The view from where I'm sitting

I gather from your blogs and other communications that most of you are grappling with the Unit 1 question. Pip Leighton had a long post yesterday which I rather enjoyed. I found it very interesting to hear his reflection on the Cold War as viewed through the prism of his own experience of serving on its frontline with the British Army 'all tooled up' as he puts it through the 1980s.

As educators we often talk about getting students to 'engage' with the question. For my part, I see what is happening in some of your blogs as evidence of that. I think it's a strength of learing in this manner. One has a record of how one's thoughts develop over time which is both illustrative of your own learning curve and a resource for others. I'm impressed.

He has another post today giving voice to some second thuoghts which to me is great. One could easily get all Hegelian at this point about the progress of knowledge--thesis, antithesis and synthesis--but as was said in The Times 'T2' section about Hegel's philosophy recently it boils down, more or less, to what normal people call 'learing from one's mistakes'.

I don't want to get ahead of the discussion by interjecting my own view on the question. I find that can shut further discussion down some time. I'd like to add just one thing to the question of Stalin's personality which has figured into what several of you have said. Gaddis points out how the Soviet system was so much a reflection of Stalin's own personality. One should not underestimate the enormous fear which Stalin provoked in his subordinates. He was certainly much more than primus inter pares in the Politburo of the time. His chief of staff wrote without shame (because many people had this reaction to Stalin) that he always kept a spare set of trousers in his office because he'd quite literally s**t himself when forced to meet with him.

An illustration: If you ever go to Moscow you should take note of the facade of the building just off Red Square facing on to Manezh place (I forget the name of the building). It's completely different one side from another. The story goes that the architects drafted two plans for the front of the building and submitted them to Stalin so he could choose which one he preferred. What he did was sign both drawings--absent-mindedly one would suppose. And the architects rather than return to Stalin for clarification, to get him to actually make a usable decision just built half the thing according to one plan and half according to another. That's fear. There are thousands of stories like this. I think it gose some way to explaining also the inefficiency of the Soviet system--which Gaddis also points out.