Tony Rocky
“It’s too early to say,” responded China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai, when asked about the significance of the French Revolution.
Can we state that it is also too early for us to say anything about the significance of the Russian revolution? 2017 is the centenary of the Russian Revolution. This topic will give rise to many discussions, debates, conferences, and the publication of many books and articles. By the end of the year, will we understand more about the meaning of the revolution or should we admit that we have a huge job ahead of us, which is to study and comprehend all the complexities of the Russian revolution?
The question of the significance of the Russian Revolution occupy a special place in my thoughts. For 44 years, living in Canada, I have been studying the pre-revolutionary history of the Russian Empire: from the abolition of serfdom in 1861 to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II and the February Revolution in 1917. I have also been studying the period from the February Revolution to the October Revolution and the Civil War. Almost 40 years ago, I wrote my master's thesis on the judicial reform of 1864 and on the political trials of the Narodniks and Narodnaya Volya. There were times when I wanted to quit my studies, but I couldn't tear myself away from studying one of the most difficult periods in pan-European history.
Over the past three years, thanks to meeting new Russian and European friends and colleagues on social networks, I started with new strength deeply study this period and its place in European history. In October 2016, I gave a lecture at a Vienna scientific institute on political terrorism in the Russian Empire. Listeners learned that many events and trends in pre-revolutionary Russia preceded various events and trends in modern Europe and therefore the topic of the lecture is of great relevance. I continue my research on terrorism, but currently the main topic of the period under study is “the Black Hundred movement in the Russian Empire.” I also study other political and social movements, including national and religious ones.
This series of articles is an experience in comparative studies. I take a comparative approach to determine the significance of the Russian Revolution in the pan-European history of revolutions and counter-revolutions. The comparative approach does not diminish the significance and uniqueness of the Russian revolution. On the contrary, it helps us to trace more deeply the elements of continuity and change, similarities and differences between revolutions and counter-revolutions, starting with the French Revolution.
The comparison of the French and Russian revolutions had a certain influence on the course of events between February and October in Russia. After all, the French Revolution was exemplary for Russian revolutionaries. They often saw the events of their revolution through the prism of the French Revolution. Russian revolutionaries in 1917 were haunted by memories of counter-revolution. Fear of an inevitable repetition of this phenomenon in Russia. Paradoxically, the relatively easy overthrow of the tsarist regime led the revolutionaries to believe that the possibility of a counter-revolution was almost natural.
Of course, Russian revolutionaries were afraid of the restoration of the Romanov dynasty. Memories of the unsuccessful Varennes escape of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1791 surfaced before them. That is why they took harsh measures against Nicholas and Alexandra to prevent a repeat of the Varennes escape.
The specter of a peasant counter-revolution in Russia troubled Russian socialists when they recalled the peasant uprising in the Vendée department in 1793-1794. Under the leadership of the nobles, the Vendean peasants rebelled for the king and the church, killing many supporters of the revolution. In Russia, according to revolutionaries, it was possible to repeat the “Russian Vendée” on the lands of the Don and Kuban Cossacks.
Russian revolutionaries recalled that Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to the French Revolution. It was not difficult for them to assume that General Lavr Kornilov was like the “Napoleon of the Russian soil.” Comparisons with the French Revolution continued among Soviet communists after the end of the Civil War.
Vladimir Lenin proclaimed the New Economic Policy (NEP) in March 1921, with the restoration of private property and entrepreneurship. For many Soviet communists, the NEP was the Soviet version of Thermidor (the month in 1794 when Maximilian Robespierre and his Jacobin comrades were overthrown and executed by their opponents). The word "Thermidor" became synonymous with a departure from revolutionary principles and betrayal of the revolution. It is understandable why many communists saw the first Five Year Plan and collectivization as an opportunity to finish what they started in 1917.
So, Russian revolutionaries made comparisons with the French Revolution and the February Revolution until the end of the NEP. However, scientific research using a comparative approach was out of the question under the Soviet regime. Even the names “Great French Bourgeois Revolution” and “Great October Socialist Revolution” excluded the possibility of tracing elements of continuity and similarities. Between the bourgeois and socialist revolution there could only be changes and differences. Even in a massive collective work dedicated to the centenary of the European revolutions of 1848-1849, the authors did not give even a small positive assessment revolutions. The authors accused the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of betraying the revolution and emphasized that only the Great October Socialist Revolution, under the leadership of the Lenin-Stalin Bolshevik Party, could bring liberation to the working people.
Since the thirties, some Western historians have taken a comparative approach to the study of European revolutions. This approach is sometimes controversial because some historians criticize proponents of the approach for simplifying, ignoring unique factors, or diminishing the significance of great revolutions (especially the French Revolution). First major study on a comparative approach came from the pen of Harvard historian Crane Brinton in 1938. The study “Anatomy of a Revolution” was reprinted several times and became a university textbook. Brinton gave comparative analysis four revolutions - English (more often called the English Civil War), American (War of Independence), French and Russian.
Brinton defined these four revolutions as democratic and popular revolutions of the majority of the population against the minority. According to the historian, these revolutions led to the formation of new revolutionary governments. The American historian stated that all these revolutions went through certain stages of development:
1. Crisis of the old regime: the inherent political and economic shortcomings of governments; alienation and retreat of intellectuals from power (for example, the intelligentsia in the Russian Empire); class conflicts; formation of coalitions of dissatisfied elements; the inept ruling elite loses confidence in governing. As Vladimir Lenin wrote: “A revolutionary situation occurs when the masses not only no longer want to live in the old way, but also when ruling classes can no longer govern in the old way”;
2. Power of moderate elements and the emergence of divisions among moderates. Their inability to govern the country (liberals in the first years after the French Revolution in Russia after the February Revolution);
3. Power of extremist elements(Jacobins in France and Bolsheviks in Russia);
4. Reign of Terror and Virtue. They combine violence against real and imaginary opponents and the creation of a new morality;
5. Thermidor or the cooling of revolutionary fever (in France - the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire of Napoleon; in Russia - the NEP).
One can argue in many ways with Brinton in his choice of revolutions for comparison, for insufficient attention to the characteristics of each revolution. He tried to trace elements of continuity and change, elements of similarities and differences in revolutions.
A detailed comparative approach, more briefly, was developed over many years by the American historian Robert Palmer and the French historian Jacques Godechaux. They studied revolutions in Europe and America from 1760 to 1800. and came to the conclusion that these revolutions had so many similarities that one can talk about the “century of democratic revolution” or the “Atlantic revolution” (revolutions took place in Europe and the Americas). Palmer and Godechaux's concept of a general wave of revolutions at the end of the 18th century was called the Palmer-Gaudeschaux thesis.
For Palmer and Godechaux, the revolutions of the late 18th century were democratic revolutions, but not in the modern sense of democracy. Especially if we're talking about on universal suffrage. These revolutions began as movements with greater participation of representatives of society in the government of the country. The usual forms of government throughout Europe were monarchies ranging from constitutional to absolutist. Various corporate institutions, such as parliaments and meetings of class representatives, collaborated with monarchs. All these legislative institutions were closed organizations of hereditary elites. Proponents of change advocated greater participation of public representatives in legislative institutions. The softening or abolition of class privileges was usually seen as a transformation of the rights to participate in the affairs of the country.
So, those who were excluded from participation in power wanted to build political life in a new way. Supporters of change were often from the middle strata, but calling these revolutions “bourgeois” as a necessary stage in the development of capitalism is not only simplistic, but also ahistorical. (One may doubt the existence of the bourgeoisie as a class with full class consciousness in this period, especially during the early stage of the industrial revolution). Political ferment often began among the nobility, especially when absolutist monarchs tried to limit noble class privileges. The French Revolution began as a revolt of the noble class against centralization and restrictions on privileges. The phenomenon is quite natural because the nobility was the leading political class in all European countries.
Tony Rocchi - M.A. in History (Toronto, Canada), especially for
Historical parallels are always instructive: they clarify the present, make it possible to foresee the future, and help choose the right political line. You just need to remember that you need to point out and explain not only the similarities, but also the differences.
There is generally no expression more absurd and contrary to truth and reality than the one that says “history does not repeat itself.” History repeats itself as often as nature, repeats itself too often, almost to the point of boredom. Of course, repetition does not mean sameness, but sameness does not exist in nature either.
Our revolution is in many ways similar to the great French revolution, but it is not identical with it. And this is primarily noticeable if you pay attention to the origin of both revolutions.
The French Revolution occurred early - at the dawn of the development of industrial capitalism and machine industry. Therefore, being directed against noble absolutism, it was marked by the transfer of power from the hands of the nobility to the hands of the commercial, industrial and agricultural bourgeoisie, and a prominent role in the process of formation of this new bourgeoisie was played by the dispersal of the old noble large property, mainly noble land ownership, and the robbery of the old bourgeoisie, purely commercial and usurious, which managed and managed to adapt to the old regime and perished with it, since its individual elements did not degenerate into the new bourgeoisie, as the same thing happened with individual elements of the nobility. It is precisely the dispersion of property - land, household and movable - that created the possibility of rapid capitalist concentration and made France a bourgeois-capitalist country.
Our absolutism turned out to be much more flexible, more capable of adaptation. Of course, general economic conditions, which largely had a global scale and scope, helped here. Russian industrial capitalism began to emerge when in the advanced countries of the West - England and France - the development of capitalist industry was already so powerful that the first manifestations of imperialism became noticeable, and in relation to our backward country this was reflected in the fact that the falling noble autocracy and its rotting social support found support in foreign financial capital. The serfdom economy, even after the formal abolition of serfdom, survived for a long time due to the agricultural crisis that befell the entire old world and especially Western and Eastern Europe with the influx of cheap overseas-American, Australian, and South African grain. Finally, domestic and industrial capitalism largely found support and nourishment for its crudely predatory appetites in the flexible policy of the autocracy. Two major facts especially testify to this flexibility: the abolition of serfdom, which partially strengthened the tsarist illusions in the peasantry and made friends with the autocracy of the bourgeoisie, and the industrial, railway and financial policies of Reutern, especially Witte, which cemented the commonwealth of the bourgeoisie and the autocracy for several more decades, and this the commonwealth was only temporarily shaken in 1905.
Thus, it is clear that both here and there - both here and in France - the tip of the weapon and its first blow were directed against the noble autocracy. But the early onset of the French revolution and the belatedness of ours is such a deep, sharp feature of the difference that it could not help but affect the character and grouping of the driving forces of both revolutions.
What, in a social sense, in terms of class composition, were the main driving forces of the great revolution in France?
Girondins and Jacobins - these are the political, random, as we know, by their origin, names of these forces. The Girondins are peasant and provincial France. Their dominance began during the revolution with the ministry of Roland, but even after August 10, 1792, when the monarchy finally collapsed, they retained power in their hands and, led in fact by Brissot, defended the power of the provinces and villages against the predominance of the city, especially Paris. The Jacobins, led by Robespierre, insisted on a dictatorship, mainly urban democracy. Acting together through the mediation of Danton, a supporter of the unity of all revolutionary forces, both the Jacobins and the Girondins crushed the monarchy and resolved the agrarian question by selling the confiscated lands of the clergy and nobility at a cheap price into the hands of the peasants and partly the urban bourgeoisie. In terms of their predominant composition, both parties were petty-bourgeois, with the peasantry naturally gravitating more towards the Girondins, and the urban petty bourgeoisie, especially the capital, was under the influence of the Jacobins; The Jacobins were also joined by the relatively few workers in France at that time, who formed the extreme left wing of this party, led first by Marat, then, after his murder by Charlotte Corday, Geber and Chaumet.
