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Edward Hallett 'Ted' CarrCBEFBA (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was an English historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for his 14-volume history of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1929, for his writings on international relations, particularly The Twenty Years' Crisis, and for his book What Is History? in which he laid out historiographical principles rejecting traditional historical methods and practices.

Educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, Carr began his career as a diplomat in 1916; three years later, he participated at the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the British delegation. Becoming increasingly preoccupied with the study of international relations and of the Soviet Union, he resigned from the Foreign Office in 1936 to begin an academic career. From 1941 to 1946, Carr worked as an assistant editor at The Times, where he was noted for his leaders (editorials) urging a socialist system and an Anglo-Soviet alliance as the basis of a post-war order. Afterwards, Carr worked on a massive 14-volume work on Soviet history entitled A History of Soviet Russia, a project that he was still engaged on at the time of his death in 1982. In 1961, he delivered the G. M. Trevelyan lectures at the University of Cambridge that became the basis of his book, What Is History? Moving increasingly towards the left throughout his career, Carr saw his role as the theorist who would work out the basis of a new international order.

Early life[edit]

Carr was born in London to a middle-class family, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a First Class Degree in Classics in 1916.^[1][2] Carr's family had originated in northern England, and the first mention of his ancestors was a George Carr who served as the Sheriff of Newcastle in 1450.^[2] Carr's parents were Francis Parker and Jesse (née Hallet) Carr.^[2] They were initially Conservatives, but went over to supporting the Liberals in 1903 over the free trade issue.^[2] When Joseph Chamberlain proclaimed his opposition to free trade and announced in favour of Imperial Preference, Carr's father, for whom all tariffs were abhorrent, changed his political loyalties.^[2]

Carr described the atmosphere at the Merchant Taylors School: '95% of my school fellows came from orthodox Conservative homes, and regarded Lloyd George as an incarnation of the devil. We Liberals were a tiny despised minority.'^[3] From his parents, Carr inherited a strong belief in progress as an unstoppable force in world affairs, and throughout his life a recurring theme in Carr's thinking was that the world was progressively becoming a better place.^[4] In 1911, Carr won the Craven Scholarship to attend Trinity College at Cambridge.^[2] At Cambridge, Carr was much impressed by hearing one of his professors lecture on how the Greco-Persian Wars influenced Herodotus in the writing of the Histories.^[5] Carr found this to be a great discovery—the subjectivity of the historian's craft. This discovery was later to influence his 1961 book What Is History?.^[5]

Diplomatic career[edit]

Like many of his generation, Carr found World War I to be a shattering experience as it destroyed the world he knew before 1914.^[4] He joined the British Foreign Office in 1916, resigning in 1936.^[1] Carr was excused from military service for medical reasons.^[4] Carr was at first assigned to the Contraband Department of the Foreign Office, which sought to enforce the blockade on Germany, and then in 1917 was assigned to the Northern Department, which amongst other areas dealt with relations with Russia.^[2] As a diplomat, Carr was later praised by the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax as someone who had 'distinguished himself not only by sound learning and political understanding, but also in administrative ability'.^[6]

At first, Carr knew nothing about the Bolsheviks. He later recalled of having some 'vague impression of the revolutionary views of Lenin and Trotsky' but of knowing nothing of Marxism.^[7] By 1919, Carr had become convinced that the Bolsheviks were destined to win the Russian Civil War, and approved of the Prime Minister David Lloyd George's opposition to the anti-Bolshevik ideas of the War Secretary Winston Churchill on the grounds of realpolitik.^[7] He later wrote that in the spring of 1919 he 'was disappointed when he [Lloyd George] gave way (in part) on the Russian question in order to buy French consent to concessions to Germany'^[8] In 1919, Carr was part of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and was involved in the drafting of parts of the Treaty of Versailles relating to the League of Nations.^[1] During the conference, Carr was much offended at the Allied, especially French, treatment of the Germans, writing that the German delegation at the peace conference were 'cheated over the 'Fourteen Points', and subjected to every petty humiliation'.^[7] Beside working on the sections of the Versailles treaty relating to the League of Nations, Carr was also involved in working out the borders between Germany and Poland. Initially, Carr favoured Poland, urging in a memo in February 1919 that Britain recognise Poland at once, and that the German city of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) be ceded to Poland.^[9] In March 1919, Carr fought against the idea of a Minorities Treaty for Poland, arguing that the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Poland would be best guaranteed by not involving the international community in Polish internal affairs.^[10] By the spring of 1919, however, Carr's relations with the Polish delegation had declined to a state of mutual hostility.^[11] Carr's tendency to favour the claims of the Germans at the expense of the Poles led Adam Zamoyski to note that Carr 'held views of the most extraordinary racial arrogance on all of the nations of Eastern Europe'.^[12] Carr's biographer, Jonathan Haslam, wrote that Carr grew up in a place where German culture was deeply appreciated, which in turn always coloured his views towards Germany throughout his life.^[13] As a result, Carr supported the territorial claims of the Reich against Poland. In a letter written in 1954 to his friend, Isaac Deutscher, Carr described his attitude to Poland at the time: 'The picture of Poland that was universal in Eastern Europe right down to 1925 was of a strong and potentially predatory power'.^[11]

After the peace conference, Carr was stationed at the British Embassy in Paris until 1921, and in 1920 was awarded a CBE.^[2] At first, Carr had great faith in the League, which he believed would prevent both another world war and ensure a better post-war world.^[4] In the 1920s, Carr was assigned to the branch of the British Foreign Office that dealt with the League of Nations before being sent to the British Embassy in Riga, Latvia, where he served as Second Secretary between 1925 and 1929.^[1] In 1925, Carr married Anne Ward Howe, by whom he had one son.^[14] During his time in Riga (which at that time possessed a substantial Russian émigré community), Carr became increasingly fascinated with Russian literature and culture and wrote several works on various aspects of Russian life.^[1] Carr learnt Russian during his time in Riga to read Russian writers in the original.^[15] In 1927, Carr paid his first visit to Moscow.^[2] Carr was later to write that reading Alexander Herzen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the work of other 19th-century Russian intellectuals caused him to re-think his liberal views.^[16]:80 Starting in 1929, Carr began to review books relating to all things Russian and Soviet and to international relations in several British literary journals and later towards the end of his life, the London Review of Books.^[17] In particular, Carr emerged as the Times Literary Supplement's Soviet expert in the early 1930s, a position he still held at the time of his death in 1982.^[18] Because of his status as a diplomat (until 1936), most of Carr's reviews in the period 1929–36 were published either anonymously or under the pseudonym 'John Hallett'.^[17] In the summer of 1929, Carr began work on a biography of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, during which the course of researching Dostoevsky's life, Carr befriended Prince D. S. Mirsky, a Russian émigré scholar living at that time in Britain.^[19] Beside studies on international relations, Carr's writings in the 1930s included biographies of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1931), Karl Marx (1934), and Mikhail Bakunin (1937). An early sign of Carr's increasing admiration of the Soviet Union was a 1929 review of Baron Pyotr Wrangel's memoirs.^[20]

In an article entitled 'Age of Reason' published in the Spectator on 26 April 1930, Carr attacked what he regarded as the prevailing culture of pessimism within the West, which he blamed on the French writer Marcel Proust.^[21] In the early 1930s, Carr found the Great Depression to be almost as profoundly shocking as the First World War.^[22] Further increasing Carr's interest in a replacement ideology for liberalism was his reaction to hearing the debates in January 1931 at the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and especially the speeches on the merits of free trade between the Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vojislav Marinkovich and the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson.^[6] It was at this time that Carr started to admire the Soviet Union.^[22] In a 1932 book review of Lancelot Lawton's Economic History of Soviet Russia, Carr dismissed Lawton's claim that the Soviet economy was a failure, and praised the British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb's extremely favourable assessment of the Soviet economy.^[23]

