Haile-Selassie I: From Progressive to Reactionary
By Bahru Zewde
Ethiopian Review, Nov-Dec 1998
Perhaps all major historical figures are controversial, capable of arousing blind admiration or unremitting hatred. If that be the case, Ethiopia does have its fair share of such historical personalities. Tewodros was depicted by some foreign writers as a "mad dog let loose." Even in Ethiopia, the Gonder clergy are not overly fond of him. And yet, few Ethiopian rulers have captivated posterity as has Tewodros. He has been practically canonized. He inspired playwrights (Germachew Tekle-Hawaryat and Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin) and novelists (Abbe Gubegna). His horse's name, Tateq, was adopted by the Ethiopian Student Union in Europe (for its journal) and by the Derg (for its military training camp). And the EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) baptized its most decisive campaign "Zemecha Tewodros."
Iyassu is another controversial figure of the modern age. Unfortunately for him, he was succeeded by a ruler of extraordinary political longevity who found it in his interest to have him portrayed in the darkest of colors. As a result, the charges of apostasy and frivolous conduct that cost him his throne in 1916 have stuck. Yet, popular culture was prepared to view the teenage ruler with indulgence. And he was adored by some ethnic groups like the Somali and Arsi Oromo, to whom he embodied a more humane relationship with the center. It is also this residual attraction of Iyassu that explains the dramatic surfacing of his progeny onto the national stage in times of crisis: some of his sons fronted resistance groups between 1936 and 1941 and others reemerged onto the national stage in 1974 and again in 1991.
No less than Tewodros or Iyassu, Haile-Selassie has also been capable of arousing violently contradictory emotions and sentiments. Foreigners in particular have been mesmerized by him. His League of Nations speech in 1936 continued to win international admiration. But Ethiopians, who would have preferred to see him die fighting, were not particularly impressed by his performance at Geneva. Nonetheless, it is a fact that he was regarded with awe and reverence by most of his subjects. It is equally true that the younger generation could only view him with a degree of resentment and ridicule almost unprecedented in Ethiopian history. The Derg inherited that resentment and practically wrote him off as a participant in the history of Ethiopia, much as he himself had denied Iyassu any place in Ethiopian history. By the same token, it will take quite a while before Mengistu will cease to be viewed as a monstrous aberration in Ethiopian history.
All this raises a fundamental question. Will we ever see the day when Ethiopian rulers will be viewed as human beings who operated within the context of their times rather than as demigods or monsters? Or is the present going to be a perennial millstone around the neck of the past? While it is an inescapable fact that history can only be written from the perspective of the present, it need not be the case that it be completely subservient to the needs and requirements of the present. Ethiopia is indeed one of the places where an argument for the depoliticization and deideologization of history is very much in order.
Fortunately for Haile-Selassie, the years of his historical quarantine are now over and historians can engage in a sober and dispassionate assessment of his reign. This is not to deny the value of the studies of Haile-Selassie and his government made so far. But for a person who dominated the life of a country for the better part of a century (and we are still living through the after-effects of his era), much still remains to be done to understand the full import of his reign. This is an attempt to defining the general contours of that reign.
Definition of Terms
The terms "progressive" and "reactionary" are obviously loaded ones. The wisdom of using them might thus indeed seem questionable. But I think that, with due clarification, they can help us understand the ambivalent position that Haile-Selassie has held in the eyes of Ethiopians. I use the term "progressive" here to denote an individual or a group who has attained a more than average perception of the course of historical evolution and is actively committed to promoting that course. Conversely, the term "reactionary" would apply to a group or an individual who acts as a brake or stumbling block to the march of the times.
Underlying this definition is the philosophy of history that accords priority to society rather than the individual. Individuals are shaped by society more than they are able to shape it. Great men there have been, but their greatness is not simply a matter of innate genius but also, and to a greater extent, a result of their operating at the right historical conjuncture.