Our revolution, being belated, having arisen in conditions of greater development of capitalism than was the case in the great French revolution, precisely for this reason has a very strong proletarian left, the power of which was temporarily strengthened by the desire of the peasants to seize the land of the landowners and the thirst for “immediate” peace by the mass of soldiers , tired of the protracted war. But for the same reason, i.e. Due to the belatedness of the revolution, the opponents of the left, the Communist-Bolsheviks - the Menshevik Social Democrats and more or less close social democratic groups to them, as well as the Socialist Revolutionaries - were more proletarian and peasant parties than the Girondins. But despite all the differences, no matter how significant or deep they are, one thing in common, a great similarity remains, is preserved. In fact, perhaps even against the wishes of the fighting revolutionary forces and parties, it is expressed in the discord of interests between urban and rural democracy. The Bolsheviks in fact represent an exclusive dictatorship of the city, no matter how much they talk about reconciliation with the middle peasant. Their opponents stand for the interests of the peasantry - the Mensheviks and Social Democrats. generally for reasons of expediency, from firm conviction that the proletariat can only win in alliance with the peasantry, the socialist revolutionaries are fundamental: they are a typical peasant, petty-bourgeois party led by the ideologists of utopian but peaceful socialism, i.e. representatives of the urban petty-bourgeois intelligentsia from the repentant nobles in part, but especially from the repentant commoners.
Both the similarities and differences in the origins and driving forces of both revolutions also explain their course.
We will not touch here on the history of the National and Legislative Assembly in France at the end of the 18th century; that was essentially just a prelude to the revolution, and for our purposes now it is of only secondary interest. What is important here is what developed and happened in France after August 10, 1791.
Two formidable dangers then faced the revolution: the threat of external attack, even direct failures of the revolutionary troops in the fight against the military forces of European reaction, and the counter-revolutionary internal movement in the Vendée and other places. The betrayal of the commander-in-chief, General Dumouriez, and the successes of the rebels were equally grist to the mill of Robespierre and the Jacobins. They demanded a dictatorship of urban democracy and merciless terror. The Convention did not dare to resist the onslaught of the Parisian workers and the capital's petty bourgeoisie. The Girondins gave up their position in the king's cause, and on January 21, 1793. Louis XVI was executed. On June 29, the Girondins were also arrested, and the guillotine also awaited them. The Girondin uprisings in the south and Normandy were pacified. On July 10, 1793, Robespierre became the head of the Committee of Public Safety. Terror was erected into a system and began to be consistently and mercilessly carried out by both the Committee and the commissioners of the Convention.
The objective tasks facing the revolution after July 10, 1793 were reduced to eliminating external danger, establishing internal order, combating high costs and economic ruin, streamlining state economy, - first of all, the monetary circulation was upset by the issues of paper money. External attacks were repulsed; uprisings within the country were suppressed. But it turned out to be impossible to destroy anarchy - on the contrary, it grew, increased, and spread more and more widely. It was unthinkable to reduce the cost of living, to keep the price of money from falling, to reduce the issue of banknotes, or to stop economic and financial devastation. Factories worked very poorly, the peasantry did not produce bread. It was necessary to send military expeditions to the village, forcibly requisitioning grain and fodder. The high cost reached the point that for lunch in Paris restaurants they paid 4,000 francs, and the cab driver received 1,000 francs for the end. The Jacobin dictatorship could not cope with economic and financial ruin. The situation of the urban working masses therefore became unbearable, and the Parisian workers rebelled. The uprising was suppressed, and its leaders Geber and Chaumette paid for it with their lives.
But this meant alienating the most active revolutionary force - the capital's workers. The peasants have long since moved into the camp of the dissatisfied. And therefore Robespierre and the Jacobins fell under the blows of reaction: on 8 Thermidor they were arrested, and the next day on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) Robespierre died under the knife of the guillotine. In fact, the revolution was over. Only reaction and most of all Napoleon managed to cope with economic devastation by crude means: the robbery of European countries - direct, through military requisitions, confiscations, robberies, territorial seizures, and indirectly - through the introduction continental blockade, which brought enormous benefits to French industry. The dictatorship of the Jacobins in one respect prepared Napoleon for his economic success: it contributed to the creation of a new bourgeoisie, which turned out to be quite energetic, enterprising, dexterous, adapted to speculation in an era of high prices and therefore replaced the old bourgeois minions of the nobility and noble autocracy, who, since the time of Colbert, had become accustomed to eating handouts from the lordly estate. table. The agrarian reform of the times of the Great Revolution also influenced the formation of the capitalist bourgeoisie - only no longer industrial, but agricultural - in the same direction of the formation of the capitalist bourgeoisie.
The objective tasks of our revolution, which took shape and came into full swing after the collapse of our monarchy, were in many ways similar, with some differences. It was necessary to suppress internal counter-revolutionary forces, restrain centrifugal currents brought up by the oppression of noble tsarism, eliminate high prices, financial and economic ruin, solve the agrarian question - all similar tasks. The peculiarity of the moment at the beginning of the revolution was that there was a need for the speedy liquidation imperialist war: This did not happen in France at the end of the 18th century. There was one more feature due to the belatedness of our revolution: being among the advanced capitalist countries, having itself tasted the fruits of the capitalist tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Russia was a convenient fertile soil for the growth of the theory and practice of immediate socialism or communism, socialist maximalism. And this soil gave lush shoots. This, naturally, did not happen or almost did not happen, except for Babeuf’s attempt and then later - in 1797 - during the great revolution in France.
All revolutions took place spontaneously. Their normal, ordinary, routine course is directed towards detection, identification by the masses of the population of all their class essence at that stage social development which they have achieved. Attempts to consciously intervene in the course of events contrary to this usual trend in the Russian revolution were made, but they were not crowned with success, partly through the fault of those who made them, partly - and even mainly - because it is difficult, almost impossible, to overcome the elements. The kingdom of freedom has not yet arrived; we live in the kingdom of necessity.
And above all, the elements, the blind class instinct turned out to be all-powerful among the representatives of our capitalist bourgeoisie and its ideologists. Russian imperialism - dreams of Constantinople and the straits, etc. - is an ugly phenomenon caused by the predatory economic and financial policies of the noble autocracy, which depleted the purchasing power of the peasantry and thereby reduced the domestic market. But our capitalist bourgeoisie continued to cling to it at the beginning of the revolution and therefore in every possible way interfered, both under Miliukov and under Tereshchenko, with the peaceful aspirations of those socialist groups that entered into a coalition with it. The same blind class instinct dictated intransigence on the agrarian question to our zemstvo liberals. Finally, for the same reason, the triumph of the class element could not be convinced of the need to sacrifice 20 billion (4 billion in gold) by establishing an emergency income tax, without which the fight against economic and financial ruin was unthinkable.
To tell the truth, great value This tax was not properly understood by both the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries who entered into a coalition with the capitalist bourgeoisie. Nor did they discover enough energy and determination in the struggle for peace. Added to this were ideological disputes that made it difficult to think democratic revolution without the bourgeoisie. In general, it turned out to be marking time both in domestic and foreign policy.
Economic and financial issues remained unresolved, the agrarian question hung in the air, the war lasted and brought defeats. Kornilov played the role of Dumouriez, and his case was unclear; the role of the head of government, Kerensky, remained very doubtful.
All this helped those who indulged the elements with demagoguery - the Bolsheviks. The result was the October Revolution.
It was a success, of course, because the workers, soldiers, and even peasants were dissatisfied with the policies, or rather, with the inaction of the provisional government. Both of them, and the third, after October 25, 1917, received what they sought: the workers - an increase in rates and the syndicalist organization of nationalized industry with the choice of commanders and organizers by those working in this enterprise, the soldiers - a quick peace and the same syndicalist structure of the army, peasants - a decree on the “socialization” of the land.
But the Bolsheviks indulged the elements, thinking of using it as a weapon for their goals - the world socialist revolution. Leaving until the end of the article the question of the species for achieving this goal on an international scale, it is necessary first of all to give ourselves a clear account of what this led to within Russia.
The nationalization of banks destroyed credit, without at the same time giving the government an apparatus for managing the national economy, because our banks were backward institutions, predominantly speculative, in need of radical, systematically conceived and consistently implemented reform in order to truly become an instrument for the correct regulation of the economic life of the country.
The nationalization of factories led to a terrible drop in their productivity, which was also facilitated by the syndicalist principle underlying their management. The syndicalist organization of factories based on the election of the administration by the workers excludes the possibility of discipline from above, of any coercion emanating from the elected administration. There is no worker self-discipline, because it develops only under developed, cultural capitalism as a result of a long class struggle under the influence and external pressure from above, and, what is even more important, strict disciplinary control on the part of the trade unions, and this, due to the oppression of tsarism, which persecuted the trade unions, we did not have before and do not have now, because what is the point of free trade unions when communism is being implanted? As a result, from a producer of surplus value, the proletariat turned into a consumer class, largely supported by the state. Therefore, he lost his independence, found himself in direct economic dependence on the authorities and directed his main efforts to expanding his consumption - to improving and increasing rations, to occupying bourgeois apartments, and to obtaining furniture. A significant part of the workers went to the communist administration and there were exposed to all the temptations associated with a position of power. “Consumer socialism,” ancient in days, long ago seemingly consigned to the archives, has blossomed in full bloom. Among the unconscious elements of the proletariat, the situation created such a crude understanding of socialism: “socialism means collecting all the wealth in a heap and dividing it equally.” It is not difficult to understand that in essence this is the same Jacobin egalitarianism, which at one time served as the basis for the formation of the new French capitalist bourgeoisie. And the objective result, since the matter is limited to purely internal Russian relations, is depicted as the same as in France. Speculation under the guise of socialization and nationalization is also creating a new bourgeoisie in Russia.
The same egalitarianism and with the same consequences was planned and carried out in the countryside. And the urgent need for food led to the same plan as in France for pumping grain out of the village; military expeditions, confiscations, requisitions began; then “committees of the poor” appeared, “Soviet farms” and “agricultural communes” began to be built, as a result of which the peasantry lost confidence in the strength of the land holdings they had seized, and if the peasantry has not yet completely and everywhere broken with Soviet power, then only the madness of the counter-revolutionary forces, which, at the very first successes, lead and install the landowners. The violence in the village had to be abandoned, but, firstly, only in theory - in practice it continues, - secondly, it is too late: the mood has been created, it cannot be destroyed; we need real guarantees, but there are none.
Our terror is no more, but no less than Jacobin's. The nature of both is the same. And the consequences are also the same. Of course, not one of the fighting sides is to blame for the terror, but both of them. Murders of the leaders of the Communist Party, mass executions of communists where their opponents prompt them, the extermination of hundreds and thousands of “hostages”, “bourgeois”, “enemies of the people and counter-revolutionaries”, disgusting grimaces of life like a greeting to a wounded leader, accompanied by a list of forty executed “enemies of the people” , - all these are phenomena of the same order. And just as individual terror is inexpedient and senseless, because one person will always find a replacement, especially when in fact it is not the leaders who lead the masses, but the elements that control the leaders, so mass terror is also ineffective for both sides: “a thing is strong when it flows under it.” blood," and with the blood shed for it, it will be strengthened. One soldier once confidently declared that the French Republic did not become a people's republic because the people did not slaughter the entire bourgeoisie. This naive revolutionary did not even suspect that it was impossible to slaughter the entire bourgeoisie, that in place of one cut off head from this hundred-headed hydra, a hundred new heads would grow, and that these newly grown heads would come from the very people who were cutting them off. Tactically, mass terror is the same nonsense as individual terror.
