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Tony Judt

Tony Judt Books

Historian

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“in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely overseas with the enemies of your founding ideals.”

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Book:Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
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“The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.”

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Author:Tony Judt
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“Про повернення євреїв на Схід ніколи не було й мови: ніхто в Радянському Союзі, Польщі чи деінде не виявляв бодай найменшого інтересу до цього. На Заході на них теж ніхто особливо не чекав, надто якщо вони мали освіту та інтелектуальний фах. Тож, за іронією долі, вони залишилися в Німеччині.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“У Франції нацистам вистачило півтори тисячі своїх людей. Вони були такі впевнені в надійності французької поліції та військових підрозділів, що, окрім адміністративного штату, призначили лишень 6 тисяч осіб німецької цивільної та військової поліції, щоб забезпечувати покору 35-мільйонної країни.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Напевно, найвідомішим обʼєктом глузування був пісенний конкурс «Євробачення» - щорічне шоу, яке вперше показали по телебаченню в 1970 році. Як комерційний продукт, завуальований під прорив нових технологій (тобто одночасну трансляцію в багатьох країнах), шоу до середини 1970-х набуло популярності серед сотень мільйонів глядачів. «Євробачення», у якому другорядні естрадні співаки й артисти-одноденки з усього континенту виконували посередні й неоригінальні композиції, а потім майже завжди поринали у невідомість, з якої і з'явилися на коротку мить, було настільки вражаюче банальним за своїм задумом і втіленням, що навіть не надавалося на пародію.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears "natural" today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric that accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth. We cannot go on living like this. The little crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before, we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come.”

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Book:Ill Fares the Land
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“У 1787 році, вирушивши з Відня на захід до Праги, Моцарт писав, що перетнув східний кордон. Схід і Захід, Азія і Європа завжди були розділені у свідомості щонайменше так само як і земля — кордонами.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Srebrenica was officially ‘protected’ not just by UN mandate but by a 400-strong peacekeeping contingent of armed Dutch soldiers. But when Mladić’s men arrived the Dutch battalion laid down its arms and offered no resistance whatsoever as Serbian troops combed the Muslim community, systematically separating men and boys from the rest. The next day, after Mladić had given his ‘word of honor as an officer’ that the men would not be harmed, his soldiers marched the Muslim males, including boys as young as thirteen, out into the fields around Srebrenica. In the course of the next four days nearly all of them—7,400—were killed. The Dutch soldiers returned safely home to Holland.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Far from addressing the Soviet nationalities question, the Afghan adventure had, as was by now all too clear, exacerbated it. If the USSR faced an intractable set of national minorities, this was in part a problem of its own making: it was Lenin and his successors, after all, who invented the various subject ‘nations’ to whom they duly assigned regions and republics. In an echo of imperial practices elsewhere, Moscow had encouraged the emergence—in places where nationality and nationhood were unheard of fifty years earlier—of institutions and intelligentsias grouped around a national urban center or ‘capital.”

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Book:Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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“Although the United States lost a quarter of a million men and women, civilians and soldiers, in World War II, that's considerably less than the Russians lost in soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad alone. It's important to convey to countries and to people and to generations who have no experience of the 20th century as it was lived in Europe just how catastrophic it was.”

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Author:Tony Judt
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