And not a lone treasure, I suppose,
Will pass grandchildren and to others fling,
Again a scald will ancient songs compose,
And, as his own, will again them sing.
-Osip Mandelstam, 1914
These lines were written by the great Russian poet who was a contemporary of the author of the book that you now hold in your hands. They were born in the same year-1891, and knew each other quite well. The fate of the book is reflected in these lines with high precision indeed: it went largely unnoticed not only by its contemporaries but by their children and grandchildren as well. However, that sad fact made it no less valuable or relevant in our time. In fact, its relevance only grew higher over the century that passed since its first publication in 1923. Some pages of it read as if they were written today, not a century ago.
It was written by an eyewitness of the greatest calamities of the XX century, a man who lived through both world wars, Russian revolution and civil wars both in Russia (1918-21) and in Spain (1936-39), through the desperate chaos of post-war Germany of early 1920s, the bloody spectacle of Stalin’s purges of 1930s and late 1940s-early 1950s, through Khruschev’s so called thaw (Ehrenburg actually coined that very term attributing it to post-Stalinist USSR), and Khruschev’s overthrow. He was one of the few true eyewitnesses of the century, a rare person who managed to survive it unscathed, despite being in the limelight and even in the crosshairs of multiple adversaries.
The most amazing thing is that in this book, that has now become available to English-speaking readers, most of the atrocities that happened in the XX century were predicted long before they actually happened. Some of them may yet happen in the not very distant future if the warning that was written over a century ago still goes unheeded. As a matter of fact, there are many more means of destruction nowadays than there were at the time of the first publication of the book. However, the author who had no formal education beyond middle school was able to predict such ＂wonderful＂ inventions as long-range missiles and biological weapons even then. As for the destructive propensities of mankind as well as hubris, stupidity and greed-they are as triumphant today as they were a century ago. And that is why it is so important to heed that warning indeed.
博客來
