Century ErikaHobsbawm turned out to be longer than the historical twentieth century. Hobsbawm was ninety-five, and he counted the “short twentieth century” as only seventy-five years old.

Historians define centuries by the decisive milestones that divide time and by radical trends. Hobsbawm believed that the twentieth century lasted from 1914, from the outbreak of the World War until the fall of Berlin Wall- until 1989; and then another time began.

Hobsbawm called the twentieth century “the century of extremes”: he believed that the theories and projects that were rich in the nineteenth century were tried to be implemented in the twentieth - but in fact, the questions posed by the theoretical century, that is, the nineteenth, were not resolved. The problems formulated only worsened: the practical twentieth century produced hasty and extreme answers. Often solutions global problems were speculative, deliberately false - they were accepted for the sake of a short triumph for a small group of people. Through the mouths of nineteenth-century theorists, humanity formulated radical questions of existence; and with the hands of practitioners of the twentieth, non-working mechanisms were built, declared to be the perpetual motion machines of history. Perpetual motion machines broke down quickly - new ones were hastily built to replace them, from fragments of rusty parts. It was an unprecedentedly bloody century, which did not provide an answer to the questions of the previous century.

But the questions have not disappeared anywhere - they were and still are.

Eric Hobsbawm lived through several eras within the “short twentieth century”: the era of socialist revolutions and fascism; the era of the Cold War and hopes for shared democracy; the era of attempted globalization and disillusionment with universal democracy; an era of sacralization of the market and a new rise of national consciousness in response to this new religion; an era of local wars undertaken in order to avoid a major war; the era of the brief victory of socialism - and the new triumph of capitalism.

According to Hobsbawm, we entered the twenty-first century back in 1990; it is too early to talk about what the new century will be like, but what is happening today does not inspire optimism. In some obituaries I read that Hobsbawm welcomed today's revolutions in the East, considered them spring and renewal. This is wrong. Hobsbawm looked at the Eastern revolutions with alarm. When he was invited to take part in the Oxford symposium on the protest movement in the East, the scientist refused. He said that he was not an expert, suggested that we judge what was happening with caution, and reminded that European conflicts begin with the redivision of the East, leading to a global redivision of the world and to war.

Hobsbawm spoke clearly about the modern crisis: the real crisis is not so much economic as ideological; this is a total crisis of understanding of Western civilization, its self-identification. And it is impossible to resolve this crisis without realizing its cultural and ideological nature.

This was said in a private conversation at home, in a house in Hampstead, but, however, was recorded on film: I invited the cameraman to film a conversation about the history of the twentieth century.

Eric Hobsbawm
Century of Revolutions 1789-1848

Hobsbawm Eric. Age of revolutions.
Europe 1789-1848 / Scientific editor: Egorov A.A.;
Translation from English Yakunina L.D. Rostov n/d: Phoenix, 1999.
CHAPTER 3
FRENCH REVOLUTION

An Englishman who is not filled with a sense of respect and admiration for the most significant Revolution that has ever taken place in the world must be immune to a sense of justice and freedom; any of my compatriots who have been fortunate enough to witness the changes of the last three days in this great city will confirm that my words are not an exaggeration.

Soon enlightened nations will drive out those who have hitherto ruled them. The kings will flee into the deserts into the company of wild beasts with which they bear a resemblance, and nature will gain its rights.

I
If the world economy of the 19th century. formed mainly under the influence of the British industrial revolution, its policies and ideology were shaped by the influence of France. Britain gave as a model its railways and factories, an economic explosion that destroyed the traditional economy and social structures of the non-European world, but France made its revolution and gave it its ideas, which is why the tricolor flag became the emblem of virtually every emerging nation, and European and world politics between 1789 and 1917 was a struggle for or against the principles of 1789 or the more radical principles of 1793. France created the vocabulary and provided examples of liberal and radical democratic policies for the whole world. France became the first great example, concept and vocabulary of nationalism. France created a code of laws, a model of scientific and technical organization, and a metric system of measures for most countries. Ideology modern world first penetrated into ancient civilizations, which until then had resisted the adoption of European ideas. That's what the French Revolution(a) did.

The end of the 18th century, as we have seen, was an era of crises of the old regimes of Europe and their economic systems, and its last decades were replete with political cataclysms, which sometimes reached the point of rebellion; colonial movements for autonomy that sought secession: not only in the United States (1776-1783), but also in Ireland (1782-1784), in Belgium and Liege (1787-1790), in Holland (1783-1787), in Geneva and even (this is disputed) in England (1779). All the seething of this political unrest is so shocking that some modern historians have spoken of “an era of democratic revolution, towards which the French were alone, albeit being the most determined and most successful” (I).

Since the crisis of the old regime was not unique to France, it is necessary to pay some attention to this. It is also arguable that the Russian Revolution of 1917 (which occupies a similar place in this century) was the most dramatic of all the upheavals that occurred several years earlier than 1917, resulting in the collapse of the ancient Turkish and Chinese empires. Although this already takes us away from the subject. The French Revolution may not have been an isolated phenomenon, but it was far more significant than any revolution of its time, and its consequences were therefore much deeper. First of all, it took place on the territory of the most powerful and densely populated state in Europe (not counting Russia). In 1789, one European in five was French. It ranked second among all the revolutions before and after it, as a massive social revolution and much more radical than any other in comparison. There is no way that American revolutionaries or British Jacobins, having moved to France for political reasons, felt more radical in France. Thomas Paine(1) was an extremist in Britain and America, but in Paris he found himself among the most moderate Girondins. The results of the American Revolution were as follows: in the States everything remained as before, only the political control of Britain, Spain and Portugal ceased. The result of the French Revolution was that the era of Balzac came to replace the era of Madame DuBarry (2).

Thirdly, the only one of all modern revolutions was worldwide. Its armies carried the revolution and its ideas throughout the world. The American Revolution remained a defining event in American history, but (except for the countries directly involved) it had little impact on other countries. The French Revolution is a milestone for all countries. Its influence, greater than that of the American Revolution, sparked the uprisings that led to the liberation of Latin America after 1808. Its direct impact reached as far away as Bengal, where Ram Mohan Roy(3) was inspired by it and founded the first Hindi reform movement, which the beginning of modern Indian nationalism (when he visited England in 1830, he insisted on sailing on a French ship to demonstrate his principles). As has rightly been noted, this was the first significant ideological movement in Western Christendom that had a real and almost immediate impact on the Islamic world (II). By the middle of the 19th century. the Turkish word "vatan", which previously literally meant "a person's place of birth or place of residence", began, under the influence of the French Revolution, to change in meaning into "party"; the term "liberty", which before 1800 meant something "the opposite of slavery", began to take on a new political meaning. Its indirect influence is universal, as it exemplified subsequent revolutionary movements and its lessons are learned from modern socialism and communism(b).

Nevertheless, the French Revolution remains the most outstanding revolution of its time. Its origins therefore must be examined not only on the basis of the general conditions of Europe, but also from the specific situation in France. Its specificity is most revealing in international relations. During the 18th century. France was Britain's main international economic rival in the world. Its foreign trade quadrupled from 1720 to 1780, alarming the British; its colonial possessions were located in more dynamically developing areas (West Indies) than those of Britain. Yet France was not such a powerful power as Britain, whose foreign policy was already aimed at ensuring capitalist expansion. It was the strongest and in many respects the most typical of all the old aristocratic absolute monarchies of Europe. In other words, the conflict between the official structure and legally enshrined property rights of the old regime and the growing new ones by social forces was more acute in France than anywhere else.

The new forces knew exactly what they wanted. Turgot, a physiocratic economist, advocated the rational use of land, free enterprise and trade, standardized effective management of a single homogeneous national territory and the abolition of all prohibitions and social inequalities that impeded the development of national resources and rational, fair administration and taxation. Although his attempt as the first minister of Louis XVI in 1774-1776. The implementation of this program ended in failure, but its failure was natural. Reforms of this kind on a modest scale were quite compatible with the monarchy and were not met with hostility by it. On the contrary, since the monarchy strengthened its power, such programs were widely disseminated at this time among the so-called “enlightened monarchs”. But in many countries with “enlightened monarchs” such reforms were either inapplicable and therefore served only as the subject of lively theoretical discussions, or could not change the general character of their political and social structure; or they could not withstand the resistance of the local aristocracy and other legal property rights, and the country remained in the same state. In France they failed more miserably than anywhere else, due to resistance from the holders of legal property rights. But the results of such a defeat were catastrophic for the monarchy, and the forces of bourgeois change were so significant that it was no longer possible to stop them. They simply transferred their hopes from an enlightened monarchy to the people, or "nation." However, such a generalization does not lead us to an understanding of why the revolution broke out then and why it took this particular path. To do this, it is necessary first of all to consider the so-called “feudal reaction”, which in fact was the spark for the gunpowder keg in France.

Among the 23 million French, 400 thousand belonged to the nobility, which was quite calm, undoubtedly the highest class of the nation, although not so reliably protected from the invasion of lower social status strata into its ranks, as, for example, in Prussia or somewhere else. They enjoyed significant privileges, including exemption from paying a number of taxes, and also had the right to collect feudal taxes. Politically, their position was not so brilliant. The absolute monarchy, being aristocratic and feudal in character, deprived the nobles of political independence and responsibility and reduced their old representative institutions - states and parliaments - to a minimum. This fact continued to torment the high aristocracy and the more recent (noblesse de robe) nobles of the mantle created by kings for various purposes, mainly financial and administrative; new nobles from the ranks of the middle class who entered the government expressed through the courts and states the double discontent of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The economic discontent of the nobles was by no means left unattended. More warriors than owners by birth and tradition, the nobles did not even formally have the right to trade or engage in any other business; they depended on the income from their estates or, if they belonged to a select minority of courtiers, on an advantageous marriage, court pensions, gifts and sinecures. But the expenses of the noble class were large and constantly growing, and their income - since they did not manage their wealth like businessmen - decreased. Entrepreneurs, if they dared to do this, suffered losses. Inflation sharply reduced the value of fixed income from annuities. Therefore, it is natural that the nobles were forced to use their only main asset - the privileges of their class. Throughout the 18th century. in France, as in other countries, they constantly sought to occupy official positions, to which the absolute monarchy preferred to hire technically competent and politically skilled representatives of the middle class. By the 1780s all nobles had to buy a patent for the rank of officer, all bishops were nobles, and even the pillars of the royal administration, the intendants, were mostly nobles. Accordingly, the nobility was irritated by the desire of the middle class to fight for official positions; the nobility simply destroyed the state itself, taking places in the provincial and central administration. Thus, they, and especially the poorer provincial nobles who had few sources of income, tried to stop the decline in their profits by squeezing everything they could out of their feudal rights, extorting money (or, much less often, duties) from the peasants. To revive the absolute rights of the nobility or maximize the identification of existing ones, a special profession feudist (feudists) appeared. Its most prominent representative, Gracchus Babeuf, subsequently became the leader of the first communist uprising in modern history in 1796. As a result, the nobility irritated not only the middle class, but also the peasants. The position of this large class, representing perhaps 80% of the French people, was far from brilliant. True, the peasants were absolutely free and were often land owners. In usual terms, the holdings of the nobility accounted for only 1/5 of the total land, the holdings of the church another 6%, with some fluctuations depending on the regions (III). Thus, in the diocese of Montpellier, peasants already owned 38-40% of the land, bourgeois - from 18 to 19, nobles - from 15 to 16, clergy - from 3 to 4%, and 1/5 of the land was in communal use (IV). In fact, the overwhelming majority of peasants were landless or had insufficient plots of land; the lack of land was aggravated by technical backwardness, and the general shortage of land increased with population growth. Feudal taxes, fees, tithes took a large and growing part of the peasants' income, and inflation reduced the amount of the remaining. Only a minority of peasants had a constant income from the sale of surpluses due to rising prices; the rest suffered from this in one way or another, especially in lean years when famine set in. There is no doubt that 20 years before the revolution the situation of the peasantry for these reasons worsened even more.

