China, History: Wild Swans by Jung Chang

The book I chose for China was quite different from the other histories I had chosen for the other countries in this project. My preference going in was to see if there was not a good biography of the person who “made modern China”. That seemed like a good approach to Turkey (Atatürk) and Russia (Lenin) and I was disappointed I had not found a suitable book for Cuba (Castro). With China, the obvious person is Mao. I started my search there - but in looking for a book, I kept coming to the conclusion that maybe I had already read the best book out there about Mao, Stanley Karnow’s ‘Mao and China’. I started to wonder if looking at Mao was really going to shed a lot of light on the question I was most interested in: What China's past has to say about China's future.

In my exploration for a possible book on Mao, one of the books I considered was by Jung Chang: ‘Mao, the Unknown Story’. As I endeavored to learn about Chang, I discovered one of her other books ‘Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China’. It is a personal history of Chang, her mother and grandmother. I think it was the perfect choice.

One of the most striking things about China is the extraordinary pace of change Chinese people are experiencing. I have always thought Americans of my grandmother’s generation had experienced dramatic change. Born in the 19th century when horses were the dominant mode of transportation, she lived to experience the Internet. In comparative terms, next to three generations in China, those changes seem modest.

Chang’s grandmother, Yu Fang, is born in a China ruled by an Emperor and warlords. Women are chattle and subject to foot binding. That is the fate of Yu Fang. She becomes a warlord's concubine. Eventually that China decays into chaos and Yu Fang is able to escape. She later remarries a doctor with whom she has a child, Bao Qin, Chang’s mother.

Jung Chang's parents

Bao Qin is a revolutionary, fighting the Japanese, then the Nationalists and distinguishing herself in the process. She marries a Red Army commander and as true believers they commit to Mao’s path. It is not long before chaos once again engulfs the family. With the Cultural Revolution the communist regime begins to eat its own. Chang’s family crashes from lofty office to become political prisoners, while she is a member of the Red Guard - the very agents of her father's destruction. Meanwhile Chang herself is gaining an education.  She excels in English and wins a scholarship to Oxford. She does not go back.

Wild Swans is a fascinating look at how a Chinese woman's life has changed. It is my sense that China's period of rapid change and perhaps even relative chaos is by no means at an end. The fact that Chinese women now see themselves as Jung Chang, rather than Yu Fang sets the stage for more dramatic change. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that China is more like us, than not.

History, Cuba: a New History by Richard Gott

In looking for a history to use for Cuba, my first impulse was to look for a biography of Fidel. I loved the books I read on Lenin and Ataturk and thought surely Fidel was every bit as central to modern Cuba as those two were to Russia and Turkey respectively. But I think historians (and hence history) benefit from distance. Both Lenin and Ataturk are controversial figures even today, but time has cooled some of the passion and that makes finding a balanced biography a bit easier.

The passion around Fidel remains white hot. I expect 20 years from now, with access to archives and time to reflect, a good biography will emerge - but I don't think that has happened yet. So I thought perhaps I should broaden the subject and seek not just the story of the Revolution but something that puts that event into a context. Even there one finds problems. Cuba’s history is tumultuous and often tragic. Even its present puts it in the middle of epic East-West and North-South struggles. Many authors seem to succumb to the temptation to tell Cuba’s story through the narrative of their own perspective. At least that is the sense you get from people who have left their reviews of books online. Many books were simultaneously praised and condemned for the conclusions they reached. For me it was a bad sign. I was looking for balance.

In Gott’s book I think I found it. Gott is a British journalist turned historian. A 1960s leftist he first visits Cuba in 1963 attracted by the romance of the Revolution. By the time he writes the book some 40 years later, that first blush has worn off. It seems to me he presents the revolution and current system in a not unrealistic yet not unsympathetic light. He puts Cuba today into its larger context beginning the story before Columbus and benefiting from the detachment gained by not being either Cuban or American. He does not have a dog in the fight and can call it as he sees it. At the end I think he accomplished what I always hope to get from history - a better understanding of why the present is the way it is.

Turkey: History Atatürk by Andrew Mango

Is democracy possible in a Muslim society? It is a burning question in this time of the ‘Arab 1848’. The reference to 1848 is a reference to the year that revolution swept across Europe. There does seem to be a demonstration effect to revolution. It happens in one place (Tunisia) and people elsewhere ask, why not here? And so in the last days we have watched Muslim societies tear down their existing regimes. It begs the question: what will they build in their place? If you asked people in the squares, they would likely tell you they want a democracy.  And we are back to the original question: is democracy possible in a Muslim country?

That may sound like a silly or bigoted question. Silly, because there are some notable examples of Muslim democracy - Turkey and Indonesia, for example.  And bigoted because the revolutions we are witnessing testify to Muslims desire for democracy. But wanting something and keeping it are not the same thing. Desire alone is not enough. Democracy is not a natural state of human affairs. Creating it, sustaining it, takes work.

As soon as I had decided that I would be visiting Turkey, I knew that I wanted to read a biography of Atatürk.  Atatürk created Turkey.  What is today a relatively stable and prosperous state goes in no small measure to the will of a single man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Turks seem to understand this. I think it is what explains Atatürk’s ubiquitous presence 70 years after his death. It's not just the statues, though there are lots of them. His picture is everywhere - stores, restaurants, government buildings, homes, car windows, flags almost anywhere you can imagine an image, someone has an image of Atatürk there. I wonder if Stalin, even at the height of his cult of personality was as omnipresent. When Stalin died, he disappeared. Atatürk remains. His story and Turkeys must be remarkable.

