A French History of the Russian Revolution : Debates and Interpretations since 1917

This book deconstructs a century of often biased interpretations of the Russian Revolution in France. The French mainstream media routinely met the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution with statements about a totalitarian nightmare, as dangerous as Nazism albeit more lengthy and murderous. Far from this negative bias, the first historians of the Bolshevik Revolution in France, as Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine, were close but unapologetic witnesses of the young Soviet regime. Moreover, the French Communist Party, whose primary goal was to follow the steps of the Bolsheviks, celebrated the “Great Socialist October Revolution” every year and enjoyed the attachment of millions of supporters for decades. As far as 1968, the Sorbonne was adorned with portraits of Lenin and young rebels would discuss Makhno’s merits. In order to understand such a dramatic reversal from enthusiasm and public concern to disparagement and obliteration, one has to study how the Russian Revolution had been analysed in the media, discussed in politics, understood and told by the academia and represented in popular culture all through a century in France.