The monarchy's financial problems exacerbated the situation. Administrative and fiscal structures have outlived their usefulness, and, as we have seen, an attempt to revive them with the reforms of 1774-1776. failed due to the resistance of the owners of legal property rights, led by parliaments. France then became involved in the American Revolutionary War. The victory over England came at the price of final bankruptcy, and thus we can say that the American Revolution was the cause of the French Revolution. Various remedies were tried with little success, but nothing short of fundamental reforms that would mobilize the real and implied fiscal capacity of the country could improve the situation in which expenditure exceeded revenue by at least 20% and no efficient economy was possible. . And although the extravagance of Versailles was often cited as one of the reasons for the crisis, court expenses amounted to only 6% per annum in 1738. Expenses for war, navy and diplomacy amounted to 1/4 of the national debt. War and debt, American war and its debt led to the fall of the monarchy.

The government crisis gave a chance to the aristocracy and parliaments. They refused to pay taxes without receiving an extension of their rights. The first breach in the wall of absolutism was made in 1787, at a meeting of notables(4); the second and decisive was the desperate decision to convene the Estates General (5), which had not been convened since 1614. Thus, the revolution began with an attempt by the aristocracy to seize power. This attempt turned out to be a miscalculation for two reasons: it underestimated the intentions of the third estate - powerless, but really existing, conceived to represent everyone who was neither noble nor clergy, but prevailed as the middle class, and this class foresaw a deep economic crisis, in the midst of which he will put forward his political demands.

The French Revolution was not carried out by any formed party or movement in the modern sense of the word, by people trying to implement any consistent program. It hardly produced leaders like those who led the revolutions of the 20th century, except for the post-revolutionary figure of Napoleon. Nevertheless, the stunning uniformity of major ideas among fairly cohesive social groups gave the revolutionary movement an effective unity. This was a group of “bourgeoisie”: it accepted the ideas of classical liberalism, formulated by philosophers and economists and disseminated by Freemasons and informal associations. Based on this, the “philosophers” can rightly be called responsible for the revolution. It could have started without them, but they may have created a contradiction between the outdated old regime and the effective new one that is quickly replacing it.

In its most general form, the ideology of 1789 was the Masonic ideology expressed with such sincere sublimity in Mozart's The Magic Flute (1791), one of the early and great works of propaganda art of a time when the greatest works of art were so often propaganda. The demands of the bourgeoisie in 1789 were set out more clearly in the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” This document is a manifesto against the hierarchical privileged noble society, but not in favor of a democratic society. “Men are born and live free and equal before the law,” said its first paragraph, but it also recognizes the existence of social differences “only on the basis of general expediency.” Private property is a natural right, sacred, inalienable, inviolable. People are equal before the law, and career opportunities are open to talent equally, but if the competition began without hindrance, it is generally accepted that the competitors will arrive at the finish line at different times. The Declaration established (in defiance of the noble hierarchy or absolutism) that “all citizens have the right to participate in the development of laws,” but “either themselves or through their representatives.” And the representative assembly, which was recognized as the main organ of government, was not necessarily democratically elected, nor was the regime it implied exclusive of kings. A constitutional monarchy based on a rational oligarchy(6), expressing itself through a representative assembly, was closer in spirit to most bourgeois liberals than a democratic republic, which might seem to be a more consistent expression of their theory, although there were those who had no doubt that it would be preferable. But in general the classical liberal bourgeoisie of 1789 (and the liberal bourgeoisie of 1789-1848) were not democratic, but simply believed in constitutionalism, a secular state with civil rights and guarantees for private enterprise and government that protect taxpayers and property owners.

Nevertheless, officially such a regime would express not just its class interests, but the general aspirations of the “people,” which in turn was called (a special term) the “French nation.” The king was no longer Louis, by God's grace King of France and Navarre, but by God's grace and the will of the state. constitutional law. “The source of supreme power,” the Declaration says, “belongs to the nation.” And the nation does not recognize anyone's power on earth except its own, and does not recognize anyone's law except its own - no rulers or other nations. No doubt the French nation and those who subsequently tried to imitate it did not at first understand how their interests coincided with the interests of other people, on the contrary, they believed that they were present at the solemn beginning or participating in a movement for the general liberation of people from tyranny. But in fact, national rivalries (for example, the rivalry of French and British businessmen) and national differences (for example, the differences between conquered or liberated nations and the interests of the so-called great nations) all constituted the nationalism to which the bourgeoisie was officially committed in 1789 The concept of "people" corresponds to the concept of "nation" - such was the revolutionary concept, more revolutionary than the bourgeois-liberal program in which it was expressed.

Since the peasants and proletarians were illiterate, politically limited or immature, and the elections were not direct, 610 representatives of the third estate were elected. Most of them were lawyers who played an important role in the economy of provincial France, and about a hundred capitalists and businessmen. The middle class fought desperately and successfully for representation greater than that of the nobles and clergy, for the modest needs of a group that officially represented 95% of the people. Now they fought with equal determination for the right to exploit their potential voters by replacing the Estates General with an assembly of individual deputies elected so that instead of the traditional feudal body debating and voting by prescription, where the nobility and clergy could always prevail over the third estate, there was new. This was the first revolutionary breakthrough. Some six weeks after the opening of the Estates General, the Third Estate, trying to get ahead of the actions of the king, nobles and clergy, legitimized itself and all who were ready to join it on its terms, as a National Assembly with the right to adopt a constitution. Attempt palace coup led them to formalize their demands in fact in the spirit of the English House of Commons. Absolutism has come to an end, as Mirabeau (7), a brilliant and notorious former nobleman, told the king: “Sire, you are an outsider in this assembly, you have no right to speak here” (V).

The Third Estate prevailed in the face of the combined opposition of the king and the privileged classes, because they represented not only the views of an educated and militant minority, but much more powerful forces: the urban, and especially the Parisian proletarians and, in general, the views of the revolutionary peasantry. The spread of limited reforms was replaced by revolution because the convening of the Estates General coincided with a deep economic and social crisis. The end of the 1780s was, for many reasons, a period of great difficulty in all sectors of the French economy. Poor harvest 1788-1789 and a very difficult winter made this crisis especially acute. Poor harvests hit the peasantry, but as long as they believed that large producers could sell grain at low prices, most peasants could eat seed grain or buy food at low prices, especially in the months leading up to the new harvest (May-July). The urban poor also suffered from crop failures, whose standard of living - bread, their main food product - was half as low as necessary. They also hit the poor because rural poverty reduced the market for manufactured goods and thereby created depression in industry. The rural poor, driven to despair by this, rebelled and engaged in robbery; the urban poor were driven to despair by the lack of work at the very moment when prices were rapidly rising. Under normal conditions, a spontaneous rebellion might have occurred. But in 1788 and 1789 all the turmoil in the kingdom, the propaganda campaign and the elections gave a political coloring to people's despair. They received a stunning and earthquake-like message of Freedom from privilege and oppression. The rebellious people stood behind the deputies of the third estate.

The counter-revolution turned a possible upsurge of the masses into a real one. Without a doubt, it was natural that the old regime had to defend itself, fight, if necessary, use force, although the army was no longer reliable. (Only idle dreamers can assume that Louis XVI was able to accept defeat and immediately turn into a constitutional monarch, even if he was a less careless and stupid person than he really was, would not have married an irresponsible woman with a chicken brain and listened less to such disastrous advice.) In fact, the counter-revolution mobilized the Parisian masses, already hungry, suspicious and aggressive. The most stunning consequence of this mobilization was the capture of the Bastille, a state prison - a symbol of royal power, where the revolutionaries expected to find weapons. During a revolution, nothing is as impressive as the fall of symbols. The storming of the Bastille, which took place on July 14, became a national holiday for France, marking the fall of despotism, and was heralded throughout the world as the beginning of liberation. Even the strict philosopher Immanuel Kant from Konigsberg, who, as is known, was so consistent in his habits that the townspeople checked their watches by him, postponed the hour of his afternoon exercise, having received this news, brought to the consciousness of the Konigsbergers that an event had occurred that shook the world. But most importantly, the fall of the Bastille spread the fire of revolution into the provinces and the countryside.

Peasant revolutions are boundless, spontaneous, nameless and irresistible movements. The epidemic of peasant revolt was turned into an irreversible shock by the combination of uprisings in provincial cities and a wave of mass fear that spread vaguely but quickly across the country: the so-called Grande Peur ("great fear") of late July and early August 1789; literally in three weeks of July the social system of French peasant feudalism and the state machine of royal France were crushed.

All that remains of state power are scattered, unreliable regiments. A national assembly without power, and a multitude of municipal and provincial administrations composed of representatives of the third estate, which soon established a bourgeois armed "National Guard" after the example of Paris. The middle class and aristocracy immediately accepted the inevitable: all feudal privileges were officially destroyed, although when the political situation stabilized, a rigid price would be set for their redemption. Feudalism was not completely destroyed until 1793. By the end of August, the revolution had acquired its formal manifesto, the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.” On the contrary, the king resisted with his characteristic stupidity, and some of the revolutionaries from the middle class, afraid that the people would be drawn into the struggle, began to think about reconciliation.

In short, the basic form of French and all subsequent revolutionary policies became clearly visible. And subsequent generations will experience such dramatic dialectical changes. Time will pass, and we will once again see moderate middle class reforms uniting the masses against conservative resistance or counter-revolution. We will see the masses flocking behind the moderates, seeking their own social revolutions, and the moderates themselves now joining the reactionaries, finding common ground with them, and the left wing ready to pursue the unfinished moderate goals with the help of the masses, even at the risk of losing control above them. And so on, through repetitions and variations of the pattern of resistance - mass mobilization, shift to the left - split among the moderates - movement to the right, until most of the middle class moves to the conservative camp or is defeated by social revolution. In most subsequent bourgeois revolutions, moderate liberals retreated or went over to the conservative camp at a very early stage. In fact, in the 19th century. We increasingly discover (mainly in Germany) that they cease to want revolution for fear of its unpredictable consequences, preferring compromises with kings and aristocracy. The peculiarity of the French Revolution is that one wing, the liberal one, of the middle class was ready to remain in the revolution until the anti-bourgeois revolution broke out: these were the Jacobins, after whom the “radical revolutionaries” began to be called everywhere.

