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As the shadow of the great financial crisis descended on the world economy in 2009, Lord Robert Skidelsky lambasted the discipline he had spent much of his academic life studying.
2009年，全球经济笼罩在金融大危机的阴影之下时，罗伯特•斯基德尔斯基(Lord Robert Skidelsky)对他长期研究的这门学科进行了猛烈抨击。
“I have always regarded their assumptions about human behaviour as absurdly narrow,” he wrote of economists in his book The Return of the Master. “I have come to see economics as a fundamentally regressive discipline . . . disguised by increasingly sophisticated mathematics and statistics.”
他在《大师的回归》一书中谈到经济学家时写道：“我始终认为他们关于人类行为的假设狭隘得可笑。我逐渐认识到，经济学从根本上是一门倒退的学科……只是被愈发复杂的数学和统计所伪装起来。”
No one could accuse Skidelsky, who wrote the definitive biography of John Maynard Keynes, of being narrowly dogmatic — or indeed of dwelling on mathematical models. In a career that spanned continents, academic disciplines and the full spectrum of Britain’s political parties, Skidelsky, who died last week at 86, was never shy of expressing his views or of changing them.
撰写过约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)权威传记的斯基德尔斯基，绝不会被指责为偏狭教条——更谈不上拘泥于数学模型。在一段横跨多个大洲、多种学科以及英国各主要政党的职业生涯中，斯基德尔斯基——上周以86岁辞世——从不讳言己见，也从不惮于改变立场。
His first major work to stir controversy was a biography of Oswald Mosley — published in 1975 — that was criticised as being overly sympathetic to the fascist leader. It reportedly stalled his academic career, costing him tenure at Johns Hopkins and shutting him out of Oxford. He instead went to Warwick university — where he became professor of international studies in 1978, and stayed.
他首部引发广泛争议的重要著作是一本关于奥斯瓦尔德•莫斯利(Oswald Mosley)的传记——于1975年出版——被批评对这位法西斯领袖过于同情。据称，这部作品使他的学术生涯受挫，导致他在约翰斯•霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)未获终身教职，并被牛津大学拒之门外。随后他转至华威大学——1978年出任国际研究教授，并一直任教于此。
At Warwick, Skidelsky immersed himself in research, poring over Keynes’ diaries, reading as much about his love life as about his thinking on policy. The three-volume biography encapsulated not only Keynes’ extraordinary achievements but also the eclectic brilliance of the Bloomsbury Group of artists, writers and intellectuals in which he played a central part.
在华威大学，斯基德尔斯基全身心投入研究，细读凯恩斯的日记，对其感情生活与政策思想同样着迷。这部三卷本传记不仅囊括了凯恩斯非凡的成就，也展现了他所处核心地位的“布卢姆斯伯里派”(Bloomsbury Group)艺术家、作家与知识分子的多元才华与思想光辉。
Skidelsky’s affinity with Keynes took him so far as to buy the economist’s former house and live in it. There he mixed with families from the same Bloomsbury set that Keynes was part of, hosting a stream of weekend visitors from politics, literature and academia. The Sussex haven was a very long way from the world Skidelsky was born into in 1939 in Harbin, Manchuria. He was part of a wealthy family of Russian merchants displaced by the revolution, a process he described in a 2005 article as “a microcosm of the first wave of globalisation”.
斯基德尔斯基对凯恩斯的亲近甚至到了买下这位经济学家旧居并迁入其间的地步。在那里，他与凯恩斯所属的布卢姆斯伯里派中的诸多家庭来往频繁，周末常接待来自政界、文坛与学界的访客。这个位于萨塞克斯的居所，与斯基德尔斯基1939年在满洲哈尔滨出生时所处的世界相去甚远。他出身于一个因革命而流离失所的富裕俄国商人家庭，并在2005年的一篇文章中将这一经历称作“全球化第一波的一个缩影”。
The family — Jewish on his father’s side and Christian on his mother’s — were in 1941 interned by the Japanese and then moved to Britain after a prisoner swap. The young Robert attended Brighton College and then Jesus College, Oxford. Felix Martin, who later collaborated with Skidelsky, describes him as “an intellectual historian who really believed in the power of ideas”.