What makes things a bit more complicated is the element of power, which is so central to understanding the career of Haile-Selassie. For there was scarcely anything that preoccupied him as much as the acquisition and preservation of political power; it was a matter of obsessive concern for him, and the one constant element in his long political life. This fact explains why a man who was almost universally hailed as progressive at the outset of his career in 1916 was regretted by so few when he was toppled in 1974. Thus, when we say Haile-Selassie was progressive in the early decades of his career, we do not mean so much that he stood for progress for its own sake, but rather that progress was a concomitant of his quest of power. Likewise, he can justifiably be called reactionary in the last decades of his power because his clinging to power blocked all paths to progress.
This naturally invites the question as to the historic moment at which Haile-Selassie ceased to be progressive and became reactionary. It would of course be rather simplistic to pick up on a year and say that was when Haile-Selassie the progressive died and Haile-Selassie the reactionary was born. As we know, historical processes are much more complex than that. The two phases of his reign shade into one another. Just as his commitment to education was not altogether altruistic, one can discern the negative implications of his centralizing drive from early on in his career. For the sake of convenience, however, one can say that the 1950s mark the period of transition. Pride goes before a fall. Pageantry, too, is a sign of oncoming decay. The international jamboree attending the coronation jubilee celebrations in 1955 marked the zenith of the emperor's power and achievement, after which the road could only be downwards. With this, we shall try to delineate the main features of the two phases.
The Progressive Phase
Before Haile-Selassie I, there was Teferi Mekonnen. It was as Teferi Mekonnen, heir to the throne (and not regent, as erroneously described by many), that the future emperor laid the foundations of his power. The cornerstone of his policy could be described as the centralization of administration. This had both political and fiscal dimensions. Politically, it was marked by the systematic erosion of the power of the regional nobility. This was accomplished from 1916 to 1935 with such efficiency that it had an element of the inexorable about it.
First to go was the powerful negus Wollo, Mikael, whose defeat at the Battle of Segele in October 1916 became the prelude to the eventual conversion of his region into a province controlled by and benefiting the imperial family. The humbling of the fiery warrior, Dejach Balcha, in 1928 was followed three years later by the appointment of the emperor's son-in-law, Dejach Desta Damtew, as governor of Sidamo. The defeat and death of Ras Gugsa Wale at the Battle of Anchem in 1930 was attended by the appointment of Ras Kassa Hailu, the emperor's relation and trusted confidant, as governor of Begemedir. The extortions of Ras Hailu Tekle-Haymanot of Gojjam and his involvement in the escape of the detained ex-emperor, Iyassu, in 1932 provided Haile-Selassie with the perfect excuse to do away with perhaps his most serious challenger to political supremacy and to entrust the rich province to his lifelong companion, Ras Imru Haile-Selassie. Finally, in 1934, the death of Abba Jifar II of Jimma provided Haile-Selassie with the opportunity to terminate the autonomous status that the region had enjoyed since the days of Menelik.
Following his return from exile in 1941, Haile-Selassie rededicated himself to strengthening the center at the expense of the periphery with even greater gusto. In this respect, the two pillars of centralization were the provincial administration decree of 1942 and the two imperial orders of 1943, which reconstituted the ministries and formally established the office of prime minister. It was with these legislative measures that the provincial administration and the central bureaucracy measures of our age were laid. Parallel with this went the creation of the modern Ethiopian army, a process already initiated with the establishment of the Imperial Guard in 1930 and the Holeta Military School in 1934.
Centralized administration and a professional national army were what Tewodros had aspired to, but he lacked the financial base to make those dreams come true. And his quest for finance led him into a mortal clash with the clergy which eventually cost him his throne, and his life. Where Teferi Haile-Selassie differed was in his ability to secure the financial resources to sustain his reforms. This was achieved through the progressive rationalization and centralization of land tax and customs dues. The abolition of honey tribute (mar giber) in 1935, the land-tax decrees of 1944 and 1966, and the agricultural income tax of 1967 were successive measures designed to strengthen the hand of the central government in the collection of land revenue. Likewise, the Customs and Export Duties Proclamation of 1943 was a landmark, marking the culmination of steps towards fiscal centralization and the augmentation of government revenue going back to his days as heir to the throne and setting the pace for the future.
