Hobsbawm’s autobiography is a
historian’s attempt to grapple with the meaning of history in general, and of the
twentieth century in particular. As a ‘participant observer’ in the
last century Hobsbawm looks at his life as a part of and shaped by
history to make sense of the twentieth century which was described by him as ‘the age of
extremes’-- it is “the most murderous as
well as the most revolutionary era in history.” (P.7) Hobsbawm shows German thoroughness in presenting the vast
panorama of history with facts and figures in an interesting manner in his historical works.
He offers an in-depth knowledge, logical explanation and curiosity
and his understanding of history without seeking approval or disagreement. In the present times
characterized by the religious
conflicts, terrorism, despair about violence in the Middle East, it is
necessary to know if history offers any specific meaning or just a blind force that tramples on
human life and dignity.
In his autobiography,
Interesting
Time, Hobsbawm presents how he has grown
up as a young man, became a communist ,
followed party, turned critic of Stalin’s regime after Khrushchev’s revelation
in the Twentieth Congress the Communist party of the Soviet union , his
association with other historians and
association with third world leftist movements, constancy of loyalty to
the party, the advent and aftermath of
globalization of the meaning of history as unending optimism in human agency to
bring a change.. Being a Marxist
historian till the end of his life , he sees himself as an ordinary man
but not as a genius like Rousseau or St.
Augustine and gives no scope to confessions or intimate personal life. The
vantage point from which he sees history is as a German , Cambridge-educated and as one who played a vital
role as the British Marxist
intellectual of his times .
The public self dominates the private
self and we come to know very little about his personal life or psychological
landscape of the writer. As in the case of
Nehru’s autobiography , we find the private self is completely submerged
by the stream of history in Hobsbawm’s autobiography. Both Nehru,
the maker of history and Hobsbawm, the writer of history have chosen to
give more importance to their public selves rather than private selves. The
autobiographer thinks that either he has
more to say about his public self or reluctant to reveal his private world to avoid hurting people close to him. He perceives his life
would be more interesting to the reader
not because of his mundane life but because of his ability to rise above his
limitations. Here also his ego plays a role but indirectly. The ‘objective’
autobiographer wants to present his authentic self by not writing about his
internal life and leaves it for the biographer to reveal
little known aspects of his personal life. All the readers are not nosey type
but the missing of internal reality as shaped by the external reality or
history may leave them still clueless about the making of man. “Take it or
leave it’ says the ‘objective’ autobiographer who emphasizes his public
self.
It
is the autobiographical historian’s business not simply revisit it, but to map
it. For without such a map, how can we track the paths of a life time through
its changing landscapes, or understand why and when we hesitated and stumbled,
or how we lived among those with whom our lives were intertwined and on whom
they depended? For these things throw light not only on single lives but on the
whole world. (7)
In the first three chapters he writes
about his childhood. He was born to an English father and a German Jewish mother in Egypt. The family
came to Vienna after the first World War. His father Leopold Hobsbawm was an idealist and his mother was an
intellectual and a writer. Owing to the
impracticality and the death of his father , the family fortunes suffered and his mother had to work
hard to sustain the family through tuitions , writing novels and doing
translations. Hobsbawm’s Britishness
saved him from ill-treatment given to
the other Jews in the school. His
father exercises a slight degree of intellectual influence on him and his
mother told him “You must not do
anything, or seem to do anything that might suggest that you are ashamed of
being a Jew’ (24) Hobsbawm writes that in pre-Hitler Vienna many middle-class
Jews never became Zionist. He writes of his father’s abrupt death on returning
home from a futile search for job and her mother’s deep sorrow that
ended her life two years later. Hobsbawm doesn’t believe in exclusivism
and refuses to see himself as religious or
a typical victim. He writes,
“Right and wrong, justice and injustice, do not wave ethnic badges or wave
national flags.” The claim of the Jews
to the term ‘chosen people’ rests not on ghettoized existence of them but “on its quite disproportionate and remarkable
contribution to humanity in the wider world, mainly in the two centuries or so
since the Jews were allowed to leave the ghettoes, and chose to do so” ( 25) The
Marxist Hobsbawm steadily refuses the separatism based on fragmented
identities.
He
also writes about his faint memories of his father, his mother’s illness, his
stay with his aunts Gretl and Mimi
and how his mother made him defer his
desire to join the communist party till he got intellectual maturity. He criticizes his
mother’s poems before his aunt and refers to his conviction in his
“professional life and private passions” that “one should not delude oneself
even about the people or things one cared about most in life.” (39)
His
arrival in Berlin 1932 in the context of
conflict between National Socialism and communism, the influence of some of his teachers made him turn towards the latter. He felt the
abiding influence of the October revolution but not the Chinese revolution and
the historical circumstances propelled
him to “a future of passionate commitment to politics.” (56)
He
tided over hard times subsequent to the deaths of his parents due to his
intellectual pursuits. He also acted responsible for his sister Nancy during the traumatic period .