这家人——父亲一方是犹太人、母亲一方是基督徒——于1941年被日军关押，随后在一次战俘交换后移居英国。年少的罗伯特先就读于布莱顿学院(Brighton College)，之后进入牛津大学耶稣学院(Jesus College, Oxford)。后来与斯基德尔斯基合作的费利克斯•马丁(Felix Martin)形容他是“一位真正相信思想力量的思想史学者”。
That belief took Skidelsky through a dizzying array of political metamorphoses. He moved from the Labour Party to help found the Social Democratic Party in 1981. He served briefly as an opposition spokesperson for the Conservatives in the House of Lords, but was sacked by Tory leader William Hague due to his opposition to Nato’s bombing of Serbia.
这种信念推动斯基德尔斯基经历了一连串令人眼花缭乱的政治转变：他从工党(Labour Party)转而在1981年参与创建社会民主党(Social Democratic Party)；他还曾在上议院短暂担任保守党的反对党发言人，但因反对北约轰炸塞尔维亚而被保守党领袖威廉•黑格(William Hague)解职。
Later, his views shifted leftward and he expressed support for the hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — but, as his son Edward Skidelsky notes, he was too independent-minded to be a party man and “felt no obligation to be consistently one thing or another”. The financial crash from 2007 to 2009 only strengthened his affinity with Keynes, leading him to voice strong criticism of austerity policies.
后来，他的观点转向左翼，并表达了对激进左翼工党领袖杰里米•科尔宾(Jeremy Corbyn)的支持——但正如其子爱德华•斯基德尔斯基(Edward Skidelsky)所言，他独立性极强，既不愿成为政党中人，也“并不觉得有义务始终如一”。2007年至2009年的金融危机进一步强化了他与凯恩斯的共鸣，使他对紧缩政策提出了强烈批评。
He strongly advocated for a negotiated peace to end the Russia-Ukraine war. In a Lords debate last year, Skidelsky argued that any durable peace must take into account the security concerns of both countries, criticising ministers who described Vladimir Putin’s invasion as “unprovoked” and “barbaric”. Such views unsettled even the peer’s admirers. Martin argues they were rooted in his personal history, notably the Russian background of his parents. “He had a personal desire to reconnect with Russia and was sympathetic to it — not in a rose-spectacled way.”
他强烈主张通过谈判达成和平，以结束俄乌战争。去年在上议院的一场辩论中，斯基德尔斯基提出，任何持久和平都必须兼顾两国的安全关切，并批评那些将弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)的入侵称为“无端的”和“野蛮的”的大臣。这些观点甚至让这位上议员的仰慕者感到不安。马丁认为，这些看法根植于他的个人经历，尤其是其父母的俄罗斯背景。“他个人渴望与俄罗斯重新建立联系，并对其抱有同情——并非以一种天真美化的方式。”
That affinity led Skidelsky to tussle for years relearning Russian, his first language, and to undertake a train trip across Siberia on the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway in 2017 on a journey ending in Vladivostok. “The entire train was lumberjacks and quite rough-looking individuals,” recalls Will Flemming, one of Skidelsky’s companions. The team survived on instant noodles and games of bridge.
这种亲近感促使斯基德尔斯基花了多年时间重新学习他的第一语言俄语，并于2017年乘坐贝阿铁路（贝加尔—阿穆尔干线，Baikal-Amur Mainline）一路横穿西伯利亚，最终抵达符拉迪沃斯托克(Vladivostok)。“整列火车上都是伐木工，还有一些看起来相当粗犷的人，”斯基德尔斯基的同行之一威尔•弗莱明(Will Flemming)回忆道。一路上他们靠方便面和打桥牌度日。
It was his devotion to the works of Keynes — and his ability to explain their ongoing relevance — that will remain Skidelsky’s great legacy. As Marcus Millar, a colleague at Warwick, puts it, his books were written with as much intimacy as intellectual force. “Like a script of a play in which the author himself seems to belong.”
正是他对凯恩斯著作的潜心研究——以及他阐释其持续现实意义的能力——将成为斯基德尔斯基最重要的遗产。正如他在华威大学的同事马库斯•米勒(Marcus Millar)所言，他的书写得既亲切，又充满思想的力量。“仿佛一出戏的剧本，作者本人似乎也身在其中。”