Why? Partly because the French bourgeoisie did not yet have the experience that subsequent liberals had, that is, a terrible picture of the French revolution that frightened them. After 1794, it will become clear to the moderates where, so far from bourgeois comfort and hopes, the Jacobin regime led the revolution, just as it was clear to the revolutionaries that “the sun of 1793,” if it rises again, will have to shine not on the bourgeois to society. Once again, the Jacobins could afford radicalism because in their time there was no class that could offer a coherent social alternative. Such a class arose only as a result of the industrial revolution - a "proletariat" with its own ideology and a movement based on it. During the French Revolution the working class - and even this is a misnomer for what is a "hire unit" - was largely non-industrial and did not play a significant independent role in the search for wages as such. The workers were starving, they were rebelling, perhaps they thought, but in practice they followed the non-proletarian leaders. The peasantry never puts forward any political alternative, except when circumstances dictate it; it is an almost irresistible force or an almost immovable class. The only alternative to bourgeois radicalism was the “sans-culottes” (8), a largely formless movement of the rural working poor, small artisans, shopkeepers, artisans, small entrepreneurs and the like. The sans-culottes were organized into the so-called sections of Paris and local political clubs and represented the main striking force of the revolution - ordinary demonstrators, rebels, barricade builders. Through journalists such as Marat and Hebert, local speakers, they still made a policy behind which stood vaguely defined and contradictory social ideas, combining respect for (small) private property with hostility towards the rich, demanded a government that guaranteed jobs, wages and social security for the poor, full equality and liberal democracy. In fact, the sans-culottes were one of the branches of this general and important political movement, which expressed the interests of a large mass of “little people” who were between the poets of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, often much closer to the latter than to the former, because they were, after all, very poor. We can see this in the United States (the democracy of Jefferson and Jackson, or populism), in Britain (radicalism), in France (the harbinger of the future “republic” and radical socialists), in Italy (the Mazzinian and Garibaldian movement), etc. For the most part, it is formed in the post-revolutionary era as the left flank of middle-class liberals, not inclined to abandon the ancient principle that they have no enemies among the left, and ready in times of crisis to rebel against the “monetary wall”, “economic royalists” or against the “golden cross” crucifying humanity." But the sans-culottes did not carry with them real alternative. Their ideals: the golden past of villages and small workshops, or the golden future of small farmers not ruined by bankers and millionaires - were unrealizable. History indifferently swept them away from its path. The most they could do - and they achieved this in 1793-1794 - was to erect barriers that would prevent the French economy from growing from then to the present day. In fact, sansculottism was a helpless phenomenon, whose name is already almost forgotten or is remembered only as a synonym for Jacobinism, with which it merged in the II year (9).
II

Between 1789 and 1791 the victorious moderate bourgeoisie, now acting through the Constituent Assembly, set about gigantic rationalist reforms in France. Most of the lasting achievements of the revolution begin from this period, since they have the most impressive international significance: the metric system and the first emancipation of the Jews. The economic plans of the Constituent Assembly were completely liberal: its policy regarding the peasantry was aimed at turning communal lands into private property and supporting rural entrepreneurs, and for the working class, the prohibition of trade unions and associations. It brought no satisfaction to the common people, with the exception of secularization from 1790 and the sale of church lands (as well as the lands of the emigrated nobility), which had the triple advantage of weakening clericalism, strengthening the position of provincial and rural entrepreneurs and rewarding many peasants for their participation in the revolution. The Constitution of 1791 prevented excessive democracy, maintaining a constitutional monarchy based on the granting of fairly extensive "privileges of property" to "active citizens." Regarding the “passive” ones, it was hoped that they would live in accordance with their status.

In reality this did not happen. On the one hand, the monarchy, although now strongly supported by influential ex-revolutionary bourgeois factions, could not subscribe to the new regime. The court weaved intrigues, thinking about a crusade of the king's brothers, the expulsion of the ruling mob and the restoration of God's Anointed, the most Christian king of France, to his throne. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) - a misguided attempt to destroy not the church but the absolutist union of the church with Rome - brought the majority of the clergy and the faithful into opposition and caused the despair of the king, who tried to leave the country, which was tantamount to suicide. He was captured at Varenie (June 1791), and from then on republicanism became a mass force, because traditionally kings who try to leave their people lose their right to loyalty. On the other hand, the uncontrolled free industrial economy of the Moderates caused fluctuations in the level of food prices and consequently discontent among the urban poor, especially in Paris. The price of bread determined the political temperature of Paris like a thermometer, and the Parisian masses were the decisive revolutionary force: it is not for nothing that the French tricolor flag is composed of the old royal white with red and blue - the colors of Paris.

The outbreak of war (10) added to the sadness, in other words, it led to the second revolution of 1792, the Jacobin Republic of the Second Year (1793) and Napoleon. In other words, it turned the history of the French Revolution into the history of Europe.

Two forces plunged France into all-out war: the far right and the moderate left. For the king, the French nobility and the growing emigration of aristocracy and clergy settled in various cities of West Germany, it seemed that only foreign intervention could now restore the ancien régime(c). Such an intervention was not so easy to organize in a difficult international situation and with the relatively calm policies of other countries. Nevertheless, it was obvious to the nobility and God's appointed rulers that the restoration of the power of Louis XVI was not only an act of class solidarity, but also an important preventive measure against the spread of frightening ideas emanating from France. In the end, the forces to restore the monarchy in France were concentrated abroad.

At this time, the moderate liberals themselves, and especially the group of politicians crowding around the deputies from the Gironde department of commerce, became a militant force. This was partly because the real revolution was trying to become worldwide. For the French, as for the countless supporters of their revolution abroad, the liberation of France was literally the first installment in the general triumph of freedom, an attitude which easily led to the conclusion that it was the duty of the Motherland, of the Revolution, to liberate all peoples groaning under oppression and tyranny. There were among the revolutionaries, moderate and extreme, sincere enthusiasm and a universal desire to spread freedom and a sincere inability to separate the path of the French nation from the path of the enslaved peoples. Both the French and all other revolutionary movements held this opinion at least until 1848. All plans for the liberation of Europe before 1848 revolved around a united uprising of peoples under the leadership of the French against European reaction, and after 1830 other national and liberal movements , such as the Italian and Polish, also saw in their nations a somewhat messianic destiny to set an example for other nations with their own liberation.

On the other hand, in a less idealistic way, war also helps solve countless internal problems. There was an obvious tendency to attribute the difficulties of the new regime to the conspiracies of emigrants and foreign tyrants and to turn the popular fury against them. More tellingly, businessmen argued that poor economic prospects, money devaluation and other ills would be a cure if the threat of intervention disappeared. They and their ideologues may have thought, seeing the example of Britain, that economic superiority was the child of systematic aggressiveness. (In the 18th century, successful businessmen did not always prosper through peace.) Moreover, as it soon turned out, profits could be made by starting a war. For all these reasons, the majority of this new Legislative Assembly, with the exception of a small right wing and a small left under Robespierre, welcomed the war. For these reasons also, when the war began, the victories of the revolution had to be combined with liberation, exploitation and political subversion.

War was declared in April 1792. The defeat, which the people (rather plausibly) attributed to royal sabotage and treason, brought with it radicalization. In August-September, with the help of armed sans-culottes in Paris, the monarchy was overthrown, a single and indivisible republic was established, and a new era was proclaimed in human history and year I according to the revolutionary calendar was introduced. The stern and heroic era of the French Revolution began amidst the massacre of political prisoners, the election of the National Convention - perhaps the most remarkable assembly in the history of parliamentarism, and the call for general resistance to the invaders. The king was imprisoned, foreign intervention was stopped by the usual artillery duel at Valmy (11).

Revolutionary wars have their own logic, the Girondins were the dominant party in the new Convention, militant in foreign policy and moderate in the interior; among them were a number of parliamentary speakers who charmingly and brilliantly represented big business, the provincial bourgeoisie and possessed intellectual merit. Their policy was completely unfeasible, since living in isolation from other states and conducting poorly paid military operations with the help of the newly created regular army, only the ladies and gentlemen in Britain described in the stories of Jane Austen could continue the war and domestic affairs (12). The revolution did not pay for either limited military action or the created army: because this war oscillated between complete victory of the world revolution and complete defeat, which meant a general counter-revolution; and its army, what remained of the old French army, was ineffective and unreliable. Dumouriez, the leading general of the Republic, was on the verge of desertion. Only unprecedented and revolutionary methods will help win such a war, only if victory could mean the defeat of foreign invaders. In fact, such methods have been found. In the ensuing crisis, the young French Republic discovered or invented total war: the general mobilization of national resources through conscription, the introduction of rations and the tight control of the war economy, and the virtual abolition at home and abroad of distinctions between soldiers and civilians. Only in our historical era has it become clear how terrible it is to participate in such a process. Since the revolutionary war of 1792-1794. remained an exceptional episode, most researchers of the 19th century. could not understand its meaning, except to see that (and in prosperous Victorian times this was forgotten) wars lead to revolutions, and revolutions are won one way or another by wars that cannot be won. Only today can we understand the meaning of the Jacobin republic and the terror of 1793-1794. using the example of modern wars.

The sans-culottes supported the government, which led revolutionary war, because they believed that counter-revolution and foreign intervention could be defeated, and because his methods mobilized people and brought social justice closer (they overlooked the fact that no effective modern war is possible under the decentralized voluntarist(13) direct democracy that they have existed). The Girondins feared the political consequences of uniting the revolutionary masses with the war they had started. They were also not ready to fight the left. They did not want to try and execute the king, but were forced to agree with their rivals; not they, but the Jacobins - the "Montagnards" who personified revolutionary determination... On the other hand, it was they who wanted to continue the war and turn it into a general ideological crusade of liberation and a direct challenge to Britain's great economic rival. They were supported on this issue. By May 1793, France was at war with almost all of Europe and began seizing territory (justified by the newly created doctrine of France's right to its "natural boundaries"). But the expansion of military expansion was increasingly difficult and only strengthened the ranks of the left, which alone could win this war. Reconsidering their views and changing tactics, the Girondins eventually launched unwise attacks on the left, which soon turned into an organized provincial revolt against Paris. A hasty unification with the sans-culottes made it possible to suppress this rebellion on June 2, 1793. The time of the Jacobin republic had come.
III

When an amateur talks about the French Revolution, the events of 1789 and especially the Jacobin Republic of the Second Year usually come to mind.

Prim Robespierre, huge and dissolute Danton, icy revolutionary sophistication of Saint-Just, rude Marat, Committee of Public Safety. The revolutionary tribunal and the guillotine are the images that most often confront us. And the names of the moderate revolutionaries who appeared after Mirabeau and before Lafayette in 1789, and the Jacobin leaders in 1793, have not been erased from the memory of only historians. The Girondins are remembered as a political group, and for the politically insignificant but romantic women associated with them are Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday. Who, besides specialists, knows the names of Brissot, Vergniaud, Guade, etc.? Conservatives created a persistent image of terror, dictatorship and hysterical bloodthirstiness, although by the standards of the 20th century. and conservative repression of the social revolution, such as the massacres after the Paris Commune of 1871, its massacres were relatively moderate, 17 thousand official executions in fourteen months (VII). Revolutionaries, especially in France, viewed it as the first republic, which inspired all subsequent revolutions. Moreover, it was an era that cannot be measured by ordinary human criteria.

It's right. But for the wealthy middle-class Frenchman who was behind this terror, it was not something pathological, something apocalyptic. This was the first, preferred, and only effective method of defending their country. This was accomplished by the Jacobin Republic, and everything it achieved was distinguished by genius. In June 1793, 60 of the 80 departments of France rose up against Paris, the armies of the German rulers flooded France in the north and east, Britain attacked it from the south and west, the country was helpless and ruined. Within fourteen months the whole of France was firmly under control, the occupiers had been expelled, and the French army had in turn occupied Belgium and was on the verge of reaping the rewards of an unbreakable and unshakable military triumph for twenty years. Although by March 1794, 3 times more was allocated for the maintenance of the army than before, and 2 times more than in 1793, and the volume of French cash (or, rather, paper notes, which in large numbers replaced it) remained almost stable. It is not surprising that Jeanbon Saint-André, a member of the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety, who, while a staunch republican, later became Napoleon's most powerful prefect, looked upon the French Empire with contempt as it could not withstand the defeats of 1812-1813. The Republic of Year II faced its worst crisis and with fewer resources(d). For such people, as for most of the members of the National Convention, who, having found themselves at the bottom, retained control over this heroic period, the choice was simple: either terror with all its horrors from the point of view of the middle class, or the death of the revolution, the collapse of the national state, and perhaps - didn't Poland serve as an example? - disappearance of the country. It may very well be, but during such a severe crisis in France, many of them would prefer a less harsh regime and, accordingly, less strict economic control. Robespierre's fall led to an epidemic of economic disarray and corrupt fraud, which in turn ended in rampant inflation and national bankruptcy in 1797. But even from a narrower perspective, the hopes of the French middle class depended on a strong, centralized nation-state. In any case, could the revolution which created the terms "nation" and "patriotism" in their modern sense give up the idea of ​​a "great nation"?

The first task of the Jacobin regime was to mobilize the masses against the split caused by the Girondins and the provincial nobility, to support the already mobilized Parisian sans-culottes, among whose demands were: revolutionary military mobilization, universal conscription, terror against traitors and universal price controls ("maximum") , in any case, coincided with the mood of the Jacobins, although their other demands were dangerous. A somewhat radicalized new constitution was adopted, which had until then been postponed by the Girondins. By this majestic but academic document the citizens were given universal suffrage, the right to revolt, to work or to create, and most remarkable of all, the official declaration that the happiness of all was the aim of government and the rights of the people were now not only accessible but effective. It was the first most consistent democratic constitution promulgated by a modern state: More specifically: the Jacobins abolished all remaining feudal rights without compensation and made it possible for poor citizens to acquire lands confiscated from emigrants, and a few months later abolished slavery in the colonies of France in order to push the blacks of San... Domingo fight for the republic against the British. These measures pursued the most distant goals. In America, thanks to them, the first independent revolutionary leader, Toussaint Louverture(e), arose. In France, they created an impregnable citadel of small and medium-sized peasant owners, small artisans and shopkeepers, economic retrogrades, tenderly devoted to the revolution and the republic, which from then on determined the life of the village. Capitalist changes in agriculture and small business - an essential condition for rapid economic development - slowed down, and with them urbanization, the expansion of the internal market, the growth of the working class and, as a consequence, the subsequent possibility of a proletarian revolution. Big business and the labor movement were doomed to remain undeveloped islands in France for a long time, surrounded by a sea of ​​grocers, small landowners, peasants and cafe owners (see Chapter IX).

Therefore, the center of the new government, representing the alliance of Jacobins and sans-culottes, leaned noticeably to the left. This was reflected in the reorganized Committee of Public Safety, which soon became the effective military government of France. It no longer contained Danton, the powerful, dissolute, perhaps even corrupt, but extremely talented revolutionary, more moderate than he seemed (he was a minister in the last royal government), but it included Maximilian Robespierre, who became its most influential member. Not many historians have remained indifferent to this dapper, pale-faced, fanatical lawyer with his somewhat exaggerated sense of personal infallibility, because he still personifies the terrible and great II year, to which no one has remained indifferent. He was not a likeable personality, and even those who today believe he was right prefer to him the shining mathematical severity of that architect of the Spartan paradise, Saint-Just. He was not a great man and often even seemed to be a limited figure. But he was the only person(other than Napoleon), whom the revolution elevated and made into a deity. This is because for him, as for history, the Jacobin Republic was not a means to win a war, but an ideal: a terrible and wonderful rule of justice and virtue, when all good citizens were equal in the face of the nation and people, destroying traitors. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and crystal confidence in his own rightness gave him strength. He had no formal dictatorial power or position, but was one of the members of the Committee of Public Safety, which in turn was the only subcommittee, but the most powerful, although never omnipotent, of the Convention. His power was the power of the people - the Parisian masses; he carried out his terror on their behalf. When they left him, he fell.

The tragedy of Robespierre and the Jacobin Republic was that they themselves had to reject those who supported them. The regime represented an alliance between the middle class and the working masses, but for the middle class the concessions of the Jacobins and sans-culottes were tolerated only insofar as they attracted the masses to the regime without harming the owner class, and in this alliance the middle class played decisive role Moreover, military needs themselves oblige any government to centralize and maintain discipline at the cost of free, direct democracy in the localities, in clubs and sections, in volunteer units, in free and demonstrative elections in which victory was won. The process in which during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. The communists strengthened, and the anarchists lost; the Jacobins of the Saint-Just model strengthened and lost the sans-culottes. By 1794, government and politics were monopolized and controlled by direct agents of the Committee or Convention - through the delegates en mission - a large body of Jacobin officers and employees in company with representatives of local parties. Eventually the economic demands of the war alienated the people. In the cities, price controls and rations were welcomed by the people, but accordingly the wage freeze also hit them. In the countryside, constant food requisitions (which the sans-culottes were the first to support) alienated the peasantry.

Thus, the masses retreated with dissatisfaction, bewilderment and angry passivity, especially after the trial and execution of Hébert, the loudest speaker of the sans-culottes. Meanwhile, many moderates were frightened by the attack on the right wing of the opposition, then led by Danton. This faction provided refuge to countless extortionists, speculators, black marketeers and other elements corrupt in the process of capital accumulation, one way or another ready, like Danton himself, the embodiment of immorality, for Falstaffian free love and free spending of money. It always appears in the early stages of a social revolution until it is overcome by stern puritanism. The Dantons in history are always defeated by the Robespierres (or those who pretend to be them, behaving like Robespierre), because stern selflessness can prevail where bohemianism cannot prevail. However, if Robespierre received the support of moderates for cleansing the taint of corruption, which was in the interests of general mobilization, further restrictions on freedom and enterprise caused confusion among businessmen. After all, what kind of thinking person would like something like a fantastic-ideological excursion into an era where there were systematic campaigns to debunk Christianity (with the active participation of sans-culottes) and the establishment of Robespierre's new civil religion of the Supreme Being (14), along with rituals that tried to oppose the religion of atheism and follow the prophetic preaching of Jean-Jacques. And the constant whistle of the falling guillotine knife reminded all politicians that no one could count on salvation.

By April 1794, everyone, both right and left, went to the guillotine, and Robespierre's supporters thus found themselves in political isolation. Only a military crisis could put them in power. When, at the end of June 1794, the new Republican army units proved their mettle by decisively defeating the Austrians at Fleurus and occupying Belgium, that was the end. On the ninth Thermidor according to the revolutionary calendar (July 27, 1794), the Convention overthrew Robespierre. The next day he, Saint-Just and Couthon were executed, and a few days later another 87 members of the revolutionary Paris Commune were executed.
IV

Thermidor marks the end of the heroic and memorable phase of the revolution: the phase of ragged sans-culottes and neat citizens in red caps, who presented themselves as Brutes and Cato, had a classically pompous and noble appearance, but always with the terrible phrases: "Lyon n" est plus! (15)" , "Ten thousand soldiers are taking off their shoes. You will take the shoes of all the aristocrats of Strasbourg and prepare them to be sent to headquarters tomorrow at ten o'clock in the afternoon (VIII)."

It was a turbulent time, most people were hungry, many were afraid, an era terrible and irreversible, like the first nuclear explosion, and the whole history changed after it. And the energy contained in it was such that it swept away, like straw, all the armies of the old regimes of Europe.

The problem facing the French middle class once the revolutionary period had passed (1794-1799) was how to achieve political stability and economic progress on the basis of the new liberal program of 1789-1791. From that day until now the program has not been implemented, although since 1870 in the parliamentary republic its current formula has been developed for all subsequent times. Rapid change of regimes - Directory (1795-1799), Consulate (1799-1804), Empire (1804-1814), restoration of the Bourbon monarchy (1815-1830), constitutional monarchy (1830-1848). ). Republic (1848-1851) and Empire (1852-1870) - was an attempt to preserve bourgeois society and avoid the double danger of either a Jacobin democratic republic or the ancien regime.

The great mistake of the Thermidorians was that they always preferred tolerance to political support, caught between the growing reaction of the aristocracy and the Jacobin-Sans-culotte Parisian poor, who soon regretted the fall of Robespierre. In 1795 they created an elaborate constitution with checks and balances to guard against periodic swings to the right and to the left and to keep them in a precarious balance, but increasingly they had to rely on the army to deal with opposition. This situation bore a strange resemblance to the Fourth Republic, and the end was the same: the general was in power. But the Directory relied on the army not only to suppress periodic riots and conspiracies (a whole series in 1795, Babeuf’s secret conspiracy in 1796, Fructidor in 1797, Floral in 1798, Prairial in 1799 (16) ) (f). The inertia of the people was the only salvation of the government, which represented a weak and unpopular regime, but the middle class needed initiative and expansion. And the army helped solve this clearly insoluble problem. She won, she supplied herself, moreover, what she managed to loot went to the government. Isn't it amazing that the most educated and capable of the army leaders. Did Napoleon Bonaparte, for example, come to the conclusion that the army could completely do without a weak civilian regime?

This revolutionary army was the most formidable creation of the Jacobin republic. From the "Levee en masse" (17), consisting of revolutionary citizens, it soon turned into a professional army, because from 1793 to 1798 there was no military conscription, and those who had neither the ability for military service nor the desire serve, deserted en masse. Thanks to this, she retained her revolutionary qualities and adopted a “selfish” interest - a typically Bonapartist combination. The Revolution gave her unprecedented superiority, which helped Napoleon justify his noble title of general. It has always resembled a people's militia, in which old soldiers trained new recruits, and they borrowed skills and moral standards from them; Formal barracks discipline was neglected, soldiers were treated like any other human being, and the reward was promotion by merit (which only granted distinction in battle), creating a true spirit of courage. This courage and sense of the superiority of the revolutionary mission made the French army independent of the resources on which other "old style" armies depended. She never had an efficient supply chain because she actually lived out of the country. For her there was never any production of weapons that in any way met her needs, but she won victories so quickly that she made do with a minimum of weapons: in 1806 a huge machine Prussian army scattered in front of the army, in which one corps fired 1,400 cannon shots. The generals could rely on boundless offensive courage and a fair amount of initiative. Admittedly, she had her weaknesses. Apart from Napoleon and a few other French military leaders, its generals and staffs were poor because the revolutionary generals or Napoleonic marshals were basically as tough as the hardy sergeants, majors or company officers, promoted by courage and spirit of leadership rather than by intelligence: a hero, but not of great intelligence, Marshal Ney was a very typical figure. Napoleon won battles: and his marshals, being out of his sight, managed to lose them. When she was in rich and well-fed countries: Belgium, Northern Italy, Germany, her supply system worked tolerably. In the vast expanses of Poland and Russia, as we will see, it did not work at all; between 1800 and 1815 Napoleon lost 40% of his forces (about 1/3 of this number due to desertion), but about 90-98% of these losses were people who died not in battle, but from wounds, disease, exhaustion and cold. In short, this was an army that defeated all of Europe with short and sharp blows, not only because it could, but because it had to win.

