Following Khrushchev's revelations of Stalin's less than saintly persona and procedures, the Soviet Union revised its official version of Communist Party history during the twentieth century. I bought a copy of this new edition and immediately turned to the index to learn the latest word on Uncle Joe. I found that he had suffered the worst of all fates: he simply wasn't there. And I thought to myself, Love him or hate him, but how in hell can you tell the story of twentieth-century Russia without him? The keepers of official records had used the primary device of excommunicators, anathematizers, and ostracizers throughout history: there is a fate far worse than death, or the rack, and its name is oblivion - not the acceptable fading of an honored life that passes from general memory as historical records degrade (for nearly all of us must endure this erasure), but the terror of unpersoning, of being present (either in life or immediate memory) but bypassed as though nonexistent.
-Stephen Jay Gould, as excerpted from his essay The Invisible Woman contained in Dinosaur In A Haystack: Reflections on Natural History
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment