When the leaders are utopian ideologues, they may be so certain they possess the key to unlimited progress that (like the French revolutionaries or the Italian fascists) they will restart the civic calendar at Year One (in 1792 and 1922, respectively). And they may feel so threatened by memories of the past that, like Stalin or Pol Pot, they will try to liquidate the elite of any generation that came of age before their revolution began. “Who controls the past controls the future,” runs Big Brother’s party slogan in George Orwell’s 1984, and “Who controls the present controls the past.”