On the other hand, the army was a field, as in many other bourgeois revolutions, that opened the way for talent, and those who achieved success received legal property rights and internal stability, like any bourgeois. This is what turned the army, despite the fact that it was created by the Jacobins, into the support of the post-Thermidorian government and its leader Bonaparte became a convenient person capable of ending the bourgeois revolution and establishing the bourgeois order. Napoleon Bonaparte himself, although a nobleman by birth, by the standards of his cruel homeland - the island of Corsica - was a typical careerist. Born in 1769, ambitious, dissatisfied and revolutionary, he slowly made a career in the artillery, one of the few branches of the royal army in which technical knowledge was necessary. During the revolution and especially during the Jacobin dictatorship, which he fully supported, he was sent by the local commissar to a decisive forward position. He became a general in year II. He survived the year of Robespierre's fall, and his talent for making useful connections in Paris helped him advance beyond this difficult moment. He did not miss his opportunity in the Italian campaign of 1796, which made him indisputably the first soldier of the Republic who acted essentially outside the control of civil authorities. Power was partly imposed on him, partly seized by him when foreign interventions showed in 1799 the helplessness of the Directory and his own indispensability. He became first consul, then consul for life, then emperor. And with his arrival, miraculously, the insoluble problems of the Directory began to be solved. Within a few years, France had a Civil Code, a treaty with the Church, and even the most stunning sign of bourgeois stability - the National Bank. And the world gained its first secular myth.

Older readers or those living in countries with old regimes may be aware of the Napoleonic legend as it persisted for several centuries, when no middle-class government cabinet was complete without his bust, and witty pamphleteers even claimed in jest that he was not a man, but a sun god. The supernatural power of this myth cannot be explained either by Napoleon's victories, or by Napoleon's propaganda, or even by his undoubtedly Napoleonic genius. As a person, he was undoubtedly a brilliant, versatile, intelligent and gifted person, although power made him rather nasty; as a general he had no equal; as a ruler he was a supremely able leader and administrator, talented, possessed of a comprehensive intellect, capable of understanding and leading his subordinates in whatever they did. As a person he radiated greatness, but most of those who described it, like Goethe, for example, saw him at the height of his fame, when myth had already shrouded him. He was, without a doubt, a great man and - with the possible exception of Lenin - his image is still recognized by all educated people today, even if it is only the image on the tiny trademark of the Triple Alliance: hair combed forward on the forehead and a hand , threaded through the lapel of the coat. Well, it’s completely pointless to compare him with figures of the 20th century who claim to be great people. Because the myth about Napoleon is based less on Napoleon’s personal merits than on the facts, unique at that time, in his career. It is known that the great overthrowers of the past began as kings, like Alexander, or patricians, like Julius Caesar, but Napoleon was a “little corporal” who achieved power over Europe only thanks to his talent. (This is not entirely true, but his “rise” was so rapid and high that there is no point in discussing it.) Any young intellectual who greedily devoured books like the young Napoleon, wrote bad poetry and stories and worshiped Rousseau could look at heaven as an object of one’s vanity, to see one’s image in a laurel wreath and on a monogram. Every businessman has since received a name for his aspirations: to be - the most hackneyed phrase - "Napoleon of finance" or in industry; All simple people They watched with awe then the only case where a common man became greater than those who had the right to wear the crown by virtue of their birth. Napoleon gave his name to ambition at the moment when the dual revolution opened the way for the ambitious. And yet he had more ambition. He was a civilized man of the 18th century, a rationalist, inquisitive, enlightened, a devoted follower of Rousseau, thanks to whom he became a romantic man of the 19th century. He was a man of revolution and a man who brought back stability. In short, he was an example of a man who broke with tradition to achieve his dreams.

To the French he was also something simpler and the most successful ruler in their long history. He is a great triumph abroad, but at home he also created or remade the apparatus of the public institutions of France, and in this new form they exist to this day. Admittedly, all his ideas existed back in the days of the Directory and the Revolution, his personal contribution was that he made them quite conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian. What his predecessors foresaw, he embodied. The great monuments of French law, the codes that became the model for the entire non-Anglo-Saxon world, were created by Napoleon. The hierarchy of positions from prefects down in the courts, universities and schools - all worked out by him. Great French careers public life, army, civil service, education, law still have the Napoleonic order and outlines. He brought stability and prosperity to all but the quarter of a million French who did not return from his wars; but even their relatives he brought honor. No doubt the British saw themselves as freedom fighters against tyranny, but in 1815 most English people were poorer and worse off than in 1800, while most French people were living well, including even the workers with their meager wages who had lost significant economic benefits given to them by the revolution. There is some mystery regarding the presence of Bonapartism in the ideology of the French, who are far from politics, especially among God

ERIC HOBSBAWUM.

AGE OF REVOLUTION. EUROPE 1789-1848.

Scientific editor Ph.D. ist. Sciences A. A. Egorov

Per. from English L. D. Yakunina - Rostov n/d: publishing house "Phoenix", 1999. - 480 p.

In The Age of Revolution, Hobsbawm traced the transformation of European life between 1789 and 1848. using the example of the “dual revolution” - the Great French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

^ A SYNTHETIC HISTORY OF THE 19TH CENTURY BY ERIC HOBSBAWUM. A. Egorov

Preface

Introduction

PART I. DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTS

Chapter 1. THE WORLD IN THE 1780s

Chapter 2. INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Chapter 3. FRENCH REVOLUTION

Chapter 4. WAR

Chapter 5. WORLD

Chapter 6. REVOLUTIONS

Chapter 7. NATIONALISM

PART II. RESULTS

Chapter 8. EARTH

Chapter 9. TO THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Chapter 10. CAREER AVAILABLE TO TALENT