From the perspective of the 1990s, when decentralization has become the norm, it is of course difficult to see Haile-Selassie's policy of centralization in a positive light. One is indeed tempted to wonder whether the relatively higher sensitivity to regional power shown by both emperors Yohannes and Menelik would not have saved Ethiopia from the tribulations of ethno-nationalism that she is witnessing today. But it is difficult to sustain such a line of thinking. To begin with, the fact that ethno-nationalism developed to the highest degree in the regions least affected by the erosion of political autonomy, i.e., Tigray and Wollega, casts doubt on the direct correlation between political centralization and ethno-nationalism. Secondly, and even more fundamentally, blaming Haile-Selassie for centralization would be judging him outside the historical context in which he lived and operated. In the circumstances in which Ethiopia found itself in the early twentieth century, surrounded by colonial powers who regarded her independence as an anomalous and obnoxious luxury, Ethiopia had no option but to subscribe to the norms of centralized government. It was to be the historical destiny of Haile-Selassie to mobilize domestic resources and external support to this end.
An important result of this process of centralization was the remarkable economic growth and modernization achieved under Haile-Selassie, particularly in the post-1941 period. A proper and thorough analysis of this process has yet to emerge. But it is evident to even the amateurish eye that Ethiopians under Haile-Selassie had better access than their predecessors to the amenities of modern life in the spheres of communications, health, education and exchange. Sadly enough, it has also become a truism that Ethiopians, including the peasants whom the 1975 rural land proclamation promised to liberate, enjoyed a higher standard of living before the revolution than they did after.
On the surface, the emperor's achievements in the field of education appear less controversial. With some justification, he himself also tended to give it pride of place in his frequent evaluations of his reign. From the establishment of the Teferi Mekonnen School in 1925 to the founding of the Haile-Selassie I University in 1961, he gave close and personal attention to the expansion of education. A cursory survey of his early speeches shows clearly how much it dominated his activities, from the founding of schools and the awarding of prizes to the formal send-off and reception ceremonies to students going to and coming from abroad.
Haile-Selassie's interest in education was not purely philanthropic, however. It was directly related to the question of political power and centralization and the consolidation of the emperor's personal power. Nothing illustrates this utilitarian approach of the emperor to education better than his relationship with the educated elite before and after the war.
From Harlem to Paris, the 1920s were a decade of artistic and literary flowering on a global scale. Ethiopia had its share of this intellectual effervescence, with Teferi presiding over a process of free discussion of national issues unprecedented in Ethiopian history. Through numerous publications of the newly established presses and the weekly Berhanena Selam, Ethiopians engaged in an almost uninhibited examination of their country's heritage and contemporary problems in order to chart a better future. Teferi was like a prince of the Enlightenment, patronizing these early intellectuals, whom he valued as allies in his struggle against the traditional nobility.
But already before 1935, it becomes apparent that, as Haile-Selassie achieved his objective of political supremacy, his need for the intellectuals diminished. His world then had room only for the loyal functionary, not for the critical intellectual. The locally educated, often combining traditional church education with a touch of the modern, gained the emperor's trust and sometimes affection. They include people such as Blatten Geta Heruy Wolde-Selassie, foreign minister, Blatten Geta Sahle Tsedalu, minister of education, Wolde-Giorgis Wolde-Yohannes, private secretary during the period of exile and powerful minister of the pen after 1941, and the poet-playwright Meri Geta Yoftahe Negussie. Conversely, the foreign-educated intellectuals became progressively marginalized, as shown in the almost simultaneous ambassadorial appointment of Negadras Afeworq Gebre-Iyesus, Bejirond Tekle-Hawariat, and Hakim Worqneh to Rome, Paris and Geneva, and London, respectively.
