Talk:E. H. Carr

Comments

This article is now longer than those on Napoleon or Lincoln. Pretty clearly, there is one editor who should consider starting a blog dedicated to trashing E.H. Carr, and leave Wikipedia alone. AECwriter 19:20, 30 January 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aecwriter (talk • contribs)

This article is full of ortography errors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.110.36.77 (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Improvements

there's a wikipedia page for the twenty years crisis so surely this page should link to it? plus i would have thought that it would be mentioned in the article, not just the bibliography, because isn't that pretty much his biggest claim to fame? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.189.212 (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't he a Stalin's apologist? How far was he from Irving? Xx236 11:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Dear Xx236, I think Carr was fairy sympathetic towards Stalin, but I don't know if would be appropriate to have the article call an apologist for Stalin-that might be a little POV. However, it is true that other historians have called Carr Stalin's apologist, so it is correct to cite them him. Carr's sins were those of omission rather then commission, and that it is correct that there is much about Soviet history that Carr was simply not interested in writing about (e.g. Soviet mass murder, famine, the Gulag, etc). As far as I am aware, Carr was never guilty of the sort of misconduct that David Irving was in that Carr never falsified documents like Irving does. But Richard Pipes compared Carr to Holocaust deniers, and that has been noted here. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Why the boring picture of Pipes in an article that is already too long? That same picture is on Pipes's own page, so it doesn't need to be repeated here.

Also, the article reads a bit like it was cut from an academic essay. I'm glad there is a lot of information on Carr, since he's important to the discipline of history whether you aree with him or not, but it seems like the important elements get buried in details that wouldn't be pertinent except to a specialist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.30.73.158 (talk) 21:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Article location

From recollection don't all his books use his intials? (Similar to his contemporary A. J. P. Taylor) Would E. H. Carr be a better located for this article? Timrollpickering 14:59, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

No-one's commented on this so far so unless there's an objection I'll move the page to E. H. Carr in two days. Timrollpickering 00:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I beleive it is much more common to refer to Carr as to E. H. Carr or in other words it's really rare to use his full name. I don't like initials in categories (the person still has full name no matter what is used more often) but in this case it's probably appropriate.--Pethr 01:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Moved. Timrollpickering 00:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up

I cleaned-up text submitted by 88.243.66.47 on 23:42, 27 December 2006. I commented out text included below, since it needs rewrite. Article as a whole still needs much editing as well...

Two versions of Carr and Morgenthau

1. the textbook version that reduces most of the complexities, caricaturing the thinkers. Since people generally read these men from secondary sources, they mistaken what is said about them to be their original thoughts. the second version rests on their actual writings. It is said of Carr that he lacks a coherent theory, but that is not the case. Carr defines himself neither a realist nor an idealist. He first uses utopianism and realism as ideal types, secondly he criticizes both from each others perspective, thirdly he develops a utopianism that is endowed with the conceptual tools of realism. This "sound political thinking" is not realism per se.

In a nutshell: Three principles of realism according to Carr: 1. Determination 2. Practice determines theory 3. Ethics is a function of power 4. Adjustment of thought to purpose (interest)

On the last principle: according to the realist, theory is a tool in the service of its propagators. Example: harmony of interests in Carr, or the idea of peace that freezes a social organization based on slavery. If you are able to convince the slave that he is better off being a slave, you spare yourself from the bothers of a slave revolt!

Another example is the recent propaganda war during the War in Iraq (liberators from a democratic country coming to save the poor people of Iraq from a terrible dictator. The whole idea is that the democratic country is always the more benevolent one). --Pethr 02:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what happened here. I've (once again?) removed several paragraphs that read like notes taken during a lecture about Carr or excerpts from a book. --Gregor Kneussel (talk) 14:50, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Stalin's apologist

Is Carr any better than Irving? Why?Xx236 08:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Obviously I don't expect you to reply over a decade later, but to answer your question Carr did not falsify sources like Irving has, nor did he deny historical events as far as I know. James H. Billington for instance wrote that Carr's multivolume history was "scrupulously honest" despite its admiring tone. I doubt any historian has claimed that of Irving's books. --Ismail (talk) 11:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Dear Xx236 we know each other Carr seems to be one of the fathers of the European Union now you know more.--88.233.209.200 —Preceding comment was added at 14:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, that might rather POVish to call Carr Stalin's apologist, but since numerous historians have said that, I think it is correct to cite them here (plus for balance, those historians who like Carr's work).--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

error

he died on third of november, not on fifth and history of russia is actually 10 volumes according to britannica. I corrected them. Elsanaturk 11:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

References

I think that there is too many references. About ten in every chapter. --Vojvodaeist 06:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Pro-Soviet study?

