Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman' s hidden stalinist past

"Last month, the biggest German daily, the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung', published an article in which Bogdan Musial, a Polish historian, revealed renowned Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, one of the prophets of postmodernism and author of sociological bestsellers, once worked as an agent for the Stalinist military secret service", notes Andreas Hess, a senior lecturer in sociology. "It should not come as a surprise that Bauman's hidden past is so passionately debated in continental Europe. Despite their adversarial history, Germans and Poles are very critical when revelations come out about the fascist and communist pasts of their intellectuals.The public attitude in continental Europe differs considerably from countries such as Britain and Ireland which were never under the spell of either fascism or Stalinism. Here in Ireland, it is still possible to read the lamentations of an unreconstructed communist like the historian Eric Hobsbawm who celebrated the Stalinist line taken during the Spanish Civil War - and to let him get away with it."

» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » History, » Europe
All available articles from » Andreas Hess

» To the complete press review of Friday, April 13, 2007