Chapter 11. WORKING POOR

Chapter 12. IDEOLOGY: RELIGIOUS

Chapter 13. IDEOLOGY: SECULAR

Chapter 14. ARTS

Chapter 15. SCIENCE

Chapter 16. CONCLUSION: CONCERNING 1848

Tables and Maps

Comments on the Russian edition

Notes

Bibliography

^ SYNTHETIC HISTORY OF THE 19TH CENTURY BY ERIC HOBSBAWUM The work brought to the attention of the domestic reader has long been well known to at least several generations of readers in the West. Having first seen the light in 1962, it was then reissued three times (!) in the second half of the 90s (in 1995, 1996 and 1997). This fact alone eloquently demonstrates that its author, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, created a truly outstanding work, talentedly synthesizing a huge, diverse, encyclopedic material in terms of the scope of the issues raised, going far beyond the scope of “pure” history. The word "encyclopedist" is usually associated with France in the second half of the 18th century. Then, in the times of Diderot and d'Alembert, Rousseau and Voltaire, it had a very real, “tangible” meaning. The titans of the Age of Enlightenment, the rulers of the thoughts of their generation, and not only theirs, could rightfully be called encyclopedists and in fact in fact, they were. In the 19th century, which unusually expanded the horizons of human knowledge in various spheres of intellectual activity, and even more so in the cosmic 20th century, the word “encyclopedist,” having lost its original meaning, seemed to irreversibly become part of the distant 18th century. However, in the case of With E. Hobsbawm and his amazing book, everything is completely different. The British historian dared to create a kind of mini-encyclopedia of the 19th century in three volumes and brilliantly carried out his daring intention. Taking the Great French Revolution of the late 18th century as a starting point, the researcher tried to find out how it, together with The industrial revolution changed the life of mankind, laying the foundation of a new world. Hobsbawm as a researcher is distinguished by his large-scale approach to the problems being studied, the ability to see them “from above,” as if from a bird’s eye view. This, however, does not at all mean the “fashionable” disdain among some modern historians for facts, small and minute historical realities. Here and there the author mentions details that are more noticeable under a microscope, building them into complex, intricate and at the same time deeply logical structures. In terms of the wealth of material used by the researcher, the abundance of topics he touched on, and the originality of the conclusions that the British historian came to, Hobsbawm’s three-volume work is in many ways a unique work. The author practically does not leave out any of the most important subjects related to the period of Western European history he is studying: the industrial revolution, the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the revolutions of the 40s, the problem of nationalism, the processes that took place in the agricultural sector of the countries' economies Europe and their industrial development, the position of the working class in the West, issues of church and secular ideology, the development of science and art. In the second volume of his work, covering approximately three decades of European history (from 1848 to 1875), Eric Hobsbawm focused on the key problems in the development of industrial capitalism in the states of Europe. As in the first volume, the author analyzes the diverse and rather complex processes of economic, political and spiritual growth in Europe, each of which is worthy of separate study. He convincingly argues that the expansion of capitalist economies throughout the world has led to what can be described as “European dominance in the economic, political and cultural life of mankind.” The final volume of E. Hobsbawm's study focuses on the history of the last four decades of economic, political and intellectual development in Europe, preceding the First World War of 1914-1918. As in previous volumes of his work, the English historian develops a wide range of problems in order, as Hobsbawm himself put it, “to present the past as a single and integral entity ... to understand how all these aspects of past (and present) life coexist and why Maybe". ^ A. A. Egorov PREFACE This book traces the transformations that took place in the world from 1789 to 1848, leading to the so-called “dual revolution” - the French Revolution of 1789 and the concurrent (British) Industrial Revolution. And therefore it is not the history of all Europe or the whole world. And if any country felt the influence of the “dual revolution” during this period, I tried, albeit briefly, to touch on it. And if the influence of the revolution on any country at that time was insignificant, I did not mention it. Therefore, the reader will learn from the book something about Egypt, but nothing about Japan, more about Ireland than about Bulgaria, and more about Latin America than about Africa. Naturally, this does not mean that the stories of countries and peoples not mentioned here are any less interesting or significant than those covered in this book. If the further development of countries mainly followed the European or, more precisely, the Franco-British path, this was because the world, or at least a large part of it, was changed under the influence of Europe, namely France and Britain. However, a number of topics that could have been covered in more detail are also omitted, not only because of their length, but also because (as in the case of US history) they are covered in other volumes in the series. The purpose of this book is not a detailed coverage of events, but their interpretation, or, as the French say, haute vulgarisation [a]. This book is for a reader with a theoretical mindset, an intelligent and educated citizen who is not too interested in the past, but who wants to understand how and why the world became what it is today and what awaits it. ^ Therefore, this book is pedantic and does not contain complex scientific terms, which abound in such works for a more learned public. My notes contain genuine quotes and figures, and sometimes authoritative judgments that are particularly controversial and unexpected. However, it is fair to say about the sources that were widely used in writing the book. All historians are greater specialists in some areas of knowledge than in others. Therefore, they need to turn to the works of other historians. Since the period from 1789 to 1848 is covered in literature, which represents such a volume that it is impossible for one person to cover it, even if he knew all the languages ​​in which it was written (in fact, all historians are deprived of the opportunity to know many languages), then most This book relies on second- and even third-hand information and therefore is likely to contain errors and inaccuracies, which the author regrets. The bibliography provides recommendations for further study. Although the fabric of history cannot be woven into separate threads without being destroyed, some dissection of the issue is still practically necessary. I had to split the book into two parts. The first extensively covers the major changes of this period, while the second describes the kind of society that was created as a result of the dual revolution. They contain intentional partial matches. I express my gratitude to the many people with whom I discussed the various problems raised in this book, who read the chapters in drafts or proofs, but, of course, are not responsible for my errors, namely: J. D. Bernal, Douglas Dakin, Ernst Fischer , Francis Haskell, H. G. Koenigsberg, and R. F. Leslie. Chapter 14 was written especially thanks to the ideas of Ernst Fischer. Miss P. Ralph provided considerable assistance as assistant secretary. Miss E. Mason compiled the index.
London, December 1961
E. J. X. INTRODUCTION Words often testify better than documents. Let's look at some English words, invented or received their modern meaning especially during the period of the 60s, which is discussed in this book. These are words such as "industry", "industrialist", "factory", "middle class", "working class", "capitalism" and "socialism". These include "aristocracy" as well as "railway", "liberal" and "conservative" as political terms, "nationality", "scientist" and "engineer", "proletariat" and (economic) "crisis". "Utilitarian" and "statistical", "sociology" and some other names modern sciences, "journalism" and "ideology" are all new words or new uses of them coined during this period[b]. These are “strike” and “pauperism”. By imagining the modern world without these words (that is, without the things and concepts that the words stand for), one can measure the abyss into which the world was plunged by this revolution, which broke out between 1789 and 1848, and which caused the greatest thing since that time immemorial, when humans invented agriculture and metallurgy, writing, the city and the state, a transformation in human history. The revolution has transformed and continues to transform the entire world. But in talking about these transformations, we must clearly distinguish between long-term results that cannot be reduced to any social scheme, political organization or distribution international forces and resources, from its early and decisive phase, which was closely related to its special social and international situation. Great Revolution 1789-1848 was a triumph not of “industry” as such, but of capitalist industry, not of the freedom and equality of the middle class or of “bourgeois” liberal society, not of “modern economics” or “ modern state ", but economies and states in a certain geographical area of ​​the world (parts of Europe and some areas of North America), the center of which were neighboring states - Great Britain and France. The transformations of 1789-1848 were essentially a double revolution that took place in those two countries, and were spread from here throughout the world. Thus, this dual revolution can be considered not only as the French political and British industrial revolutions, not only as something belonging to the history of the two states that were its main bearers and symbols, but rather as the double crater of a rather significant active volcano. It is neither coincidental nor uninteresting that the simultaneous eruptions that occurred in France and Britain had slight differences. But from the point of view of the historian, as from the point of view of the Chinese or African observer, it is more appropriate to note that they occurred one way or another in the north-west of Europe and in its overseas possessions, and that they could not possibly have been expected at that time in any other part of the world. It is also appropriate to note that they are almost impossible in any form other than the victory of bourgeois-liberal capitalism. It is obvious that such a profound transformation cannot be understood without looking back into history much earlier than 1789, and even to the decade that preceded it and caused the crisis of the old order of the north-western world, which the dual revolution was to sweep away. Whether or not we consider the American Revolution of 1776 to be an explosion similar to that which occurred in England and France, or their main harbinger and catalyst, do we attach importance to the constitutional crisis and economic transformations of 1760-1789, which clearly explain the coincidence of the great breakthrough, but not its main reasons. How far back in history a researcher would have to go back - to the English revolution of the mid-17th century. , the Reformation and the beginning of Europe's military conquest of the whole world and the exploitation of the colonies at the beginning of the 16th century, or even earlier - for our purposes this does not matter, since such an analysis of history would take us far beyond the scope of the topic of our study. We must consider the social and economic forces, the political and intellectual instruments of these changes, which were already prepared by all the events in this part of Europe, vast enough to revolutionize the rest of it, and it is not our task to study the emergence of the world market, the most active class personal entrepreneurs or even (in England) fortune, which contributed to the passage of legislation to increase the limit of personal liability - which was the basis of government policy. Nor do we intend to trace the evolution of technology, scientific knowledge, or consider the ideology of the individualist, the secularist, the rationalist belief in progress. We admit that all these phenomena existed before the 1780s, although we cannot say with certainty that they were widespread and fully developed. On the contrary, we would like to warn everyone against the temptation to find novelty in the external manifestations of the dual revolution, based on the simplicity of the clothes of the people who carried it out. It is an undoubted fact that Robespierre, Saint-Just, in their dress, manners and speech, would not have looked out of place in the drawing room of the old regime, and also that Jeremy Bentham, whose reform ideas expressed the views of the British bourgeoisie of the 1830s, was one the very person who proposed the same ideas to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, and that statesmen representing extreme political and economic interests middle class, were members of the British House of Lords. Thus, our task is not to explain the existing features of the new economy and society, but to tell the story of their victory, the desire to trace not the gradual destruction of the foundations of previous centuries, but their decisive victory over them. And the other task is to trace the profound changes that led to the instant victory in the countries affected by them and in the rest of the world involved in the clash of new forces: the “victory of the bourgeoisie” was the name of this period of recent world history. And since the dual revolution originated in one part of Europe and its immediate results were most obvious there, the story this volume tells is a regional one. It is also obvious that from this double crater of the Anglo-French revolution, it spread throughout the world, and therefore it is clear that it took the form of European expansion and victory throughout the world. Obviously, its most striking consequence for world history was the establishment of a dominance of several regimes (and especially Britain) over the entire world, which has no analogues in history. Before the merchants, steam engines, ships and guns of the West - and before its ideas - centuries-old civilizations and empires retreated and crumbled into dust. India became a province ruled by British proconsuls. Islamic states were rocked by crises, Africa was open to direct conquest. Even the Great Chinese Empire was forced in 1839-1842. open its borders to the exploitation of the territory by Western governments and businessmen, who were faced with an unhindered opportunity for the development of Western European capitalist entrepreneurship. And yet the history of the dual revolution is not only a victory for the new bourgeois society. It is also the story of the emergence of those forces in the era of the revolution of 1848 that were destined to turn expansion into contraction. Moreover, by 1848 this extraordinary impending change of fortune was already to some extent clear. Admittedly, the worldwide rebellion against the West that spread in the mid-twentieth century was then barely noticeable. Only in the Islamic world can we observe the first stages of the process by which peoples defeated by the West adopted its ideas and technologies, in order to turn them against the same West at the beginning of internal Westernization reform in the Turkish Empire in the 1830s and, above all, in the great career of Mohammad Ali in Egypt. But in Europe itself, the forces and ideas that foresaw the victory of the new society were already emerging. The "specter of communism" was already haunting Europe in 1848. In 1848 it was expelled. For a long time he remained powerless, as ghosts really are, especially in Western world, where much immediately changed under the influence of a dual revolution. But if we look around the world in the 1960s, we are no longer tempted to underestimate the historical power of revolutionary socialism and communist ideology, born in response to the dual revolution and by 1848, for the first time receiving its classical definition. A historical period that begins with the creation of the modern world's first factory system in Lancashire and the French Revolution of 1789, ends with the construction of the first railway network and the publication of the Communist Manifesto. ^ Part I
DEVELOPMENT OF EVENTS CHAPTER 1
THE WORLD IN THE 1780s Le dix-huitieme siecte doit être mis au Pantheon. Saint-Just [I] I The first thing you can notice when you look at the world of the 1780s is that it was much smaller and much larger than the world of today. It was smaller geographically, because even the well-educated and well-informed people who lived then - well, let's say, such a person as the scientist and traveler Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) - knew only the inhabited areas of the Earth on the globe ("known lands "with less developed societies than in Western Europe, of course, were even smaller, narrowing down to small patches of land on which an illiterate Sicilian peasant or a farmer from the Burmese hills lived his life and beyond which everything was always unknown). Much of the oceans' surface, though by no means all of it, had already been explored and mapped thanks to the remarkable abilities of 18th-century navigators such as James Cook, although human knowledge of the seabed remained negligible until the mid-19th century. The main outlines of the continents and most of the islands were known, but, by modern standards, not very accurately. The extent and height of the mountain ranges of Europe were not known very accurately, Latin America - very approximately, Asia - very little studied, Africa (with the exception of the Atlas Mountains) - were not studied at all. The flows of the great rivers of the world (with the exception of the rivers of China and India) were unknown to everyone except a few hunters, merchants, and foresters who might know those areas. With the exception of some areas on certain continents, they did not have to penetrate more than a few miles inland from the coast - the world map consisted of blank spots, crossed by the paths of traders or explorers. And if it were not for hard-to-get second- and third-hand information collected by travelers or employees in distant trading posts, these blind spots would be even more extensive. Not only the “known world,” but the actual world, at least in terms of its population, was smaller than it is now. Since a population census is necessary for practical purposes, all demographic studies are quite approximate, but it is clear that the Earth's population then was only a fraction of today's, perhaps no more than a third. From the most frequently cited estimates, which are not too far from reality, the population of Asia and Africa was much smaller than it is now, in Europe in 1800 it was 187 million (versus 600 million today), and the population of America in 1800 was 187 million. in relation to the current population even less. In 1800, approximately two in every three people lived in Asia, one in every five was European, one in every ten was African, and one in thirty-three was American or Oceanian. And it is natural that then the population density on earth was much less, excluding, perhaps, some small regions of intensive agriculture and high concentration of urban populations, such as parts of China, India, Western and Central Europe, in which the population density was also high compared to modern ones. With smaller populations, there were corresponding areas of effective human settlement. Climatic conditions (perhaps slightly colder and wetter than today, although not as cold and wet as during the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1700) pushed settlement further into the Arctic. Endemic diseases such as malaria also limited settlement in many areas, for example Southern Italy, where the coastal plains, uninhabited for a long time, were gradually settled during the 19th century. Primitive forms of economy, namely hunting and (in Europe) territorial vegetative seasonal rearing of livestock, necessitated the creation of large settlements outside densely populated regions - such as the plains of Apulia. IN early XIX V. Travelers in the Roman Campania usually described its landscapes as follows: an empty, malarial plain with occasional ruins, few cattle, and the occasional picturesque bandit. And, of course, most of the arable land hitherto, even in Europe, was occupied by barren steppe, swamps, poor pastures or forest. The people were at least a third shorter: the Europeans were for the most part noticeably shorter and thinner than they are now. This is illustrated by the many statistical reports on the physical condition of conscripts, on which this conclusion is based: in one of the cantons of the Ligurian coast, 72% of recruits in 1792-1799. were 1.5 m (5 ft 2 in) tall. This does not mean that people of the late 18th century. were weaker than we are now. The lean, short, untrained soldiers of the French Revolution were as physically tough as the short mountaineer partisans fighting in the colonies today. Continuous marches for weeks, fully equipped, at a speed of 30 miles a day were common. Nevertheless, what remains certain is that then, by our standards, human physical abilities were very small, and they were given exceptional importance by kings and generals who selected tall guys for their elite guard regiments and cuirassiers. But although the world was in many respects smaller, the great difficulties and uncertainties of communication in practice made it much larger than it is now. I have no desire to exaggerate these difficulties. End of the 18th century was, by the standards of the Middle Ages or the 16th century, an era of extensive and rapid communications and even before railways were built, improved roads, stagecoaches, and the postal service were at their best. Between the 1760s and the end of the century, the journey from London to Glasgow took only 62 hours rather than 10 or 12 days. The system of mail coaches, or stagecoaches, introduced in the second half of the 18th century, became widespread from the end of the Napoleonic wars until the advent of railway communication, which not only contributed to a relative increase in speed - in 1833 the postal service between Paris and Strasbourg took 36 hours - but also its regularity. However, the provision of land passenger transport was weak, and land transport of goods was both slow and very expensive. For those involved in government affairs or trade, communication was of paramount importance: it is estimated that 20 million letters were delivered by British mail at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (and at the end of this period, 10 times more were delivered), but the vast majority of the population globe letters were not needed, since they could not read, and they traveled, except perhaps trips to and from the market, extremely rarely. If they or their goods moved overland, it was in most cases on foot and at low speed in carts, which even at the beginning of the 19th century. transported 5/6 French goods at less than 20 miles per day. Couriers raced long distances with dispatches, postilions drove mail coaches, in which they carried about a dozen passengers, shaking over potholes, or, if the carriage was suspended on straps, rocking them, as if they were rocking at sea. Nobles traveled in their own carriages. But most of the population moved at the speed of a driver walking alongside his horse or mule, which was a land vehicle. Under those conditions, water transport was not only more convenient and cheaper, but often also (excluding obstacles such as wind and weather) faster than other modes of transport. While traveling through Italy, Goethe took 4 and 3 days respectively to sail from Naples to Sicily and back. If he had to cover this distance by land, it would not give him any pleasure. At that time, having a port meant being connected with the whole world, and indeed: it was closer from London to Plymouth or Leith than to the villages in Breckland, Norfolk; Seville was much closer to Veracruz than to Valladolid; from Hamburg it is closer to Bagia than to Pomerania, which is distant from the sea. The main disadvantage of water transport was its dependence on the weather. Even in 1820, postal services from London to Hamburg and Holland were carried out only twice a week, to Sweden and Portugal - only once a week, and to North Africa - once a month. And so there is no doubt that Boston and New York had closer ties to Paris than, say. Carpathian region Maramaros with Budapest. And just as it was easier to transport goods and people to large quantities over long distances across the oceans, it was easier, for example, to sail 44,000 km to America from Northern Irish ports in five years (1769-1774) than to sail 5,000 km to Dundee in three generations - thus, it was easier to reach a distant capital than to reach a village or another city. The news of the storming of the Bastille reached the residents of Madrid in 13 days, and before Peron, 133 km from the capital, news from Paris did not arrive until July 28. The world in 1789 was thus vast for most people. Many of them, with the exception of those torn from their nest by a terrible fate, military service, lived and died in their district and often in the same parish where they were born. By 1861, more than 9 out of every 10 people in 70 of France's 90 departments lived in the same department where they were born. The rest of the land was a subject of interest to government officials; they knew about it only by hearsay. There were no newspapers, except those that could be counted on one hand, for the middle and upper classes; 5,000 copies was the usual circulation of the French magazine even in 1814 - and in any case few could read it. News came mainly from travelers and from the migrating part of the population: merchants, traders, hired and seasonal workers, artisans, numerous vagabonds and legless cripples, wandering monks, pilgrims, smugglers, robbers, fair people and, of course, soldiers who descended on the population during the war or garrisoned in peacetime. Usually news came through official channels - the state or the church. But even the majority of municipal employees of state or universal organizations were local residents, or people assigned to lifelong service in such organizations. The central government appointed the ruler in the colony and sent him to serve in the local administration - but this practice was only just being established. Of all the junior officers, perhaps only the regimental officers did not limit themselves to a specific location, consoling themselves only by the variety of wine, women and horses in their district. II Thus, the world in 1789 was predominantly rural, and no one can understand this until they take note of this fundamental fact. In Russia, Scandinavia or the Balkan states, where the city was never developed, about 90-97% of the population were rural residents. Even in areas with a strong, if destructive, urban tradition, the percentage of rural population was extremely high: 85% in Lombardy, 72-80% in Venice, more than 90% in Calabria and Lucania - according to available research. In fact, around a few thriving industrial or commercial centers, we could not find a European state in which at least four out of every five inhabitants were not rural. And even in England itself, the urban population first exceeded the rural one only in 1851. The word “urban” is, of course, ambiguous. It refers to two European cities in 1789, really large by our standards: London - with a population of about a million people, and Paris, with a population of about half a million, and two dozen or so cities with a population of 100,000 or more: two in France, two in Germany, four in Spain, possibly five in Italy (in the inland part of it, traditionally considered the mother of cities), two in Russia and one each in Portugal, Poland, Holland, Austria, Ireland, Scotland and the European Turkey. But it also included many small provincial towns where the majority of the urban population lived, towns in which a person could walk from the church square, surrounded by city buildings and institutions, to the fields in a few minutes. Of the only 19% of Austrians living in cities even at the end of the period we studied (1834), more than three-quarters lived in cities with a population of less than 20 thousand, about half in cities with a population of 2 to 5 thousand. These were cities through which French day laborers roamed during their Tour de France; whose outlines of the 16th century. preserved like flies in amber, thanks to the stagnation of subsequent centuries; the romantic poets of Germany were admired against the backdrop of their tranquil landscapes; cities overlooked by the tops of Spanish cathedrals, where dirty Hasidic Jews revered their miracle-working rabbis, and the Orthodox argued about the prophetic subtleties of the Law of God; to which Gogol’s auditor traveled to intimidate the rich, and Chichikov thought about buying dead souls. But these were also cities from which hot and ambitious young men came to start revolutions or make their first million, or both. Robespierre arrived from Arras, Gracchus Babeuf from Saint-Quentin, Napoleon from Ajaccio. Those provincial towns were still cities, albeit small ones. The native townspeople looked down on the surrounding villages, with contempt from witty and educated people towards the strong, slow, ignorant and stupid villagers. (In views normal people half-asleep provincial towns had nothing to boast about: in the popular German comedy "Scandalous Town" is ridiculed - the more so, the more obvious the stupidity of the hillbilly). The difference between city and country, or rather between the inhabitants of the city and the village, was striking. In many countries they were separated by something like a wall. In extreme cases, such as in Prussia, the government, in an effort to keep its taxpayers under safe guard, introduced a virtual complete separation of urban and rural activities; even where there were no such harsh administrative divisions, city dwellers were often physically distinct from rural residents. In the vast territory of Eastern Europe there were German, Jewish or Italian islands, lost in lakes of Slavs, Hungarians and Romanians. Even townspeople of the same religion and nationality differed from the surrounding villagers, they wore different clothes and, in fact, were in most cases (with the exception of exploited workhouse workers and factory people) taller, and perhaps also slimmer [c]. They usually prided themselves on being intelligent and educated, although by virtue of their way of life they were almost as ignorant of what was happening in the immediate vicinity of their area, and almost as cut off from the world as the villagers. The provincial city, in essence, still related to rural society and the rural economy. He lived prospering at the expense of the surrounding peasantry and (with a few exceptions) was still not much different from them. Its professional and middle classes were grain and cattle traders, agricultural processors, lawyers and notaries who handled the affairs of the noble classes or the endless litigation that always existed between agricultural communities, merchants who borrowed or lent, and between rural spinners and weavers ; more respected representatives of the government, nobles or church. Its artisans and shopkeepers supplied neighboring peasants or townspeople who lived outside the village. The provincial town had been in decline since its heyday in the Middle Ages. It was rare to find a "free city" or "city-state", and even rarer was a center of production with a large market or a postal station for international trade. As such a city fell into decline, it clung with increasing tenacity to the local monopoly with its market, where it could obtain protection from newcomers: the inveterate provincialism, which was ridiculed by young radicals and journalists of large cities, arose from the desire of these cities for economic self-defense. In southern Europe, in such cities, nobles and even sometimes noble gentlemen lived on rent from their estates. In Germany, the bureaucracy of countless small principalities themselves owned vast estates, exercising leadership, carrying out the will of His Holiness to collect the annual income from the obedient and downtrodden peasants. Provincial town of the late 18th century. could be prosperous and growing, and then its center was dominated by stone buildings in the modern classical style or in the rococo style, which still survive in the cities of Western Europe. But prosperity was associated with the countryside. III The agrarian question was the main one in 1789, and from here it is clear why the first academic school of European economists - the French physiocrats - came to the conclusion that land and land rent are a source of net income, and the essence of the agrarian question was the connection between those who cultivated the land , and those who owned it, between those who produced the product and those who appropriated it. From the point of view of land ownership relations, we can divide Europe - or even economic relations centered in Western Europe - into three large components. To the west of Europe are overseas colonies. In them, with the exception of the Northern United States of America and a few less significant zones of free agriculture, typical farmers worked: Indian workers forced to work or actually slaves - blacks who worked as slaves, somewhat less often - rural tenants, sharecroppers or something like that . (In the East Indies colonies, where direct cultivation of the land by European planters was quite rare, a typical form of coercion by land inspectors was to supply part of the crop, spices, or coffee in the Dutch islands.) In other words, the typical farmer was unfree or politically coerced. The typical landowner owned a huge, almost feudal estate (hacienda, finca, estancia) or plantation on which slaves worked. The distinctive features of the semi-feudal type estate were primitivism, isolation and focus solely on local needs: Spanish America exported mining products mined by actual Indian slaves and nothing agricultural. The peculiarity of the economy of the zone of slave-owning plantation agriculture, the center of which was on the Caribbean islands,

