In times of war, the knowledge of historians offers even less guidance than the knowledge of epidemiologists during the corona crisis. Sometimes references to the past can even get in the way of understanding contemporary developments.
As a historian, there you stand in frightening times: all things considered, you cannot say very much meaningfully about current events. Not even if you know that current events will occupy one or more chapters in the history books of the future. In the past few weeks, Maarten van Rossem has often been reviled, who thought the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Putin would be wise enough to refrain from such a perilous undertaking. Van Rossem should not have ventured into Kremlinology. The past is a foreign country, but current affairs are sometimes even more so. Historians therefore generally adopt a modest attitude when analyzing current developments. At most they point to constants in the history of a country. On similarities of current events with past episodes. To historical ironies that always do well at the cocktail table or on talk shows. But every statement contains the disclaimer that history never repeats itself. And historians can be less certain as they move beyond the past.
Yet in recent weeks, historians have been deeply involved in trying to bring some order to the confusion of the moment. In doing so, they discussed – disputing each other’s points of view – the eternal Russian fear of encirclement. On Ukraine’s national identity – which Putin denies. On the question of whether Russia has been cheated by the West after the end of the Cold War. On the reliability of Russia as a treaty partner. About Stalin and about the bitter fate of Ukraine as part of the Soviet Union. About the Finnish-Soviet Winter War of 1939/1940, which also did not go well for the aggressor. About Peter the Great and Catherine II. And even about the (Dutch) Disaster Year 1672, from which the beleaguered Ukrainians could draw hope.
War in Ukraine calls for interpretation
Certainly: an enormous event such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine requires a historical interpretation. As a historian – graduated in 1985 – I am the last to deny or put into perspective its importance. My profession can even rejoice (although that word may not be quite appropriate in this context) that the war in Ukraine gives rise to historical reflections to which Dutch commentators – citizens of a flat country where peace was the rule for centuries – usually do not throw up quickly. And undoubtedly all historical parables and analyzes have also contributed to the increase of knowledge and advancing insight.
But as analysts of world conditions, historians are not as indispensable as the epidemiologists are (or were) during the pandemic – although their authority was not undisputed. While epidemiologists, as practitioners of hard science, can make well-founded statements about the expected course of an epidemic, historians are treading on thin (and thin) ice as they venture a taste of history that has yet to be written.
Sometimes a reference to the past can even stand in the way of a proper analysis of contemporary developments. For example, the umbrella term ‘fascism’, for everything that went against the fashionable progressiveness of the sixties and seventies, lost all meaning due to frequent use – not to mention the fact that it was wrongly used as a synonym of National Socialism. Councilors who ordered the eviction of squats were dismissed as fascists. Consumers who escaped the boycott of South African oranges during apartheid, or holidaymakers who flew to Franco’s Spain or Colonel’s Greece, were fascism carriers. Hans Janmaat, founder of the Center Party, was by definition a fascist because the multicultural society did not appeal to him that much. And as a fascist, he was shown no compassion at all after the hotel in which he held a congress with some kindred spirits in 1986 was set on fire by ‘anti-fascist’ demonstrators (a political act of violence in which Janmaat’s later wife was seriously injured).
‘The term fascism has become a term of abuse without meaning’, wrote Dutch scholar Willem Huberts in his study of Dutch fascism. He himself quoted the late Hermann von der Dunk in this regard: ‘At first the fascist turned out to be a devil. Now the devil turns out to be a fascist.’ Forum for Democracy is significantly closer to fascism than Janmaat’s Center Party at the time. But the adjective ‘fascist’ has by now been eroded to such an extent that it no longer satisfies as a characteristic of FvD. In that sense, FvD is beyond fascism.
Expected Germ of Fate
As a historian, I myself have been socialized at a time when a straight, causal line was still drawn between the great stock market crash of 1929, Depression, fascism/National Socialism, war and Shoah. For me, the word “crash” contained the seeds of all the fatalities of the twentieth century. That is why I was very upset about the fall – deeper than that of 1929 – that hit all the leading exchanges on Monday, October 19, 1987. At the time I was working as an editor Binnenland at NRC Handelsblad, then still located at the Westblaak in Rotterdam. From behind my computer, a pot-bellied monster that produced a buzzing poisonous green print, I witnessed the unrest that at the end of the morning took over the Economics editorial office a few tables away, where there was usually a serenity.