I modified this unsourced statement, because it is self-contradictory. Carr was a brilliant historian, arguably one of the greatest British historians. However, history in contrast to propaganda, it cannot be pro- or anti-Soviet. In addition, Carr's pupils, e.g. Haslam aren't pro-Soviet historians. Carr sympathies to state planning and Carr's belif that the world moves towards socialism are well known, however, it is absolutely incorrect to state that his studies were "pro-Soviet".

1. R. W. Davies (The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr, 1892-1982 by Jonathan Haslam. Source: Russian Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jul., 2000), pp. 442-445):"Carr went where no one had gone before and where only really few have really gone since. ...Carr's analysis is now an indispensable starting-point for understanding the dynamics of Stalinism".
2. Olga Crisp (Reviewed work: "Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr by Chimen Abramsky". The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Nov., 1975), pp. 725-726) states:"E. H. Carr has gained indisputable eminence in the field of Soviet studies. Even the most severe critics of his view of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath stand in awe of Carr's impeccable scholarship, his skill in assembling and mastering an immense amount of detail, his narrative gift, lucidity, and precision, and above all his unrivalled industry and boldness of design. Neither the Soviet Union nor the USA where the bulk of research on the Soviet Union has been concentrated have produced anything even approaching in scale and quality Carr's monumental "History of Soviet Russia"."
3. David Wedgwood Benn (Reviewed work(s):The Vices of Integrity. E. H. Carr 1892-1982 by Jonathan Haslam. Source: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 8 (Dec., 2000), pp. 1561-1562) states: "Nevertheless, Carr remains a controversial figure, with some admirers and no shortage of adversaries. He has been portrayed as an advocate of appeasement-of Hitler in the 1930s and of Stalin in the 1940s-and as a subtle apologist for Stalinism. Some detractors have even tried to link his views with his allegedly unsympathetic personality. Today, following the collapse of the USSR, the question naturally arises whether the main project of Carr's life was in vain."
   He continues: "Political differences also caused serious tensions between Carr and other Russian specialists such as lsaiah Berlin and Leonard Schapiro. Haslam documents this with fresh detail. But even some of Carr's adversaries respected him: for example, the American writer Bertram Wolfe confessed to being 'filled with admiration' at Carr's scholarship (p. xii). By no means all of Carr's critics could be described as Cold Warriors. But some of them were, and it seems that some critics treated the discussion of his History of Soviet Russia and of his lectures on What is History? as a coded debate about the inevitability of the Bolshevik Revolution."
4. Jonathan Haslam (Reviewed work(s): "The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917-1929" by E. H. Carr, "From Napoleon to Stalin" and Other Essays by E. H. Carr, "The Twilight of Comintern 1930-35" by E. H. Carr Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 1021-1027) writes: "Carr's fatalism comes out in his attitude to Stalin. He consciously distanced himself from those who supported Lenin but attacked Stalin, or supported Trotsky against Stalin, or who supported Stalin against Trotsky; no one has yet, to my knowledge, raised Stalin's banner against Lenin. Carr was always consistent in seeing Stalin as a force for both good and evil: ' the most ruthless despot Russia had known since Peter, and also a great westernizer' "

I can present a vast number of other reviews, and all of them support the idea that Carr was one of the most prominent historians. Good, honest historian cannot be ideology motivated. Therefore, the phrase:"Known: For pro-Soviet studies in Soviet history" is (i) insult (ii) a dramatic over-simplification.
I changed it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

