestina do PC e sobre as ações internacionais de Moscou, citando uma grande plêiade de comissários do período. Foi um dos que se desiludiu com a causa a partir do relatório Kruvchov. Ele conta que ao ler a denúncia contra Stálin em Bucareste, onde funcionava o Kominform, ficou 5 dias sem poder dormir, tremendo com o desconforto de ver o pai dos povos ser denunciado como um tirano assassino. A partir daí começou a observar melhor os seus pares e concluiu que o movimento comunista era gerido por uma mística (sic) em que os fatos e narrativas tinham uma simbologia própria de interpretação da realidade. Seu livro tem a preciosidade de ser uma fonte de dados sobre o comportamento dos próceres comunistas em uma época que passou, mas que deixou sequelas em sociedades atrasadas onde o niilismo se tornou uma doença social tão renitente quanto o subdesenvolvimento que as sufocam.