Carr's early political outlook was anti-Marxist and liberal.^[24] In his 1934 biography of Karl Marx, Carr presented his subject as highly intelligent man and a gifted writer, but one whose talents were devoted entirely for destruction.^[25] Carr argued that Marx's sole and only motivation was a mindless class hatred.^[25] Carr labelled dialectical materialism gibberish, and the labour theory of value doctrinal and derivative.^[25] He praised Marx for emphasising the importance of the collective over the individual.^[26] In view of his later conversion to a sort of quasi-Marxism, Carr was to find the passages in Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism criticising Marx to be highly embarrassing, and refused to allow the book to be republished.^[27] Carr was to later call his Marx biography his worst book, and complained that he had written it only because his publisher had made a Marx biography the precondition of publishing the biography of Mikhail Bakunin that he was writing.^[28] In his books such as The Romantic Exiles and Dostoevsky, Carr was noted for his highly ironical treatment of his subjects, implying that their lives were of interest but not of great importance.^[29] In the mid-1930s, Carr was especially preoccupied with the life and ideas of Bakunin.^[30] During this period, Carr started writing a novel about the visit of a Bakunin-type Russian radical to Victorian Britain who proceeded to expose all of Carr regarded as the pretensions and hypocrisies of British bourgeois society.^[30] The novel was never finished or published.^[30]

As a diplomat in the 1930s, Carr took the view that great division of the world into rival trading blocs caused by the American Smoot Hawley Act of 1930 was the principal cause of German belligerence in foreign policy, as Germany was now unable to export finished goods or import raw materials cheaply. In Carr's opinion, if Germany could be given its own economic zone to dominate in Eastern Europe comparable to the British Imperial preference economic zone, the US dollar zone in the Americas, the French gold bloc zone, and the Japanese economic zone, then the peace of the world could be assured.^[31] In an essay published in February 1933 in the Fortnightly Review, Carr blamed what he regarded as a punitive Versailles treaty for the recent accession to power of Adolf Hitler.^[31] Carr's views on appeasement caused much tension with his superior, the Permanent Undersecretary Sir Robert Vansittart, and played a role in Carr's resignation from the Foreign Office later in 1936.^[32] In an article entitled 'An English Nationalist Abroad' published in May 1936 in the Spectator, Carr wrote 'The methods of the Tudor sovereigns, when they were making the English nation, invite many comparisons with those of the Nazi regime in Germany'.^[33] In this way, Carr argued that it was hypocritical for people in Britain to criticise the Nazi regime's human rights record.^[33] Because of Carr's strong antagonism to the Treaty of Versailles, which he viewed as unjust to Germany, Carr was very supportive of the Nazi regime's efforts to destroy Versailles through moves such as the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936.^[34] Carr later wrote of his views in the 1930s that 'No doubt, I was very blind'.^[34]

International relations scholar[edit]

In 1936, Carr became the Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and is particularly known for his contribution on international relations theory. Carr's last words of advice as a diplomat was a memo urging that Britain accept the Balkans as an exclusive zone of influence for Germany.^[22] Additionally in articles published in the Christian Science Monitor on 2 December 1936 and in the January 1937 edition of Fortnightly Review, Carr argued that the Soviet Union and France were not working for collective security, but rather 'a division of the Great Powers into two armored camps', supported non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War, and asserted that King Leopold III of Belgium had made a major step towards peace with his declaration of neutrality of 14 October 1936.^[35] Two major intellectual influences on Carr in the mid-1930s were Karl Mannheim's 1936 book Ideology and Utopia, and the work of Reinhold Niebuhr on the need to combine morality with realism.^[36]

Carr's appointment as the Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics caused a stir when he started to use his position to criticise the League of Nations, a viewpoint which caused much tension with his benefactor, Lord Davies, who was a strong supporter of the League.^[37] Lord Davies had established the Wilson Chair in 1924 with the intention of increasing public support for his beloved League, which helps to explain his chagrin at Carr's anti-League lectures.^[37] In his first lecture on 14 October 1936 Carr stated the League was ineffective.^[38]

In 1937, Carr visited the Soviet Union for a second time, and was impressed by what he saw.^[39]:60 During his visit to the Soviet Union, Carr may have inadvertently caused the death of his friend, Prince D. S. Mirsky.^[40] Carr stumbled into Prince Mirsky on the streets of Leningrad (modern Saint Petersburg, Russia), and despite Prince Mirsky's best efforts to pretend not to know him, Carr persuaded his old friend to have lunch with him.^[40] Since this was at the height of the Yezhovshchina, and any Soviet citizen who had any unauthorised contact with a foreigner was likely to be regarded as a spy, the NKVD arrested Prince Mirsky as a British spy;^[40] he died two years later in a Gulag camp near Magadan.[1] As part of the same trip that took Carr to the Soviet Union in 1937 was a visit to Germany. In a speech given on 12 October 1937 at the Chatham House summarising his impressions of those two countries, Carr reported that Germany was 'almost a free country'.^[41] Unaware apparently of the fate of his friend, Carr spoke in his speech of the 'strange behaviour' of his old friend, Prince Mirsky, who had at first gone to great lengths to try to pretend that he did not know Carr during their accidental meeting in Leningrad.^[41]

In the 1930s, Carr was a leading supporter of appeasement.^[42] In his writings on international affairs in British newspapers, Carr criticised the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš for clinging to the alliance with France, rather than accepting that it was his country's destiny to be in the German sphere of influence.^[35] At the same time, Carr strongly praised the Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck for his balancing act between France, Germany, and the Soviet Union.^[35] In the late 1930s, Carr started to become even more sympathetic toward the Soviet Union, as Carr was much impressed by the achievements of the Five-Year Plans, which stood in marked contrast to the failures of capitalism in the Great Depression.^[16]

His famous work The Twenty Years' Crisis was published in July 1939, which dealt with the subject of international relations between 1919 and 1939. In that book, Carr defended appeasement under the grounds that it was the only realistic policy option.^[43] At the time the book was published in the summer of 1939, Neville Chamberlain had adopted his 'containment' policy towards Germany, leading Carr to later ruefully comment that his book was dated even before it was published. In the spring and summer of 1939, Carr was very dubious about Chamberlain's 'guarantee' of Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939.^[44]

In The Twenty Year's Crisis, Carr divided thinkers on international relations into two schools, which he labelled the realists and the utopians.^[25] Reflecting his own disillusion with the League of Nations,^[45] Carr attacked as 'utopians' those like Norman Angell who believed that a new and better international structure could be built around the League. In Carr's opinion, the entire international order constructed at Versailles was flawed and the League was a hopeless dream that could never do anything practical.^[46] In the same book, Carr described the opposition of realism and utopianism in international relations as a dialectic progress.^[47] Carr argued that in realism there is no moral dimension and that what is successful is right and that what is unsuccessful is wrong.^[43]

Carr contended that international relations was an incessant struggle between the economically privileged 'have' powers and the economically disadvantaged 'have not' powers.^[43] In this economic understanding of international relations, 'have' powers like the United States, Britain and France were inclined to avoid war because of their contented status whereas 'have not' powers like Germany, Italy and Japan were inclined towards war as they had nothing to lose.^[48] Carr defended the Munich Agreement as the overdue recognition of changes in the balance of power.^[43] In The Twenty Years' Crisis, Carr was highly critical of Winston Churchill, whom Carr described as a mere opportunist interested only in power for himself.^[43]

Carr immediately followed up The Twenty Year's Crisis with Britain : A Study of Foreign Policy From The Versailles Treaty to the Outbreak of War, a study of British foreign policy in the inter-war period that featured a preface by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. Carr ended his support for appeasement, which had so vociferously expressed in The Twenty Year's Crisis in the late summer of 1939 with a favourable review of a book containing a collection of Churchill's speeches from 1936 to 1938, which Carr wrote were 'justifiably' alarmist about Germany.^[49] After 1939, Carr largely abandoned writing about international relations in favour of contemporary events and Soviet history. Carr was to write only three more books about international relations after 1939, namely The Future of Nations; Independence Or Interdependence? (1941), German-Soviet Relations Between The Two World Wars, 1919–1939 (1951) and International Relations Between The Two World Wars, 1919–1939 (1955). After the outbreak of World War II, Carr stated that he was somewhat mistaken in his prewar views on Nazi Germany.^[50] In the 1946 revised edition of The Twenty Years' Crisis, Carr was more hostile in his appraisal of German foreign policy then he had been in the first edition in 1939.