None of that is new at all. In fact, two of the authors are already cited in the E._H._Carr#References. Literally, not a single one of these doesn't say that Carr wasn't "pro-Soviet", which you just oddly deleted. And, of course he was "respected", he was an excellent writer and researcher. Holding "pro-Soviet" views doesn't mean that he was a bad or in any way a disreputable historian. Were that the case, many college professors would have been out of a job. Mosedschurte (talk) 00:22, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

None of the sources state that Carr's works were biased. Carr personally was pro-Soviet during some periods of his life. Carr as a journalist could be a pro-Soviet writer. However, that has no relation to his historical works: accusation in ideological motivation means the accusation in a lack of professionalism. It is impossible to find at least a single source that accused Carr in that. Your reversion is ridiculous.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:31, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

In addition, you restored the assertion that is questionable and not neutral. Please, refrain from further reversions.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:33, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: "It is impossible to find at least a single source that accused"

Literally the first book on google books that pops up with Carr and pro-Soviet:

• Charles A. Jones, E.H. Carr and international relations: a duty to lie, Cambridge University Press, 1998ISBN 0521478642, page 113

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Pro-Soviet in foreign policy, intent on the simultaneous attainment of military and socio-economic security, an advocate of West European integration and British decolonization, critical and anti-posititivist in methodology, and adamanet in his denial of the constancy of human nature and natural interest, Carr provides an unesasy companion for Cold War realists . . . .

If Carr's pro-Soviet and integrationist attitudes on the European settlement were unexceptional in themselves, why did they lead him, and the The Times, into the wilderness?

---

More to the point, for the article's deletion, you have cited literally NOT A SINGLE SOURCE -- not one -- that claims that he was no "pro-Soviet."

Also, one more change, and you'll hit 4 -- WP:3RR. Mosedschurte (talk) 00:41, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You mix Carr's personal views and Carr's historical studies. Although he was pro-Soviet journalist (during some part of his life. One of the above sources state he was anti-Communist before WWII), everybody agreed that his historical analysis of Soviet Russia was excellent, and Carr himself was one of the most prominent historians of Soviet Russia. This fact is sufficient to prove that his historical studies were neutral.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:48, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

--I'm not "mixing" anything, I'm just pointing out that you haven't cited a single source stating otherwise supporting any deletion -- no one argues that Carr wasn't a good writer and historical researcher -- while literally the first click on google books describes his "pro-Soviet foreign policy".

--More to the point, changed this article only because you were embarrassed by a false accusation of another editor claiming source citation supporting points here in another article. And you just got caught in this change.

--I would stop this nonsense, rancor and false accusations, and just stick to the substance of articles.Mosedschurte (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

On that talk page, I haven't accuse anybody in anything. The phrase "For pro-Soviet studies" is unsourced. It contradicts to the well established fact that Carr was one of the most prominent British historians, and the most prominent historian of the Soviet Russia. The claim that Carr's historical studies were pro-Soviet is inconsistent with these facts. Therefore, the words "pro-Soviet" must be removed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:59, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: "The claim that Carr's historical studies were pro-Soviet is inconsistent with these facts."

No it's not. It's not inconsistent with a single one.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: "On that talk page, I haven't accuse anybody in anything."

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"In contrast to you, I do not select only those sources that support my POV"
Paul Siebert accusing another editor of selective sourcing

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I would cut back on the accusations, especially when you stepped into it quite badly on that talk page.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Pro-Soviet, anti-Soviet, pro-American, anti-American, as well as all other pro- and anti- studies cannot be good historical studies. Carr's book are very good. Ergo Carr's books cannot be pro-Soviet.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: "Carr's book are very good. Ergo Carr's books cannot be pro-Soviet.-"

That makes absolutely zero sense. More to the point, it doesn't follow the sources.Mosedschurte (talk) 01:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It is very sadly that logical arguments make absolutely no sense for you... What about that: Haslam directly states:"Carr was always consistent in seeing Stalin as a force for both good and evil". In other words, sine ira et studio. What other evidence you need?--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

In addition. I made this change not because I "was embarrassed by a false accusation of another editor claiming source citation supporting points here in another article", but because I went to jstor.org and read about 10-15 reviews on Carr's book. And, to my great surprize, I found almost no criticism there. I wouldn't even try to edit this article before reading something on that account.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course he can be a good historian and be "Pro-Soviet", and you can't seriously be claiming otherwise. In fact, that's what the sources say about him. Also the citation of sine ira et studio is simply bizarre. No one has claimed Carr has ever gotten carried away by emotion (or anger or fondness, for that matter).

