"Dr Wober's letter is a timely reminder of the skill employed by members of the French Communist Party in "colonizing" institutions from within. Some measure of their patient ability in this respect may be gathered from the manner in which they penetrated research organizations and institutions of higher learning during the previous régime, at a time when they had no friends in high official posts. Now, with ministers in crucial areas of the bureaucracy, we may expect to see them extending their permanent influence and patronage, this time from above. One must cling to what crumbs of comfort that remain: after 1947, the ministries that had been in Communist control for the previous three years were effectively purged. But such a purge would be much more difficult a second time."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandEssayists from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyUniversity of Oxford alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to The Times (2 July 1981), p. 13
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Cobb
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Richard Cobb
Richard Charles Cobb CBE (20 May 1917 – 15 January 1996) was a British historian and essayist, and professor at the University of Oxford. He was the author of numerous influential works about the history of France, particularly the French Revolution. Cobb meticulously researched the Revolutionary era from a ground-level view sometimes described as "history from below".
22 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Richard Cobb →
Related Quotes
"Napoleon was a tyrant quite as abominable as Hitler; and the fact that he did not kill quite so many people is due me…"
"But my own greatest debt to the Duke was the discovery of Namier. Now here was a level of history the existence of wh…"
"One is constantly amazed at the arrogant effrontery and insensitivity of intellectuals. What right has Bernard Levin …"
"The book reminds us that 1789, far from being a year of hope and unity, was one already of intense disunity, and alre…"
"Richard Cobb was an open opponent of the methods of the Annalists. If Theodore Zeldin analysed France in their fashio…"
"Too many historical blockbusters are much admired but little read. This one really does deserve to be in the hands – …"
"Richard Cobb, eschewing sociology, has brilliantly recaptured the tangled human reactions, immediate reactions, of Fr…"
"Mr. Cobb's book is one of the most important contributions to our knowledge of the French Revolution to have appeared…"
"No student of the Revolution can hope to understand the Terror without reading this book."
"One should at least be grateful to Mr Crossman for having reminded us that what socialism is about is coercion."