Some of the major themes of Carr's writings were change and the relationship between ideational and material forces in society.^[14] He saw a major theme of history was the growth of reason as a social force.^[14] He argued that all major social changes had been caused by revolutions or wars, both of which Carr regarded as necessary but unpleasant means of accomplishing social change.^[14]

World War II[edit]

During World War II, Carr's political views took a sharp turn towards the left.^[47] Carr spent the Phoney War working as a clerk with the propaganda department of the Foreign Office.^[51] As Carr did not believe Britain could defeat Germany, the declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939 left him highly depressed.^[52]

In March 1940, Carr resigned from the Foreign Office to serve as the writer of leaders (editorials) for The Times.^[53] In his second leader published on 21 June 1940 entitled 'The German Dream', Carr wrote that Hitler was offering a 'Europe united by conquest'.^[53] In a leader during the summer of 1940, Carr supported the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States.^[54]

Carr served as the assistant editor of The Times from 1941 to 1946, during which time he was well known for the pro-Soviet attitudes that he expressed in his leaders (editorials) he wrote.^[55] After June 1941, Carr' s already strong admiration for the Soviet Union was much increased by the Soviet Union's role in defeating Germany.^[16]

In a leader of 5 December 1940 entitled 'The Two Scourges', Carr wrote that only by removing the 'scourge' of unemployment could one also remove the 'scourge' of war.^[56] Such was the popularity of 'The Two Scourges' that it was published as a pamphlet in December 1940, during which in its first print run of 10,000 it completely sold out.^[57] Carr's left-wing leaders caused some tension with the editor of the Times, Geoffrey Dawson, who felt that Carr was taking the Times in a too radical direction, which led Carr for a time being restricted only to writing on foreign policy.^[58] After Dawson's ouster in May 1941 and his replacement with Robert M'Gowan Barrington-Ward, Carr was given a free rein to write on whatever he wished. In turn, Barrington-Ward was to find many of Carr's leaders on foreign affairs to be too radical for his liking.^[59]

Carr's leaders were noted for their advocacy of a socialist European economy under the control of an international planning board, and for his support for the idea of an Anglo-Soviet alliance as the basis of the post-war international order.^[22] Unlike many of his contemporaries in war-time Britain, Carr was against a Carthaginian peace with Germany, and argued for a post-war reconstruction of Germany along socialist lines.^[14][60] On his leaders on foreign affairs, Carr was very consistent in arguing after 1941 that once the war ended, it was the fate of Eastern Europe to come into the Soviet sphere of influence, and claimed that any effort to the contrary was both vain and immoral.^[61]

Between 1942 and 1945, Carr was the Chairman of a study group at the Royal Institute of International Affairs concerned with Anglo-Soviet relations.^[62] Carr's study group concluded that Stalin had largely abandoned Communist ideology in favour of Russian nationalism, that the Soviet economy would provide a higher standard of living in the Soviet Union after the war, and it was both possible and desirable for Britain to reach a friendly understanding with the Soviets once the war had ended.^[63] In 1942, Carr published Conditions of Peace followed by Nationalism and After in 1945, in which he outlined his ideas about the post-war world should look like.^[1] In his books, and his Times leaders, Carr urged for the post-war world, the creation of a socialist European federation anchored by an Anglo-German partnership that would be aligned with the Soviet Union against the United States.^[64]

In his 1942 book Conditions of Peace, Carr argued that it was a flawed economic system that had caused World War II and that the only way of preventing another world war was for the Western powers to adopt socialism.^[14] One of the main sources for ideas in Conditions of Peace was the 1940 book Dynamics of War and Revolution by the American Lawrence Dennis^[65] In a review of Conditions of Peace, the British writer Rebecca West criticised Carr for using Dennis as a source, commenting 'It is as odd for a serious English writer to quote Sir Oswald Mosley'^[66] In a speech on 2 June 1942 in the House of Lords, Viscount Elibank attacked Carr as an 'active danger' for his views in Conditions of Peace about a magnanimous peace with Germany and for suggesting that Britain turn over all of her colonies to an international commission after the war.^[60]

The next month, Carr's relations with the Polish government were further worsted by the storm caused by the discovery of the Katyn Forest massacre committed by the NKVD in 1940. In a leader entitled 'Russia and Poland' on 28 April 1943, Carr blasted the Polish government for accusing the Soviets of committing the Katyn Forest massacre, and for asking the Red Cross to investigate.^[67]

Lord Davies, who had been extremely unhappy with Carr almost from the moment that Carr had assumed the Wilson Chair in 1936, launched a major campaign in 1943 to have Carr fired, being particularly upset that through Carr had not taught since 1939, he was still drawing his professor's salary^[68] Lord Davies's efforts to have Carr fired failed when the majority of the Aberystwyth staff supported by the powerful Welsh political fixer Thomas Jones sided with Carr.^[69]

In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens, Greece between the Greek Communist front organisation ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times leader sided with the Greek Communists, leading to Winston Churchill to condemn him in a speech to the House of Commons.^[64] Carr claimed that the Greek EAM was the 'largest organised party or group of parties in Greece' that 'appeared to exercise almost unchallengeable authority' and called for Britain to recognise the EAM as the legal Greek government.^[70]

In contrast to his support for E.A.M/E.L.A.S, Carr was strongly critical of the legitimate Polish government in exile and its Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resistance organisation.^[70] In his leaders of 1944 on Poland, Carr urged that Britain break diplomatic relations with the London government and recognise the Soviet sponsored Lublin government as the lawful government of Poland.^[70]

In a May 1945 leader, Carr blasted those who felt that an Anglo-American 'special relationship' would be the principal bulwark of peace.^[71] As a result of Carr's leaders, the Times became popularly known during World War II as the three pence Daily Worker (the price of the Daily Worker was one penny).^[22] Commenting on Carr's pro-Soviet leaders, the British writer George Orwell wrote in 1942 that:

'all the appeasers, e.g. Professor E. H. Carr, have switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin'.^[17]

Reflecting his disgust with Carr's leaders in the Times, the British civil servant Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote in his diary: 'I hope someone will tie Barrington-Ward and Ted Carr together and throw them into the Thames.'^[64]

During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, which were published as a book in 1946, Carr argued that 'The trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable', that Marxism was the by far the most successful type of totalitarianism as proved by Soviet industrial growth and the Red Army's role in defeating Germany and that only the 'blind and incurable ignored these trends'.^[72] During the same lectures, Carr called democracy in the Western world a sham, which permitted a capitalist ruling class to exploit the majority, and praised the Soviet Union as offering real democracy.^[64] One of Carr's leading associates, the British historian R. W. Davies, was later to write that Carr's view of the Soviet Union as expressed in The Soviet Impact on the Western World was a rather glossy and idealised picture.^[64]

