Book Review: James C. Pearce: The Use of History in Putin’s Russia and Anton Weiss-Wendt: Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control of the Past

Abstract

major novel Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl in 1983 (newly translated by Damien Searls as Anniversaries. From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, 2018). Three volumes had already been published and the fourth was well in progress when Johnson left Berlin, but Wright does not reflect on Johnson’s nearly 10-year struggle to complete it, nor particularly on its significance as a major work of twentieth-century European literature. Otherwise, Johnson’s two most important works during his Sheerness years were his 1979 Frankfurt poetics lectures, published as Begleitumstände (Attendant Circumstances) in 1980, and the novella Skizze eines Verunglückten (Sketch of An Accident Victim) of 1981. Wright does not discuss the former in any depth, even though it is as close as Johnson got to an autobiography and offers plenty of material that might help understand his move to England. Wright uses the latter only as a comment on the break-up of Johnson’s marriage that took place during his Sheerness years, which it certainly can be seen to be, but to which it should not be reduced. It may be the case that there simply is not enough to say about Johnson himself in Sheerness that makes the tale worth telling as a story in its own right, whereas there would be value in a study of his years in Sheerness that addresses and assesses his literary production there and that also weaves in the author’s own origins and life before Sheerness, while taking a far more selective approach to Sheerness local history. A volume of Inselgeschichten (Island Stories, 1985) was published from Johnson’s literary estate, containing largely unfinished texts, mostly from Johnson’s letters, and only three short texts that Johnson published in his own lifetime. His essay ‘Ein unergründliches Schiff’ (published in English as ‘An Unfathomable Ship’ in 1983, translated by Lawrence Wilson) on the Richard Montgomery, a US ammunitions ship that was wrecked in 1944 and lies in view of Sheerness, stands out as the only text of substance based on the town of Sheerness that he wrote. Johnson’s research on the wreck evokes a sense of place in the present while salvaging the history that lies submerged, spinning a tale from contemporary Sheerness to the Second World War and its consequences. It condenses the ‘sea view’ that he himself ‘had’ in Sheerness down to a bigger story worth telling. Here we see Johnson not as ‘Charlie’ in Sheerness, but as the major European intellectual that he undoubtedly was.