The Soviet government has new beginnings. But, insofar as they are actually put into practice, for example, in the field of education, this is done in the overwhelming majority of cases not by communists, and here the main, main work is still ahead. And then how much formalism, bureaucracy, paperwork, red tape has been revived! And how clearly one can see here the hand of those numerous “fellow travelers” from the Black Hundred camp, with which the Soviet regime has become so overgrown.
And as a result, the same tasks: external war, and internal, civil struggle, and hunger, and economic and financial ruin. And even if it were possible to stop all wars and win all victories, the economy and finances cannot be improved without outside, foreign help: this is a feature that distinguishes our situation from the French at the end of the 18th century. But even there they didn’t get along without going abroad: they only forcibly robbed her, which can’t be done now.
True, there is an international counterweight: revolutions in Hungary, Bavaria, Germany. The Soviet government hopes and expects a world, worldwide socialist revolution. Let us even assume that these aspirations will come true, even in the very form in which they are depicted in the communist imagination. Will this save the situation here in Russia?
The answer to this question is undeniable for those who are familiar with the regularities of the course of revolutions.
Indeed: in all revolutions, during their turbulent period, old tasks are demolished and new ones are set; but their implementation, their solution is a matter of the next, organic period, when the new is created with the help of everything viable and in the old classes that previously dominated. Revolution is always a complex and lengthy process. We are present at the first act of this drama. Even if it hasn’t passed yet, let it still last. So much the worse. Russia is tired of economic ruin. There is no strength to endure anymore.
The outcome is clear. While the world revolution flares up (if it flares up), ours will go out. A complete collapse can be prevented, and the construction of a new one can be preserved and strengthened only by the union of all democracy - urban and rural. And the union must be realistically expressed. The closest, most urgent measures to this end are complete non-interference in the question of land, giving the peasantry unlimited freedom to dispose of the land as they want; refusal of requisitions and confiscations in the countryside; granting freedom to private initiative in the matter of supply while continuing and developing intensified, active work and the existing state and public apparatus for supply; securing all this by direct, equal and secret voting of all workers in elections to councils and by all civil liberties; cessation of internal and external war and an agreement on economic and financial support from the United States and England.
Then and only then can one endure, endure to the end, hold out until the time of organic construction of a new order, or rather, begin this construction, because the time has come for that, and there is no force that would avert the beginning of this process. The whole question is in whose hands the steering wheel will be. Every effort must be made to preserve it as a democracy. There is only one path to this, now indicated. Otherwise, it’s an overt reaction.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rozhkov (1868 - 1927) Russian historian and political figure: member of the RSDLP (b) from 1905, from August 1917, member of the Central Committee of the Menshevik Party, from May to July 1917 - comrade (deputy) minister of the Provisional Government, author of a number of works on Russian history and economics Agriculture Russia, economic and social history.
The Great French Revolution was generated by acute contradictions between various layers of French society. Thus, on the eve of the revolution, industrialists, merchants, and merchants who were part of the so-called “third estate” paid significant taxes to the royal treasury, although their trade was constrained by many government restrictions.
The domestic market was extremely narrow, since the impoverished peasantry bought almost no industrial goods. Of the 26 million French, only 270 thousand were privileged - 140 thousand nobles and 130 thousand priests, who owned 3/5 of the arable land and paid almost no taxes. The main burden of taxation was borne by peasants whose standard of living was below the poverty line. The inevitability of the revolution was also predetermined by the fact that absolutism in France did not meet national interests, defending medieval class privileges: the exclusive rights of the nobility to land, the guild system, and royal trade monopolies.
In 1788, on the eve of the revolution, France entered into a deep economic crisis. The financial and commercial-industrial crisis, the bankruptcy of the state treasury, ruined by the wasteful spending of the court of Louis XVI, a crop failure, which resulted in the high cost of food, aggravated the peasant unrest. Under these conditions, the government of Louis XVI was forced to convene on May 5, 1789 the Estates General, which had not met for 175 years (from 1614 to 1789). The king counted on the help of the estates in overcoming financial difficulties. The Estates General consisted, as before, of three estates: the clergy, the nobility and the “third estate”. Deputies of the “third estate” demanded the abolition of the old order of voting separately in chambers and the introduction of voting by a simple majority. The government did not agree with this and tried to disperse the Constituent Assembly (in June States General were renamed by their deputies). The people of Paris supported the Assembly and on July 14, 1789, stormed the royal fortress-prison Bastille.
The Great French Revolution was led by the bourgeois class. But the tasks facing this revolution could only be accomplished due to the fact that its main driving force was the masses - the peasantry and urban plebeians. The French Revolution was people's revolution, and that was her strength. The active, decisive participation of the popular masses gave the revolution the breadth and scope with which it differed from. other bourgeois revolutions. French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. remained a classic example of the most complete bourgeois-democratic revolution.
The French Revolution occurred almost a century and a half later than the English Revolution. If in England the bourgeoisie opposed royalty in alliance with the new nobility, then in France she opposed the king and the nobility, relying on the broad plebeian masses of the city and the peasantry.
The aggravation of contradictions in the country caused a division of political forces. In 1791, three groups were active in France:
Feuillants - representatives of the large constitutional-monarchist bourgeoisie and liberal nobility; Representatives: Lafayette, Sieyes, Barnave and the Lamet brothers. Several representatives of the movement were ministers of France during the period of the constitutional monarchy. In general, the policy of the Feuillants was conservative and aimed at preventing further revolutionary changes. After the overthrow of the monarchy on August 9-10, 1792, the Feuillants group was dispersed by the Jacobins, who accused its members of betraying the cause of the revolution.
Girondins are mainly representatives of the provincial commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.
Supporters of individual freedom, admirers of Rousseau's democratic political theory, who very soon began to speak out in a republican spirit, ardent defenders of the revolution, which they wanted to transfer even beyond the borders of France.
Jacobins - representatives of the petty and middle bourgeoisie, artisans and peasantry, supporters of the establishment of a bourgeois-democratic republic
The course of the French Revolution 1789 - 1794 conditionally divided into the following stages:
1. The period of constitutional monarchy (1789-1792). The main driving force is the big aristocratic bourgeoisie (representatives are the Marquises of Mirabeau and Lafayette), political power is held by the Feuillants. In 1791, the first French Constitution was adopted (1789).
2. Girondin period (1792-1793). On August 10, 1792, the monarchy fell, King Louis XVI and the royal family were arrested, the Girondins (the name from the Gironde department, in which the city of Bordeaux is located, many Girondins, such as Brissot, were from) came to power and proclaimed France a republic. In September 1792, instead of the Legislative Assembly of France provided for by the abolished Constitution of 1791, a new Constituent Assembly was convened - the National Convention. However, the Girondins were in the minority in the Convention. Also represented in the Convention were the Jacobins, who professed more left-wing views than the Girondins, expressing the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. The majority in the Convention was the so-called “swamp”, on whose position the fate of the revolution actually depended.
3. Jacobin period (1793-1794). On May 31-June 2, 1793, power passed from the Girondins to the Jacobins, the Jacobin dictatorship was established, and the republic was strengthened. The French Constitution, drafted by the Jacobins, was never put into effect.
4. Thermidorian period (1794-1795). In July 1794, as a result of the Thermidorian coup, the Jacobins were overthrown and their leaders were executed. The French Revolution marked a conservative turn.
5. Period of the Directory (1795-1799). In 1795, a new French Constitution was adopted. The convention was dissolved. The Directory was established - collective head state, consisting of five directors. The Directory was overthrown in November 1799 as a result of the Brumaire coup led by General Napoleon Bonaparte. This marked the end of the Great French War bourgeois revolution 1789-1799
The main results of the Great French Revolution:
1. It consolidated and simplified the complex variety of pre-revolutionary forms of ownership.
2. The lands of many (but not all) nobles were sold to peasants in small plots (parcels) in installments over 10 years.
3. The revolution swept away all class barriers. Abolished the privileges of the nobility and clergy and introduced equal social opportunities for all citizens. All this contributed to the expansion of civil rights in all European countries and the introduction of constitutions in countries that did not have them before.
4. The revolution took place under the auspices of representative elected bodies: the National Constituent Assembly (1789-1791), Legislative Assembly(1791-1792), Convention (1792-1794) This contributed to the development of parliamentary democracy, despite subsequent setbacks.
5. The revolution gave birth to a new government system - a parliamentary republic.
6. The state was now the guarantor of equal rights for all citizens.
7. The financial system was transformed: the class nature of taxes was abolished, the principle of their universality and proportionality to income or property was introduced. The budget was declared open.
More on the topic Features of the French bourgeois revolution of the 18th century: prerequisites, driving forces, main political trends, results and historical significance:
- The Great French Bourgeois Revolution (features and main stages)
- Features and main stages of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century.
- Features and main stages of the American bourgeois revolution.
- Topic 23. Revolution of the 18th century. and the formation of the bourgeois state in France"
- 35 Historical conditions and prerequisites for the formation of the bourgeois type of state and law:
- 36 From the history of the bourgeois state in England. English bourgeois revolution:
- Key drivers influencing higher education policy in Ireland
- Brief historical background. Main trends of modern economic theory
- The Dutch bourgeois revolution and the formation of a bourgeois state in Holland.
- 37 Stages and main acts of the English bourgeois revolution.
- French Revolution of 1789: main periods and documents
- The essence of money. The emergence of money as a result of the long historical development of forms of value and their main characteristics. Features of the equivalent product
- Main features and historical prerequisites of a capitalist economy
- Copyright - Advocacy - Administrative law - Administrative process - Antimonopoly and competition law - Arbitration (economic) process - Audit - Banking system - Banking law - Business - Accounting - Property law - State law and administration - Civil law and process - Monetary law circulation, finance and credit - Money - Diplomatic and consular law - Contract law - Housing law - Land law - Electoral law - Investment law - Information law - Enforcement proceedings - History of state and law -
Having systematically visited bookstores for decades, I noticed the lack of literature about the French Revolution. Moreover, even in the educational programs of the USSR there is absolutely no mention of Lenin’s attitude to this phenomenon. But this is strange. After all, we are the first country of victorious socialism. Shouldn't we study the first revolution of the world, which is the French one? Of course, I did not expect from our timid Soviet leaders that they would publish here, especially then in the USSR, the works of theorists and practitioners of the French revolution, such as Robespierre, Marat, Danton, so that we would publish memoirs of active participants those events. We and the speeches of the secretaries communist parties « fraternal countries“They were afraid to publish it themselves. But it was possible to at least give a Soviet interpretation. But no, we didn’t have that and don’t have it. Of course, you never know what books are missing from our stores. For example, even in our largest bookstores it is impossible to see books on setting up factory equipment or working on machines, in particular on CNC machines. And this despite the fact that our factories at this time are a very wretched sight, more reminiscent of the workshops of a run-down collective farm. Intellectual stupidity in general is characteristic feature socialism and remains this feature of ours to this day.
But I won't get distracted. Be that as it may, I was interested in such a strange silence about such a grandiose event as the First World Revolution, and I decided to take a closer look at the reason for our silence and at the same time compare how the French Revolution differs from the Russian. Of course, I mean the so-called Great October Socialist Revolution. Well, let's begin.
