https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/10/02/eric-hobsbawm-1917-2012/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 23:46:36 -0400<![CDATA[In the annals of moral idiocy, the Marxist British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who died yesterday at 95, will ever enjoy a conspicuous place. A gifted and prolific writer, the Egyptian-born Hobsbawm was utterly absorbed by the ideology that fired his youthful dreams of utopia.  How he must have savored the fact that he was born in 1917, the year of the Bolshevist revolution in Russia which ushered in so much poverty, misery, terror, and freedom-blighting totalitarian oppression. “The dream of the October Revolution is still there somewhere inside me,” Hobsbawm wrote in his memoir Interesting Times in 2002, “I have abandoned, nay, rejected it, but it has not been obliterated. To this day, I notice myself treating the memory and tradition of the USSR with an indulgence and tenderness.”]]>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:59:38 -0400<![CDATA[Roger Kimball]]>https://pjmedia.com/roger-kimball/2012/10/02/eric-hobsbawm-1917-2012-n117100