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Society for History ducation

History and Utopia by E. M. CioranReview by: Patricia WarrenThe History Teacher, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May, 1989), pp. 334-335Published by: Society for History EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/492871 .Accessed: 14/09/2014 16:49

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334 The History Teacher

which contributed ignificantly to the positive structural ntegration of the Reich (p. 16).Professor Dukes examines the German Arms Bill of 1913, cited by some scholars--e.g.,

Fritz Fischer-as evidence of a will to war on the part of imperial Germany's militaryleaders. Dukes focuses on the question of whether the Arms Bill of 1913 was in factjustified. In answering hatquestion, he argues hatGerman oreign policy during heperiodwas not really so different or unique when contrasted with the other European GreatPowers (p. 22). An increase in German armaments n 1913 was understandable andlegitimate in light of the changing international ituation.

Other essays contribute further to a more balanced view of imperial Germany.Spectacular economic growth characterized the period. Like all nations undergoingindustrialization, Germany grappled with the problems that accompanied apid urbaniza-tion. Peter Merkl (University of California, Santa Barbara) argues that Germany wasperhaps more successful than either England or the United States. German workersexperienced a steady increase n real wages, a low unemployment rate, and a solid socialsecurity system not equaled anywhere else. Unlike workers n liberal England, where halfover 65 ended their lives in the poorhouse, German workers could look forward o somebenefits, however small.

Andrew Lees (Rutgers University), ike Merkl, demonstrates hat the urban citizen inimperial Germany was luckier than most of his contemporaries n the West. German citiesexcelled in the quality of their municipal administrations. Their municipal governmentsenjoyed a level of independence hat enabled them to attempt novel solutions to the newurban problems despite opposition from old patricians and the nouveau riche.

Other essays deal similarly with the questions of alleged discrimination againstCatholics, the role of women in the Reich, and the achievements of German highereducation, especially the role of the universities. A particularly welcomed feature is theextensive (21 pages) bibliographical essay that concludes the volume. It provides anexcellent summary of book-length monographs published since 1961 and is designed tocompliment the bibliography n Gordon Craig's Germany 1866-1945 (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1978).

In summary, Another Germany: A Reconsideration ofthe Imperial Era is a welcomedaddition o the historiography f imperial Germany. t should find its way into college anduniversity libraries, where it can be consulted by history teachers and graduate tudents.

Liberty University Paul R. Waibel

Books

History and Utopia, by E. M. Cioran. New York: Seaver Books, 1987. 118 pages.$16.95,cloth.

History and Utopia, by E. M. Cioran, a collection of six highly abstract ndpassionate-at times overwrought--essays, explores contemporary Western society's attempts to

transcend history through hecomforting llusions of utopia, llusions which will ultimatelyprove to be its undoing. Cioran conceptualizes history as an irresistible orce propellingman away from a lost paradise of the eternal present o a negative eternity, a dismalrecord of mediocrity, failure, cruelty, passivity, and oppression.

The central themes of Cioran's work are introduced n the most personal essay of the

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Books 335

collection, Letter to a Faraway Friend. Here he describes his nostalgia for the lostinnocence of childhood, a nostalgia later amplified nto man's longing for the selflessness

of the golden age before history. His youthful passion was manifested in an earlyadmiration or tyrants and totalitarianism hat s echoed in his argument hatmen are drawninstinctively to tyrannical regimes and absolutist ideologies. Reflections on his long-standing exile in Paris--he left his native Romania in 1937-become the basis for adiscussion of the mediocrity, torpor and vulnerability of the democratic West. The veryfreedom and liberality which typifies the West has permitted t to dissipate its energy onmeaningless and selfish pursuits.

According to Cioran, man is fundamentally violent, greedy, vengeful, amoral and,above all, passionate. Action is his essence. Cioranbelieves tyranny s the truest xpressionof man's being, and, ultimately, the source of Russia's inevitable triumph over the West.He postulates an apocalyptic struggle between the totalitarian East and the liberal West

which inevitably the West will lose. Orthodoxy and absolutism have permitted Russia toconserve her strength and channel man's rapacious and rancorous nature nto the serviceof the state. Cioran maintains hat Russia took the West's utopian schemes and made themuniquely her own; in so doing, Russia developed an ideology which will ultimately burythe supine and defenseless West.

Utopia is, for Cioran, an imagined happiness, without which life is suffocating, yethe reviles utopian thinking as a mere fantasy, the mother of ideology, a result of fecklessidealism. In the final essay, The Golden Age, however, Cioran suggests that utopianismis an expression of our nostalgia for an era before history, before human elf-consciousness.Utopian thinking s Western man's way of denying that history is merely the result of theinchoate actions of isolated individuals, some of whom have a greater will to power thanothers. Yet for all his Nietzschean histrionics, Cioran concludes on a surprisingly benignand ultimately bewildering note. He maintains that we can return o the lost Eden of the

eternal present by internalizing our longing for it and then by withdrawing nto an innerrealm of utter selflessness, discovering there an ultimate reality, a fulfilling void, whichcontains more reality than all history possesses .. .

History and Utopia is a compelling yet profoundly troubling work. In the flow ofCioran's impassioned writing, it is too easy to overlook his flawed conclusions and thenear-mockery he makes of historical analysis. He offers little which cannot more profitablybe drawn from the writings of more insightful and compassionate writers, such asAlexander Solzhenitsyn, Milan Kundera, and even Jean-Frangois Revel. Students andteachers alike would gain far more reading and discussing Nietzsche's works, rather hanthis derivative recasting of his thought.

California State University, Long Beach Patricia Warren

The White Generals: An Account of the White Movement and the Russian CivilWar, by Richard Luckett. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.413 pages.

$25.00, cloth.First published n 1971,Richard uckett's nformal istory f the RussianCivilWar

maybeon the way obecoming minor lassic, or he irst estof time sa second dition.At the outset,TheWhiteGenerals id notseemdestined orpermanence, ecause hebook

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