So, despite the fact that the French Revolution did not establish socialism, but only put an end to feudalism, it has a lot in common with the Russian one. So what?
Let's start with the most noticeable phenomenon - the liquidation of tsarism.
The Russian Tsar was immediately arrested and sent to the Urals. Louis and his wife for a long time remained not only free, but also actively participated in public life countries. For example, Marie Antoinette even had the opportunity to work for the enemy and communicate military campaign plans to him.
The deputies of the convention debated for a long time how to judge the king. And although the king was arrested in August 1792, his first interrogation took place only on December 11.
The convention held an open vote on the king's guilt.
Each deputy had the right to motivate his opinion.
The king even had a lawyer.
The king appeared before the Convention several times before he was executed in January 1793.
Marie Antoinette was also publicly tried before she was executed in October.
And what's interesting. The ten-year-old son of the king was not killed, as happened here in Russia with his almost the same age. The boy was sent to a foster family. Yes, strangers took poor care of him. So bad that the boy eventually contracted tuberculosis and died. Everything is true, but he was not shot in the basement by unknown persons. But we still don’t really know anything about our executioners. So, something about some.
And what’s interesting is that the rest of the royal family’s relatives emigrated safely and lived quite peacefully abroad. No one was going to kidnap or kill them.
Moreover, after the execution of Louis 16 and Antoinette, the remaining Bourbons could return to France without fear.
In Russia, as we know, all the Romanovs were wiped out, along with their infants. In total there are more than a hundred people.
That is, they secretly took him to the Urals, secretly executed him, and then brazenly claimed that they didn’t even know where the grave was. Although they really couldn’t know anything about the grave, because there was no grave. People were buried like dogs, the place was even compacted with a car. In the end, even the house of engineer Ipatiev, where Nikolai’s own family was kept before execution, was demolished. And where the rest were executed and who exactly we still don’t know for sure. It’s as if the Cheka doesn’t have archives.
And if I started talking about kings, then it is necessary to talk about attempts to save those who were crowned especially, as these attempts are depicted in our literature.
In the little literature that exists in Russia on this issue, they are trying to convince us that foreigners, in particular England, did not sleep at night, thinking about how to save the dynasty of France or the dynasty of Russia, to arrange an escape from the country of Louis 16 or Nicholas 2 . Bullshit. In my opinion, these Englishmen, on the contrary, sought to ensure that both the king and the czar were executed by the revolutionaries. The lives of these persons did not play any role, but death brought dividends in the form of compromise of these “bloodthirsty degenerates of revolutionaries.”
And it doesn’t matter that Louis was a relative of Leopold and Nicholas was also related to the lords.
Well, if we are talking about foreigners, then it is not superfluous to talk about their interference in the internal affairs of France and Russia. In our country, any foreign intervention is shown as an attempt to maintain stability and the old order. It's bullshit. We must understand that time and characters. England at the height of the revolution in France was the most in an active way involved in the war with the nascent United States of America. And the fact that there was turmoil inside its main competitor on the mainland, France, was very beneficial for England. What's wrong with a competitor who can't take advantage of your difficulties? So the revolution in France was simply beneficial for England. And here is what the French scientist Albert Mathiez, the author of several monographs on the French Revolution, says about foreign intervention.
Foreign gold was intended not only for finding out military secrets, but also for causing unrest and creating all kinds of difficulties for the government.
And here is what Deputy Fabre d'Eglantine said to members of the Committee of Public Safety.
There are conspiracies in the republic external enemies- Anglo-Prussian and Austrian, which are dragging the country to death from exhaustion.
We must understand that any unrest within the country is a blessing for the enemies, and the fact that all these revolutionaries are shouting loud slogans is not scary at all.
No wonder Deputy Lebas wrote to Robespierre:
- Let's not trust cosmopolitan charlatans, let's rely only on ourselves.
Because there were traitors to the revolution at all levels of government. Actually, most often these were not even traitors, but slippery adventurers who joined the revolution for personal gain.
As for Russia, the power of this giant worried everyone. No one wished her well; they were afraid of her. Therefore, turmoil within a country like Russia, which throws the economy back hundreds of years, was very desirable for all countries.
It seems like similar events, but there are so many dissimilarities here.
Although the two revolutions have many parallels. There are some funny ones too.
For example, the revolutionary names that began to be given to children in Russia. Like Krasarmiya, Divide (Lenin’s cause is alive).
In France, no one gave children such names. But something similar happened there. During the French Revolution in Poland, the revolutionary governor was the famous storyteller Hoffmann. At that time he was the Prussian administrator of Warsaw. When Poland was divided, in the Russian part Jews received surnames based on their hometowns or the surnames of their employers. In Prussia and Austria, surnames were given to Jews by officials. So the revolutionary official Hoffman was exiled to the best of his literary imagination. Many Jews at that time received very wild surnames, for example, Stinky or Koshkolapy when translated into Russian.
Or take such a concept as “enemy of the people.” It also comes from the time of the French Revolution. There was even a commissar position in both France and Russia. However, this was also the name given to the assistants of the inquisitor in ancient times, even before all the revolutions. The inquisitor had two kinds of assistants - some were given to him by his superiors, others he selected himself. Some of them were called commissars.
However, the status of state commissars was not only in France and Russia, but also in Nazi Germany. And members of the Nazi Party in Germany addressed each other the same way as ours - comrade.
By the way, the French were the first to send workers to collective farms for agricultural work. Of course, there were no collective farms then, but grain threshing existed. It was to thresh grain that the Committee of Public Safety mobilized the city workers, since the peasants refused to work for nothing.
There are parallels that no one knows about now. For example, no one knows that immediately after the revolution of the seventeenth year we abolished the old calendar and, following the example of the French, introduced our own revolutionary one, where there were no names of the days of the week, and the seven-day week itself was abolished. And we replaced the names of the days with numbers. In general, we began the countdown of the new revolutionary time in 1917. That is, in the USSR we did not have, say, 1937 or 1938, but rather the years 20 and 21 of the new revolutionary era, respectively.
There is another somewhat mystical parallel. For example, a friend of the people, Marat, was killed by a woman, Charlotte Corday.
According to the official version, Lenin was also shot by a woman, blind Kaplan.
And take our cruiser "Aurora", from which we fired at Zimny.
Oddly enough, the French also have something similar. The Jacobins at one time declared an uprising against the bribed deputies. But the signal for such an uprising was a shot from a signal cannon. Not a cruiser, of course, but not bad either.
All these parallels are, of course, a curiosity. And revolution is a movement of property and social strata. So how did property transfers occur in France?
The French Revolution did not envisage a widespread transfer of property from one political class to another.
Community property was divided according to a law issued specifically for this purpose.
Even the property of emigrants, those who fled the revolution, was not taken away. The property of emigrants was sold under the hammer. Moreover, upon purchase, the poor were provided with an installment plan for ten years.
In general, in France there was a sale of national property, while in Russia this property was simply taken away by force on the completely “legitimate basis of the revolutionary moment.”
Bread was not taken from the peasants, as it is in Russia, but bought. Another thing is that the peasants did not want to give their bread for depreciated paper money, but that is another question. No one completely took away the peasant’s bread.
The Revolutionary Assembly even intended to create a section to ensure the inviolability of person and property.
“Personality and property are under the protection of the nation,” said the French.
However, attempts to introduce general nationalization food production in France was done and even quite successfully. And what’s interesting is that these ideas about the nationalization of property were spread mainly by priests, revolutionary-minded priests. For example, the Parisian abbot Jacques Roux toyed with the idea of creating public stores where there would be strictly fixed prices, like ours later.
However, ideas about nationalization remained not only ideas. At the most critical moment for the French Republic, when foreign armies were advancing on all fronts, and this was August 1793, not only a general mobilization was carried out, but in general the government began to manage all the country’s resources. For the first time in history, all goods, food supplies, and the people themselves were at the disposal of the state.
Saint-Just even passed a decree on the confiscation of the property of suspects.
Well, what happened in Russia with personal property and personal inviolability in general, I think there is no need to repeat.
Although it’s still worth talking about terrorism. After all, no revolution is complete without terror. Naturally, the French Revolution was not without terror. Above, I already mentioned such a category of citizens as suspicious. What did they mean in France?
The following were considered suspicious persons:
1) Those who, by their behavior or their communications, or their speeches and writings, have shown themselves to be a supporter of tyranny or federalism and an enemy of freedom;
2) Those who could not prove the legality of their livelihood;
3) Those who were denied a certificate of citizenship;
4) Persons whom the Convention or its commissions have removed from office;
5) Those of the former nobles who did not show devotion to the revolution;
6) Those who emigrated during the period from July 1 to the publication of the decree of March 30, 1792, even if they returned to France within the period specified by this decree or even earlier.
About the French law on suspicious persons, the famous French historian Albert Mathiez wrote that this decree posed a threat to everyone who in one way or another interfered with the government, even if they did nothing. If a person did not take part in the elections, for example, then he fell under the article of the law on suspicious persons.
In Russia we didn’t have any laws about suspicious people. It’s just that every financially secure person was automatically considered an enemy. In general, when we talk about the Red Terror, they always add that the Whites also carried out terror. But, however, there is a significant difference between the Red and White Terrors. The Red Terror actually meant political genocide. People were persecuted not for infractions, not for crimes, but because they belonged to a certain social class. Whites did not kill people just because a person was a loader or a peasant. White terror this, in the end, is simply a self-defense response, but in no case is genocide against one’s own people. But it was genocide that took place here. By the way, the French admit quite openly that political genocide was taking place in France at that time, but we obvious fact We stubbornly deny it today, just as we denied many other things. For example, we stubbornly did not recognize the authenticity of party archives captured by the Germans in Soviet territories during the Second World War. Well, it's fake. Such monstrous documents cannot belong to the humane Soviet government. We denied the execution of more than twenty thousand, for example, Polish officers for fifty years. Well, how do we know who shot whom and why these corpses have bullet holes in their skulls.
In general, the scale of the Red Terror here and in France of that period can be judged if only because the French used the guillotine for executions. Yes, it was later replaced by executions from rifles and cannons, but still the French terror did not reach the same scale as in Russia. There is no comparison here. But what do the French themselves write about their terror?
For example, they boldly admit that under the pretext of freedom, freedom itself was killed. And terror itself has become endemic.
What then can we say about Russia?
In Russia, they killed millions and not in prisons, but simply in homes. They were not killed by a court verdict. But simply because the man was a nobleman, a priest, simply wealthy. In addition, in Russia, all criminals were released from prisons. They also became judges and executioners on completely legal grounds, joining the ranks of the Cheka and the workers’ militia. A normal person will not just go kill others.
We must not forget that Stalin himself was, after all, first and foremost a criminal authority, a famous cash-in-transit robber in the criminal community. Moreover, bombs were used during robberies, not small arms. During the explosions, not only collectors died, but also innocent people, random passers-by who, like the collectors, also had children and wives. However, both women and children were caught in the explosions of Russian revolutionaries. She doesn’t understand the bomb who’s in front of her. The people throwing it, of course, understood, but they just didn’t give a damn about the fate of others.
Let us once again draw a parallel between our terror and the French terror.
In August and September 1792, prisoners were exterminated in French prisons.
Here, for example, is a description of murders in French prisons given by Albert Mathiez.
“The intoxication with murder was so great that they killed indiscriminately criminals and political criminals, women and children. Some corpses, such as the Princesse de Lamballe, were terribly mutilated. The number of those killed, according to rough estimates, fluctuated between 1100 and 1400."
