Scris de Hotshot, 01.04.2011 at 04:43
What are all these *chan websites?
Scris de Garde, 17.03.2011 at 22:56
Scris de HeyI, 17.03.2011 at 22:33
[words]
Agreed.
Scris de Unahim, 16.02.2011 at 13:12
Strange that there's stuff there to upgrade any strategy, except sky menace and tank general
(emphasis mine)Citat:The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte
Psychological studies of "great men and women" frequently serve as a fig leaf to disguise the absence of an understanding of broad socio-historical processes. The study of history is replaced by trivial personal observations. Instead of science we have gossip. The negative traits and peculiarities of a great person are related in detail, as in the memoirs of a valet. But as Hegel remarked, the valet who recalls this trivia never made history.
A careful study of the character and background of Napoleon Bonaparte can furnish us with many useful insights into his behavior, just as similar information concerning Hitler and Stalin can cast some light upon theirs. In his biography of Stalin - a wonderfully profound work of historical materialism, Trotsky dedicates the first chapter to Stalin's childhood and upbringing - a necessary component of any biography. He carefully excludes the kind of sensational exaggerations and the conclusions that are read into a man's past on the basis of what he later became. But having sifted the source material carefully, we are left with a small amount of useful information that can help us to attain a deeper understanding of Stalin's subsequent evolution.
Men and women make their own history, but they do not make it freely, in the sense that the scope and results of their actions are strictly limited by the given socio-economic context that is prepared independently of their will. Different personalities are required by different historical periods. There are times when history demands a Lenin or a Trotsky, and others when a Stalin can come to the fore. It is the historical context that provides the individual with the necessary field of action. But there are certain circumstances when the actions of an individual, or group of individuals, can exercise a decisive influence, inclining the balance in one sense or another.
Of course, personal characteristics cannot determine the course of great historical events. But they can and do influence the specific forms taken by events. They do not create the ebb and flow of broad historical processes, but they can create the very complicated patterns, cross-currents and eddies that affect the short and medium term.