Cold War[edit]

In 1946, Carr started living with Joyce Marion Stock Forde, who was to remain his common law wife until 1964.^[14] In 1947, Carr was forced to resign from his position at Aberystwyth.^[73] In the late 1940s, Carr started to become increasingly influenced by Marxism.^[16] His name was on Orwell's list, a list of people which George Orwell prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered these people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.^[74] In 1948, Carr condemned the British acceptance of an American loan in 1946 as marking the effective end of British independence.^[75] Carr went on to write that the best course for Britain was to seek neutrality in the Cold War and that 'peace at any price must be the foundation of British policy'.^[76] Carr took a great deal of hope from the Soviet–Yugoslav split of 1948.^[77]

In May–June 1951, Carr delivered a series of speeches on British radio entitled The New Society, that advocated a commitment to mass democracy, egalitarian democracy, and 'public control and planning' of the economy.^[78] Carr was a reclusive man who few knew well, but his circle of close friends included Isaac Deutscher, A. J. P. Taylor, Harold Laski and Karl Mannheim.^[79] Carr was especially close to Deutscher.^[16]:78–79 In the early 1950s, when Carr sat on the editorial board of the Chatham House, he attempted to block the publication of the manuscript that eventually became The Origins of the Communist Autocracy by Leonard Schapiro on the grounds that the subject of repression in the Soviet Union was not a serious topic for a historian.^[80] As interest in the subject in Communism grew, Carr largely abandoned international relations as a field of study.^[81] In 1956, Carr did not comment on the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising while at the same time condemning the Suez War.^[82]

In 1966, Carr left Forde and married the historian Betty Behrens.^[14] That same year, Carr wrote in an essay that in India where 'liberalism is professed and to some extent practised, millions of people would die without American charity. In China, where liberalism is rejected, people somehow get fed. Which is the more cruel and oppressive regime?'^[83] One of Carr's critics, the British historian Robert Conquest, commented that Carr did not appear to be familiar with recent Chinese history, because, judging from that remark, Carr seemed to be ignorant of the millions of Chinese who had starved to death during the Great Leap Forward.^[83] In 1961, Carr published an anonymous and very favourable review of his friend A. J. P. Taylor's contentious book The Origins of the Second World War, which caused much controversy. In the late 1960s, Carr was one of the few British professors to be supportive of the New Left student protestors, who, he hoped, might bring about a socialist revolution in Britain.^[84]

Carr exercised wide influence in the field of Soviet studies and international relations. The extent of Carr's influence could be seen in the 1974 festschrift in his honour, entitled Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr ed. Chimen Abramsky and Beryl Williams. The contributors included Sir Isaiah Berlin, Arthur Lehning, G. A. Cohen, Monica Partridge, Beryl Williams, Eleonore Breuning, D. C. Watt, Mary Holdsworth, Roger Morgan, Alec Nove, John Erickson, Michael Kaser, R. W. Davies, Moshe Lewin, Maurice Dobb, and Lionel Kochan.^[85]

In a 1978 interview in The New Left Review, Carr called Western economies 'crazy' and doomed in the long run.^[86] In a 1980 letter to his friend Tamara Deutscher, Carr wrote that he felt that the government of Margaret Thatcher had forced 'the forces of Socialism' in Britain into a 'full retreat'.^[87] In the same letter to Deutscher, Carr wrote that 'Socialism cannot be obtained through reformism, i.e. through the machinery of bourgeois democracy'.^[88] Carr went on to decry disunity on the Left.^[89] Though Carr regarded the abandonment of Maoism in China in the late 1970s as a regressive development, he saw opportunities, and wrote to his stockbroker in 1978: 'a lot of people, as well as the Japanese, are going to benefit from the opening up of trade with China. Have you any ideas?'.^[90]

Controversy surrounds the question of whether Carr was an anti-Semite.^[13] Carr's critics point to his being champion of two anti-Semitic dictators, Hitler and Stalin, in succession, his opposition to Israel, and to most of Carr's opponents, such as Sir Geoffrey Elton, Leonard Schapiro, Sir Karl Popper, Bertram Wolfe, Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam, Leopold Labedz, Sir Isaiah Berlin, and Walter Laqueur, being Jewish. Carr's defenders, such as Jonathan Haslam, have argued against the charge of anti-Semitism, noting that Carr had many Jewish friends (including such erstwhile intellectual sparring partners as Berlin and Namier), that his last wife Betty Behrens was Jewish and that his support for Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the Soviet Union in the 1940s–50s was in spite rather than because of anti-Semitism in those states.^[13]

History of Soviet Russia[edit]

After the war, Carr was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and then Trinity College, where he published most of his popular works—A History of Soviet Russia and What Is History? He remained at Trinity College until his death. He was a tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford from 1953 to 1955, when he became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the 1950s, Carr was well known as an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union.^[5] Carr's writings include his History of Soviet Russia (14 vol., 1950–78). Towards the end of 1944 Carr decided to write a complete history of Soviet Russia from 1917 comprising all aspects of social, political and economic history to explain how the Soviet Union withstood the German invasion.^[91] The resulting work was his 14-volume History of Soviet Russia, which took the story up to 1929.^[92] Carr's friend and close associate, the British historian R. W. Davies, was to write that Carr belonged to the anti-Cold-War school of history, which regarded the Soviet Union as the major progressive force in the world, and the Cold War as a case of American aggression against the Soviet Union.^[39]:59

Like many others, Carr argued that the emergence of Russia from a backward peasant economy to a leading industrial power was the most important event of the 20th century.^[93] The first part of a History of Soviet Russia comprised three volumes entitled The Bolshevik Revolution, published in 1950, 1952, and 1953, and traced Soviet history from 1917 to 1922.^[94] The second part was intended to comprise three volumes called The Struggle for Power, which was intended to cover 1922–28, but Carr instead decided to publish a single volume labelled The Interregnum that covered the events of 1923–24, and another four volumes entitled Socialism in One Country, which took the story up to 1926.^[95] The final volumes in the series were entitled The Foundations of the Planned Economy, which covered the years until 1929. Originally, Carr had planned to take the series up to Operation Barbarossa in 1941 and the Soviet victory of 1945, but his death in 1982 put an end to the project. The volumes of Carr's History of Soviet Russia were received with mixed reviews. It was 'described by supporters as 'Olympian' and 'monumental' and by enemies as a subtle apologia for Stalin'^[96]

A book that was not part of the History of Soviet Russia series, though closely related due to common research in the same archives, was Carr's 1951 book German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939. In it, Carr blamed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.^[97] In 1955, a major scandal that damaged Carr's reputation as a historian of the Soviet Union occurred when he wrote the introduction to Notes for a Journal, the supposed memoir of the former Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov that was shortly thereafter exposed as a KGB forgery.^[98][99] Carr's last book, 1982's The Twilight of the Comintern, though not officially a part of the History of Soviet Russia series, was regarded by Carr as the completion of the series. In this book, Carr examined the response of the Comintern to fascism in 1930–1935. Another related book that Carr was unable to complete before his death, and was published posthumously in 1984, was The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War.^[100]

What Is History?[edit]

Carr is also famous today for his work of historiography, What Is History? (1961), a book based upon his series of G. M. Trevelyan lectures, delivered at the University of Cambridge between January–March 1961. In this work, Carr argued that he was presenting a middle-of-the-road position between the empirical view of history and R. G. Collingwood's idealism.^[101] Carr rejected the empirical view of the historian's work being an accretion of 'facts' that he or she has at their disposal as nonsense.^[101] Carr divided facts into two categories, 'facts of the past', that is historical information that historians deem unimportant, and 'historical facts', information that the historians have decided is important.^[101][102] Carr contended that historians quite arbitrarily determine which of the 'facts of the past' to turn into 'historical facts' according to their own biases and agendas.^[101][103]

Contribution to the theory of international relations[edit]

Carr contributed to the foundation of what is now known as classical realism in International relations theory.^{[citation needed]} Through study of history (work of Thucydides and Machiavelli) and reflection and deep epistemological disagreement with Idealism, the dominant International relations theory between the World Wars, he came up with realism.

