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We have a procedural memory that's all and we re-invent things

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We have a procedural memory, that's all; and we re-invent things."Next, a former official, now in consultancy work, who, quite separately, said almost the same thing: "Because of the dependence on files, you are taught by the past in Whitehall - but you don't learn from it."It was a sense of this knowledge gap in public life, especially of the recent past, that led to the foundation four years ago (in which I was involved) of the Institute of Contemporary British History, with a programme of seminars and publications to help fill it.At a different level the Politics Association, which celebrates its 20th anniversary at a conference in Manchester next weekend, has done great and sustained work in deepening the level of understanding in schools; as shown by the depth and quality of today's A- level politics papers, and the number sitting the exams (now more than 10,000 a year and increasing).But what is the remedy at the upper levels of public life? It could be the inclusion of historical background as a routine element in business school and Civil Service College training. Taylor should have set the train of thought in motion because that prince among debunkers always maintained that the only thing statesmen learn from the mistakes of the past is how to make new ones. But for my generation, which graduated in the late 1960s (and not just those of us who spent our library hours at college on history), reading him on European and English history, Hitler and Bismarck, the British foreign policy establishment and those radicals who dissented from it, was part of our standard "intellectual furniture", to use a phrase once applied to the works of Eric Hobsbawm, another scholar whose books drip with stimulation.At only a slight risk of exaggeration, the benefit of such writings seeping into the consciousness of a generation was that it gave people in public life a perspective - a kind of inoculating jab against what George Orwell called "the smelly little orthodoxies" of political fashion.And Taylor, for all his quirky perversities and appalling softness on the post-war Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, was a powerful antidote to falling for any of the "isms" or succumbing to the allure of the mighty of the moment.So much for the death of a scholar who brightened the post-war intellectual scene in Britain and helped keep history the queen of the arts. A CONJUNCTION of an event and two conversations set me thinking last week about the extent to which Whitehall policy-makers and people in public life generally in the United Kingdom now treat the past as a usable commodity It is ironic that the death of A.J.P. In fact, I wouldn't quarrel with a Cossack at all.Sir John Ure is the author of `The Cossacks' (Constable, pounds 20). Yeltsin had a soft spot for them, reintroduced Cossack regiments and appeared in Cossack uniform Cossack clubs - mostly rifle clubs - sprang up. They have not lost their old animosity for the Muslim Chechens, nor their propensity to protect Russia's frontiers bravely while resenting central authority.

Even if some of the urban "Asphalt Cossacks" lack the old equestrian skills, it would be an unwise president who wrote them off as an anachronism."We are Russians, only more so," one of them said to me recently: I wouldn't quarrel with that. Lenin branded them as kulaks and starved them out.Some Cossacks always yearned for an independent Cossack state, and, when Hitler made false promises of this during his invasion of 1941, many defected and fought with the Germans while others remained as Red Army cavalry Retribution was savage. Those who were captured or handed over by the Allies were executed or sent to Siberia; Cossack communities were decimated, and Cossack horsemanship reduced to a circus act.With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cossacks bounced back They had been put down before and survived. But, when the final crunch of the Revolution came in 1917, they fought on both sides. With their knouts and sabres they slashed their way through strikers and demonstrators. They were Russia's Gurkhas.With the first rumblings of the Russian Revolution in 1905, the Tsar switched their role from frontier troops to internal policemen.

In the following century the Tsars deployed the Cossacks as storm troopers in their campaigns to extend their frontiers in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Cossacks threw in their lot unequivocally with the Tsar and harassed the invader's retreating army across the snows so effectively that Napoleon described them as "a disgrace to the human species" The British, on the other hand, feted them in Hyde Park. Each time there were reprisals.The turning-point came with Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. In the 16th century, Ivan the Terrible started recruiting them to police his frontiers. The Tsar and the Stroganov family sent them into Siberia to conquer new territories and enrich the treasury with bales of rare furs.They were always awkward servants of the crown, jealous of their privileges and tax immunities. They rebelled repeatedly: Stenka Razin's revolt threatened Moscow; Mazeppa betrayed Peter the Great; Pugachev nearly unseated Catherine the Great. Good horsemanship, keen markmanship and a vague adherence to Orthodox Christianity (Jews and Turks were not welcome) were the only recruiting requirements. At first, the Cossacks were almost wholly predatory: they hijacked passing caravans and raided neighbouring settlements, carrying off women and weapons But gradually these poachers turned gamekeepers.

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