Library Section

A recent programme of BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4 was dedicated to the life and works of the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm. One of the striking things to emerge from Simon Schama’s extended interview with Hobsbawm was that the interviewee’s commitment to Marxism had not diminished or even been fundamentally re-evaluated in the light of the final collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European empire in 1985-1991. Hobsbawm even re-affirmed his commitment to Marxism, oblivious or indifferent to the fact that Marxist regimes had slaughtered tens of millions of people in trying to build some global socialist utopia.