I repeat, in Russia, criminals in prisons were not killed en masse, except for 1941, when we exterminated all prisoners before leaving the city. By the way, it was exactly these kind of executions that the NKVD failed to hide that the Germans very skillfully took advantage of, showing people the executed poor fellows whom the communists destroyed before retreating, or, more precisely, before fleeing. But these were wartime measures. And so, as Shalamov repeatedly asserted, he wouldn’t know that if a person spent twenty years in the Gulag, criminals in the camps were considered “friends of the people” by the Soviet authorities. With the help of criminals, the security officers maintained discipline in the camps. For example, during the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal there were only four hundred security officers. I don't consider security. Until the fifties, our country's security consisted of civilian riflemen. So these four hundred people controlled a huge mass of prisoners with the help of criminals. And it was like that everywhere. That is, power and criminality grew together in our country quite strongly at that time. And why shouldn’t it grow together if the revolutionaries themselves were the same criminals? The most striking example is Stalin himself.
Here is another fact of the French Revolution.
In Nantes, the revolutionary and terrible drunkard Carrier organized mass drownings on ships, barges, and boats. There were up to two thousand victims of drowning.
If we take the Russian Revolution, we can see the discrepancy in the scale of terror. The size of our Gulag surpasses not only everything French, but also has no analogues at all in its atrocities and gigantomania. But the terror in the USSR is not only the years of revolution. This and the subsequent persecution of people for their origin, for the fact that people have relatives abroad, for the fact that the person was in captivity, simply in occupied territory, was taken to Germany. I know one woman who was taken to Germany as an infant along with her mother. Then the path to a career and professional growth was closed to her. It doesn't matter that she was a baby in Germany. All the same, she no longer had the right to enter a university. That is why this woman only graduated from technical school. And then they told her that she should consider this fact as happiness. Terror in the USSR generally took a wide variety of forms, often completely invisible to others. But this did not make him any more humane.
Although even today we try to carefully hide the scale of terror. For example, few people know about a burial found in the USSR near Chelyabinsk, where in a common pit there were eighty thousand corpses with bullet holes in the skull. By the way, the number of victims only in this secret burial place of communists exceeds the number of victims in the notorious Babi Yar. These people were simply shot, according to the authorities, in the thirties. Of course, the poor fellows were killed by people “without fear or reproach,” that is, our glorious NKVD officers. Moreover, there were many children’s skeletons in the pit. Let's not forget that in the USSR, full criminal liability began at the age of thirteen. This law was repealed only in the mid-fifties. However, as they say, there were skeletons of people of a younger age. This fact suggests that people were not arrested in their homes. Otherwise, they would all be sorted by gender and age: women and men would be in different camps, children in orphanages. In this burial, all the victims were in one common grave. Most likely, this entire mass of people were interned from the Baltic states or from Western Ukraine, or from Moldova, or from Poland, divided between the Germans and the Soviets. For some reason, they decided not to sort them by age and gender, but simply killed them. And what’s interesting is that the then authorities of our humane USSR immediately prohibited further research in this area. This can only mean one thing - there were other similar burials nearby, just as large.
This is, of course, a very sad topic. Let's talk better about human origins. I'm not talking about Darwin's theory or the racist rants of the Nazis. In this case, I am most interested in our attitude to the class roots of a person. We simply could not do without blaming a person for his class affiliation. But to blame a person for his origin or circumstances that were not his will is simply to be guided by thoughtless fanaticism. Is not it? But in the case of the Chelyabinsk burial, this is not so much fanaticism as simple criminal fanaticism of people endowed with state power.
If in France terror, as the French themselves admit, was permanent, then in our country it was generally all-encompassing.
The Paris newspaper publisher of that time, Jacques Roux, wrote that one cannot demand love and respect for a government that exercises its power over people through terror. Our revolution will not be able to conquer the world through indignation, destruction, fire and blood, turning all of France into one huge prison.
This is what happened to the humane USSR. The country has turned into one big concentration camp, where people were divided into executioners and their victims.
Yes, there are many, many similarities between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, but I would like to point out some serious differences. In this case I mean the main characters of the revolution. The fact is that in the French Revolution there were no leaders from the proletariat. All deputies were nobles. There was one Jacques the Poor from the peasants. That's all. In Russia we had many who were not nobles. And on government positions In Russia, after the revolution, there were generally many people who were completely illiterate. Even among the ministers there were many people with two classes of education. What can we say about the time of the revolution and shortly after it. It is enough to recall the level of education of our Politburo members already in the eighties. Even such a vaunted intellectual, supposedly an intellectual, like Andropov had only a river technical school behind him. But this man occupied the very top echelons of power.
Of course, if we are looking for similarities between these two revolutions, then we cannot ignore such phenomena as the abolition of titles, coats of arms, and the demolition of monuments to kings and their associates. In this matter too, we are more vulgar than the French. We not only destroyed all the monuments in the cities, but even in the cemeteries. Well, of course, since the man was a “minion of tsarism,” then his grave must be razed and razed to the ground. This is what we did very diligently in the glorious USSR. And if in all civilized countries there are now very ancient graves, then none can be found anywhere in our country. The communists tried, they tried very hard. This effort is especially clearly seen in the example of former socialist countries, where since the First World War there were military cemeteries for soldiers everywhere. enemy army. These cemeteries were not destroyed until the countries turned socialist after World War II. Socialism destroyed all old military cemeteries in socialist countries. The graves of famous people have disappeared. In this matter, the communists also showed quite class approach, rejecting not only faith, but also conscience.
But, if I started talking about faith, then it would not be out of place to compare our attitude to religion and that of the French. In France, by the way, many revolutionary deputies were either bishops or simply priests.
Of course, all priests in France fell into the category of “suspicious”. Moreover, if they did not resign, they were simply sent to prison. Although theoretically there was freedom of religion in France at that time. The Convention, for example, even approved freedom of worship. Moreover, such an active figure in the revolution as Robespierre seriously believed that the persecution of the Christian religion was organized by foreign agents in order to arouse hatred of the revolution among the believing population. Robespierre considered the persecution of religion to be a new fanaticism, growing out of the fight against old fanaticism. Moreover, Robespierre was also of the opinion that the destroyers of churches were counter-revolutionaries operating under the guise of demagoguery.
Yes, in France churches were closed by the thousands, often becoming revolutionary churches. For example, Notre Dame was turned into a temple of reason. But, nevertheless, the French sought to somehow streamline this process, some kind of revolutionary reforms were carried out. In our country, in the USSR, if churches were not destroyed, they were turned not into temples of reason, but into warehouses or workshops, while priests were declared wholesale “enemies of the people” and simply destroyed. And this process of cannibalism and vandalism in our country continued for decades.
Of course, speaking about these two revolutions, it is impossible not to talk about this general phenomenon for socialism, as a shortage of everything, speculation, global theft, bribery. Let's not forget that the ominous abbreviation VChK itself stands for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Profiteering and Crimes in Ex officio. In this regard, I would like to note such a detail as the absence of such harsh authorities in the countries of “decaying capitalism”. This whole bouquet of phenomena: sabotage, corruption, profiteering, looting, global shortages of everything, bribery as a way of life are characteristic on such a gigantic scale only for humane socialism. Naturally, the French already had this whole set of ulcers.
Yes, the French introduced fixed prices for products. And what are the consequences? Yes, the shelves are empty, just like ours in our native USSR.
Just like ours, the French introduced card system for essential products; for bread, for sugar, for meat, for soap, etc., etc. Complete coincidence. What they have is what we have.
And what is especially interesting. In a country that has always been famous for its wines, its winemakers, and its vineyards, counterfeit wines suddenly began to spread widely. The scale of the disaster acquired such proportions that special positions of commissioners were even introduced to sample wine. And this is in wine France! We didn’t have such commissars, but counterfeit wines are still in great use to this day.
But how is the French deficit, the chaos in trade and the economy, different from ours? I will answer briefly – scale. For example, in France, armed force was never used to carry out requisitions, only administrative centralization was strengthened. Our CHON officers raked everything out.
Well, if we started talking about theft, then it’s not superfluous to talk about revolutionary police structures.
In France, the Assembly established an extraordinary criminal tribunal, the judges and juries of which were appointed by the Convention itself, and not chosen by the people.
Please note that there is a jury. In Russia, people were generally shot without trial or investigation simply for belonging to the class of “exploiters and world-eaters.”
In France, the property of those sentenced to death went to the benefit of the republic. The insolvent relatives of the convicted were given material aid. Pay attention to such a scrupulous detail as caring for the relatives of convicts who were provided with financial assistance. Our security officers would simply consider these abnormal French fools for such softness. But, as a rule, the security officers were illiterate people and simply did not have any thoughts about this.
What about the French? Well, what can we take from them? These abnormal prisoners even had defenders; moreover, both the defenders and the defendants could freely express their opinions. The liberty is unheard of.
Although by the time of Thermidor, both the institution of defenders and preliminary interrogations of the accused were nevertheless eliminated.
These French were speaking differently by that time.
To punish the enemies of the fatherland, it is enough to discover them. The point is not so much about their punishment as about their destruction.
These speeches are already more similar to ours, Russian ones.
Even the very concept of “enemies of the revolution” was eventually expanded to such an extent that it meant everyone who was trying to mislead public opinion, hinder public education, and corrupt morals and public conscience.
This is already closer to Lenin and even Stalin.
“Let terror be put on the order of the day,” said Deputy Royer.
This is already much closer and clearer to us.
And Deputy Chomet directly proposed organizing a revolutionary army like our CHONs. About the parts special purpose I already added this myself, because humanity does not have a time machine. Simply by the similarity of the tasks. These detachments were supposed to deliver requisitioned grain to Paris. And then the deputy said: “Let the guillotine follow every such detachment.” A completely sensible person who fully understands that no one will simply give their bread to someone else’s uncle.
This is probably why the French began to realize that terror is not a temporary means, but a necessary condition for the creation of a “democratic republic.” Maybe not everyone thought so, but Deputy Saint-Just thought so.
In general, although the French themselves believe that political genocide was taking place at that time, I, as a person born in our humane USSR, am simply amazed by the softness of these paddling pools. Think about it for yourself, Danton, this architect of the revolution ensured that not a single general, minister or deputy could be brought to trial without a special decree of the Convention.
What court? What special decree? Yes, these French are simply crazy. Personally, the gentleness of these French people simply amazes me. For example, the chairman of the tribunal Montana even tried to save Marat's murderer Charlotte Cardet.
Well, who stood on ceremony for so long with this blind hysterical Kaplan, who allegedly shot at Lenin. It doesn’t matter that she can’t see a person two meters away, the main thing is that she was caught. Which means we need to shoot her quickly.
In general, the devil was going on with the French punitive authorities. For example, in the tribunal appointed by the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of Public Safety, there was not a single worker among the judges and juries.
Well, where is this thing good for?
And among the appointed members of the tribunal, these French even had high nobles, for example, marquises.
Is this in the marquise's tribunal? This is horror! We didn’t have this in Russia, of course.
Yes, these French people are strange people. They also judged kings openly. For example, political process over the queen passed openly and lasted several days.
It's mind boggling. No, to execute secretly, as we did, in some basement, so they take everything out to the public. Well, aren't they crazy?
In general, a completely spineless people, no revolutionary firmness. True, they had a law on accelerating sentences, which even led to an increase in death sentences. But numbers, but numbers.
From August 6 to October 1, 1794, only 29 people were sentenced to death.
