The Shadow of October

Abstract

Since Advielle and Jaurès, several generations of historians have enhanced our knowledge of Babeuf. They worked in a violent century which saw the rise and fall of fascism and Stalinism, and their work could not fail to be influenced by the world around them. For those who saw Stalinist Russia as the consummation of Marxist communism, Babeuf took his place as a pioneer of that tradition. Equally important, in the context of the struggle against fascism, was the idea of the ‘Popular Front’. In France especially, Popular Frontism inherited from nineteenth-century republicanism, from Clemenceau and Jaurès, a view of the relation between socialism and the republican tradition which exerted enormous influence during the twentieth century, and lay behind the Popular Front policies of alliance between the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie and the working class. Popular Frontism is sometimes seen as an invention of the Communist International, but its roots in French politics lay far deeper. Hence the Communist Party’s Popular Front policy flourished in France while achieving nothing in Britain. Popular Frontism had enormous influence on the appropriation and interpretation of the French Revolution.