Both the question itself and the literature devoted to this question are so extensive that even with the strictest selection the bibliography would take many pages. It is impossible to touch on all the details that may interest the reader. A guide to further reading has been compiled by the American Historical Association (the Manual of Historical Literature, revised periodically) for students and teachers at Oxford, A Selected List of Works on Europe and Other Countries, 1715-1815, edited by J. S. Bromley and A. Goodwin (Oxford, 1956) and A Select Book of European History 1815-1914, edited by Allan Bullock and A. J. P. Taylor (1957). The first one is better. The books marked below also contain bibliographic recommendations.

There are several series on general history dealing with this period or any part of it: the main one is "People and Civilizations", because it contains two volumes of Georges Lefebvre, which are historical masterpieces: ""The French Revolution" (vol. 1, 1789-1793, available in England, 1962) and *"Napoleon"

(1953). F. Ponteil* “L'6veil des nationalites 1815-1848” (1960), published instead of an earlier volume under the same title by G. Weil, for which clarification is also needed. The similar American series, The Rise of Modern Europe, is more logically structured but geographically more limited. You can read the books by Kane Brinton "The Revolutionary Decade 1789-1799" (1934), J. Bruun "Europe and the French Empire" (1938) and F. B. Artz * "Reaction and Revolution 1814-1832" (1934) .Bibliographically, the most useful series is "Clio", intended for students and periodically revised, we especially note those places where current historical discussions are presented. These are the following books: E. Preklin and V. L. Tapie, * "Le XVIIIe sciecle" (2 volumes ); L. Villa "La Pevolution et I'Empire" (2 volumes), J. Droz, L. Genet and J. Vida-leik * "L'6poque contemporaine", vol. 1, 1815-1871. Although outdated " Allgemeine Wirfschaftsgeschichte", vol. II, "Modern Times" by J. Kulischer, reprinted in 1954, is still a good collection of economic history, but there are many more books by American colleagues of approximately the same quality that can be recommended; "Economic history of Europe since 1750"

V. Bowden, M. Karpovich and A. P. Usher (1937), “Business 1 Cl. I” by J. Schumpeter (1939) cover a wider range of events than the title suggests. From the main translated works on history, A Study of the Development of Capitalism by M. H. Dobb (1946) and The Great Changes (published as Sources of Our Time in England, 1946) by K. Polanyi, also Modern Capitalism III; Economic life of the past Lecture by K. Zippola “World economic history"(1962). In technology - Singer, Holmiard. Hall and Williams - "History of Technology", IV; "The Industrial Revolution 1750-1850" (1958) - not very forward-looking, but useful for reference. “A Social History of Engineering” (1961) by V. X. Hermitage, with a wonderful introduction, and “The Social History of Lighting Works” (1958) by W. T. O’Dea are both entertaining and useful. See also books on the history of science. On agriculture, outdated but still useful by A. Se “Esquisse d’une histoire du regime agraire en Europe au XVIII et XIX $с1с1е8” (1921), while there is nothing more suitable to replace it. There is still no collection of modern research on agriculture. Mark Bloch’s very short “Esquisse d’une histoire monetaire de I’Europe” about money

(1954) is as useful as K. Mackenzie" Banking systems Great Britain, France, Germany and the USA" (1945). For those interested, there is a complete collection of R. E. Cameron "France and the Economic Development of Europe 1800-1914" (1961), one of the most significant studies in recent years, can serve as a preface to the problems of lending and investment, together with the unsurpassed to this day L. X Jencks, The Circulation of British Capital to 1875 (1927).

