Book Description
In the philosophical tradition of George Orwell and
Isaiah Berlin, Robert Conquest presents a brilliant work of
history and meditation, one that examines the political
ideologies that have corrupted the twentieth century and, in
the process, sent millions to the slaughterhouse. The main
responsibility for our century's cataclysms, Conquest
maintains, lies not in impersonal economic or social
forces--like revolutionary Marxism or German National
Socialism--but in the distortions that polluted human minds
with the detritus of absolutist ideas. Conquest finds the
failure to understand these phenomena as epidemic in Western
civic culture, which has so far--barely--prevailed. Whether
discussing Kierkegaard or Koestler or the disasters posed by
the new European Economic Union, Conquest has a remarkable
ability to fuse literature and history, philosophy and
prognostication, and presents here a grand synthesis of our
century, seen through its most deeply flawed ideologies.
"The main responsibility for our century's
cataclysms, Conquest maintains, lies not so much in
impersonal economic and social forces as in the huge mental
distortions produced by ideologies like revolutionary Marxism
and National Socialism. The final, sobering chapters of
Reflections on a Ravaged Century concern themselves with some
coming storms, notably that of the European Union, which
Conquest believes is an economic, cultural, and geographical
misconception divisive of the West and doomed to
failure."
