French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Aunoble, La Révolution russe, une histoire française. Lectures et représentations depuis 1917
History, Politics and Society
The Russian Revolution: A French History. Readings and Representations since 1917
Eric Aunoble
Publication date: 26/01/2016 Publisher: La Fabrique ISBN: 978-2-35872-079-3 EAN: 9782358720793 Format: Paperback Number of pages: 255 p.
The Russian Revolution will soon be a century old, yet it is doubtful whether its anniversary will prompt major commemorations. In France in particular, ever since François Furet's The Passing of an Illusion (1995) and The Black Book of Communism (1997), it has been widely viewed as the genesis of a totalitarian nightmare as dangerous as Nazism, but longer-lasting and deadlier. And yet... In 1968, the Sorbonne was adorned with portraits of Lenin while Nestor Makhno was being rediscovered. The French Communist Party, boasting tens of thousands of activists and millions of voters, had been founded in 1920 precisely to follow the example of the Russian Bolsheviks. Every year, the PCF would celebrate the "Socialist October Revolution." Furthermore, among the early French communists who rubbed shoulders with Lenin and Trotsky in the Kremlin during those heroic times were Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine, the pioneers of the history of the revolution and Bolshevism in France.
How did such a reversal—from infatuation to denigration and erasure—happen? To understand this, the author traces how the event has been interpreted and represented in France from 1917 to the present day. Significant attention is devoted to literary and cinematic depictions, illustrating how, for instance, the cliché of the "Bolshevik in a leather jacket" owes more to Boris Pilnyak's The Naked Year or David Lean's Doctor Zhivago than to the work of historians.
The influence of such foreign works is all the more decisive because, on the French side, a negative and sensationalist vision was propagated from the outset, notably by Joseph Kessel. Through the shifting and contradictory interpretations of historians regarding the events of 1917 in Russia, an intellectual and political history of France is also revealed. Even on the left, the country of the "Great Revolution" proved far more resistant to this newcomer than one might expect.
The Communist Party ultimately succeeded in imposing its narrative, and in the France of the 1950s and 1960s, the adoption of Soviet determinist discourse comfortably coexisted with the dominance of the Annales school. Consequently, dissenting revolutionary voices were suppressed, and the subversive edge of October was thoroughly blunted. May 1968 changed nothing in this regard, nor did the publication of works attempting to capture the complexity of a popular revolution defeated in its very victory.
The path was thus cleared for a resurgence of conservative approaches, subsequently galvanized and amplified by the collapse of the USSR. Acting as an historiographical journey through authors of different generations and opposing views, Eric Aunoble's work sheds light on the multifaceted nature of the Russian Revolution, aiming to restore to the "ten days that shook the world" a richness that had been eclipsed by its status as either a model or a bogeyman.
The book is also intended as an encouragement to revisit the study of the years 1917–1921, as they still hold vital lessons for those striving for emancipation today.
Table of Contents
1917–1939: A MISUNDERSTOOD REVOLUTION
AFTER 1945: LUKEWARM WATER FOR THE COLD WAR
THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY OF THE SIXTIES
AFTER 1991: FROM THE HISTORY OF A "CRIME" TO THE HISTORY OF ITS VICTIMS
Eric Aunoble is a historian. His research focuses on the revolutionary period and the early decades of the Soviet regime, particularly in Ukraine. He is the author of "Le communisme tout de suite !", the commune movement in Soviet Ukraine (1919-1920), published by Les Nuits Rouges (2008). He teaches at the University of Geneva.
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An article on this book can be read on enattendantnadeau.fr:
The reception of the Russian Revolution in France has been shaped by the tension between political allegiance and historical inquiry. While the French Communist Party initially championed the Bolshevik model, the intellectual landscape shifted toward a narrative of totalitarianism, influenced by works such as The Passing of an Illusion. The Russian Revolution: A French History explores this trajectory by analyzing how various representations—ranging from cinematic depictions like Doctor Zhivago to the accounts of Joseph Kessel—have influenced the understanding of the revolutionary period in the French consciousness.
By tracing these shifting interpretations, the book highlights the interplay between French domestic politics and the memory of 1917. It examines how the suppression of dissenting revolutionary voices and the dominance of specific historiographical schools, such as the Annales school, contributed to the understanding of the event. Readers interested in the history of political ideas and the evolution of French intellectual life may find this analysis of the revolution's legacy relevant. The study seeks to move beyond the framing of the revolution as either a model or a bogeyman.