This is just some kind of mockery of revolutionary justice. Even if we take into account that in the next three months 117 prisoners were sentenced to death.
Is this scale?
And what’s most terrible is that many of those convicted were generally acquitted. Some were sentenced to exile, some to prison, for some the arrests did not even have any consequences.
This is just a mockery of the revolution!
Although not everything is so sad in this soft-bodied France. They have gotten wiser.
The Committee of Public Safety organized the Bureau of Administrative Supervision and the General Police.
These French even began to act decisively. For example, by order of Bonaparte, the Duke of Enghien is captured abroad and brought to France for execution.
The Duke, of course, was executed. But, interestingly, Murat, the governor of Paris at that time, did not agree for a long time to put his signature on the Duke’s death sentence. Murat had to be persuaded and even given him a tidy sum of one hundred thousand francs after the Duke’s execution for his signature on the verdict. But this is not what surprises me, but the fact that in the USSR no one would have tried to persuade Murat in such a case; he would have simply been executed along with the kidnapped duke.
Yes, these French people are strange people. And they are also talking about some kind of genocide. Although the revolution still destroyed several hundred thousand of them. But can this figure be compared with our scale?
In general, even in the similarity of events there are many differences. Take the revolutionary army, for example. The French soldiers were paid, that is, they received a salary. The French even tried to fight unemployment with the help of the army. For example, Deputy Chalier proposed forming an army of unemployed people and paying them twenty sous a day for their service.
In Russia, no one paid for the service. Even now, our soldiers actually serve for free, that is, we don’t even consider service as a profession. They feed you, clothe you and what else? According to our concepts, this is quite enough.
And in general, we mobilized more decisively. With the French, for example, a rich man could buy off the army, like we do today. Although there is a very significant difference in the methods. The sons of wealthy parents could buy themselves out of service by hiring another person to take their place. Nowadays, no one here hires another person for themselves, but money still decides everything.
Although, during the revolution in Russia it was impossible to buy off the army. We forcibly mobilized old career officers who had not yet been killed, taking the relatives of these people hostage. So that they don’t twitch too much.
Similarities with phenomena in the army are also evident in the mass exodus of officers. But there are also differences. French officers en masse had the opportunity to immigrate from the country. Our officers were simply killed en masse. For example, the blood of naval officers made the Neva red.
Misconceptions of illiterate people - anyone can lead. And in the revolutionary armies, people were chosen for command positions by the soldiers themselves.
Naturally, with the help of the army, both revolutions produced a permanent policy, that is, they expanded revolutionary expansion, expanded beyond the borders of the country.
The French, like the Russian revolutionaries, imagined that all peoples were only eager to establish a revolution within themselves.
But, unlike the Russians, the French believed that the main figures in the revolution would be the intelligentsia, writers, and thinkers. After all, in France, the revolution was the work of the bourgeoisie. The workers were not leaders.
Like the French, we also made plans to carry out the revolution abroad.
Dantom, for example, spoke quite definitely on this matter.
“In our person, the French nation has created a great committee for the general uprising of peoples against kings.”
The convention even adopted a draft decree proposed by La Révelier-Lepo: “The National Convention, on behalf of the French nation, promises fraternal assistance to all peoples who wish to regain their freedom.”
We, too, constantly stuck our noses, or rather the barrel of the Kalashnikov, where it was necessary and where it was not needed.
The revolutionaries of France were planning to raise an uprising throughout Europe.
Our scale was much broader; we dreamed of a world revolution, of fanning a “world fire.” No more, no less.
Although, if you look at it, both we and the French were talking about world war, planning to destroy the old world.
As Albert Mathiez said:
- Like the old religions, the revolution intended to spread its gospel with sword in hand.
The monarchy needs peace, the republic needs militant energy. The slaves need peace, but the republic needs the strengthening of freedom, the French argued. Did we say something else?
Here the French and I have a complete coincidence of views and actions.
The French began to establish revolutionary regimes abroad very, very actively. However, so do we.
Usurping power, imposing revolutionary orders in other countries, both we and the French used the populist slogan - “peace to the huts, war to the palaces.”
In reality, this policy turned into ordinary violence, nothing more.
In general, both of them actively pursued an ordinary policy of conquest, which the local population was not at all enthusiastic about.
Let us at least remember how many millions of people fled from the socialist paradise. Several million people from the GDR alone went west. It was the only country in the socialist camp where the population of the country was catastrophically declining due to mass exodus.
But they fled from all socialist countries. Sometimes the flight took simply extremist forms. In our USSR alone, since the mid-fifties, there have been a hundred hijackings of airliners. This is for some forty years.
And if I started talking about revolutionary expansion, then it is not superfluous to recall that the French not only had numerous agitator agents abroad, but also actively subsidized newspapers.
We, with the help of the Third International, also carried out all kinds of expansion into the internal affairs of other countries. And quite annoying.
But if we compare these two revolutions, then it is necessary to compare the leaders of the revolution. This is quite interesting.
Let's start with Napoleon.
In his youth, Napoleon, like a true Corsican, hated the French.
I wonder what feelings young Dzhugashvili, either a Georgian or an Ossetian, had towards the Russians?
Napoleon had very few women according to Soviet standards, although he had an illegitimate son from a Polish woman, whom no one ever recognized as king. At least his victories on the sexual front do not come close to Beria’s all-encompassing. And he also never had children like Stalin.
Napoleon, like Hitler, was very well read. Napoleon thoroughly studied Plutarch, Plato, Titus Livy, Tacitus, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Raynal.
I may be asked why, when comparing the French and Russian revolutions, I mention Hitler? How is it possible, when talking about Stalin, not to mention Adolf? Completely unthinkable. They are like two boots that form an unchanging pair in history.
But let’s continue about Napoleon.
Napoleon was deeply disgusted by the crowd storming the Tuileries, calling them notorious rabble and scum.
I wonder what feelings Stalin had when he sent millions of innocent people to their deaths?
Napoleon personally went on the attack. But at that time all attacks were hand-to-hand combat. What is hand-to-hand combat? Yulia Drunina says this best. Napoleon was wounded with a bayonet in one of the attacks. This was a combat officer.
Stalin never flew on an airplane, he was afraid for his precious life.
Napoleon took great care of his large family. Even when he received a very modest salary, even then he did not stop supporting his relatives.
We know how Stalin treated his relatives. All of his wife's relatives were personally destroyed by him.
For his extremist views, Napoleon received the nickname of a terrorist.
Nobody called Stalin that, although he was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most mass murderer. But even without this, Stalin can easily be classified as a terrorist. Wasn’t he the one who organized attacks on collectors, as a result of which bystanders also died from bombs?
Napoleon flirted with the sans-culottes, borrowing their slang and curses.
Stalin did not borrow anything, he was simply a boor by nature.
During the revolution, Napoleon, as a supporter of Robespierre, was arrested and spent several weeks awaiting execution.
No one arrested Stalin after the victory of the revolution.
Napoleon, after the execution of Robespierre, could not find work for some time and even tried to get a job as an officer with the Turks.
For our revolutionaries, such a biography would cost a person his life.
In general, as far as humanity is concerned, Hitler, strange as it may sound, was, in my opinion, more humane than Stalin. For example, Hitler helped his mother’s attending physician emigrate from the country, despite his Jewish origin.
What really unites Hitler with Stalin is the writing of poetry. True, Hitler composed for a specific girl, but what Stalin composed is unknown to the common people to this day.
Both Napoleon and Hitler were in great need of their time. But neither one nor the other even thought of engaging in robbery, as Stalin did.
The military commission declared Hitler unfit for combat, but he submitted a petition to King Ludwig 3 with a request to serve in the Bavarian regiment and after that he was called up for military service.
Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross, first and second class.
Stalin had never been in the trenches.
Napoleon married Josephine Beauharnais, who was a widow and five years older than Bonaparte.
Stalin, as you know, chose young children.
Napoleon carefully controlled the newspapers, personally ensuring that the press portrayed him in a favorable light to the people.
Stalin surpassed him in this. This is not even worth talking about. No wonder Stalin was subsequently accused of creating his own personality cult.
Napoleon, like Stalin, appeared everywhere in modest clothing. But if Stalin wore military uniform, then Napoleon appeared everywhere in modest civilian clothes. If he wore a military uniform, then without any gold embroidery.
Napoleon, although at one time he ordered the execution of four thousand captured Turks near Jaffa, was still not as bloodthirsty as Joseph. It's not even worth talking about.
Members of the Directory in Paris were openly despised for their brazen, shameless theft, bribery, and luxurious daily revelry.
Stalin behaved more modestly. He organized carousings at night, but also every night, and this at a time when people were literally dying of hunger in the streets, as was the case in the thirties. We now know about such a depressing situation from German intelligence reports of that time, which are preserved in the archives.
And again I will skip to the Nazis.
In Germany, under the Nazis, a single ideology was introduced and a one-party system was introduced.
It happened to us too.
The foreign policy of both revolutionary France and Soviet Russia was characterized by extreme aggressiveness. However, the same as Germany.
Napoleon did not stand on ceremony with women. For example, there is a well-known case with one actress, to whom he immediately said: “Come in. Take off your clothes. Lie down."
And how did our Politburo members behave during the night revelry? What, Beria sat, drank the best cognac, ate black caviar and did not use his subordinates, I mean the female servants, the servants? I doubt. If it cost him nothing to grab any woman he liked from the street, then what can we say about his subordinates. Has Stalin stopped loving young children? Didn't pay attention to women at all? I doubt. With this kind of grub even a dead person will get a rise.
The emigrants were allowed to return to France. In our country, if anyone returned, then at best they were awaiting a concentration camp for many years.
Napoleon had a completely respectful opinion about religion. He said that if you take away people’s faith, then in the end nothing good will come of it and they will only turn out to be highwaymen.
Stalin did not care about such problems. He himself was a robber, a robber, a raider on collectors.
Fouche organized a very skillful and effective network of police espionage that covered the entire country.
But were our political police worse? Fewer? In addition, it was already equipped at that time with effective electronics, albeit largely purchased abroad.
Desmond Seward, an English historian, in his book Napoleon and Hitler describes the police methods of that period in France.
Arrests for psychological reasons were carried out mainly at night; those arrested were not treated on ceremony and, if necessary, their tongues were loosened by torture.
If I didn’t know that this was being said about revolutionary France, I would have decided that we were talking about the glorious USSR, where even children were tortured, because full legal responsibility came in the USSR from the age of 13. This means that already at this age they could do anything to a person: torture, execute. And this age of thirteen, the age of full legal responsibility, remained in the glorious USSR until the fifties.
Napoleon had absolute power, both civil and military, and was above the law. This is what the English historian Desmond Seward writes about Napoleon.
What kind of power did Stalin have? Absolute or not absolute?
Several attempts were made on Napoleon's life. One of them in 1804 was successfully prevented by the police. The main performer, Georges Cadoudal, a man of extraordinary strength, was captured by the police. During his arrest, Cadoudal killed and mutilated several police agents. He was, of course, beheaded in the end. But what’s interesting is that the main organizer of that failed terrorist attack received only two years in prison and then, after being expelled from France, he lived safely in America.
In the Soviet Union, a person received a death sentence even for misspelling Stalin’s last name, or rather, his nickname.
Napoleon was very abstinent in food. His usual lunch consisted of chicken, broth, a cup of coffee and a small amount of wine.
Everyone now knows how our Politburo members caroused at night. Members of regional committees also reveled. The carousings of comrades from the Smolny Palace during the siege became especially popular. They did not experience any food shortages at all. Even during the entire period of the siege of Leningrad they did not stop baking cakes for them.
