History of the Present: Essays, Sketches and Despatches from Europe in the 1990s by Timothy Garton s> Ash (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 173 Ash, Timothy Garton. Historyof thePresent. Essays,Sketches andDespatches from Europe intheI99os. Allen Lane, London and New York, I999. xxi + 441 pp. Notes. Index. ?20.00. TIRELESS friend of the opposition intelligentsiaof the Soviet satellitesbefore I989 and authorof severalwell received books on their transformationsince, Timothy Garton Ash has put together another, ratherindividual,volume. It is about the 'new' Europe born in I989, which has over nine years acquired its shape, with the exception of Russia, and perhaps the United Kingdom, where the direction of change is still unclear (p. ix). The book is neither an account of Europe's history in the I990S nor a systematic exposition of the 'transition' following the collapse of Communism. It is a 'history' of the presentin the form of evocative and vibrantreportsby a traveller-halfinsider about an amazing number of face to face meetings with political leaders, an East German spy-master, distinguished litterati and even ordinary people. These 'fragments'of history make up a 'turningkaleidoscope' in which the parts are connected by chronologies that remind the reader of events throughout Europe. The fragmentsare also complemented by reflectionson wider issues of the present, speculationson Europe's future and ruminations about writingcontemporaryhistory.The authorhas a light touch even when writingabout heaviersubjectsand his book is ajoy to read. The balance of the general European and the local topics is heavily tilted toward the eastern half of the continent which is not surprisingfor the postI989 years. Garton Ash's interest, however, is Europe 'whole and free'. In this, as in other respectstoo, the intellectual-witnesscum historianfollows in the footsteps of R.W. and Hugh Seton-Watson and other British itinerant scholars who believed that direct personal experience was indispensable to writing about contemporary affairs. But is the present really a legitimate subject for the historian?Until well into the eighteenth century, the author argues, to be an eyewitness (and even more a participant)was considered to be a majoradvantage.Ranke has changed all that. In his time most of politics was put on paper; in the age of air travel and electronic communication personal contacts, however, may be more important (pp. x-xi). Those who follow Ranke assume that with the passage of time we know more about the past and stand a better chance of recovering it wieeseigentlich gewesen ist.We are more impartial,have access to the documents (to which we apply source criticism)and we understandthe 'meaning' of events by seeing the long-term consequences. But that is precisely the problem. Looking at the past from a distance, with the knowledge of the consequences, could easily lead to the conclusion that 'what actually happened had to happen'; Henri Bergson called this'theillusionsof retrospectivedeterminism'.In fact, with thepassage of time much of historyisirretrievablylost(pp. 242-49) andmemoryendlessly 'rearrange[s]the past in constantly shiftingpatterns' (p. 290). This theme is explored in relation to the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and Walesa'sloss of the 1995 elections. The eye-witness is more likely to recognise an accidental outcome of events than the scholar writing from a distance who will then, knowingly, identify some 'deeper forces' at work (pp. 233-34). Although there may be more to it than one finds here, 174 SEER, 79, I, 2001 undoubtedlythe authorhas a case. Tocqueville on I848,John Reed on i9 I7, Hugh Seton-Watsonon the Communist takeoverswill still be read long after most conventional histories(not to mention political scientists)will have been forgotten. Garton Ash reviews a debate among the Czech leaders, in which he took part, on whether or not the intellectual should take political office ('Intellectualsand Politicians'pp. I50-73). PresidentHavel, opening the PEN congress in Prague in November 1994, recalled a writerfriend'srefusalto take office on the groundsthat he had to remain 'independent'. Should that become the general norm, the President insisted, 'no one will be independent, because there won't be anyone around to make that independence possible' (p. I52). Later premier Vaclav Klaus argued, that in a free country the distinction between 'dependent' and 'independent' intellectuals becomes unimportant. Garton Ash intervened, suggesting that the relationship between politicians and intellectuals should be adversarial:the former worked in half truth, the latter...