The careers of Heruy and Tekle-Hawaryat epitomize the fates of these two sections of the intelligentsia. Heruy graduated from Entoto Raguel with a good grounding in traditional church education, which he then embellished with a smattering of English acquired at the Swedish mission in Addis Abeba. He won the trust and confidence of Teferi Haile-Selassie to become, progressively, director-general of the Municipality of Addis Abeba, chief judge of the special court set up to adjudicate cases involving foreign residents, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finally, in 1930, minister of foreign affairs. In 1936, he was one of the few persons chosen to accompany the emperor into exile. He died in Bath in September 1938. The emperor was so deeply moved by his death that, in his funeral oration, he abandoned the royal "We" and made the second known relapse into the first person singular after 1928, the first being during his famous address to the League of Nations in 1936. Tekle-Hawariat was educated in Russia, where he was adopted by a liberal aristocratic family.
He was commissioned as an artillery officer and returned to Ethiopia after 11 years. He then had a shorter sojourn in England and France, where he developed an abiding interest in agronomy. He first pinned his hopes for introducing reforms on Iyassu. Disappointed by the dissolute character of the young emperor, he changed camp in 1916 and, by his own admission, became a star witness in the denunciation of Iyassu as an apostate. He was rewarded with the governorship of the strategic district of Jijjiga, which he converted into a model of modern administration. Although briefly detained in 1928 in connection with a Bolshevik scare, he was subsequently made minister of finance, the only foreign-educated Ethiopian to rise to ministerial level before 1941.
The 1931 constitution, which Tekle-Hawariat drafted, marked the high point of his influence. At the same time, it signified the end of his utility to the emperor and his growing marginalization. After that, the emperor apparently had little use inside the country for this man, who had a reputations for being too outspoken. His assignment as Ethiopian minister of to Paris, from where he could also double as minister to the League of Nations at Geneva, was thus on the part of the emperor a brilliant deflection of the ardor and critical intelligence of Tekle-Hawariat to serve the imperilled national cause abroad rather than let it occasion embarrassment at home. The Italian invasion found them at cross-purposes, the emperor preparing to go into exile as his minister hurried back home from Europe to join battle. After a brief effort to resist the Italian occupation, Tekle-Hawariat himself went into exile successively in Djibouti, Aden and Madagascar. Presumably to express his ire at what he felt to be a betrayal by the emperor, he prolonged his exile after 1941 and, on his return, retired to the obscurity of a gentleman-farmer at Hirna, in Harerghe province.
After 1941, the emperor continued to confide more in the traditionally educated than the foreign-educated. Until 1953, Aklilu Habte-Wold and Yilma Deressa were the only foreign-educated Ethiopians (in France and England, respectively) to attain ministerial-level appointments. They were what we would call in present-day parlance technocrats, bringing in skills as well as loyalty to the emperor. They had a clearly junior role compared with the two ministers who turned out to be the power-brokers of the post-1941 order: Tsehafi Te'ezaz Wolde-Giorgis Wolde-Yohannes and Mekonnen Habte-Wold. Both, like Heruy, were graduates of Raguel 'University'. In both cases, their service to the emperor antedates the Italian invasion. What all four had in common, howeverand hence their attraction to the emperorwas their plebeian background. They had no independent base of their own and could be disposed of at any time, as indeed Wolde-Giorgis was in 1955.
The Reactionary Phase
It is, I think, apparent from the above that the progressive and reactionary features of Haile-Selassie's reign are not mutually exclusive but tend to overlap. Power, which remained the abiding concern of the emperor, was their locus of interaction. His obsession with power in time gave a reactionary character to what at the outset could have been progressive measures. Political centralization negated the legitimate wishes of regions for internal autonomy. The armed forces became more and more instruments for preserving and defending his autocratic power. The educated elite were expected to be loyal servants of the palace, not independent forces of change, vertically attached to him but with little lateral connection among themselves, even at the cabinet level.