There is still no fully comprehensive treatment of the question of the industrial revolution, despite many recent works on economic development, not always of interest to historians. The best work is Studi Storici, 3-4 (Rome, 1961) and the more specialized First international Conference in Economics", Stockholm, 1960 (Paris-The Hague, 1961). P. Monto "The Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century" (1906), despite its age, it remains the main one in Britain. Since 1800, nothing better has appeared. Britain and the Industry of Europe 1750-1870 (1954) by W. O. Hendersons describes the influence of Britain; "The Industrial Revolution in the Czech Lands" (Historica P, Prague 1960) by J. Persa contains a bibliography for seven countries; V. O. Henderson “The Industrial Revolution on the Continent: Germany, France, Russia 1800-1914” (1961) - for final year students. Among the main ones remains K. Marx “Capital”, vol. I,. and S. Giedion “Mechanization” (1948) - the first work on mass production.

A. Goodwin "European Nobility in the 18th Century" (1953) introduces the aristocracy. Nothing like this has been written about the bourgeoisie. Fortunately, the best source is the easily accessible novels of Balzac. “The History of the Condition of Workers under Capitalism” (Berlin, 38 volumes) by Y. Kuchinsky is an encyclopedia about the working class. The best modern teaching remains F. Engels, “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.” For the urban proletariat, L. Chevalier, “Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses et Paris dans la premidre moitie du 19th scidcle” (1958) perfectly combines economic information with artistic content. E. Sereni “II capitalismo nelli campagne”

(1946), although the information relates only to late Italy, is the most useful work on the study of the peasantry. The same author of “Storia des passaggio agrario italiano” (1961) provides an analysis of the changes in agriculture that have occurred due to human production activities. The Influence of the Potato on Society and History (1949) by R. N. Salaman is remarkable because of the historical importance of this type of food, but despite recent research, the history of this food is

BUT despite recent research, the history of this vital product is very little known; It should be noted “The Food of the English” (1939) by J. Drumond and A. Wilbraham, “L'officier francais 1815-1871” (1957) by J. Chalmin, “L'instituteur” (1957) by J. Duveau and “School Teachers” (1957) A. Tropa, about unusual stories in the profession, where the author also describes positive changes in the society of capitalism; and J. Galt's Ecclesiastical Annals for Scotland.

Most interesting story science is “Science in History” by J. D. Bernal and “History of Sciences” (1953) by S. F. Mason - the best in natural philosophy. For information M. House “Histoire de la science (Encyclopedic de la Pleiade, 1957). “Science and Industry in the 19th Century” (1953) Zh.D. Bernala gives several examples of mutual influence; R. Titon, “The French Revolution and Scientific Progress” (in the book S. Lilley “Essays on the Social History of Science”, Copenhagen 1953); K. K. Gillispn, Genesis and Geology (1951) is entertaining and depicts the tensions between science and religion. On education - G. Duvo and B. Simone, “A Study of the History of Education 1780-1870” (1960). About the press - J. Weil “Le Journal” (1934).

There are many works on the history of economics: E. Rolla “History of Economic Thought”, J.B. Buri “The Idea of ​​Progress” (1920), E. Halévy “The Development of Philosophical Radicalism” (1938). L. Marcus “Thought and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory” (1941), J. D. Kohl “History of Socialist Thought, 1789-1850”. The New World of Henry Saint-Simon (1956) by Frank Manuel is the most recent work on this enigmatic and significant figure. August Cornu “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Life and work (1818-1844)"; Berlin 1954; Hans Kohl "The Idea of ​​Nationalism" (1944).

About religion. C. S. Latoretti “Christianity in the Revolutionary Age” I-III (1959-1961); W. Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (1957) and H. R. Niebuhr, Social Sources sec9) on the Jews.

For in-depth study of art history. N. L. B. Pevzner “Essay on European Architecture” (illustrated edition, 1960); E. H. Gombrich “History of Art” (1950) and P. X. Lang “Music IN Western Civilization" (1942); Arnold Heiser's Social History of Art, II (1951); F. Novotny “Painting and sculpture in Europe 1780-1870” (1960) and H. R. Hitchcock “Architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries” (1958), educational art history; R. D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution (1947) and Goya and the Democratic Tradition (1948); K. Clarke "Gothic Revival" (1944); P. F. Fracostel, “Le style empire” (1944); I. F. Antal “The Influence of Classicism and Romanticism” (Burlington Magazine 1935, 1936, 1940. 1941). About music: A. Ainstein “Music and the Romantic Era”

(1947) and "Schubert" (1951). On literature: G. Lukács “Goethe and His Time” (1955); The Historical Novel (1962) and chapters from Balzac and Stendhal in A Study of European Realism (1950); J. Bronowski “William Blake - the man without a mask” (1954); R. Velleg, "History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950, I" (1955); R. Gonnard “Le L6gende du bon sauvage” (1946), H. T. Parker “The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries” (1937), P. Trachard “La sensibilite r6volutionnaire 1791-1794” (1936), P. Jourda “L'exotisme dans la litterature francaise" (1938) and F. Picard "Le romantisme social" (1944).

From historical events This period we will try to highlight some themes. The bibliography on revolutions and revolutionary movements is very voluminous for 1789. Somewhat less for 1815-1848. J. Lefebvre “The Beginning of the French Revolution” (1949), A. Soboul “Pr6cis d’histoire de la R6volution Francais” (1962), A. Goodwin “The French Revolution” (1956). There is still a lot of literature. Bromley and Goodwin provide a good guide from the following works: Soboul "Les sanscullottes en G an II" (1960), J. Rude's encyclopedic work "The Crowd in Franz00" (1959) and E. Eisenstein "Filippo Michele Buonarroti" (1959) introduce us to secret societies. A. Mazur “The First Russian Revolution” (1937) talks about the Decembrists. R. F. Leslie, Polish Politics and the Revolution in November 1830 (1956). There is no general research on labor movements.

E. Dollins “Histoire du mouvement ouvrier” I (1936) introduces only Britain and France. And also A. B. Spitzer “The Revolutionary Theories of August Blanqui” (1957), D. O. Evans “Le socialisme romantique” (1948) and O. Festi “Le mouvement ouvrier au d6but de la monarchie de Juillet * (1908).

About 1848 F. Feite "The Beginning of an Era, 1848" (1948) contains essays on many countries; J. Droz “Les revolutioils allemandes de 1848” (1957),

E. Labrousse “Aspects de la crise... 1846-1851” (1956) - detailed coverage of the French economy. A. Briggs, A Study of Chartism (1959). E. Labrousse “Comment naissent les r6volutions?” (Paris, 1948).

international relations" (A. Fugner until 1815 and P. Renouvin - 1815-1871, both 1954). About the process of war: B. H. Liddell Hart “Napoleon’s Ghost” (1933), Tarle “Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia in 1812” (1942), J. Lefebvre “Napoleon, notes on the French army”, M. Levy, “Social history of the navy 1789-1815” (1960). E. F. Heckscher “The Continental System” (1922) - it needs to be supplemented by F. Croizet “Le blocus continental et I’economie britannique” (1958) no economic problems. F. Red-likh “De praeda militari: robbery and stolen goods 1500-1815”

(1955). J. N. L. Baker's "History of Geographical Explorations and Discoveries" (1937) and the remarkable "Russian Atlas of Geographical Discoveries and Explorations" (1959) contain a description of the European conquest of the world; K. Pannkar "Asia and Western Influence"

(1954), G. Scelle “Le trait6 negriere aux Indes de Gastille”, 2 vols. (1906) and G. Martin “Histoire de I’Esclavage dans les colonies francaises”

(1948) - the basis for the study of the slave trade. E. O. Lnppman “History of Sugar” (1929) and N. Dir. “The History of Sugar,” in 2 volumes (1949). E. Williams “Capitalism and Slavery” (1944). On the topic of “informal” colonization of the world through trade and gunboats - M. Greenberg “British Trade and the Discovery of China” (1949) and H. S. Ferns “Britain and Argentina in the 19th Century.” (1960). Regarding the two large areas that were under European rule - V. F. Wertime, “Indonesian Society in Transition” (1959) (see also J. S. Fournival, “Colonial Policy and Practice,” 1956, which refers to Indonesia and Burma); From the extensive literature on India, one can choose from: E. Thompson and G. T. Gorath, The Rise and Implementation of British Rule in India (1934); E. Stokes “English utilitarians and India” (1959); A. R. Desai, The Social Basis of Indian Nationalism (Bombay, 1948); There is no such literature on Egypt under Mohammed Ali, but X. Dodwell “The Founder from Time Egypt” (1931) can advise.

It is impossible not to indicate literature on the history of some countries. About Britain: E. Halevi “History of the English people in the 19th century.” remains fundamental to the history of England in 1815, vol. 1; A. Briggs "The Era of Improvement 1780-1867" (1959). About France: F. Sagnac “La formation de la soci6te francaise moderne”, II (1946), G. Wright “France in our time” (1962), F. Ponteil “La monarchie parlementaire 1815-1848” (1949) and F. Artz "France during the Bourbon Restoration" (1931). About Russia: M. Florinsky “Russia”, II (1953) and M. N. Pokrovsky “A Brief History of Russia”, (1933) and Lyashchenko “History national economy Russia" (1947). About Germany: R. Pascal “The Rise of Modern Germany” (1946), K. S. Pinson “Modern Germany” (1954). T. S. Hamerow "Restoration, revolution, reaction: Economics and politics of Germany 1815-1871" (1958). D. J. Droz and G. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (1955). About Italy: D. Candeloro. "Gloria dell Italia moderna II 1815-1846" (1858). About Spain: P. Vilar “History of Spain” (1949) and J. W. Vives “Historia social de Espa&a y America Latina”, IV, 2 (1959) beautifully illustrated, A. J. P. Taylor “The Habsburg Monarchy” ( 1949), E. Wangerman “From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials” (1959). On the Balkans: L. S. Stavrianos “The Balkans since 1453” (1953) and B. