Edward Hallett Carr

Edward Hallett Carr , born in London the June 28th 1892, dead the November 5th 1982, is an English historian, a journalist and a theorist of the International relations.

Biography

Edward Carr was diplomat with the Foreign Office (the equivalent of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in France) of 1916 to 1936. That enabled him to attend the Conférence of peace in Versailles in 1919 as a member of the English delegation. From 1925 to 1929 he exerted a post of diplomat in the Baltic States then, in 1933, reached the post of first secretary of Diplomatic Service. He became then professor in international relations with Aberystwyth of 1936 to 1947, then historian at the university of Birmingham. He published many articles and reports of works in the Times Literary Supplement , in particular on the Soviet Union.

The career of Edward Carr suffered much because of its refusal to adhere, in the post-war period, with the consensus on the Cold war. Regarded as pro-Soviet in the official circles, he was elected in 1947 neither with the direction of School off Slavonic and East European Studies of London nor to the Russian pulpit of history of faculty, whereas all seemed to indicate it. From this date, it had much sorrow to find a permanent post of professor of university, which him because of the financial problems. It is G.H. Bolsover which was named in the place of director of School off Slavonic and East European Studies instead of Carr: he was regarded as “a surer” academic less shining but. Zbigniew Brzezinski, political adviser with the State Department American of 1966 to 1968, then assisting White House for the national security of 1977 to 1981, concerned “to dam up” and to fight the influence which the USSR in Occident could have, declared that the “most dangerous” academics in Great Britain were Edward Carr, Isaac Deutscher and Rudolf Schlesinger.

Research

It published a study into 1939 which remained traditional in the study of the international relations of the inter-war period. It was one of the thinkers, with Hans Morgenthau, Raymond Aron and Henry Kissinger, of the current of the realism in international relations. Wild adversary of the Empiricism in the Historiography, it was interested also much in the intellectual Histoire of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, like with the diplomatic history and the philosophy of the history.

Edward Carr finally exerted a great weight on the Soviétologie of post-war period. The major part of its career of historian was devoted to fourteen volumes of sound History off Soviet Russia , which cover the first twelve years of the Soviet mode and on which it worked of 1944 to 1977. The Fondation Rockefeller granted financings to Edward Carr so that it can work on the files of Trotsky to the Université of Harvard. The historian Isaac Deutscher had a considerable influence on Carr during the period when this one wrote the first volumes of sound History off Soviet Russia .

According to Edward Carr, it was at the same time the company and the Soviet State which had involved the phenomenon of the Stalinisme. It granted little importance to the role of the individuals in the history, estimating that they were before all the fruit of their time and the place in which they lived. In 1949, E. Carr brought this analysis iconoclast, in precursor of the historians known as “Révisionniste S”: “Stalin could not have carried out its colossal task if it had not been able to be based on a broad popular support”. In its history of the Revolution Bolshevik, E. Carr was detached from an event-driven history to draw the picture of the political, economic and social order in emergence. According to him, the capacity Bolshevik had been confronted with important obstacles in its walk towards socialism. It had been handicapped by the absence of democratic traditions, a slightly developed industrial system and a hostile international environment. The installation of a strong and authoritative State to face the Russian backwardness was thus the condition of the survival of the Soviet mode.

Historical interpretations of Edward Carr were very discussed. There were important tensions and a reciprocal hostility between Carr and other historians like Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Schapiro or Robert Conquest, defenders of the tradition of liberal thought. The members of this current of thought stigmatized the parties taken political with Edward Carr, estimating for example that, in the first volumes of sound History off Soviet Russia , it adopted systematically the point of view of Lénine. According to Robert Conquest, E. Carr strongly decided in favor of Stalin in its presentation of the Soviet main leaders of the years 1920. It would have expressed a very negative opinion on Boukharine, presents, in a typically Stalinist phraseology, like “objectively counter-revolutionary”. It is nevertheless notable that even the largest detractors of Carr, like the American sovietologist in favor of the theory of the Totalitarisme Bertram Wolfe, admired the width and the quality of its research.

For its part, Rudolf Schlesinger congratulated Carr for its presentation on the political struggles after the death of Lénine because its work exceeded the quarrel between Trotsky and Stalin, in connection with which Western historiography was accustomed to tearing.

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