Selected works[edit]

• Dostoevsky (1821–1881): A New Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
• The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth Century Portrait Gallery, London: Victor Gollancz, 1933.
• Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism, London: Dent, 1934.
• Michael Bakunin, London: Macmillan, 1937.
• International Relations Since the Peace Treaties, London: Macmillan, 1937.
• The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: an Introduction to the Study of International Relations, London: Macmillan, 1939, revised edition, 1946.
• Britain: A Study of Foreign Policy from the Versailles Treaty to the Outbreak of War, London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1939.
• Conditions of Peace, London: Macmillan, 1942.
• Nationalism and After, London: Macmillan, 1945.
• The Soviet Impact on the Western World, 1946.
• A History of Soviet Russia, London: Macmillan, 1950–1978. Collection of 14 volumes: The Bolshevik Revolution (3 volumes), The Interregnum (1 volume), Socialism in One Country (4 volumes), and The Foundations of a Planned Economy (6 volumes).
• The New Society, London: Macmillan, 1951.
• German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939, London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1952.
• What Is History?, London: Macmillan, 1961; revised edition ed. R.W. Davies, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
• 1917 Before and After, London: Macmillan, 1969; American edition: The October Revolution Before and After, New York: Knopf, 1969.
• The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917–1929), London: Macmillan, 1979.
• From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
• The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935, London: Macmillan, 1982.
• The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War, New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Notes[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdefHughes-Warrington, p. 24
2. ^ ^abcdefghiDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 475
3. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 476
4. ^ ^abcdHaslam, 'We Need a Faith', p. 36
5. ^ ^abcHaslam, 'We Need a Faith', p. 39
6. ^ ^abDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 481
7. ^ ^abcDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 477
8. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 30
9. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 28
10. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 27
11. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 29
12. ^Zamoyski, Adam The Polish Way, London: John Murray, 1989 p. 335
13. ^ ^abcHaslam, 'E.H. Carr's Search for Meaning' pp. 21–35 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, Palgrave: London, 2000 p. 27
14. ^ ^abcdefghCobb, Adam 'Carr, E.H.' pp. 180–181 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Volume 1, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999 p. 180
15. ^Haslam, 'We Need a Faith', pp. 36–37
16. ^ ^abcdeDeutscher, Tamara (January – February 1983). 'E. H. Carr—A Personal Memoir'. New Left Review. I (137): 78–86.
17. ^ ^abcCollini, Stefan (5 March 2008). 'E. H. Carr: historian of the future'. Times. London. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
18. ^Mount, Ferdinand Communism A TLS Companion, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 321
19. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 41-42
20. ^Davies, R.W. 'Carr's Changing Views of the Soviet Union' pp. 91–108 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 95
21. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 47
22. ^ ^abcdeHaslam, 'We Need a Faith', p. 37
23. ^Davies, R.W. 'Carr's Changing Views of the Soviet Union' pp. 91–108 from E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 98
24. ^Laqueur, pp. 112–113
25. ^ ^abcdLaqueur, p. 113
26. ^Halliday, Fred, 'Reason and Romance: The Place of Revolution in the Works of E.H. Carr', pp. 258–279 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 262
27. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', pp. 478–479
28. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 478
29. ^Laqueur, p. 112
30. ^ ^abcDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 479
31. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 59
32. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 59–60
33. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 79
34. ^ ^abDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 483
35. ^ ^abcDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 484
36. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', pp. 481–482
37. ^ ^abPorter, pp. 50–51
38. ^Porter, p. 51
39. ^ ^abDavies, R.W. (May – June 1984). ''Drop the Glass Industry': collaborating with E.H. Carr'. New Left Review. I (145): 56–70.
40. ^ ^abcHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 76
41. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 78
42. ^Laqueur, pp. 113–114
43. ^ ^abcdeLaqueur, p. 114
44. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 79–80
45. ^'E.H Carr and The Failure of the League of Nations'. E-International Relations.
46. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 68–69
47. ^ ^abLaqueur, p. 115
48. ^Jones, Charles E.H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 p. 29
49. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 80
50. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', pp. 48–484
51. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 80–82
52. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 81
53. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 84
54. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 93
55. ^Beloff, Max 'The Dangers of Prophecy' pp. 8–10 from History Today, Volume 42, Issue # 9, September 1992 p. 9
56. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 487
57. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 90
58. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 90–91
59. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, pp. 91–93
60. ^ ^abHaslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 100
61. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 488
62. ^Beloff, Max 'The Dangers of Prophecy' pp. 8–10 from History Today, Volume 42, Issue # 9, September 1992 p. 8
63. ^Beloff, Max 'The Dangers of Prophecy' pp. 8–10 from History Today, Volume 42, Issue # 9, September 1992 pp. 9–10
64. ^ ^abcdeDavies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 489
65. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 97
66. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 99
67. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 104
68. ^Porter, pp. 57–58
69. ^Porter, p. 60
70. ^ ^abcConquest, Robert 'Agit-Prof' pp. 32–38 from The New Republic, Volume 424, Issue # 4, 1 November 1999 p. 33
71. ^Jones, Charles 'An Active Danger': Carr at The Times' pp. 68–87 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 77
72. ^Laqueur, p. 131
73. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 491
74. ^John Ezard. 'Blair's babe'. The Guardian.
75. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 152
76. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 153
77. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 151
78. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 490
79. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 474
80. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity pp. 158–164
81. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 252
82. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 177
83. ^ ^abConquest, Robert 'Agit-Prof' pp. 32–38 from The New Republic, Volume 424, Issue # 4, 1 November 1999 p. 36
84. ^Haslam, 'We Need a Faith', pp. 36–39 from History Today, Volume 33, August 1983 p. 39
85. ^Ambramsky, C. & Williams, Beryl Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr pp. v–vi
86. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 508
87. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 289
88. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 509
89. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 509-510
90. ^Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 290
91. ^Hughes-Warrington, pp. 24–25
92. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 493
93. ^Hughes-Warrington, p. 25
94. ^Laqueur, pp. 116–117
95. ^Laqueur, p. 118
96. ^Cox, Michael 'Introduction' pp. 1–20 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Pargrave, 2000 p. 3
97. ^Carr, German-Soviet Relations', p. 136
98. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 504
99. ^Andrew, Christopher & Mitrokhin, Vasili The Mitrokhin Archive The KGB in Europe and the West, London: Penguin Books, 1999, 2000 p. 602
100. ^Davies, 'Edward Hallett Carr', p. 507
101. ^ ^abcdHuges-Warrington, p. 26
102. ^Carr, What Is History?, pp. 12–13
103. ^Carr, What Is History?, pp. 22–25;

References[edit]