On December 2, 1804, Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French.
Nobody crowned Stalin. But was his lifestyle different from the royal one? Yes, Joseph himself admitted to his mother that he was a king. After all, no one pulled his tongue. Just as no one pulled Brezhnev’s tongue, who also considered himself a tsar in all seriousness.
Although the French Revolution abolished all titles, Napoleon subsequently created a new nobility. Princes, barons, dukes, and counts appeared. But let's ask ourselves a question: weren't our party leaders the nobility? Weren’t all these secretaries of the regional committee and city committees, in the end, essentially ordinary appanage princelings? They had their own supplies, their own doctors, their own sanatoriums. And all this is at a much higher level, clearly not at the popular level.
Our Soviet director Sergei Gerasimov is quite right in his film “The Journalist” when he asserts that our society, although classless, is not without caste.
When describing the merits of the Soviet government, they usually say that it gave people apartments and built stadiums. But even under Adolf Hitler, huge residential areas and stadiums were built for workers in Germany.
Yes, regarding Hitler. After all, he also wore a completely modest uniform without insignia. Like great Stalin, like Bonaparte.
When describing Hitler's ruthlessness, they usually say that he destroyed not only real opponents, but also simply potential ones. Yes, just in case. At the same time, Adolf did not destroy the families of his opponents. The Soviet government destroyed everyone at the root.
And, if I inadvertently mentioned Germany, then it’s worth saying a few words about concentration camps. In 1937, there were just over thirty-seven thousand prisoners in all of Germany.
In the same year, our political police, this oprichnina of Stalin, killed over forty thousand officers alone. There were millions in the camps.
And if I’m already talking about Hitler, then it’s worth mentioning his culinary preferences, which were very modest, like Napoleon’s. Yes, he loved cakes and cakes with buttercream, but otherwise he was quite moderate in food. Vegetable soups, nut cutlets. I have no information whether Hitler refused black caviar when he found out its cost, but if he did not refuse, he always remembered this price. Stalin, like his entourage, did not care at all about the cost of caviar, as well as the cost of other delicacies that these members of the Politburo consumed daily and, of course, nightly.
And if I inadvertently mentioned Hitler, then it’s worth saying a little about the Fuhrer’s literacy.
Hitler spoke French and English. Let it not be perfect. But I watched films without translators, read foreign magazines myself, without resorting to the services of translators. And, in general, Adolf read a lot, like Napoleon.
The British believed that in this French republic people lived worse than slaves. This is how one Englishman spoke about that time.
Parisian society looks very pitiful - everyone is afraid of the secret police spies, and Napoleon deliberately cultivates general suspicion, “considering this the best way keep the population in obedience."
And what horror did our political police bring to people? But this is just a tiny part of the activities of the all-encompassing NKVD-KGB.
By the way, Napoleon also said: “I rule through fear.”
Modern historians unanimously agree that imperial France was no less a police state than Nazi Germany. I would like to ask another question in this regard. To what extent was the USSR a police state?
Evidence from the time indicates that censorship in France was intolerable. There were only four newspapers published in Paris, down from seventy-three in 1799. Each issue of the newspaper was read by the Minister of Police before publication.
All British newspapers were banned from sale.
I think there is no need to talk about Soviet censorship. Even now we don’t have foreign magazines and newspapers on newsstands, and under “developed socialism” there weren’t any.
Since there were not enough workers in the countryside due to universal conscription, Napoleon began experiments with slave labor, using Austrian prisoners of war for agricultural work. In our country, as we know, we used our own, internal “enemies of the people.” And there were significantly more of them, these enemies, than foreign prisoners.
The police were omnipresent. There were provocateurs all around, hunting down opponents of the regime.
This is about the French police. But if this fact If you don’t know, you might well think that we are talking about our police.
Napoleon loved it when people showed disobedience to him. In these cases, he could see his opponents, and it was easier for him to break their resistance.
I think Joseph was no less an intriguer, moreover, a very, very hypocritical intriguer. Before arrest, he treated all his victims kindly and said something laudatory to the victim. And then he destroyed the person.
This is what Napoleon wrote to his brother Joseph, who was appointed king of Naples: “I would like the Neapolitans to try to raise a rebellion.” In other words, he advised his brother to provoke a rebellion in order to identify enemies, which he could then destroy.
But this method is the most beloved in the USSR. I, of course, do not have access to Soviet archives, but I am simply sure that the uprising in Hungary, the uprising in Germany, and the uprising in Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries were artificially provoked by the Soviets. For what? There are many reasons. I'll try to name the most popular ones.
First, to identify the enemies of Soviet power in order to have a reason to destroy them.
Secondly, quietly send your agents into the enemy’s camp. Among thousands of immigrants and even millions, it is very difficult to identify KGB agents. Right?
There’s no point in naming other reasons anymore. The value of provocation is already visible from these two.
There is nothing new in such methods. As for the French, more than two hundred years ago the British Prime Minister accused the French of deliberately provoking the population of Venice to revolt in order to have a pretext for invasion.
The advice required only a little knowledge of history, no innovations.
Yes, a few more words about the difference between the two revolutions.
When an anti-revolutionary uprising broke out in Lyon, after suppressing the houses of the rebel rich people, the French decided to demolish them. Abnormal. We could make big communal apartments out of these houses.
The two largest revolutions in terms of their impact on the world have received surprisingly little comparative study. In the Soviet era, this was made difficult by the ideological factor, which drew a sharp line between “bourgeois” and “socialist” revolutions, and in the conditions modern Russia- the lack of development of comparative historical research and the (but still incomplete) rethinking of the very phenomenon of revolutions that has occurred over the past two decades. The October Revolution underwent a particularly sharp, polar revision, but also in French historiography by the 1970s. many key provisions of the classical social theory revolution of 1789, who interpreted it in the usual terms of “feudalism”, “capitalism”, etc. The revolution began to be viewed from the point of view of human rights and freedoms, changes in mentality, etc., and “embedding” it into a long historical context (1).
As a result, already on the approaches to comparing the October and French revolutions, a lot of questions arise. It is not even clear whether the terms “socialist”, “bourgeois”, “great” are applicable to them; what exactly to compare the French Revolution with - directly with the October Revolution; with the February and October revolutions or with the February, October revolutions and the Civil War, increasingly being united by researchers into a single “Russian Revolution”? (Individual French historians: J. Lefebvre, E. Labrousse, M. Bouloiseau, on the contrary, identified several revolutions in the Great French Revolution, either substantively or chronologically.)
Without trying to cover the whole gamut of problems within the framework of a small article, we will try to outline only some fundamental points that united and distinguished the French and October revolutions. This would help us break through the still existing scholastic schemes and get closer to understanding the phenomenon of revolutions.
Despite the 128 years that separated the events of 1789 and 1917. and despite the obvious contrast in the natural, climatic, sociocultural and other conditions of France and Russia, many of the factors that gave rise to and acted during the revolutions under consideration were to one degree or another similar. This was explained not only by the powerful influence of the French experience (to one degree or another it was used by almost all political forces). The Bolsheviks considered themselves followers of the Jacobins. A huge part of Russian revolutionary vocabulary (“Provisional Government”, “Constituent Assembly”, “commissar”, “decree”, “tribunal”, “whites” and “reds”, etc.) originated from the French Revolution. Accusations of Jacobinism and, on the contrary, appeals to the experience of the Jacobins, fears or hopes associated with the “Vendee”, “Thermidor”, “Bonapartism”, etc., have become one of the most common subjects of political discussions in our country (2).
Both the French and October revolutions marked an important (although far from being as self-sufficient as previously thought) step towards the transition from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial one and were associated with the contradictions that arose between them, and to some extent, within the nascent industrial society (to use the usual, ideologized term, within capitalism).
Large European revolutions, as economists have recently discovered, occurred at a similar stage of economic development, when the gross domestic product per capita was from 1200 to 1500 dollars. In France it was estimated at about 1218, and in Russia - 1488 dollars (3)
Moreover, in the pre-revolutionary period, both countries demonstrated extremely high economic growth. Contrary to stereotypes, France in the 18th century. developed noticeably faster than England, its economy was the largest in the world, with GNP twice as large as England's (4). Since post-reform times, Russia has been ahead of all European powers in terms of economic growth.
On the eve of the revolutions, both countries experienced a significant deterioration in their economic situation due to a bad harvest in 1788 and the First World War. However, it is by no means difficult situation the masses became the main factor in revolutions. In France in the 18th century. the level of taxation was half that in Great Britain, and in Russia in 1914-1916, despite economic difficulties and interruptions in the food supply of cities, overall production growth continued, and the situation of the masses was significantly better than in Germany, which was at war with it. A. de Tocqueville, who noted long ago that “revolutions are not always led only by the deterioration of the living conditions of the people” (5), turned out to be right.
In the pre-revolutionary period, France and Russia experienced a demographic explosion, caused primarily by a decrease in mortality. Population of France for 1715-1789 increased by more than 1.6 times - from 16 to 26 million people, and the population of Russia in 1858-1914. - 2.3 times, from 74.5 million. to 168.9 million people (without Poland and Finland it was 153.5 million) (6). This contributed to both rapid economic growth and strengthening social tension, especially in the village, where more than 4/5 of the population of both countries lived. The share of city dwellers was also approximately the same: in France in 1800 it was 13%, in Russia by 1914 it was 15%. In terms of population literacy (40%), our country by 1913 was approximately equal to France in 1785 (37%) (7).
The social structure of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, like that of France in the 18th century. (albeit to a greater extent) had a transitional character - from class to class - in nature. The class division has already undergone noticeable erosion, and the process of class formation has not yet been completed. The fragmentation and instability of the social structure became one of the factors of revolutionary upheavals. To others common factor, which increased the mobility of the population was the replacement of traditional large (composite) families with small ones (8).
In France in the 18th century. and in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The religiosity of the population and the influence of the church, which was in close connection with state power, fell (9). The abolition by the Provisional Government in Russia of compulsory communion for soldiers led to a decrease in the proportion of those receiving communion from 100 to 10% and below. Such a large-scale decline in religiosity reflected a crisis of traditional consciousness and facilitated the spread of political ideologies.
One of the features of the historical development of Russia since the 18th century. was considered a sociocultural split between the “lower classes” and the “higher classes” of society, which played vital role in 1917. However, some modern French historians (R. Mushamble, R. Chartier, D. Roche) noted the presence in their country before the revolution of “two cultural poles,” “two cultures,” and even “two Frances.”
The approximate similarity of a number of key features of the development of pre-revolutionary France and Russia is not accidental. The predominance of the peasantry served as a necessary factor for the development of a broad “anti-feudal” movement, since many structures of traditional society were rooted in the countryside. At the same time, the presence of an already noticeable proportion of the urban population provided leadership for this movement, its relatively new, compared to the peasant wars of the Middle Ages, direction and some organization. Demographic explosion, erosion of class barriers; formation of classes, new social groups, striving for property and power; the emergence of a significant, although not yet predominant, proportion of the literate population; the transition from patriarchal families to small ones and the decline in the role of religion - all this was necessary conditions breaking traditional stereotypes of mass consciousness and involving a significant part of the people in the political process.
Pre-revolutionary France and Russia were brought together by the unprecedented power of monarchical power by European standards (which largely determined the strength of the revolutionary explosion), and the decisive role of capitals can be noted in the development of events and the course of revolutions. (“The political predominance of the capital over the rest of the state is not due to its position, not its size, not its wealth, but solely to the nature of government,” noted Tocqueville.).
