Igor Lukes, Professor of international relations and history at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies reminds us that “heroes are scarce in modern history.” Writing in the US edition of The Conversation, Prof. Lukes, adds:
Every hint of civic courage, it seems, needs to be treated with the reverence that was once reserved for holy relics. When evidence appears that casts doubt on a hero’s image, admirers find it difficult to accept. And yet the list of heroic individuals who changed their countries and who – at the same time – betrayed them is not a short one.
The article, titled “Tarnished Heroes: Don’t Dismiss them” appeared in the December 31, 2014 edition of the online magazine The Conversation US, and is a reaction to a new documentary film released in the Czech Republic on the life of a dissident named Pavel Wonka who fought against the totalitarian regime in Communist Czechoslovakia. Prof. Lukes explains that “what has caused the filmmaker, Libuse Rudinska, to be the target of much criticism is that she does not portray the man who died while on a hunger strike in prison as a pure angel.”
The article goes on to recount the lives of many ‘tarnished heroes’ including Comte de Mirabeau (French Revolution), the Russian Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon (Russian Revolution), Poland’s Lech Wałęsa (Solidarity movement), General Dmitry Polyakov (1980s USSR) and, finally, back to Pavel Wonka in Communist Czechoslovakia. In comparing these different cases, he points out that “Mirabeau, Gapon, Wałęsa, Polyakov, and Wonka became involved in clandestine activities but they never intended to surrender their moral autonomy and values. Their secret commitments notwithstanding, they believed that they would be able to play important quasi-diplomatic roles.”
More importantly, Prof. Igor Lukes concludes:
Yearning for a world inhabited by heroes and villains is a natural defensive reaction to the surrounding chaos. This is why, on close examination, public personalities tend to disappoint us since they fail to fit in the black-and-white categories we prefer. They “disappoint” because they can plausibly function on both sides of fault-lines that others consider unbridgeable.
Read full article here. Prof. Lukes had also written on this subject, in Czech, here.