French and Russian Revolutions Essay

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There can be no doubt as to the fact that there are many similarities between French Revolution of 1792 and Russian Revolution of 1917. For example, both revolutions came because of growing discontent among Russian and French citizens over governmental authorities’ incompetence. Both revolutions idealized the concept of people’s equality, with the slogan of French revolution (Liberte, egalite, fraternite) being widely used by Russian Communists.

Both revolutions had resulted in ensuing the reign of political terror, immediately after revolutionaries, such as Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin, became the heads of new “revolutionary” governments in their countries. However, it is important to understand that whereas; French Revolution was essentially a progressive political event (it had set Europe on the path of capitalism and industrialism, while removing French degenerate aristocracy and Catholic clergy from position of power), Russian Revolution of 1917 had resulted in turning the whole country into the “testing ground”, upon which the obscure theory of Marxism would be practically implemented, for the first time in history.

In fact, what later came to be known as “Russia’s Great October Socialist Revolution”, was more of a political coup – the members of Russia’s Provisionary Government, which was formed after Czar’s abdication in 1916, we being simply arrested by the group of armed Commies, who never even enjoyed much of a public support, on the part of ordinary Russians.

It its turn, this provides us with the insight on another significant difference between French and Russian revolutions – whereas, French revolutionary leaders, such as Robespierre, Mirabeau and Marat never ceased considering themselves as spokesmen for their people (they were all French), Russian Communist leaders, such as Trotsky (Bronstein), Kamenev (Rosenfeld), Zinoviev (Apfelbaum) etc. were all overwhelmingly Jewish, which is why they used to openly refer to Russians as the “wood in the chimney of international revolution”.

Frank Britton’s book “Behind Communism” contains excerpt from Leon Trotsky’s speech, which he delivered to the leadership of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1916: “We should turn her (Russia) into a desert populated with white niggers. We will impose upon them such a tyranny that was never dreamt by the most hideous despots of the East” (Britton 25). By 1922, 95% of Politburo’s members were Jews and this was in time when Jews only constituted 1.5% of population in Russia. In other words, Russian revolution of 1917 was only formally “Russian”. In its turn, this significantly differ it from French Revolution of 1792, which relied on ordinary citizens’ overwhelming support.

Whereas the “enforcers” of French Revolution sans-culottes were French people, the “enforcers” of Russia’s Communist takeover consisted of gangs of foreigners (Chinese, Latvians, Hungarians, Romanians), hired by Communist leaders to stamp out Russian peasants’ resistance.

Whereas, French revolutionaries were solely concerned with the matters of national importance, Russian revolutionary leaders strived for nothing less then taking over the political part in the whole world, which explains why Soviet coat of arms featured sickle and the hammer, displayed over the globe, and why Soviet Constitution used to openly proclaim that this was only the matter of time, before all world’s countries would join Soviet Union as “Soviet Republics”. Thus, both revolutions can only be compared formally, because of their diametrically opposite metaphysical essence.

Whereas, French Revolution allowed representatives of French bourgeoisie to proceed with their commercial activities, without having to observe feudal prejudices, during the course of the process, Russian Revolution of 1917 had resulted in physical elimination of national bourgeoisie, as social class, and in creation of new social class – “communist aristocracy”, consisting almost exclusively of hook-nosed “idealist promoters of workers’ cause”.

Bibliography

Britton, Frank “Behind Communism”. London: Noontide Publications, 1979.

Cody, David “”. 2007. The Victorian Web. Web.

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