Re: "It is very sadly that logical arguments make absolutely no sense for you"

--LOL, especially after your attempted use of the phrase sine ira et studio.

--Again, I would spend less time on other editors and more time on the substance of articles.--Mosedschurte (talk) 01:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Believe me, I didn't keep in mind to offend you. The fact that the logical arguments seem to make no sense to you is really very sad, because I believe I am able to accept logical arguments and I thought that would help us to establish productive collaboration.
Let's do the experiment: try to explain me, using logically consistent arguments, what concretely is wrong in my syllogisms. If you demonstrate me a flaw in my arguments, I promis I will immediatelly re-introduce the words I removed from the artice.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:31, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

One more point. A hundred sources that contain the words "Carr" and "pro-Soviet" will not be a good argument. Since many scholar leave the question of Carr's bias beyond the scope, it would be hard to find a direct statement that "Carr was not pro-Soviet". If someone is a good historian that implicitly means the freedom from any bias.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Just for one, the base premise of your syllogism, that one cannot be Pro-Soviet and a good historian.

Re: "If you demonstrate me a flaw in my arguments, I promis I will immediatelly re-introduce the words I removed from the artice."

--I'll be quite honest, you HAVE NEVER done this. Not once. Not even when I have hit you with large numbers of sources on an issue stating something in black and white. Not even when, in the World War II article, I agreed not only to wade back to potentially reverse an already resolved issue you didn't like, but also to change the wording of another phrase, and have repeatedly offered different such compromise changes. Frankly, the phrase "give an inch, take a mile" comes to mind. Or even worse, it then ends in some bizarre -- and flatly false -- accusation against me (an almost incalculable number of these). Earlier today, you actually admitted:

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"The reason is quite simple: if I am too polite, you simply ignore my arguments."

---

Or, to push things past the laugh point, the Eastern Bloc talk page, where you actually at one point took the opposition point claiming that the annexation of half of the country of Poland should be removed from the Eastern Bloc article to be replaced by the insertion of a description of the popularity of actor Dean Reed (nothing more need be said). To be perfectly blunt, no matter how many times I've agreed with something you've suggested, or made changes in an article based on your statements, you've then continued to battle on, almost always refusing to settle for anything unless the objectionable statement you want is in an article (many times with facts you don't like deleted) in the manner in which you want it, period. Even after countless compromises have been made by the other editor. At best, you sort of stop battling after a while on some issues. That's about the extent of any willing to give and take that I've seen.Mosedschurte (talk) 02:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I have never done that before because you revert my edits much more frequently than I revert yours.
Going back to the topic, let me facilitate your task. Starting from the very beginning, all the western science was (and is) based on the idea of precedence of truth over emotions: "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas". You are a scientist, or scholar until, and only until, you are ready to accept truth irrespective to your sympathies or antipaties. This is a condicio sine qua non. This statement equally relates to history as a science. Do you agree with that statement?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else think this artcle sounds like it was written by a pro-Allied apologist?

"in his 1955 book International Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919-1939, Carr claimed that the German default on reparations in December 1922 that sparked the 1923 Ruhr crisis was only very small, and that the French reaction in occupying the Ruhr was grossely disproportionate to the offense[79]. As the American historian Sally Marks noted, that even in 1955 this was a long-discredited pro-German "myth", and that in fact the German default was enormous, and that Germany had been defaulting on a large scale ever since 1921"

I haven't read Carr's book, but it seems to me that the part of this I have highlighted in italics is a little 'pro-allied' bolt-on put on the end, just to make sure that people aren't scared by the idea that maybe Germany wasn't 'pure evil' in the first half of the twentieth century, and that maybe the Treaty of Versailles, and allied hostility toward Germany after WWI - such as the occupation of the Ruhr - went some way to causing the unrest in Germany that led to the Second World War.

