Such a choice can encourage the most dangerous nationalist tendencies within a society, especially young people, that does not know what hides behind the silence and official lies. When I taught at Harvard University last year, my Chinese students almost completely ignored their recent history.
They reacted with a somewhat “defiant nationalism” to critical observations. They were going “to check” the “accuracy” of historical remarks that did not fit with the history they had been taught at school. How could I be so critical of Mao? It demonstrated my Western bias against a rising Asian giant.
Between the two extremes of the Balkans and China, the relationship between “memory” and “history” knows so many shades of gray. It took France nearly 50 years to openly confront its Vichy past and to recognize that the French state had been guilty of collaboration with the Nazis. The country’s colonial past still remains a painful issue that is far from being confronted in a dispassionate, objective manner. It is as if truth and justice are seen as potential obstacles to peace, stability and progress.
But there is a major difference between the search for historical truth, which is an absolute must for a society at large, and the search for the settling of scores and the punishment of those found and declared guilty. One must know the past, to avoid the risk of repeating it, but also in order to transcend it.
But between a history that paralyzes a nation’s ability to “move on” collectively and an absolute unwillingness to face the past, which can lead to criticism of the present, there is ample room to maneuver. Healthy nations use that room to bury the pain of the past, if not the past itself.
Dominique Moisi is visiting professor of government at Harvard University.
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