There has been much discussion in American intellectual life about the appeal of Communism to intellectuals. But much of this talk reveals little that is profound, because it is not intended to. It is less designed to understand the traison des clercs than to applaud both the author and the reader for resistance to its temptations. The career of E.J. Hobsbawm complicates this self-regard. Here is a historian who is regarded by almost all as a principled and distinguished historian, a man whose works exude moderation, calm and good sense yet who belonged to the Communist Party of Great Britain until the collapse of the Soviet Union. He helped to found, and was chairman, of the British Communist Party Historian's Group at perhaps the darkest period of Stalinist terror against intellectuals, yet in 1952 he helped to found, and for decades was a crucial figure of "Past and Present," the leading journal of history in the English-speaking world.
How to explain this anomaly? It is important to point out that he opposed the 1956 invasion of Hungary and that by 1968 both he and the party opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia and took a much more liberal Eurocommunist line. It is important to point out that much of this has to do with tact, both on his part and that of the British party. He wrote little on history after 1914 until 1989 and held no party offices, and the party did not criticize him. It should be clear, since recent reviews by David Pryce-Jones in "The New Criterion" and Richard Pipes in "Commentary," do everything to confuse the issue, that Hobsbawm's ideal from the sixties to the eighties was Berlingeur, not Brezhnev, that he opposed Tony Benn and preferred Neil Kinnock to Michael Foot, and that De Gaulle and FDR are the world leaders that get the most praise here. In contrast to Pryce-Jones's hysterical and unsupported assertions, Hobsbawm's Communist Party membership did not undermine his integrity as a historian. (Though one wonders about Pryce-Jones' own competence, where he makes the incorrect assertion that "The Age of Extremes" does not mention the Gulag.)
"Yes, but what about before 1956?" Hobsbawm admits that he supported Communism's anti-Social Democrat strategy in Weimar (when he was 15), and that he supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He reminds us that for the first eight months of the war the conservatives of France and Britain thought less of attacking Hitler than of trying to attack the Soviet Union in the course of defending Finland. We learn of his doubts and nervousness, in his case it was over the break with Tito, the Rajk trial in Hungary and a depressing 1954 visit to the Soviet Union. We learn much about the internationalism and efficiency of the party and the fact that for better or for worse it was the major revolutionary movement around.
But this is a valuable book not simply because it describes how a rational and thoughtful man could believe in a course of political action that was in retrospect patently wrongheaded (he writes that Communism "left behind a landscape of material and moral ruin," and that "it must now be obvious that failure was built into the their enterprise from the start.") We also read many intelligent and thoughtful set-pieces, such as Hobsbawm's early life in post-war Vienna, or the reaction to the Fall of France. We learn about how this central-European/English Jew became a reputable jazz critic, under the name of Francis Newton, named after one of the few Communist jazz players. There are the chapters where he looks at his experiences in France, Italy, Latin America, and less successfully, the United States. These are filled with interesting and penetrating anecdotes along with thoughtful comments of how these countries have changed over the past fifty to seventy years. In France he notes the formality and dignity demanded by French intellectuals, of whom Sartre was an exception. We learn how in Italy the PCI's concern over how local groups elected as branch secretaries, of all people, Seventh Day Adventists. We also learn of the time Hobsbawm was talking in Sicily with a local Communist when the latter suggested that it would be best if the locals didn't know he was English. It would be better if they thought he was from Bologna. But hadn't we been talking in English all day? That's all right, "What do these guys know how they talk in Bologna?"
We learn about his relationship with the sixties rebels, how he did not fully understand (and did not admire) their hedonistic attitude towards sex. He was sympathetic to the Black Panthers, though he knew they had no chance of succeeding, opposed Québécois and Basque nationalists, while the Shining Path was the first rebel group he clearly did not want to win. We learn interesting anecdotes about intellectuals. He suggests that it may have been J.L. Talmon, the conservative Israeli historian, who suggested to his publisher that Hobsbawm write "The Age of Revolution." We learn about his unsuccessful attempts to take E.M. Forster to see Lenny Bruce, and the economist Paul Baran to see Miles Davis. We learn that Hobsbawm has relatives in Chile, and that they supported Pinochet. Memoirs are often apologetic and misleading, especially among historians. As Perry Anderson pointed out in excellent review in "The London Review of Books," this book is very much an exception.
