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This series of essays shows how one can conceptualize an historical event such as the French Revolution, and identify the radical changes it produced as well as the continuity it provided, albeit under the appearance of change.
A study of Communism and a history of the myth of Communism as
perpetuated by its admirers. Francois Furet illuminates how the
support for Communism and its embodiment, the Soviet Union, became
virtually synonymous with "anti-Fascism" and how this strategic
arrangement reverberated through the West. During the first half of
the 20th century, to be against the Soviet Union (and its
Communism), argues Furet, was tantamount to betraying the fight
against Fascism, despite the fact that both Fascism and Communism
ultimately spring from the same nationalist impulse. Thus the
struggle against Fascism resulted in the sanitizing or
glorification of Communism. This whitewashing of the Soviet
regime's excesses not only kept alive the myth and attractiveness
of the Communist promise but had complex moral, intellectual, and
political ramifications for the West. This book is a history of the
ideological passions that have fueled and characterized the modern
era. It serves as an effort to revise the understanding of the 20th
century at the "fin de siecle".
Francois Furet needs little introduction. Widely considered one of
the leading historians of the French Revolution, he was a maverick
for his time, shining a critical light on the entrenched Marxist
interpretations that prevailed during the mid-twentieth century.
Shortly after his death in 1997, the New York Review of Books
called him "one of the most influential men in contemporary
France." Lies, Passions, and Illusions is a fitting capstone to
this celebrated author's oeuvre: a late-career conversation with
philosopher Paul Ricoeur on the twentieth century writ large, a
century of violence and turmoil, of unprecedented wealth and
progress, in which history advanced, for better or worse, in
quantum leaps. This conversation would be, sadly, Furet's last - he
died while Ricoeur was completing his edits. Ricoeur did not want
to publish his half without Furet's approval, so what remains is
Furet's alone, an astonishingly cohesive meditation on the
political passions of the twentieth century. With strokes at once
broad and incisive, he examines the many different trajectories
that nations of the West have followed over the past hundred years.
It is a dialogue with history as it happened but also as a form of
thought. It is a dialogue with his critics, with himself, and with
those major thinkers - from Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt - whose
ideas have shaped our understanding of the tragic dramas and
upheavals of the modern era. It is a testament to the crucial role
of the historian, a reflection on how history is made and lived,
and how the imagination is a catalyst for political change. Whether
new to Furet or deeply familiar with his work, readers will find
thought-provoking assessments on every page, a deeply moving look
back at one of the most tumultuous periods of history and how we
might learn and look forward from it.
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Fascism and Communism (Paperback)
Francois Furet, Ernst Nolte; Translated by Katherine Golsan; Preface by Tzvetan Todorov
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R556
Discovery Miles 5 560
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In his major work on communism, the international bestseller The
Passing of an Illusion, the eminent French historian François
Furet devoted a lengthy footnote to German historian Ernst
Nolte’s interpretation of fascism. Nolte responded, a
correspondence ensued, and the result was the remarkable exchange
presented in this volume. Fascism and Communism offers readers the
rare opportunity to witness and learn from a confrontation between
two of the world’s most distinguished historians over one of the
most serious subjects of our time. Each from a different
perspective, Furet and Nolte offer compelling arguments for the
common genealogy of these two ideologies as well as reasons for the
intellectual community’s rejection of this explosive thesis
throughout the twentieth century. This discussion leads to a deeper
understanding of the nature of totalitarianism as well as the
trajectory and interpretation of modern European history.
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