Professor Jay Bergman’s magnum opus deals with an important, albeit not well-researched, subject: the influence of the French Revolution on Soviet intellectual life. In his broad and meticulously researched narrative, Prof. Bergman draws a panoramic picture of the French Revolutions, with major focus on the Great French Revolution and Napoleonic Era (1789–1815). His monograph is based on a variety of primary sources – from newspaper articles to stenographic records of Party meetings – and a vast array of secondary sources, e.g. monographs on Russian/Soviet history and the French Revolution.
The major problem with the work, at least in the view of this reviewer, is organization. The author actually divides the work into three parts, each dealing with one of the four French Revolutions: that is, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1830 Revolution, 1848 Revolution, and the 1871 Paris Commune. This division obscures the major focus of the work: the monograph is not about the French Revolutions as they were, but on Russian/Soviet history and how the images of the French Revolution were implanted in the evolving political and intellectual milieu, addressing the needs of people in power and the opposition. A structure deriving from its Russian/Soviet perceptions would have made the text more cohesive, whereas now it often looks like four separate books, not always well related to each other. For example, while elaborating on frequent appeals to Jacobin terror, Soviet officials reinforced their arguments with examples of the Paris Commune which, in their view, demonstrated clearly that there was no great revolution without terror: either revolutionaries would strike reactionaries, or reactionaries would deal with revolutionaries.
Still, regardless of these organizational problems, it is a major work and would be a standard text for those who are interested in the subject. The text could be “deconstructed” in a variety of ways. Still, in the view of this reviewer, there are two major conclusions. First, the preoccupation with the French Revolution, to varying degrees of course, throughout the entire Soviet period, regardless of the clear interest in Russian history from the early 1930s. This indicates that the Soviet regime continued to see itself in the context of the West, at least in the intellectual and cultural realm, regardless of geopolitical confrontation. Or, to be precise, the West, as a cultural/spiritual phenomenon, had not been absolutely marginalized even during high Stalinism and the interest in the French Revolutions, the archsymbols of the West, shows this. There is a second implication of the study.
One of the major conclusions of the work, which might look strange at first glance, is that Soviet intellectuals and politicians were hardly dogmatic, despite their endless assertion that they followed the “sacred text” of their Marxist forefathers. Indeed, in their reading of the French Revolution, they followed Engels’ famous dictum that “Marxism is not dogma but guidance for actions.” The French Revolution’s image was firmly embedded in the Bolsheviks’ political needs. After the February Revolution, when the Bolsheviks believed that they might come to power in a peaceful way, at least many of them, thought in this way, they asserted that they would not follow the terror of the French Revolution. Later on, when they did come to power and engaged in terror, they immediately proclaimed that all great revolutions, such as the French Revolution, had also engaged in terror. After the end of the Civil War, the ruling Bolsheviks immediately disassociated themselves from the French Revolution, and asserted that the Bolshevik Revolution was absolutely different, and the USSR would not have its own Thermidor. At the same time, the gamut of anti-Soviets – from Trotskyists to Mensheviks – asserted that either Thermidor was inevitable or had already taken place. Stalin’s rise in the 1930s had changed views on the French Revolution to adjust to the needs of the regime. Terror was glorified once again, and Jacobins became ardent French patriots. Finally, by Gorbachev’s era, the Revolution had become a symbol of the liberation of humanity.
Reading about the obsessive interest in the Revolution, especially in the first years of the regime, one could be surprised by the post-Soviet era. The interest in the French Revolution declined abruptly, and it almost disappeared from the public’s mind. One personal anecdote was telling. In 2011, the author of the review attended a conference in Moscow. By the end of the conference, I waited for a taxi in the first-floor hall. Near me, two girls, dressed to kill, patiently waited for clients. Soon, they disappeared. The hotel’s security guard and clearly their pimp, stood nearby. “Where did your Théroigne de Méricourt go? Possibly to Bolotnaia Square to participate in the Revolution?” I asked him with a smile.
“Who is Méricourt?” he asked.
“She plied the same trade as your girls, and she was often sexually aroused by bloodshed.”
He shamed me for transforming his girls into bloodthirsty perverts and asked me who was Théroigne de Méricourt and when she lived.
“During the French Revolution. The Great French Revolution.”
“French Revolution!” He looked at me with perplexity. “I’ve never heard of it.”
To be sure, a few generations ago, I would have received a different answer. What is the reason for this sort of double death of the French Revolution, both as the real event and as an image? The lack of interest in the French Revolution is not directly related to the counter-revolutionary nature of the Putin regime, but due to another reason: the French Revolution has been firmly placed into Western history and Western civilization in general, and the West’s power implies the popularity of the French Revolution. The West’s unquestioned domination led to the fact that most events in European history have been seen through the prism of Western history. One might remember that the proponents of the French Revolution themselves visualized their history in the context of ancient Greece and Rome. Russia has been on the brink of the West. Still, a considerable number of Russian intellectuals regarded Russia as a Western country. It is not the case today, regardless of the fact that present-day Russia is closer to the capitalist West than in any other time in its history. Still, the Spenglerian vision of the West, mostly the USA, as decaying, is widespread. And this explains why the French Revolution, or actually any Western experience, has become increasingly irrelevant to the East, both to declining Russia and rising China.
Thus, the reviewed book on the role of the French Revolution in Russian intellectual discourse is important, not just because it elucidates the important aspects of Russian intellectual history, but because it is a perfect snapshot of the time when the West, in all its manifestations, including its historical imagination, ruled supreme in Russia’s – and not only Russia’s, of course – intellectual life.