Professor Michael Jabara Carley in the MGIMO University in Moscow, Russia, in February 2015. Photo: Wikipedia.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—In the first episode of Interviews by Arnold August, posted on August’s YouTube channel, the Canadian journalist and author interviews Professor Michael Jabara Carley to dig into his prolific work as a historian and his work in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives to shed light on the decisions taken by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the preamble of the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call the World War II.
Professor Michael Jabara Carley, born in 1945 in the United States, starts the interview by recounting his political and personal evolution as a young man born in Brooklyn, New York, at the Methodist hospital. His family later moved to New Orleans, where he was exposed to the racism inherent in US society. He traces his evolution through his involvement in the civil rights movement. The young Carley took the train from Washington DC to Montgomery, Alabama to participate in the last day of the march from Selma to Mongomery. They pulled down the blinds in the train when in the deep south to discourage cracker snipers, he said.
Later, his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement led him, like many other US citizens, to emigrate to Canada.
He explains how he had to choose between activism and academic endeavors. He excelled at the latter. Professor Carley of the Department of History, Université de Montréal, is an expert on the history of Russian and Soviet foreign policy. He has written six books (published and forthcoming)—four of them translated or being translated into Russian. He is a prolific writer who is not afraid to take unpopular positions. The first of his trilogy is Stalin’s Gamble: The Search for Allies against Hitler, 1930-1936, published by the University of Toronto Press.
The trilogy is based on more than two decades of original research on the archives of the USSR, carried out by the historian. “In the interview, it is difficult to determine where Carley ends and the archives begin; the two seem to merge, such is his profound knowledge of the subject,” Arnold August remarked.
The core of the interview is based on the first and second volumes of the trilogy which deal with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, one of the most controversial and disinformation-laden events in recent history.
Carley does not disappoint. In a lively and down-to-earth narrative, peppered with facts and analysis, he sets the record straight, by explaining the history of, on the one hand, the USSR’s intensive search for anti-Nazi allies in the 1930s and, on the other, the rejection of France, Great Britain, the US, Poland (a lost cause from the beginning), Romania, and even Italy as potential pillars against Nazi Germany.
Viewers are treated to some important yet virtually unknown facts about how the USSR attempted to form an alliance to contain the growing threat of Hitler and fascism. The “archive rat,” as Carley calls himself, narrates that the leaders of these countries (except Poland) who favored an anti-German Nazi alliance, such as US President Roosevelt, were in the minority among the elite, while the majority of the ruling circles in these countries were against the USSR, such as the powerful US State Department and its vast network in that country, for example.
Professor Carley shared an anecdote that illustrates both the tragic outcome of Stalin’s gamble (in retrospect) and how the failure of this gamble affected the USSR and its quest for collective security against Hitlerite Germany.
During the interview, the modest, self-effacing professor, a rare phenomenon in North American academia, returns to his high school days, when his teacher, who had a profound influence on his life, told him: “Dare to think differently.” He jokes that his teacher forgot to add, “You’ll get in trouble if you do.” Carley admits emotionally but with pride, “To get to where I am now, I have suffered many defeats in life. I have always dusted myself off and gotten back up again.”
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
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