It needs to be borne in mind that the reparations were not a 'way of saying sorry' for the Germans, they were forced on them by the winners of the First World War, they were a financial penalty on the people of Germany. The people of Germany were made to pay for the First World War simply because they lost the war, this is true. Saying they defaulted on payments makes it sound like they were lent money honestly by the allies, and that poor old France was left sadly out of pocket.

Furthermore, the use of the word 'claimed' is objectionable. Whereas Carr's opinion on the matter was just a 'claim', Sally Marks's is a 'fact'. Why? Also, Carr apparently said that the default was 'small', whereas for Sally Marks it was 'enormous'. What is the difference between 'small' and 'enormous'? Did Carr and Marks disagree on the figure? Or just on the adjective?

Finally, Carr thought that the French response was 'grossly disproportionate', this was his opinion, this is what he thought. Unless he made a mistake, if someone has shown that information on these 'enormous' defaults was not available to Carr, then that is fine, then we can say that he based his opinion on some wrong information. However, if the way he saw the facts was just different to the way Marks saw it, then Carr's point stands. This is not about the 'truth' of WWII, its about E.H. Carr, and if he though that then leave it be.

This is not the only example, much of the article is like this. Can we leave these fantasies of WWII allied honesty and morality aside. If some people cannot handle the fact that even britain, france and america slaughtered millions of 'innocent' civilians then they shouldn't study history. Louboi (talk) 14:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

First thing, as the author of the passage that you find offensive, your entirely unsolicited career advice about studying history is most unwelcome. I don't like to flaut my credentials, but since you had seen fit to tell me not to study history, for your information, I hold both a BA and a MA in History. And furthermore, since you have accused of writing of historical "fantasies", my GPA was 90.

Now turning to your major point, what is the difference between a "small" and "enormous" default? Carr wrote like to make it like Germany had delivered most of the timber quote for 1922, and only just fallen short slightly. The fact is, only 29% of the timber that was supposed to be delivered had been deliverd, which means there was a 71% shortfall. That's sounds like a very large default. Not is not a matter of opinion, that is a matter of fact, and Carr was quite wrong to make it sound otherwise.

Your statement about the German people being forced to pay the entire costs of the war is likewise completetly wrong. Reparations that were imposed on Germany were very small and quite payable, and all this talk about impossible to pay reparations just reflects the fact that Germany didn't want to pay reparations (as opposed to not be able). Officially, Germany was to pay 132 billion marks in reparations, which sounds like a huge bill. On a closer inspection, it is not. The reparations were divided into three classes, namely the A, B and C bonds. The bulk of the 132 billion were assigned to the C bonds, which the Allies never intended to collect. The C bonds were just there to give the impression to the French public that vast amounts of reparations were going to be collected. The Germans were expected to pay only the A and B bonds, which totaled 50 billion marks. And for your information, 50 billion marks is an amount smaller then Germany had offered to pay, which was 51 billion marks. So all this talk of crippling reparations on Germany is just rubblish. The Germans could had easily paid the 50 billion marks, if they wanted to, since they themselves had admitted they could pay 51 billion marks. Even Niall Ferguson in his otherwise ridiculously pro-German book, The Pity of War has a whole chapter devoted to establishing that Germany could had easily paid the reparations if she wanted to.

But the problem is that they didn't. And why didn't they want to pay? Because it was the best way of scrapping Versailles. The Allies assigned the figures, but the Germans were of course, acutally in charge of paying the sums. The Germans quite determinedly followed a policy of defaulting as a way of doing away with reparations entirely. The Germans knew that the public opinion in the English speaking world was convinced that they had a huge sum to pay, and thanks to Keynes’s bestseller of 1920, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, public opinion in the English speaking world by and large was on their side. The German policy to spark a confronation with France over reparations, knowing full well that pressure from public opinion in the English-speaking world would force Britain and the United States (whom held most of France's debts) into siding with the Reich, and thus forced an unilateral change in the Versailles Treaty in Germany's favor. In this, the Germans were quite successful and by 1932, reparations were cancelled.

