Unknown Knowledge
In this clip, National Review’s “Uncommon Knowledge” takes counterfactual history to absurd new heights with a discussion between host Peter Robinson, Christopher Hitchens, and Oxford historian Robert Service. “What would Trotsky have done?” is the subject. Peter Robinson sweetly calls it “the question of questions,” then goes bonkers:
“OK Let me put before you several of the outrages under Stalin and you tell me how they would have been different? … The Gulags .. Stalin … he sets up road blocks … effectively starves them out. Trotsky, what would have been different? … Of the purges, Christopher … anyone who might pose any threat to him, Stalin would have eliminated … Trotsky would not have done that?”
Now that’s high-brow talk.
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I believe that counterfactual exercises are as underrated as the National Review is overrated.
Sure, the execution on that one was botched and bumbled, but the Trotsky question really is interesting. These sort of questions reveal much more about those who answer than about those whose histories they’re re-imagining, but that, too is worth hearing about.
It’s an interesting discussion, nonethless, and perfectly harmless. Seems just like a petty attempt to belittle NR, and the Hoover Institution at that.
My all-time most dreadfully memorable counterfactual discussion, that I heard second hand, and may in fact be an urban legend:
Furrowed-brow, TV-panel moderator – “What would have happened if Kennedy hadn’t been killed?”
Henry Kissenger – “I imagine Mrs. Kennedy wouldn’t have remarried”
O. O’connell, It may be true, but the one I heard was the following. Mao was asked what would have been different if Khrushchev had been assassinated instead of Kennedy. He thought for a moment and replied, “I don’t suppose Mrs. Khrushchev would have married Aristotle Onassis.”