The colleagues looked anxiously at their screens and at each other. Their jackets came off, and gradually the seriousness of the stock market news was expressed in increasingly larger capitals. When finally editor-in-chief Wout Woltz exceptionally left his office to personally interfere with the opening of the newspaper, I was sure that I was witnessing history in the making† Before my mind’s eye, the disasters of the 1930s were unfolding again. Since history never repeats itself according to the same script, I suspected that the fascism of then would now take on a different appearance (possibly that of anti-fascism, as historian Jacques Presser had suggested two decades earlier). And it didn’t seem likely to me that the misery would again be of (mainly) German manufacture. But it was clear to me that the crash had ushered in a frightening time.
On my way home from a feverish day at work, I noticed that no one on the street seemed to share my concerns. Passers-by licked an ice cream with pleasure. A florist praised his composed bouquets. And at the cinema where recently The Untouchables turned, there was a long line of people at the cash register. I had the inclination to cry out to them, “Don’t you know what disaster is coming your way?” But it soon became clear that the careless souls had sensed the situation better than I had, with my historical templates. To which I must immediately add that my assessment of the stock market crash was not common among historians at the time.
Reduce to true proportions
The stock market crash of ’87 has indeed been reduced to its true proportions in a matter of days. Other events, however, make you wonder whether their historical importance is not overestimated by contemporaries. This applies not only to natural disasters, seizures of power and wars that fell into oblivion after some time, but possibly also to the news theme par excellence of the past two years: corona. For all those directly affected – seriously ill patients, relatives of people who succumbed to corona, healthcare workers, politicians, some journalists – corona was a very significant event. But most people were not affected by the disease itself, but only by its social, political and economic consequences: the lockdowns (intelligent or otherwise), the mouth cap obligation, the curfew, the QR code, the conspiracy theories of which corona was the pioneer. , and opposition to all measures to halt the spread of the virus. The direct impact of corona, expressed in the number of victims as a percentage of the (world) population, was limited compared to the plague epidemics in the gray past and the Spanish flu of 1918-1920. Also because adequate intervention prevented worse. It is even questionable whether corona would have been noticed at all when society was still ravaged by epidemics and public diseases. In those dark times, corona might have been an unnamed part of the everyday calamities that threatened humanity.
The epidemics of past centuries affected everyone – although the paupers were more likely to fall victim to them than the better-off. Corona, on the other hand, was not a collective experience, certainly not on a global level. For some, the lockdown evokes associations with loss of freedom, for others with memorable walks through a quiet city, or with nice game evenings in a closed circle. One lived in great fear of corona, the other was able to close it well. Corona did not create a common destiny, but discord between citizens. Corona will undoubtedly be stored in the collective memory, but not as an unambiguous story. And future historians may find that the predominant attention the theme has enjoyed for two years has not been justified by its intrinsic significance. But this historian can also be profoundly mistaken.
Surprised by events
‘I never noticed that historians were better analysts of their own time than non-historians’, Maarten van Rossem wrote years ago in the periodical named after him. “They were invariably as surprised by the events of their own time as non-historians.” Even on fairly manageable issues, historians, or those who refer to history in their argument, seldom agree.
For example, in 2008 I witnessed a debate in Potsdam, the Versailles of Berlin, about whether the local Garrison Church – badly damaged in 1945 and demolished in 1968 – should be restored to its former glory. It was sweltering hot. The Spain-Italy European Championship match, which promised to be spectacular, could be kicked off at any moment. But some two hundred historically savvy people were eager to have their say in a stuffy hall about the desirability or undesirability of the reconstruction of the Garrison Church. This concerned the Prussian Baroque. The architectural merits of the Plattenbau that had risen in GDR times on the site of the demolished church. On Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, and Potsdam Day (March 21, 1933), when Hitler celebrated in the Garrison Church the symbiosis of the old and the new (National Socialist) Germany — an event on which the opponents of reconstruction made their main argument borrowed.
People who knew their classics exchanged their arguments. No historical vista has gone unmentioned. And yet there was no sign of an agreement during the evening of debate. Although a start has been made on the reconstruction of the tower, 14 years later, the project is still regarded as ‘controversial’ and is fraught with so much controversy that it is doubtful whether it will ever be brought to a successful conclusion.
‘Understanding one’s own time is a matter of common sense and a sense of proportion’, Van Rossem wrote. And historians are not more afflicted with this than non-historians. Even if, as in Potsdam, it is about the past itself, they can’t figure it out. The past offers hardly more to hold on to than the present or the future. One thing we can safely assume – with or without historical knowledge – is that if the war in Ukraine continues to overflow, everything we’ve been worrying about in recent years will be reduced to a footnote to history.