This brings us to what was the point of the whole excerise. The Germans wanted to have reparations cancelled as a way of creating a precedent for cancelling other parts of Versailles, especially Part V, which had disarmed Germany. And why did they want Part V cancelled? So, they could rearm and plunge the world back into war. Nobody ever said here that Germany was a force of "pure evil" as you put it. But having that much, Germany was a not a force for pure good either. I am sorry, but you are totally wrong about Versailles and the Ruhr occupation causing World War II. You seemed to be operating on the assumpation that poor, peace loving Germany was just beaten up by the Allies so badly after 1919 they were forced to turn to the Nazis, who in their turn caused the war. The point is, every German government after 1919 was committed to a policy of war and conquest. If the Weimar Republic did not wage aggression, it was only because Part V of Versailles kept Germany disarmed, and hence too weak to go to war. You may wish to acquaint yourself with General Hans von Seeckt's memo of September 11, 1922 entitled "Germany Attitude to the Russian Problem", which states quite bluntly about Poland:

"The existence of Poland is intolerable and incompatible with Germany's vital interests. She must disappear and will do so through own inner weakness and through Russia-with our help. Poland is more intolerable for Russia than for ourselves; Russian can never tolerate Poland. With Poland collapes one of the strongest pillars of the Peace of Versailles, France's advance post of power. The attainment of this objective must be one of the firmest guiding principles of German policy, as it is capable of achievement-but only through Russia or with her help. Poland can never offer Germany any advantage, either economically, because she is incapable of development, or politically, because she is a vassel state of France. The restoration of the frontier between Russia and Germany is a necessary condition before both sides can become strong. The 1914 frontier between Russia and Germany should be the basis of any understanding between the two countries"(Wheeler-Bennet, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967, page 136)

Note here, that the problem is not Poland's borders with Germany, it is the existence of Poland period that was "intolerable" to Germany. And note likewise, that what Seeckt is proposing here is what happened in 1939. And finally please note, that the destruction of Poland is tied to the wider goal of the destruction of France as a power. Now of course, it would be absurd to say that was a straight line here from Seeckt's memo of 1922 to the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, since there were several twists and turns in German-Soviet relations between 1922 and 1939, but that is besides the point. The point here is that German foreign policy in the Weimar era was bascially aggressive and aimed at wars to destroy her neighbours, just the foreign policy of the Second Reich and just like the foreign policy of the Third Reich. If Weimar didn't attack anybody, it was only because of Part V of the Versailles Treaty kept Germany so weak that war was inconceivable. Far from causing wars, Versailles saved the peace because it kept Germany weak enough that she couldn't risk war. As Alfred Duff Cooper noted in 1939 in a letter to the newspaper:

“Some of use are getting rather tired of the sanctimonious attitude which seeks to take upon our shoulders the blame for every crime committed in Europe. If Germany had been left stronger in 1919 she would sooner have been in a position to do what she is doing today”.

It was only 1935 when Germany abrogated Part V, and started to rearm that made the Second World War possible. And by allowing Germany to get away with not paying reparations, the precedent was created for the abrogation of Part V. Indeed, please note that immediately after reparations were abolished in 1932, the Germans promptly followed this up with the demand for the abrogation of Part V of the Versaillles Treaty, which was the point of all this trouble over reparations. Let's consider an analogy. There's a vicous beast that attacks and devours people, so it is locked into a cage. Then along a bunch of so-proclaimed do-gooders with names like Keynes and Carr who insist that life inside the cage is too cruel to the beast, and anyhow the monster is very just a gentle creature cruelly tormated by its keepers. So as a result, everybody feels sorry for the beast, which is let loose, and then resumes its old ways with even greater ferocity. People like Carr have blood on their hands by working so hard to persuade the world that Germany was a force for the good that needed to be freed from Versailles.

