The Initial Reception of the French Revolution

Abstract

Practically from its inception, the French Revolution prompted educated Russians, regardless of their politics, to form an opinion of it. As the revolution progressed, instead of changing minds, it froze them, turning assumptions into beliefs and beliefs into dogma. Chapter 1 shows this to be true especially for Russians on opposite ends of the political spectrum. This was not true, however, of liberals such as Pushkin whose politics, by contrast, fluctuated greatly. The chapter concludes with analysis of ‘gentry-revolutionaries’ such as Mikhail Bakunin and Alexander Herzen, who applied to the actors in the French Revolution the same requirement of ‘moral wholeness’ that was an essential aspect of the Russian revolutionary movement as a whole.