So I looked for a book that would tell those stories. Ideally it would have been written by a Turk, someone with the perspective that can only be gained by living it. Alas that was not to be. Turks do write books about Atatürk - lots of them. They don't translate them, it seems. Outside of Turkey the interest in Atatürk is not so great. Mango’s book was a good compromise. Mango was born and raised (to age 21) in Turkey. He experienced Atatürk’s Turkey firsthand. It is still a western outsider’s perspective, but it is one who fully understands the society he is observing. As such he does a good job of helping the reader understand Atatürk managed what was nothing short of a cultural Revolution. There are those (ok, me) who would argue that that was his greatest accomplishment.

Turkey under Atatürk was never a democracy. What Atatürk did was set Turkey on a path towards the creation of a society that could eventually become and sustain democracy. Many of the Turks I met are very worried about the future and the political dominance of Islamists. These are legitimate fears and to the extent that Islamism grows it grows at the expense of Atatürk's legacy. It would be a counter-revolution and a threat to the democracy Turkey has become.

That's why all those images of Atatürk make me optimistic. It is not so much a glorification of him, but of his ideals. Those ideals are modern, progressive, secular and democratic. A country with those ideals will tend to be democratic. Turkey is still populated by Muslims but it is not an Islamic democracy - just a democracy where most citizens practice Islam. There's a difference and they have Atatürk to thank for it.

Germany: History

Five Germanies I Have Known, by Fritz Stern

For a history about Germany, I started by looking for a book that fit my predilection - the biography of a great leader. When I teach American government, I always ask the students to consider America without George Washington. Take that one person out of the equation in the country and its history is quite different. For Russia, Lenin was the obvious choice and for Germany? We all know the obvious choice. Hitler. So why not read a biography of Hitler? Well first I already have. In grad school we had a course in totalitarianism and the reading was biographies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, among others. I think I know as much as I care to about the Führer. So if not him, who else?  Having thought about German history I considered the options (Bismark, Adenauer, Brandt) I was still unsatisfied and searched Amazon for books on German history. Immediately one jumped out at me: Five Germanies I Have Known. The idea was spot on.  There have been at least five distinct Germany's and the author seemed to have a great vantage point from which to consider them.

The book was written by Fritz Stern, an eminent historian from Columbia University. It is a blend of autobiography and history written by a person who not only became renowned for his study of German history but who had the ability to enhance his scholarly treatment of the subject with his intimate experience of events and personalities. Spanning from unification (1870) through disaster and division (1933-1945) and finally to reconstruction and reunification (1990+) He really had seen it all.

GDR's Free German Youth

So what are the five Germany's?  Actually, there are six. Stern writes about them all but, the first disappears before he is born and is introduced through the stories of his grandparents, converted Jews living in Breslau under the Kaiserreich. World War I and German defeat wash that away and in its place comes the ill-fated Weimar Replublic. Hitler's Germany is Sterns second from personal experience and the last that he experiences directly as a citizen. For the Nazis baptism was meaningless. Jewishness is a racial quality that a dab of water could not erase. Hence Stern was Jewish and his family subject to Nazi oppression. His family was lucky. They had foresight and means and escaped. Stern finished growing up and was educated in war time in America. After the war Stern became a leading historian of the early 20th century Germany. As such, he addressed the burning question of the day: how could this (Nazism) happen? Because of the centrality of this question, and Stern’s prestigious position (Columbia University) he was thrust into the center of making sense of the 30s as a prelude to reconstruction and then developing the Germany's of the postwar era. Those would be Germany's #3 and #4, The Federal Republic (West) and its communist twin the GDR (German Democratic Republic, East).

Stern was there, commenting and at times getting sucked into the trials and tribulations of those times. His perspective as an “expellee” - oddly drawn to the task of restoring Germany to the community of Nations - presents a fascinating narrative, both personal and historical, which leads us directly to the present moment – Stern’s Fifth Germany, the one we know today – unified, strong, confident and at the center of European life. In 1940, that might have been a terrifying prospect.  Today it seems normal. A story with a happy ending.

Russia; History - Lenin by Dimitri Volkoganov

Glorious Future?  That way...

Lenin is the third in Volkoganov’s trio of biographies of early leaders of the Soviet Union Stalin, Trotsky and finally Lenin.  What makes Volkoganov’s work notable is primarily the extraordinary access the author had to the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Volkoganov was a military historian who taught at the Lenin Military Academy and eventually rose to serve as the chief assistant to Russia's first post Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsin. Among Volkoganov’s responsibilities for Yeltsin was the supervision of the declassification of the CPSU archives. Volkoganov had first crack at what few historians had ever seen – Lenins’ original documents.

A Young Lenin - with Hair!

Volkoganov uses that access to craft a portrait of the unquestioned leader of Russia’s October Revolution. There is considerable controversy surrounding his portrait and the man who paints it. Volkoganov, despite his long tenure as part of the Soviet system, is a well-known critic of that system. This book addresses directly one of the central questions of Soviet history - is Stalinism a logical consequence of Leninism, or terrible aberration?

Lenin Today

Volkoganov comes down squarely on the side of logical consequence. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union saw the creation of a system of pervasive violence and terror. Volkoganov uses the archives to document Lenin’s own use of terror for the promotion of his seizure of power.  Volkoganov presents the case Lenin knew that there was no way to accomplish the total control he aspired to, without the excuse of crisis. Volkoganov argues that the Civil War was unnecessary except as the excuse for the violence needed to shock Russian society into cowering obedience. That,  was always Lenin’s goal, and naturally became Stalin’s. The Apple did not fall far from the tree…