Does history teach us lessons Give examples Essay

Does history teach us lessons Give examples - Essay Example We are often told, that history teaches us lessons, and that terrorism is the notion, towards which these historical lessons and knowledge are to be applied. Simultaneously, there is a widely-spread opinion, that looking back at our past we see that there were the possibilities to prevent famous dictators from coming to the power and causing irreversible effects. The past cannot be changed, but it can and should be learned; however, what we face at present is false interpretation of the historical events and the desire of the historians to represent certain historical events in the light which is better for their personal needs and strivings. In fact, any historian plays the role of the intermediary between the past and the present - his main aim is to make the public familiar with the events of the past based on the evidence he has at his disposal; what we see now is that many historians have gone too far, trying to become the people, who have the right to interpret this past, often distorting it. I would agree, that history gives us lessons to learn, but due to the general lack of understanding of the historical events, we often have to rely on what famous historians say; their opinions often appear to be contradictory and misleading. As far as we don't really tend to go deep into history for finding our own proofs for this or that historical assumption, we mostly believe in what we hear about the lessons from history, and how they should be used. 'Because history is a world of detailed, specific events, the idea of 'general laws' of history is self-contradictory. Of course, historical actors should be understood as obeying the general laws independently derived by other disciplines, such as the law of gravity or the law of diminishing marginal returns. But history itself can generate no such laws, since they would involve abstracting away all of the details of events, in other words, abstracting away the very subject matter of history.' (Durant & Durant 1997, p. 49) What I wanted to say by this quotation is that history in general cannot be reduced to some generalizations, as it is often done. If there are any real lessons we have to learn from the past, these lessons should be tied to specific events, and not to some general assertions. We can't say that wars are the most important lessons to learn not to make new wars happen - each war is different in its essence, and each should be considered separately, in order to learn the lessons and to apply them to the requirements of the modern time. There is often a confusion between the historical past and the practical past - historical past is merely a statement of the events which took place in the past, while practical past refers to the question of 'what do these past events mean to me right now' (Fink 2001, p. 236) This is about what we talk here, and about what we have to make a reasonable conclusion. I would agree that the skills of the professional historian would give him enough knowledge to judge the events of the past, but I can

Comparison between Russian and German Revolutions Essay

Comparison between Russian and German Revolutions - Essay Example However, both of the events lasted for very few years only and ended in fiasco eventually without achieving the targets and goals on the foundations of which the revolts had been raised by the revolutionaries. The following lines aim to discuss the chronicle of incidents leading towards the revolution along with the aftermath of these great events of the world history. The Paper Russian Revolution: Aptly stated as the Bolshevik or October Revolution 1917, the Russian revolution was actually the outcome of the prevailing despotism, nepotism, poverty, social inequality and suppression of the haves-not at the hands of the haves in the early twentieth century Russia. Consequently, the revolution was entirely socialistic in nature that took place on the Marxist-Leninist principles of justice, freedom and equality. Hence, the revolution had essentially been planned and structured against the prevailing socioeconomic discrimination, injustices and inequalities under the imperialist Russian political structure. The despotism, according to the revolutionaries, had patronized the malpractices and exploitation of the deprived strata by the cruel elite stratum. Although the entire Europe had witnessed the same social scheme under despotic rulers, yet the improvements could be witnessed in the western and central parts of the continent after the advent of famous 18th century French Revolution. However, being a separate and farther zone of Europe, Russia could not witness any uplift in the socioeconomic lot of the masses, and her situation was almost similar to that of 18th century France. Consequently, poverty, slavery, serfdom and class discrimination existed in Russia at their full swing even after one and half century of the advent of Industrial Revolution of 1750. The Russian subjects were bound to lead the life of misery, deprivation and lawlessness under Czarsi, where the oily-tongued flatterer courtiers and opportunists like Rasputin and others could have access thro ugh unfair means and nasty activities. â€Å"Under pressure from richer Europe the Russian State swallowed up a far greater relative part of the people’s wealth than in the West, and thereby not only condemned the people to a twofold poverty, but also weakened the foundations of the possessing classes.† (Trotsky 1930, 3) 1 Marxist perspective also played an important part in accelerating the pace of revolution in Russia. Karl Marx (1817-1883) had presented his social conflict theory during the later part of nineteenth century, through which he had communicated to the downtrodden members of society the message of organized struggle for obtaining their rights on the foundations of the hard efforts they made while working in the agricultural fields as well as in industrial zones from dawn to dusk, against which they attainted almost nothing. Marx was of the opinion that the workers, laborers and peasants consumed considerable period of time and energies, but the industria lists and feudal enjoyed lion’s share in the profit of the product. Hence, there was urgent need of the revising of contract between the owners and workers in order to avoid bloody conflict between the two. If the contract freely entered into by the vendors of money in the form of wages and the vendors of their own labor that is, between the employer and the workers were concluded not for a definite and limited term only, but for one’