The French Revolution in Modern Russian and Western Thought

Abstract

From its beginning the French Revolution and its slogan - liberté, egalié, fraternité - has been a symbol of revolution. Later, during the twentieth century, its images were merged with images from other revolutionary upheaval, especially in Russia where it played an important role in the Russian Revolutions’ intellectual history as well as in the history of the Soviet regime. The reasons for the popularity of the French Revolution in Russian intellectual life varied. It is clear, however, that the external similarities between the histories of late eighteenth-century France and modern Russia played a large part. Indeed, one could easily compare the French ancien regimé to the Russian monarchy; the 1905 Revolution could be compared to the French ‘1789’, the February Revolution to ‘1792’. The Bolshevik Reign of Terror could be seen almost as a carbon copy of the French ‘1793’, and the Soviet regime could be viewed as either a prolonged reign of Russian Jacobins or, and this was the point of the majority of the enemies of the Bolshevik regime, as nothing but a Russian Thermidor. Present day observers of post-Soviet Russia also are given to using this comparison to Thermidor.