Having grown under his patronage, the prewar intelligentsia did not show much inclination for independent initiative, either individually or, even less so, collectively. The only exceptions were, perhaps, Tekle-Hawariat and some members of the younger generation such as Benyam Worqneh, the Cambridge-educated son of Hakim Worqneh. But, as we have seen above, his prolonged exile rendered Tekle-Hawariat irrelevant to the post-1941 scene, while Benyam was liquidated during the Graziani massacre, together with his brother Yosef, the fiery son of Heruy, Fekade-Selassie, and scores of other young Ethiopians. Their liquidation came soon after the disbanding of the only politically motivated and truly pan-Ethiopian group of the Resistance, the Black Lion Organization, to which all three had belonged. Although it reiterated its loyalty to Haile-Selassie and his family in its constitution, it is possible that, had the organization managed to survive the Italian occupation, the years of struggle and its youthful composition would have enabled it to play a significant political role in the post-1941 order. As it was, on his restoration to the throne, Haile-Selassie was able to exercise unfettered power.
The patriots were too disparate to form a bloc; the leading ones were either co-opted (like Ras Abebe Aregay) or liquated (like Belay Zelleke). It was in such a setting that he consummated the absolutist agenda, the reconstitution of feudalism on a more secure economic foundation, which he had started before the war. Yet, Ethiopian absolutism showed little of the progressive potentialities of its European counterpart. From the womb of European absolutism was born capitalism. Ethiopia was scarcely capitalist even on the eve of 1974. Partly, this was a result of the absence of a national, even commercial, bourgeoisie. The rural surplus, which went to benefit mostly the landed nobility or the rural gentry, was either squandered in conspicuous consumption or converted into urban property. Partly (and interrelated to the preceding), it was due to the fact that Ethiopia, like other countries of the Third World, found itself in a position of dependency to international capitalism.
Autocracy became the unmistakable stamp of Ethiopian absolutism; and, initially, politically opposition had as its target the diminution or elimination of autocracy rather than radical economic reordering. Even when opposition assumed revolutionary dimensions after the mid-1960s, it came about through the voluntaryism of the leftist intelligentsia rather than the objective laws of class struggle. The first major plot against the emperor, the one led by Bitweded Negash in 1951, reportedly aimed at eliminating the emperor and proclaiming a republic. The 1960 coup was intended to introduce a form of constitutional monarchy. True enough, the declaration of the coup makers also expressed a commitment to the expansion of agricultural production, but it was left quite vague as to whether this expansion was to come through a liberated peasantry or through a new rural bourgeoise that would replace the parasitic landed nobility; the latter option was to become discernible only in the last years of the Haile-Selassie regime.
Inchoate and nebulous as the declarations of the coup makers were, they nonetheless set the agenda for change: political liberalization and an economic reordering to benefit the lower classes. On neither grounds was the emperor prepared to concede. Political liberalization went against the emperor prepared to concede. Political liberalization went against the exercise of absolute power he cherished so much. Economic reordering, which would have essentially meant a thoroughgoing land reform, could only be achieved at the expense of the landed nobility, whose loyalty was vital for the maintenance of his own power. Absolutism after all was a concordat whereby the emperor guaranteed the economic privileges of the traditional nobility, who in turn surrendered their own political power, and those of the new landlords, who pledged eternal loyalty to him.
I alluded earlier, somewhat tentatively, to 1955 as the year when the emperor could be said to have reached the height of his power and achievements and at the same time the end of whatever social utility he might have had for Ethiopia. That was the time when, had the emperor not been completely blinded by his love for undiluted autocracy, he could have tried to arrange for a smooth transition to democracy and social and economic justice. Theoretically, the revised constitution of 1955 was supposed to provide for such a transition. But, as is evident from the elaborate provisions for the rules of Solomonic succession, which occupy a preeminent and predominant position in the document, such a transition was predicated on his eventual death, which few people, least of all the emperor himself, expected to be in the near future. Hence the anomaly that the crown prince, who was declared as such at the time of the emperor's coronation in 1930, and whose succession the 1955 constitution was supposed to guarantee further, had to wait in vain for over four decades to accede to the throne. In the end, he was physically incapacitated before the emperor and the dynasty were swept away by the tide of revolution. The Derg's designation of the crown prince as a constitutional monarch in 1974 was little short of a cruel joke.