Finally, Carr was a self-proclaimed expert on international relations in the inter-war period. So he should have been familar with the work of the great French economist Étienne Mantoux, whose seminal 1946 book The Carthaginian Peace Or The Economic Consequences of Mr Keynes showed very clearly that Germany could had paid the reparations in full if had so desired. Since Carr was writing in 1955, he really ought to had known better then to be repeating the same pro-German nonsense he been writing in the 20s-30s. Nine years had passed since Mantoux's book was published, so there really is no reason for Carr to be unfamiliar with Mantoux's book. I'll wrote that Carr thought the French response was 'grossly disproportionate' in occupying the Ruhr, that was his opinion, and I think the article says that quite clearly. My point about the next sentence is that Carr was very mistaken when he said the German timber default of December 1922 which sparked the crisis (as planed by Berlin) was small, when the facts showed quite clearly that a 71% default occurred, which most people would agree was not a small default. If you would take the trouble to read Marks's article, you will see that Germany had been defaulting on very large scale on a very frequent basis deliberately ever since the summer of 1921, and taunting the French to do something about it, out of the hopes that they might cause a crisis like that which occurred in 1923, which all part of their efforts to destroy Versailles, and thus go back to their good old war-mongering ways.--A.S. Brown (talk) 02:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Gee, what a peddling of anti-German myth must I read here? And this for an encyclopedia. 105.12.7.103 (talk) 03:13, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I beg to offer to the author of extremely important but perhaps overly-long article a little advice which, although utterly gratuitous, he may wish to take into consideration

Keep it brief.PiCo (talk)

• Yeah, you got it right there, mate. The section on What is History? is considerably longer than the book itself. --OhNoPeedyPeebles (talk) 21:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

More unusually for a book by a Western historian, A History of Soviet Russia met with warily favorable reviews by Soviet historians

It's the most terrible accusation of a Western historian, to be accepted in a totalitarian coutry, where all texts were not even censored but frequently designed by the party and police.Xx236 (talk) 07:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that does not reflect well on Carr. If you are aware of a source criticizing Carr, please bring it in, Xx236.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:04, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The phrase "warily favorable" isn't actually akin to favorable. Soviet reviewers criticized Carr as a bourgeois historian. They accused him of distorting certain historical events and even initially damned him as a "falsifier" of Soviet history. They considered him more objective than, say, Richard Pipes and Leonard Schapiro, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement. --Ismail (talk) 09:20, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Outer Mongolia > Kronstadt

"In A History of Soviet Russia, Carr paid more attention to relations between the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia than to the Kronstadt mutiny, which Carr gave only a few lines to under the grounds that it was unimporant" - From the article.

Outer Mongolia and the declaration of the Mongolian People's Republic were significant in both Soviet and Chinese foreign policy history, since Nationalist China refused to recognize the existence of any independent Mongolian state. (Same with Tibet and Tannu Tuva, the latter being a virtual Soviet protectorate) I think the current quote is a bit insulting, because it pretty much makes it sound like "Hah, Carr focused on some Mongolians rather than a short-lived sailors uprising against the Bolshevik state." Even though the uprising lasted for a month whereas the disputes over Mongolia lasted for over 30 years. --Ismail (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

But on the other hand, the Kronstadt uprising led directly to the New Economic Policy, which by changing the social and economic basis of Soviet society affected the lives of millions of people in the 1920s while the dispute about Outer Mongolia, however important it was and is the people of Mongolia scarcely affected the wider world at all. There is something very strange about a book about Soviet history that mentions the Kronstadt uprising in passing while assigning an inordinate amount of space to talking about Moscow’s relations with Outer Mongolia. Perhaps if Carr were writing a history of Soviet foreign policy that might be acceptable, but he was writing as he titled the series A History of Soviet Russia. What Carr did is sort of like if somebody were to write A History of the United States that hardly mentioned the civil rights movement while assigning a huge amount of space to the topic of Canada-U.S relations in the 1950s-1960s--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC).

I know replying to this eight years later is a bit silly, but Carr argued that the Kronstadt mutiny did not lead to the NEP (see The Bolshevik Revolution Vol. 2, 1952, p. 272.) He argued the NEP had already been put forward beforehand. Hence the fleeting attention he gave to it. --Ismail (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

As an addendum to my earlier comment, the dispute over Outer Mongolia wasn't merely confined to the people of Mongolia as you imply. As I wrote ten years ago, it was a sore spot in relations between the Soviet Union and China. It was a problem the Soviets had to contend with in working with Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and even Mao Zedong who complained in 1964 that "the Soviet Union, under the pretext of assuring the independence of Mongolia, actually placed that country under its domination. Mongolia covers an area much greater than that of the Kurile Islands. When Khrushchev and Bulganin were in China in 1954 we raised this question, but they refused to speak to us about it." I'd also add that when Outer Mongolia is discussed in Carr's volumes, it isn't in volumes where you'd expect the Kronstadt mutiny to be discussed. So it isn't a situation of Carr writing a single book on Soviet Russia and deciding to sacrifice discussion of Kronstadt in favor of discussion of Outer Mongolia. --Ismail (talk) 19:03, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Some thoughts

The article is way too long.