• Abramsky, Chimen & Williams, Beryl J. (editors) Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr, London: Macmillan, 1974, ISBN0-333-14384-1.
• A. K. Review of Michael Bakunin pp. 244–245 from Books Abroad, Volume 12, Issue # 2 Spring 1938.
• Barber, John 'Carr, Edward Hallett' pp. 191–192 from Great Historians of the Modern Age ed. Lucian Boia, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
• Barghoorn, Frederick Review of The Interregnum, 1923–1924 pp. 190–191 from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 302, November 1955.
• Beloff, Max 'The Dangers of Prophecy' pp. 8–10 from History Today, Volume 42, Issue # 9, September 1992.
• Beloff, Max 'Review: The Foundation of Soviet Foreign Policy' Review of The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 pp. 151–158 from Soviet Studies, Volume 5, Issue # 2, October 1953.
• Bernstein, Samuel Review of Michael Bakunin pages 289–291 from Political Science Quarterly, Volume 54, Issue # 2, June 1939.
• Call, M. S. Review of International Relations Since the Peace Treaties page 122 from World Affairs, Volume 101, Issue # 2, June 1938.
• Campbell, John Review of The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 p. 1207 from Foreign Affairs, Volume 61, Issue # 5, Summer 1983.
• Carr, E. H. German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars, Harper & Row: New York, 1951, 1996
• Carr, E. H. The Twilight of the Comintern New York : Pantheon Books, 1982
• Carr, E. H. What Is History? London: Penguin Books, 1961, 1987.
• Carsten, F. L. A History of Soviet Russia: Foundations of the Planned Economy, 1926–1929. Volume III, Parts 1–2 pp. 141–144 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 56, Issue # 1, January 1978.
• Carsten, F. L. Review of A History of Soviet Russia: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929. Volume III, Part 3 pp. 138–140 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 58, Issue # 1, January 1980.
• Carsten, F. L. Review of The Twilight of Comintern, 1930–1935 pp. 629–631 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 61, Issue # 4, October 1983.
• Cobb, Adam 'Economic Security: E.H. Carr and R.W. Cox-The Most Unlikely Bedfellows' from Cambridge Review of International Studies, Volume 9, 1995.
• Cobb, Adam 'Carr, E.H.' pp. 180–181 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing ed. Kelly Boyd, Volume 1, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999, ISBN1-884964-33-8.
• Conolly, Violet Review of 1917: Before and After pp. 735–736 from International Affairs, Volume 45, Issue # 4, October 1969.
• Conquest, Robert 'Agit-Prof' pp. 32–38 from The New Republic, Volume 424, Issue # 4, 1 November 1999.
• Corbett, P. E. Review of The Twenty Years' Crisis pp. 237–238 from Pacific Affairs, Volume 14, Issue # 2, June 1941.
• Cox, Michael 'Will the Real E. H. Carr Please Stand up?' pages 643–653 from International Affairs, Volume 75, Issue # 3, July 1999.
• Cox, Michael (editor) E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal, London: Palgrave, 2000, ISBN0-333-72066-0.
  • Cox, Michael 'Introduction' pp. 1–20.
  • Davies, R.W. 'Carr's Changing Views of the Soviet Union' pp. 91–108.
  • Halliday, Fred 'Reason and Romance: The Place of Revolution in the Works of E.H. Carr' pp. 258–279.
  • Haslam, Jonathan 'E.H. Carr's Search for Meaning' pp. 21–35.
  • Jones, Charles 'An Active Danger': Carr at The Times' pp. 68–87.
  • Porter, Brian 'E.H. Carr-The Aberystwyth Years, 1936–1947' pp. 36–67.
  • Stephanson, Anders 'The Lessons of What Is History?' pp. 283–303.
  • Ticktin, Hillel 'Carr, the Cold War, and the Soviet Union' pp. 145–161.
  • White, Stephen 'The Soviet Carr' pp. 109–124.
  • Wilson, Peter 'Carr and His Early Critics: Responses to The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1939–46' pp. 165–197.
• Davies, R. W. 'Edward Hallett Carr, 1892–1982' pp. 473–511 from Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 69, 1983.
• Davies, R.W. (May – June 1984). ''Drop the Glass Industry': collaborating with E.H. Carr'. New Left Review. I (145): 56–70.
• Deutscher, Isaac 'Review: The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–23: A Review Article' review of A History of Soviet Russia: Vol. I: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–23 pp. 204–207 from International Affairs, Volume 27, Issue # 2, April 1951.
• Deutscher, Isaac 'Mr E.H. Carr as a Historian of the Bolshevik Régime' pp. 91–110 from Heretics and Renegades and Other Essays, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.
• Deutscher, Tamara (January – February 1983). 'E. H. Carr—A Personal Memoir'. New Left Review. I (137): 78–86.
• Drinan, Patrick Review of The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin, 1917–1929 pages 100–101 from Military Affairs, Volume 44, Issue # 2, April 1980.
• Evans, Graham 'E. H. Carr and International Relations' pages 77–97 from British Journal of International Studies, Volume 1, Issue # 2, July 1975.
• F. D. Review of Nationalism and After pages 289–290 from World Affairs, Volume 108, Issue # 4, December 1945.
• Fox, William R. T. 'E.H Carr and Political Realism: Vision and Revision' pp. 1–16 from Review of International Studies, Volume 11, 1985.
• Gathorne-Hardy, G. M. Review of International Relations between the Two World Wars (1919–1939) pp. 263–264 from International Affairs, Volume 24, Issue # 2, April 1948.
• Gellner, Ernest 'Nationalism Reconsidered and E. H. Carr' pages 285–293 from Review of International Studies, Volume 18, Issue # 4, October 1992.
• Goldfischer, David 'E. H. Carr: A 'Historical Realist' Approach for the Globalisation Era' pp. 697–717 from Review of International Studies, Volume 28, Issue # 4 October 2002.
• Griffins, Martin Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, London: Routledge, 2000, ISBN0-415-16228-9.
• Gruber, Helmut Review of Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 pp. 195–200 from New German Critique, Volume 30, Autumn, 1983.
• Gurian, Waldemar 'Review: Soviet Problems' pages 251–254 from The Review of Politics, Volume 13, Issue # 2, April 1951
• Gurian, Waldemar 'Review: Soviet Foreign Policy' pages 118–120 from The Review of Politics, Volume 16, Issue # 1, January 1954.
• Hanak, Harry Review of A History of Soviet Russia Foundations of a Planned Economy 1926–1929, iii, Parts 1 and 2 pages 644–646 from The English Historical Review, Volume 93, Issue # 368, July 1978.
• Hanak, Harry Review of A History of Soviet Russia Foundations of a Planned Economy 1926–1929 pages 642–643 from The English Historical Review, Volume 95, Issue # 376, July 1980.
• Haslam, Jonathan 'We Need a Faith: E.H. Carr, 1892–1982' pp. 36–39 from History Today, Volume 33, Issue # 8, August 1983.
• Haslam, Jonathan 'E.H. Carr and the History of Soviet Russia' Reviews of Reviews of The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917–1929, From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays and The Twilight of Comintern 1930–35 pp. 1021–1027 from Historical Journal, Volume 26, Issue #4, December 1983.
• Haslam, Jonathan The Vices Of Integrity: E.H. Carr, 1892–1982, London; New York: Verso, 1999, ISBN1-85984-733-1.
• Howe, Paul 'The Utopian Realism of E.H. Carr' pp. 277–297 from Review of International Studies, Volume 20, Issue No. 3, 1994.
• Hudson, G. F. Review of A History of Soviet Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923. Volume I pp. 597–601 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 29, Issue # 73, June 1951.
• Hughes-Warrington, Marnie Fifty Key Thinkers on History, London: Routledge, 2000, ISBN0-415-16982-8.
• Hunter, Holland Review of Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 A History of Soviet Russia page 484 from Slavic Review, Volume 38, Issue # 3, September 1979.
• Karpovich, Michael Review of Michael Bakunin pp. 380–382 from The American Historical Review, Volume 44, Issue # 2, January 1939.
• Keep, John Review of Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 pp. 284–289 from Soviet Studies, Volume 24, Issue # 2, October 1972.
• Keeton, G. W. Review of The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 pp. 156–157 from The Modern Law Review, Volume 4, Issue # 2, October 1940.
• Kendall, Walter Review of The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War pp. 122–123 from International Affairs, Volume 62, Issue # 1, Winter 1985–1986.
• Kenez , Peter Review of The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin page 372 from Russian Review, Volume 39, Issue # 3, July 1980.
• Jackson, George Review of Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 pp. 815–817 from The American Historical Review, Volume 89, Issue # 3, June 1984.
• Jenkins, Keith On 'What Is History?': From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, London: Routledge, 1995, ISBN0-415-09725-8.
• Johnston, Whittle 'E. H. Carr's Theory of International Relations: A Critique' pp. 861–884 from Journal of Politics, Volume 29, Issue # 4, 1967.
• Jones, Charles E.H. Carr And International Relations: A Duty To Lie, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN0-521-47272-5.
• Labedz, Leopold 'E.H. Carr: A Historian Overtaken by History' pp. 94–111 from Survey March 1988 Volume 30 Issue # 1/2.
• Laqueur, WalterThe Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History from 1917 to the Present, New York: Scribner, 1987 ISBN0-684-18903-8.
• Linklater, Andrew 'The Transformation of Political Community: E. H. Carr, Critical Theory and International Relations' from Review of International Studies, Volume 23, Issue # 3, July 1997.
• Long, David & Wilson, Peter (editors), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. London: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• W. N. M. Review of German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939 pp. 625–626 from The English Historical Review, Volume 67, Issue # 265, October 1952.
• Manning, C. A. W. 'Review: Conditions of Peace by E. H. Carr' pp. 443–444 from International Affairs Review Supplement, Volume 19, Issue # 8, June 1942.
• Molloy, Seán 'Dialectics and Transformation: Exploring the International Theory of E. H. Carr' pp. 279–306 from International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 17, Issue # 2, Winter 2003.
• Morgenthau, Hans 'The Political Science of E. H. Carr' pages 127–134 from World Politics Volume 1, Issue # 1, October 1948.
• Nove, Alec Review of A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country, Volume I pp. 552–555 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 37, Issue # 89, June 1959.
• Nove, Alec Review of 1917: Before and After pp. 451–453 from Soviet Studies, Volume 22, Issue #3, January 1971.
• Oldfield, A. 'Moral Judgments in History' pp. 260–277 from History and Theory, Volume 20, Issue #3, 1981.
• Pethybridge , R. Review of A History of Soviet Russia Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 pages 942–943 from The English Historical Review, Volume 88, Issue # 349, October 1973.
• Pickles, W. Review of Studies in Revolution p. 180 from The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 2, Issue # 2, June 1951.
• Porter, Brian 'E.H. Carr-The Aberystwyth Years, 1936–1947' pp. 36–67 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000
• Prince, J. R. Review of What Is History? pp. 136–145 from History and Theory, Volume 3, Issue # 1, 1963.
• Rauch, Georg von Review of The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 pages 376–380 from Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 178, Issue #2, 1954.
• Rauch, Georg von Review of A History of Soviet Russia pages 181–182 from Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 193, Issue # 1 August 1961.
• Reynolds, P. A. Review of German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–39 from International Affairs, Volume 28, Issue # 4, October 1952.
• Rowse, A. L. Review of The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 pp. 92–95 from The Economic Journal, Volume 51, Issue # 201, April 1941.
• Schlesinger, Rudolf Review of The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 pp. 389–396 from Soviet Studies, Volume 2, Issue # 4 April 1951.
• Schlesinger, Rudolf 'The Turning Point' from Soviet Studies, Volume XI, Issue No. 4, April 1960.
• Seton-Watson, Hugh The Bolshevik Revolution, Volume II pp. 569–572 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 31, Issue # 77, June 1953.
• St. Clair-Sobell, James Review of A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 pages 128–129 from International Journal, Volume 8 ,Issue # 2, Spring 1953.
• St. Clair-Sobell, James Review of A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 pages 59–60 from International Journal, Volume 9, Issue # 1, Winter 1954.
• Struve, Gleb Review of Michael Bakunin pp. 726–728 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 16, Issue # 48, April 1938
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh 'E.H. Carr's Success Story' pp. 69–77 from Encounter, Volume 84, Issue No. 104, 1962.
• Walsh. W. H. Review of What Is History? pp. 587–588 from The English Historical Review, Volume 78, Issue # 308, July 1963.
• Willetts, H. Review of A History of Soviet Russia Volume VI pages 266–269 from The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 40, Issue # 94, December 1961.
• Wolfe, Bertram 'Professor Carr's Wave of the Future Western Academics and Soviet Realities' from Commentray, Volume XIX, Issue # 3, March 1955.
• Woodward, E. L. Review of Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism page 721 from International Affairs, Volume 13, Issue # 5, September – October 1934.
• Review of The Conditions of Peace pages 164–167 from The American Economic Review, Volume. 34, Issue # 1 March 1944.