The most important revolutionary factor generated by the desacralization of mass consciousness, the growth of education and social mobility of the population of France and Russia, as well as the actions of the authorities, was the discrediting of monarchs, and hence, to a large extent, the institution of the monarchy. When Louis XV fell ill in 1744, 6 thousand masses were ordered for his health at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and when he died, in 1774, only 3 masses were ordered (10). Louis XVI and Nicholas II turned out to be weak rulers for such turbulent eras. Both of them tried to carry out overdue reforms (Turgot, Calonne and Necker in France, Witte and Stolypin in Russia), but, faced with resistance from the ruling elite, for the most part they were unable to implement or complete them. Yielding to pressure, they made concessions, but sometimes tried to win them back, and in general they pursued a contradictory, wavering course that only teased the revolutionary masses. “Separated from each other by five quarters of a century, the king and the king are represented at certain moments by two actors playing the same role,” noted L.D. Trotsky in “History of the Russian Revolution”.
Both monarchs had unpopular foreign wives. “Queens are taller than their kings not only in physical stature, but also morally,” wrote Trotsky. - Marie Antoinette is less pious than Alexandra Feodorovna, and, unlike the latter, she is ardently devoted to pleasure. But both equally despised the people, could not bear the thought of concessions, and equally did not trust the courage of their husbands.” The Austrian and German origins of the Queen and Tsarina, in conditions of war with their native countries, served as an irritating factor for the masses, provoking rumors of treason and further discrediting the monarchies.
Both revolutions began relatively anemic, initially went through a period of dual power, but underwent rapid radicalization. (“The most amazing thing about the French Revolution,” marveled J. de Maistre, “is its captivating power, which removes all obstacles.”) In terms of the breadth of involvement of the masses, and hence in its radicalism and bloodshed, in terms of secularism, and in one way or another to the extent and anti-religiousness of ideologies, a clear social orientation and messianism, in terms of influence on the world, the October and French revolutions are closer than any others.
Sometimes almost literal analogies can be traced, right up to the people’s petitions to their monarchs. In France, this happened 14 years before the revolution - on May 2, 1775, and in Russia - 12 years before, on January 9, 1905. Although the king deigned to go out onto the balcony of the Versailles Castle, and the tsar was not in the Winter Palace, both attempts to file a complaint turned out to be unsuccessful and caused repressions: in France - the hanging of two people from the crowd, in Russia - the shooting of demonstrations. No less remarkable is the coincidence of the key myths and symbols of these revolutions, which were the “assaults” of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the Winter Palace on October 25-26, 1917. In fact, they were not at all heroic battles, but by noisy, but anemic (especially for the attackers) seizures of objects that did not seriously resist.
The fall of the monarchies in France and Russia did not prevent the further radicalization of the revolutions; on the contrary, it gave them a powerful impetus, which ultimately brought the Jacobins and Bolsheviks to power and served to unleash terror on an unprecedented scale. The number of his victims in France, according to latest estimates, exceeded 40 thousand people, and together with the victims of the civil war that unfolded in the Vendée and other areas, it amounted to from 200 to 300 thousand people - approximately 1% of the country's population (11). Any complete data on the total number of victims revolutionary terror in Russia there is none, and those that exist are fragmentary and contradictory. But it is known that population losses during the October Revolution and the Civil War of 1917-1922. amounted to from 12.7 to 15 million people (of which 2 million emigrated); Thus, every tenth to twelfth person died or was forced to leave the country. Russia's irretrievable losses in the First World War (1914-1917) - 3-4 million people - were approximately 4 times less. Even the losses of all 38 countries participating in the war, representing 3/4 of the world's population, amounted to 10 million people, i.e. significantly inferior to the losses of Russia alone in the Civil War!
The terrible price of revolutions, their dire consequences do not end there. France gained broad democratic rights and political stability only after two more revolutions and upheavals associated with the lost war with Prussia and the short but bloody history of the Paris Commune - more than 70 years after the end of the Great Revolution.
Only during the period of the Third Republic, after the completion of the industrial revolution and the creation of an industrial society (the volume of industrial production exceeded the volume of agricultural production in France in the mid-1880s), did revolutionary upheavals become a thing of the past.
Although in the future the French Revolution gave impetus to the industrial revolution (it began in the last years of the 18th century), unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and a decade and a half of devastating Napoleonic wars (12) undermined the French economy and its position in the world. The French economy, which competed with the English economy and surpassed it in scale, easily lost primacy to it in the 19th century (13), and then “let ahead” the United States, Germany, and Tsarist Russia.
The consequences of the October Revolution, which included not only the Civil War, but also mass collectivization, as well as direct political repressions, even according to the most conservative estimates, resulted in about 20 million dead (and this does not include the 27 million who fell in the Great Patriotic War). Moreover, the 74-year socialist experiment for which these sacrifices were made failed and led to the collapse of the USSR. As a result, at the beginning of the 21st century. The country occupies a worse position in the world than at the beginning of the 20th century. (14)
Then the Russian economy was 4th in the world, in 2005 (in terms of GDP) it was only 15th, and taking into account the purchasing power parity of the currency - 10th. In terms of the level of democratic freedoms, efficiency of the state apparatus and corruption, our country is among developing countries, and not at the top of their list. Already from the mid-1960s. The decline in mortality and the increase in life expectancy stopped, and since the 1990s. Russia's population is inexorably declining.
The unprecedentedly catastrophic consequences of the October Revolution and the socialist experiment it began are attracting increased attention to its distinctive features.
The French Revolution, like other European revolutions, was directed against the structures and relations of traditional society (“remnants of feudalism”). In the October Revolution, even if individual general democratic tasks were initially solved (legislative abolition of estates, separation of the state from the church, division of landowners’ lands), it was only “in passing.” As a result, the revolution led to the virtual destruction of democratic freedoms and the reproduction - in a modernized, industrial form - of many characteristics of traditional society. Equalizing, socialist tendencies, which were only hinted at in the French Revolution by the Jacobins, the “mad”, and somewhat more so by C. Faucher, members of the Social Circle and Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals, acquired dominant significance in the October Revolution.
The French Revolution, based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, the principle of " general will", emphasized national tasks. Its manifesto was the “Declaration of the Rights and Freedoms of the Citizen,” which declared private property sacred and inviolable, and emphasized: “Men are born and live free and equal before the law,” “the source of sovereignty is based essentially in the nation. No corporation, no individual can wield power that does not clearly emanate from this source.” The revolution caused a patriotic upsurge; the word “patriot” became synonymous with the word “revolutionary.” As a result of the revolution, the French nation was formed.
The October Revolution, which grew out of the First World War (which the Bolsheviks met with the slogan of “defeat in the war of their own government”, and ended with a humiliating, “obscene”, as Lenin admitted, separate peace), as well as from the internationalist Marxist ideology, on the contrary, despised patriotic, common goals and emphasized private, “class” objectives and the redistribution of property. The manifesto of the revolution was the Declaration of the Rights not of the citizen, but only of the “working and exploited people,” which proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e., a clear minority) and was included, following the French example, in the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918. The Bolsheviks’ explanations that the working people are the overwhelming majority of the population turned out to be just a screen for the further “division” of the people according to the degree of “class purity” and “consciousness”, and ultimately for the establishment of a totalitarian regime. Russian national consciousness has not yet taken shape.
In the eventual, “technological” plan, such a result became possible not because October 1917, unlike 1789, was purposefully prepared by the Bolshevik Party. Having gone through various stages, like the French Revolution, the October Revolution did not end with “Thermidor”. The Bolsheviks only temporarily adopted partial “self-thermidorization” during the NEP years, which allowed them to survive and then launch a new offensive. (The events of 1991, which led to the collapse of socialism and the USSR, can be considered partly a belated “Thermidor.”
The essential differences of October were largely determined by the fact that this revolution occurred after the industrial revolution. Therefore, by 1917 Russia had a more developed industry and a working class (albeit not yet fully formed)15, a much higher concentration of production and even its partial monopolization. The latter - combined with the strengthening of government regulation during the First World War - significantly facilitated the establishment of state control over the economy and the transition to a new socio-economic model. By the beginning of the 20th century. The ideological brainchild of the industrial revolution, Marxism, which theoretically substantiated such a transition, also managed to gain popularity.
In addition, unlike France at the end of the 18th century, Russia entered 1917 already having the experience of revolution (1905-1907), recognized revolutionary leaders and “tested” radical parties. Varied socialist parties, whose ideology turned out to be close to traditional mass consciousness, occupied disproportionately great place in the party system. Already after February 1917, they dominated the political arena, and in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, for the first time in the world, they received more than 4/5 of the votes (16).
The solution to October 1917 lies, first of all, in a unique “proportion”, a combination of contradictions of early modernization and the maturing industrial society, complicated by the crisis of the Russian Empire and especially the First World War, which had a total impact on all spheres of society and mass consciousness.
In addition, the transition from a traditional society to an industrial one began in our country from a qualitatively different “initial base” than in France - a previous historical path, on which, as we know, there was a 240-year Mongol-Tatar conquest, serfdom, autocracy, “ service state,” Orthodoxy, but there were neither free cities (at least since the 15th century) and burghers, nor strong traditions of written law and parliamentarism (except for the specific and short-lived experience Zemsky Sobors), nor the Renaissance. That is why the objectively difficult, painful process of industrial modernization was particularly difficult for us. This modernization (and, accordingly, the breakdown of traditional structures and stereotypes of mass consciousness) took place at a speed unprecedented in Europe, skipping and rearranging individual phases.
As a result, in Russia by 1917 (i.e., two decades after the industrial revolution), the agrarian revolution, unlike the leading powers, was not completed; more than 4/5 of the population lived in the countryside, where communal rather than private property dominated on land, and the strength of the Russian bourgeoisie was significantly inferior to the level of economic development of the country due to the increased role of the state and foreign capital (which amounted to about 1/3 of the total share capital).
The combination of a highly concentrated industry, young, closely connected with the countryside, but already acquired the revolutionary traditions of the working class and relatively weak bourgeoisie with the numerically overwhelming communal peasantry, with its egalitarian, collectivist mentality, hatred of “bars” and huge marginal layers (due to the speed of modernization processes and World War) and created that explosive mixture, the explosion of which - detonated by war, weakness, discreditation of power, and then the beginning of the collapse of the empire - “launched” the Russian revolution much further than the European ones.
At first it seemed that in terms of its significance and influence on world processes, the October Revolution overshadowed the French Revolution. But by the end of the 20th century, it became obvious that the French Revolution, despite its bloody transformation and prohibitively high cost, objectively gave impetus to the change traditional societies to industrial ones. The October Revolution, on the contrary, negated its positive consequences in Russia, and then in a number of other countries that fell into the orbit of the USSR, opening up rather new era, and, according to N.A. Berdyaev, “new Middle Ages”. Socialism, which objectively served as an alternative to capitalism through the formation of an industrial society, showed the dead end of this path. (There is no doubt that this was precisely socialism - the main signs of socialism: the destruction of private property, the power of the “proletarian party” and others were evident.)
Thus, if the term “socialist” is applicable to the October Revolution, then the concept “bourgeois” in relation to the French Revolution can only be used in a narrow, specific sense. Whether these revolutions can be called great depends on the scale of values: whether they are led by human life or abstract “trends” or “patterns”. Nevertheless, in terms of the scale of their influence on society and the world, these revolutions deserve the name “great”.