Hobsbawm’s
autobiography manages tension between autobiographer and historian . As a historian, he tries to be objective and
very little is known about his individual feelings and reactions. He writes
about his fellow historians, leaders and contemporary famous people.
He
remained in the communist party after
the Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin’s crimes in 1956 for the main
reason that he didn’t want to side with the Satan party in the name of
deserting “the god that failed.” He
writes as follows;
. I was strongly repelled by the idea of being in the
company of those ex-communists who turned into fanatical anti-communists,
because they could free themselves from the service of “The God that failed”
only by turning him into Satan. (217)
He
wanted to prove the success of being a
historian in spite of being a communist. He steered clear from becoming either
the victim or a bitter critic of communism
during the second world war and
cold-war period. He has established his academic credentials as a historian and
his works have been read by many leftists around the world. His wide canvas, meticulous
portrayal of events , admission of drawbacks of his cherished ideology,
constant attempts to make sense of history gives us an insider’s history of the
rise and fall of fortunes of communism.
The profound influence of the October
revolution decided his reference point and he remained a staunch loyalist of
the same despite disillusionments inside the Soviet union.
His joining the party as a central European
in the collapsing Weimar Republic but not as young Briton and his pride made
him remain in the party and succeed as a historian. He writes, “I do not defend
this form of egoism, but neither can I deny its force. So I stayed.” (218)
Hobsbawm
notes that in the present it has become
possible to have abundance and technological change as Marx predicted without communism. ‘Today the foundations of
this certainty that we knew where history was going have collapsed, notably the
belief that the industrial working class would be the agency of change.”( 137)
While
the cold war made them stick to communism, they saw unlimited potential of
socialism in Russia. “To most of the world it did not seem to be the worst of
all possible regimes, but an ally in the fought for emancipation from western
imperialism, old and new , and a model for non –European economic and social
development.”(195)
He
also writes about how he moved closer to
Italian party’s line. He deals with the sixties which have seen the students’
revolutions around the world, communism in the
third world and Chinese experience. He doesn’t show much attachment
towards Chinese experiment and India appears only as
a passing reference.
Writing
about the state of history in the present he observes the political pressures
on writing history, people changing the past to suit their purpose and writes,
“Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defense of history by its
professionals is today more urgent in
politics than ever. We are needed.” ( 296)
Regarding the nineteen sixties, Hobsbawm notes that reds of his
generation who were bitter lot “could not
share the cosmic optimism of the young”.( 253) While the Vietnamese
struggle moved the English Leftists
deeply , for revolutionaries of his generation the main problem was “ what
Marxist should do , indeed what their function could be in non-revolutionary
countries.” (259) And the
disappearance of The traditional labour
left after 1983 and Thatcherism
sang a dirge to the traditional leftism.
He expresses that the night of the
electoral defeat of the Labour in 1992 as “the saddest and most
desperate in my political experience.” (277)The disintegration of communism and the weakening of
social democracy led to the resurrection of religious and ethno- tribalism once propped up by the USA. Technology has
caused the disappearance of the
proletariat in the classical sense in many countries, especially advanced
countries. The staunch Marxist historian Hobsbaum himself has expressed uncertainty regarding the direction of history.
Tony
Judt in his article, “The Last Romantic” in
The New York Review of Books, Nov.20, 2003
Writes
as follows: “His style is clear. Like E.P.Thomson, Raymond Williams, and
Christopher Hill, his erstwhile Companions in Communist Historians’ Group ,
Hobsbawm is a master of English prose. He writes intelligible history for
literate readers.” He also points out that his memoirs “record a long and fruitful
twentieth -century life.” He criticizes Hobsbawm’s silence over
Russia’s suppression of internal
and external dissent. He refers to as “the most naturally gifted historians of
our time; but rested and untroubled , he has somehow slept through the terror
and shame of the age.”
Hobsbawm’s experience has been shaped more by
the Euro-centric perspective which made
his perception of history as
pessimistic in the aftermath of the world wars and the cold war. The newly independent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America emerged from
centuries of colonialism. Hobsbawm’s
uncertainty and skepticism in the face of globalization and consumerism
have not
spread to countries like India, China, Cuba or South Africa which retained
their optimism.
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