Eritrea was to show how costly the growing irrelevance of the emperor and the political order he represented was to Ethiopia. Without minimizing the complexity of the Eritrean problem, one can, I think, emphasize as one of its roots the contradiction between the autocratic order that reigned in Ethiopia and the democratic atmosphere that prevailed in Eritrea in the 1940s and which the 1952 federal arrangement appeared designed to protect. Although, as has been argued, the 1955 constitution might have partly been designed to resolve this contradiction, it went nowhere near doing that. It has become a common cliche now that the emperor's objective was to bring Eritrea securely within his autocratic fold, not to allow Ethiopia to experience the plurality of views that had been seen in Eritrea during the 1940s. This was on the levels of both policy and practice. The constitution's provisions for civic liberties had so many legal qualifiers as to render them of little practical value; political parties were not even envisaged. In the realm of practice, the emperor's belated attempt to woo the separatists antagonized the unionists without managing to placate the former. Furthermore, the systematic corrosion of Eritrea's autonomy added fuel to the separatist movement and contributed to the emergence of first the Eritrean Liberation Movement and then the Eritrean Liberation Front.
I write in my book (1991) that the emperor's "obsession with power bordered on megalomania." I still feel that is not wide of the mark. What is more, he had reached the point where he came to identify Ethiopia's fate with his own, to feel that Ethiopia had no life without him. Irritated by Tekle-Hawariat's constant refrain, he is reported to have blurted out once: "You keep on saying 'Ethiopia, Ethiopia.' Ethiopia is nothing without me. Her fate is intertwined with mine. Don't imagine that Ethiopia will survive after I am gone." Another facet of this megalomania was the relentless pursuit of pomp and grandeur. His coronation ceremony, which by all accounts was an event of unprecedented pageantry, set the tone of his life. Later on, as the domestic situation became increasingly unattractive, he sought glamour and splendor abroad through his record-breaking foreign tours. The climax to a life that put a premium on pomp and pageantry came with the celebrations of his eightieth birthday, which many in retrospect consider another opportunity the emperor missed to make a graceful exit.
Imperial autocracy determined the nature of opposition. Extreme situations often require extreme solutions. This explains why the students, on whom Haile-Selassie had so often prided himself as examples of his progressive achievements, came to harbor uncompromising opposition to him and the system that he represented. The fact that the emperor made no allowance for even moderate opposition meant that opposition could manifest itself only in radical form. Germame Neway was the first such radical opponent of imperial power. He represented a clean break with the earlier intellectuals, who on the whole felt beholden to the emperor. The killing of the hostages held at the Genete Leul Palace when it became evident that the coup had failed was testimony to the feeling of bitterness that had been engendered and a tragic foretaste of the bloodletting that was to be Ethiopia's fate in the course of the revolution.
But Germame pales in comparison with the student radicals and leftist intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. By this time, the impatience with an emperor and system that refused to give way had reached its limit. The absence (or tenuousness) of any generational link between the reforming intellectuals of the early twentieth century and the student radicals of the 1960s was to have a telling effect. Revolution was adopted as the only option before reform could even be properly considered. In any case, the emperor's imperviousness to all calls for reform scarcely left any other option but the revolutionary one. That explains why, in 1974, it was not the ancien regime that was caught in total disarray; the proponents of bourgeois-democratic reformsuch as they werealso swept away before they could even be heard.
