History and Revolution: Refuting Revisionism

by Mike Haynes (Editor), Jim Wolfreys (Editor), Daniel Bensaid (Contribution by), Geoff Eley (Contribution by), Marc Ferro (Contribution by)

Overview

In History and Revolution, a group of respected historians confronts the conservative, revisionist trends in historical enquiry that have been dominant in the last twenty years. Ranging from an exploration of the English, French, and Russian revolutions and their treatment by revisionist historiography, to the debates and themes arising from attempts to downplay revolution’s role in history, History and Revolution also engages with several prominent revisionist historians, including Orlando Figes, Conrad Russell and Simon Schama.

This important book shows the inability of revisionism to explain why millions are moved to act in defence of political causes, and why specific political currents emerge, and is a significant reassertion of the concept of revolution in human development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844671519
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	08/17/2007
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Mike Haynes teaches history at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He is the author of Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism; Russia: Class and Power 1917–2000; and (with Rumy Hasan) A Century of State Murder?

Jim Wolfreys is lecturer in French political history at King’s College London, UK. He is co-author (with Peter Fysh) of The Politics of Racism in France.

Daniel Bensaïd (1946–2010) taught philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, and was the author of books on Marxism, Walter Benjamin, the French Revolution and Joan of Arc. The Marxists’ Internet Archive has a list of obituaries.

Table of Contents

Introduction   Mike Haynes   Jim Wolfreys     1
Radicalism and Revisionism in the English Revolution   Geoff Kennedy     25
Twilight Revolution: Francois Furet and the Manufacturing of Consensus   Jim Wolfreys     50
The French Revolution: Revolution of the Rights of Man and the Citizen   Florence Gauthier     71
Liberals, Jacobins and Grey Masses in 1917   Mike Haynes     93
'Our Position is in the Highest Degree Tragic': Bolshevik 'Euphoria' in 1920   Lars T. Lih     118
The New Anti-Communism: Rereading the Twentieth Century   Enzo Traverso     138
Communism, Nazism, Colonialism: What Value has the Analogy?   Marc Ferro     156
What Produces Democracy? Revolutionary Crises, Popular Politics and Democratic Gains in Twentieth-Century Europe   Geoff Eley     172
Revolutions: Great and Still and Silent   Daniel Bensaid     202
Notes     217
Index     257