The Ends of the Infinite

Memo 1 - The Ugly Parts of History

Aleksandr Nudnov, Professor of Literature and, by courtesy, of History, University of Bosk-ir.

I write this memo in response to two pieces penned by my colleagues in the Bosk-ir History Department. The first piece, "The Normative Role of History", by Professor Denis Shumkin, appeared in the Journal of Early Expansion Studies. Denis argues that historians have a role in presenting history in such a way as to induce pride in the nation in the reader. In his words, "the pride that history may bring to the citizen is incomparable to that of any other source. As historians, it is our duty to the nation to ensure that the people understand the glory of our land and people. As such, we ought to emphasize the courageous, good, and strong qualities of our forefathers, and the foresight they had in expanding throughout taiga, steppe, and tundra."

The second, "Countering the Perversion of History" by Professor Vera Gromkova and appearing in the same Journal, argues that historians should take care to avoid highlighting the depraved or flawed qualities of their subjects, for these normalize such perversions and harm our society presently. She also comments that my most recent piece on Stareshan is "vulgar" and "condones a culture of no-strings attached romance." She apparently cannot bring herself to write the word sex.

I do not deny the validity of many of their points. Undoubtedly, reading an inspiring history of the glory of our predecessors inspires one to puff up the chest and to look at the wealth, both culturally and geographically (not to mention geologically), we have received from them. It is also certainly true that works pertaining to the more vicious qualities of these forefathers have inspired copycats; the recent murder cases in Ir-karbat, mimicking the infamous* torture and execution of Ukhodnisl' by Posleshan, suggest that we might take care to make clear that the vicious things are bad, that Posleshan was a power-hungry madman to be learned from but not imitated.

*but probably fabricated; stay tuned for a forthcoming paper on the matter.

But I worry that the suggested views of history, both the patriotically didactic presentation Professor Shumkin suggests and the, for lack of a better term, sanitized presentation Professor Gromkova promotes, fail to carry out the purpose of history as an academic endeavor. Furthermore, I contend that we already skew towards the "Shumkin-Gromkova school" of history, so to speak, as opposed to the "Akunkin" school, as championed by my colleague and mentor, Professor Boris Akunkin of the History and Linguistics departments. In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that I consider myself a part of the Akunkin school, and prefer to present just the facts, as mechanically as possible, leaving the issue of judgment to the reader.

The remainder of this memo will explain why, with all due respect to my colleagues, I believe our favoring of the Shumkin-Gromkova school to be a misstep. That we currently favor this school is undeniable. Anyone who has published a historical work through any university will notice the constant pushes by editors to clean up the books. Cultured readers, we are told, do not want to read at length anything that could be characterized as "graphic."

I believe that we cannot tell the real story of history without noting the gory or sexual parts. Consider the well-known records of the Ranger Vsekan, not only a rare surviving document from the dawn of the reign of Stareshan, but also a good look at the nature of early colonization in the Central Taiga. Vsekan treated the serfs assigned to him quite brutally: he branded one and cut the tongue out of another, leading the latter man to starvation and eventual death. Consider a verse in the sagas which pointed us to the account:

In forest great and river grand, Killed ranger serfs, cowards, weak, For desertion-try a man he'd brand, Companion drowned deep in that dark creek, And on mutiny in distant land, Another serf bled from the mouth, For with dog and knife, Vsekan would cut Tongue from serf, from cheek to cheek.
How are we to present this account without the violence or gore? That Vsekan grounded the disobedient servants and made them do chores, and this immediately led the rest to comply with his orders? This would be more than ridiculous; it would be false. The account of Vsekan isn't the only such case; many of our historical sources are laden with violence. If we drop it all, we will thin out our textbooks by a factor of two at least.

Perhaps, as Shumkin suggests, we should instead provide commentary. We may present a primary or secondary source, say, on the same account of the Ranger Vsekan, but explicitly note that it was bad. I see three obvious downsides to this proposal, but don't mean to indicate that there aren't more.

