The Theory and Practice of World Revolution in the Perception of Inter-war Europe

Abstract

Scholars of the communist movement, from whatever ideological and theoretical standpoint, have concentrated primarily on its internal sources and documentary heritage. When analysing this or that past event, all historians strive to empathise with its material and spiritual legacy and consequently at some stage identify themselves with the subject of their research in order to draw conclusions and evaluations. This approach has dominated historiography, but that does not mean it is adequate. One could argue that the reconstruction of the activities and historical traces (sleda) of any personality, party, spiritual movement or economic structure is also possible by examining how they were perceived by contemporaries, by comparing ‘internal history’ with the external locus on which this history is born, develops and dies.