The article doesen't reach neutrality standards, in particular with the boxes "the face of progress", "the wave of progress", "the cost of progress". Furthermore, in "What is history?" Carr never says that "[the] deaths in the Soviet Union during the First Five Year Plan period were justified by the growth in Soviet heavy industry in the early 1930s". This article to me represents to what extent a scientific description can be corrupted by political belief.

--FedBrandy (talk) 23:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

• Well, I was offering a summary of Carr's position there. Carr says that Soviet policies in the period of the First Five Year Plan caused immense "suffering" (which is something of an understatement) and those polices were "progessive", which sounds very much like a justification. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

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Duplicated content

A large part of this article (the section about What Is History?) is largely duplicated in the article What Is History?. This is not a good thing - the same content shouldn't be on multiple pages in Wikipedia. Given how long this article is, that content should probably be removed and replaced with a summary, informing the reader that for a more in-depth explanation they should read the article What Is History?. Robofish (talk) 13:02, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Article too long

This article is way too long, and based on this talk page, other commenters have been saying the same thing since at least 2010. I've added the "very long" header. In particular, there's a gigantic section on A History of Soviet Russia in this article, but the Wiki article A History of Soviet Russia is a stub with nothing more than publication dates of the volumes. Similarly, the discussion on What Is History? should go into the What Is History? page to avoid duplication. Talu42 (talk) 21:41, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It's even longer now. --OhNoPeedyPeebles (talk) 12:47, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I've removed all of the book reviews from the list of works, since Wikipedia is not a bibliography. Ideally, the Selected Works section should contain only books and any significant journal articles (if any) by the author. Talu42 (talk) 06:29, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

The article is ridiculously long and probably needs a rewrite. --TMD (talk) 14:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. It's so fucking long. --OhNoPeedyPeebles (talk) 19:45, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Disagree. One could try to break out the sections, but that would be pretty tricky, since they are integral to the article. It's also likely to be a waste of time, since it's merely moving information. The information in the article is valuable and well-presented. Deleting that info outright is a very bad idea.81.88.116.27 (talk) 13:57, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. It's a common tactic for Marxist pseudointellectuals to go on and on when the subject at hand is indefensible. Carr was a traitor, a Quisling propagandist who should have been in prison rather than living in academia at taxpayers' expense. 73.231.167.121 (talk) 23:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

It's pretty silly to write this given the contributor most responsible for making this article so long is neither a Marxist nor an admirer of Carr. --Ismail (talk) 00:47, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

First sentence

the very first sentence claims Carr to be a Marxist and cites Ticktin for that purpose. If one reads Ticktin however, will find this (pg 154): "One can only conclude that Carr was sympathetic to Marxism but was not a Marxist. He chronicled Marxism but did not fully understand it". I think the source is seriously misinterpreted in the current version of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.99 (talk) 16:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

towards Communism and its achievements

What are the achievements according to Carr? Did the achievements exist ?Xx236 (talk) 13:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

To quote Carr, "by the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties, the fruits of industrialization, mechanization and long-term planning began to mature. Much remained primitive and backward by any western measurement. But standards of living substantially improved. . . The Soviet worker, and even the Soviet peasant, of 1967 was a very different person from his father or grandfather in 1917. He could hardly fail to be conscious of what the revolution had done for him; and this out-weighed the absence of freedoms which he had never enjoyed or dreamed of." (The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin, 1979, pp. 188-189) Most of this seems uncontroversial to me, although obviously in hindsight Carr (like many others, both sympathetic and critical of the USSR) underestimated the desire to make right "the absence of freedoms" on the part of the population. --Ismail (talk) 19:03, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

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