First, this introduces friction. Suppose a history student wants to write a paper on Vsekan, but when they go to read the sources, they find that every one is interleaved with annotations criticizing Vsekan's cruelty. The student must now work twice as hard to filter out the original account, the actual meat of the matter which they must analyze, from the value judgment, which is just a wrapper on the original. Perhaps, as some of my fellow faculty suggest, the students should work harder anyway. But what about us, the historians? We already work quite slowly on an enormous body of history. If we must also filter out primary accounts from wrappers, our work will undoubtedly grind to a halt. Alternatively, historians might end up with bootleg copies of primary sources with the commentary cut out. I don't think any of us want to conceal the sources we use regularly.
Second, the introduction of commentary on every primary source primes us to think about history in a certain way. A student may read the whole account and make a decision for themself. Perhaps the brave Vsekan acted justly, ensuring order in the ranks of his subordinates in a distant, desolate taiga he aimed to colonize. Or maybe the cruel Vsekan used the situation as a pretext to exercise his latent sadism. This is a matter open to interpretation. But if the "primary" source they read contains the moral decisions of others, it ceases to be a primary source, and it shuts down any potential for innovative thought.
Third, the commentary may render editions of primary sources dated. Social morals change. Maybe in a future where primary sources have commentary, our failure to comment on some action in the sources will mark us as cruel and sadistic. Perhaps Vsekan's failure to even attempt to ease the pain of the serf transforming into a goat will one day be a cruelty on par with his cutting out the tongue of a disobedient. Every generation will need to rewrite the commentaries on the primary sources; historians will become focused on writing the newest edition of the primary sources, more set on the thesis and antithesis than on the synthesis of the sources.
More fundamentally than the issue of presenting the facts, I would note the issue of presenting motives. Humans, though we often act in valiant, great ways, do not always do so. Many times, we act out of wrath, malice, envy, lust, bloodlust, lust for power, gluttony, addiction, mischief. By ignoring the wrathful, malicious, envious, lustful, gluttonous, addicted, or mischievous actions of our forefathers, we make their motives that much more difficult to understand. Consider the following verse, ostensibly composed and whistled aloud by Stareshan about a servant girl, one of his biweekly flings, in Sevurak, and secretly recorded by a monk:
 And then I saw her jet black hair, Long lashes on her dark eyes pass. To feel that skin, both soft and fair, To grip and kiss her tits, her ass.
(For the record, this is not the most vulgar of his poems. Several of his recorded sayings quite graphically describe the positions and motions he fantasizes of in relation to his mistresses.)
This is not the wise, omniscient Stareshan we present to schoolchildren. Many of his actions we explain away by omniscience. Yet, in many ways, Stareshan's behavior can be explained by lust. He had Domata killed, more or less, because she wouldn't put out. I had to edit my book to remove mentions of this to allow it to be published, but, realistically, Domata became comfortable in her role as the wife of an Earl and ceased to believe it her duty to pleasure her lord regularly. Her refusal to have more children factored in, too. Stareshan, a man of great appetites, did not tolerate this. Likely, disagreements on the matter raised tensions, then the two got into an argument when she discovered a mistress of his. Accounts from Beney Harim at the time suggest that a merchant or knight's daughter (bogat, unclear if in reference to a bogatiy, a wealthy man, or a bogatyr, a knight) was quickly married off, to insulate her from the sexual predations of an "invitee", possibly one of Stareshan's men but probably Stareshan himself.
When we write history as though the people of the past do not act with the same base motivations as we do, we limit ourselves in understanding why they acted the way they did. This leaves us with a wholly warped perception of the past, and a failure to understand that we are not monsters for sometimes having an intrusive thought, or for suffering from addiction. Our forefathers have experienced these problems before. Maybe writing more about them would help us speak more openly about our own problems.
I would like to wrap up with the note that the Shumkin-Gromkova school of history dovetails with political conservatism. It presents the people of the past as pacifistic, asexual, wise ascetics who acted with naught but the good of society in their hearts. Such a presentation of the past casts the present as an anomaly, plagued by violence, sex, drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, full of greed and envy. By warping history into a downwards slope, we convince ourselves that we ought to look to the past as a reference for the future, rather than as a history. History becomes prescriptive, not descriptive.
I view history as an apolitical science. To that end, let us not shy away from presenting even the ugly parts of our history.