External links[edit]

• The Two Faces of E.H. Carr by Richard J. Evans
• Review of E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal by Alun Munslow
• E.H. Carr vs. Idealism: The Battle Rages On by John Mearsheimer
• Papers of E. H. Carr held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections

The inventor of Ethernet refutes the claim that information technology has lost its strategic value.

A year ago, Harvard Business Review published a now infamous article called “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Its author, the magazine’s then executive editor Nicholas G. Carr, argued that information technology no longer gives businesses a competitive edge. Carr called information technology managers impatient, wasteful, passive, and lured by the chorus of hype about the so-called strategic value of IT.

This story is part of ourJune 2004issue

Harvard Business Review has 243,000 extremely influential readers. So if it publishes an article saying that information technology doesn’t matter, then an awful lot of important business leaders are going to believe it. And if they do, they’ll run their companies-and our economy-into a ditch.

Many commentators have debunked Carr’s article since it appeared last year. So many in fact that I feel like Elizabeth Taylor’s ninth husband: I know what to do, but how to make it interesting? But Carr’s article just won’t stay debunked. And now he has expanded his thesis into a new book called Does IT Matter?, which the Harvard Business School Press published in April. The question-style title hints at some backpedaling, but Carr’s point is basically unchanged-and it needs debunking yet again.

Since I do not subscribe to the ink-on-dead-trees version of the magazine, I bought my copy of Carr’s May 2003 paper through Amazon.com. It was delivered over the Internet in minutes as a PDF file for $7.00. Carr’s new book is also listed on Amazon.com, a triumph of IT-enabled corporate strategy. We see that IT apparently matters to Harvard.

Carr himself has a website, nicholasgcarr.com. IT apparently matters to Carr.

Let’s face it: IT matters to everyone.

Two Trillion Reasons that I.T. Matters

I asked how much IT matters of Frank Gens, senior vice president for the information technology market research giant IDC. (Full disclosure: IDC is owned by IDG, on whose board I serve.) IDC reports that the global investment in information technology (including telecommunications) totaled $1.9 trillion in 2003 and, despite Carr, will climb to $2.0 trillion in 2004.