The Legacy
Hark ye! Hark ye! We first gave you this faith believing that it was good. But innumerable people have been slain on account of it, Yolyos, Qeberyal, Tekle Giorgis, Sertse Krestos, and now these peasants. For which reason we restore to you the faith of your forefathers. Let the former clergy return to the churches, let them put in their tabots, let them say their own liturgy; and do ye rejoice.
(Trimingham 1965)
Those were the words of Emperor Susneyos (r. 1607-1632), as he proclaimed the restoration of the Orthodox faith after his brief but costly experiment with Catholicism. He followed it up by abdicating his throne in favor of his son Fasiladas. The message is clearly conservative. But they were the wise words of a ruler who was not prepared to bleed his country to death for the sake of his own personal power. How myopic and self-centered Ethiopia's twentieth-century rulers appear by contrast! Few rulers in Ethiopian history had the power and opportunity that Haile-Selassie and Mengistu had to mobilize the country's human and material resources towards progress and development. But not only did they subject everything to the consolidation of their own personal power; they were also prepared to destroy the country for the sake of that power.
To his credit, Haile-Selassie's achievements far outshine Mengistu's in almost every sphere. It appears in fact that Mengistu's role in history has been to destroy practically everything that Haile-Selassie had built up. (That the former ruled in more difficult times is only partially attenuating.)
Haile-Selassie's greatest crime was that he ruled for far too longand he was not aware of it. In 1916, there was no prince better equipped than Teferi to bring Ethiopia into the modern world. Iyassu had some progressive ideas, particularly on the vexed issue of national integration, but he lacked method and resolution. Teferi seized the opportunity created by the deposition of Iyassu to inaugurate a reign marked by some important achievements in the spheres of administration, education and infrastructure.
But Haile-Selassie failed to realize when his time was up. Given his enormous power, he could have directed some of his efforts towards paving the way for a smooth transition of power. But he did scarcely anything to prepare the country for the future, whether along monarchical or republican lines; this fault remains his greatest indictment in history. His conduct in this regard was tantamount to the old egocentric adage: apre moi le deluge.
And the deluge did comein his own time. It brought in it wake one of the bloodiest chapters in the country's history, with many experiments in social and economic remodelling but with hardly any concrete benefits of lasting importance to show. The opposition that Haile-Selassie's uncommonly long and obdurate rule engendered was a curious amalgam of nihilism and idealism. It was set firmly on an indiscriminate destruction of old manners and traditions and the inauguration of a utopia which existed only in the rosy writings of Marx and Lenin. It was not emperor by knowledge of the country's concrete circumstances, nor of its history. The moderate and modernizing voice of the prewar intellectuals had been silenced and moderating voice of the prewar intellectuals had been silenced forever by ruthless Fascist guns and Haile-Selassie's policy of marginalization.
Unfortunately for Ethiopia, the legacy of that nihilistic and idealistic opposition is still with us. While its domestic inadequacy and the changes in the international situation have terminated the ascendancy of doctrinaire socialism, we are still saddled with the perceptions on the national question of the leftist opposition. To deny the principle of national self-determination is both unprincipled and impolitic. But to elevate that principlewhich is only a working principleto the level of creed and not to relate it to the country's pressing economic needs and the international context in which it finds itself can only bring trouble. A policy of conscious and organized induction of ethno-nationalist sentiments, as is being done in Ethiopia today, can only conjure forebodings of yet another disaster. To emphasize the divergent and acrimonious chapters in the history of the peoples of Ethiopia while de-emphasizing systematically or even denying outright the cultural, economic, geographical and historical links that have bound them through the centuries is expressive of an overriding interest in destruction rather than reconstruction. Hence the need for a sober and dispassionate assessment of the legacy bequeathed us by the Haile-Selassie erain both its positive and negative dimensions.
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Bahru Zewde is a professor of history at Addis Abeba University. This article is first published in "Ethiopia in Change," 1994, edited by Abebe Zegeye and Siegfried Pausewang.