According to a 2003 IDC survey, non-IT business executives spend 20 percent of their time thinking about IT. Are they wasting their time? Again despite Carr, almost 60 percent say that the strategic importance of IT is increasing; only 2 percent say the importance is decreasing. Carr may claim these Harvard-MBA-type executives are foolish or misguided, but 55 percent feel that their companies should use information technology more aggressively; 43 percent feel their usage is just right; and only 2 percent feel that they should be less aggressive.

In Carr’s world, information technology managers are apparently fools, or even frauds, to the tune of $2 trillion per year. Presumably, these managers slavishly upgrade to whatever new thing vendors want to sell. But in the real world, millions of people already work hard to spend their IT budgets wisely. The computer-trade press has been covering this complicated process for almost 40 years.

In warding off his debunkers, Carr has offered some clarifications of his argument. He doesn’t really mean that information technology doesn’t matter; rather, he says, his point is that because IT has been commoditized, like electricity, it confers upon its business users no competitive advantage. He also clarifies that he does not mean that information itself doesn’t matter, nor does he mean that the people using the technology don’t matter. What really doesn’t matter, he says, is the no-longer-proprietary technology infrastructure for storing, processing, and transmitting information. So we can only hope that most of Harvard Business Review’s captains of industry read beyond the article titles before dropping the magazine on their coffee tables.

Carr concludes that since information technology no longer provides a competitive advantage to businesses, they should stop spending wildly on advanced information technology products and services. He admonishes managers to stop being suckers for the latest cool products from Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, et al. IT managers should stop squandering corporate assets and begin acting in the best interests of their shareholders. They should become boring minimizers of IT cost and risk.

As evidence, Carr points out that my 30-year-old baby, Ethernet, has been standardized and commoditized. It’s true that last year more than 184 million new Ethernet ports were shipped, at a value of $12.5 billion, and that anyone can buy them. Most of those ports are the current mainstream version of Ethernet, which carries data over wires on local-area networks at 10 or 100 megabits per second.

But now that the post-Internet-bubble nuclear winter is almost over, Ethernet is speeding up, to beyond 1,000 megabits (one gigabit) per second. Ethernet is going into wide-area networks. It’s going wireless. It’s going into embedded systems-the eight billion microprocessors shipped every year that don’t go into PCs.

New Ethernet standards are being created, new commoditization races are being started, and Ethernet, if ever it wasn’t, is once again a tool of corporate strategy. In the article and now again in his book, Carr wrongly equates today’s information technologies with electricity, and then he wrongly characterizes electricity as static. In short, Carr, deep into a post-bubble depression, wrongly declares the end of history.

The history of electricity is not over, however. Controlling electrical power grids is still famously problematic, and that’s to say nothing of the exciting developments in technologies such as wind, solar, fission, fusion, hydrogen, and batteries, all of which present strategic opportunities. And information technology is bigger and more recent than electricity. Both are still rapidly evolving; both are very much alive as important elements of corporate strategy.

Much of the research on information technology usage that Carr cites is of dubious validity. Take, for example, the studies that, as Carr puts it, “consistently show” that expenditure on IT as a fraction of company revenue is inversely correlated with financial performance. One study that Carr cites states that the 25 companies with the highest economic returns spent on average just .8 percent of revenues on IT, while the typical company spent 3.7 percent. But this hardly proves Carr’s conclusion. Rather, it indicates that companies investing wisely in IT increase revenues much faster than those that invest unwisely, too little, or not at all. Companies that invest poorly in IT don’t increase revenues as quickly, so their IT expenditures are higher as a fraction of revenue. Companies that invest unwisely in IT go out of business and are not counted in the studies. IT still matters.

Raining On The I.T.-Bashers’ Parade

Carr is not the first person to question the value of information technology. Paul Strassman, for example, despite being a high-profile, big-budget chief information officer for such organizations as NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Xerox, has made a second career of studies not finding the benefits of IT. Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach is another famous critic of IT. During the 1990s, he claimed that increasing investments in information technology were showing no benefits. Roach, echoing MIT economist Robert Solow, wrote that IT investments were not appearing in U.S. productivity numbers. I called Solow, a Nobel Prize winner, and he admitted that this so-called productivity paradox might easily be explained by how poorly productivity is measured. Productivity numbers are hard to come by, and Roach relied on outmoded methods. But Roach stuck by his IT-doesn’t-matter numbers, like the proverbial drunk looking for his wallet under a street lamp.

Today, information technology accounts for about half of capital expenditures by U.S. companies. Productivity is high and increasing rapidly. What is Roach saying now? He says that the productivity numbers are highly questionable. In other words, if the data conflict with your theory, throw out the data. It makes me wonder whether Roach, like Carr, just has a bad attitude about IT.

Nicholas Carr Does It Matter Pdf Download Youtube

In Carr’s reply to early critics, published on the Web by the Harvard Business Review in June 2003, he wrote that his article “has at least succeeded in setting off an important and long-overdue debate about the role of information technology in business.” I don’t think so. If anything, Carr has succeeded only in misleading his readers.

Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, in their 2003 book IT Doesn’t Matter-Business Processes Do, argue that Carr is not only wrong but dangerous. They remind us of what happened when Harvard Business Review published Michael Hammer’s 1990 article “Reengineering Work.” Too many Harvard MBAs decided to take the easy part of Hammer’s advice and downsized their companies to death. Unless Carr’s argument is debunked, the current crop of reigning MBAs will be tempted to run WordPerfect on mid-1980s PCs connected to IBM 360 mainframes.

Which brings us to Carr’s central conceit. He urges IT managers not to venture foolishly out onto technology’s cutting edge and to buy only that which has low risk and high value to their companies. Carr urges this as if it were breaking news.

In fact, IDG alone publishes 300 information technology magazines worldwide, and each has several competitors. All of these have been offering advice for decades on just how far onto the bleeding edge of technology it is wise to go to give your company an edge. Taking technology risks, when done well, can bring competitive advantage. When done poorly, it can bring disaster. But that’s a balancing act that the information technology managers of the world were well aware of long before Carr put in his two cents.

We often brag about the marvelous U.S. innovation machine. We brag about our world-leading research universities. We brag about our entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists, like me, who back them. But there is an unsung player in our marvelous innovation machine: the aggressive users of information technology. In Germany, by contrast, it’s hard to buy IT unless it’s from Siemens. In the United States, startups readily find managers out on the cutting edge, searching for new, smarter, and more efficient ways to do things-a quest that keeps our vaunted innovation machine humming.

If business executives follow Carr’s advice, who will provide innovation’s test beds? How will new technologies find their markets? This may be the most important reason to debunk Carr’s arguments once and for all: if they harden into conventional business wisdom, American ingenuity will be strangled in its bassinet.

I serve on the board of a small public company in Silicon Valley called Avistar. For 10 years, Avistar has been marketing networked desktop videoconferencing to large companies. Avistar’s hardware and software have worked increasingly well for a long time. What’s taking time is their adoption-the search for one situation after another in which the technologies provide a value that’s worth the risk.

Avistar CEO Jerry Burnett disagrees strongly with Carr and recommends a division of labor in IT management. On one hand are specialists in what Burnett calls “availability management.” These might be mistaken for the cost and risk minimizers that Carr extols. On the other hand are specialists in “adoption management.” These are the people Carr wants demotivated, demoted, or fired.

Nicholas Carr Does It Matter Pdf Download Online

Carr argues that things that are widely available, like IT, cannot be used for sustained competitive advantage. Well, since Harvard Business Review is received by almost a quarter-million people and can be bought by anyone with $16.95, then according to Carr’s own argument, that publication itself doesn’t matter. Cancel your subscription and download any interesting articles from back issues-which any teenager will be able to find for you on the Internet for free.

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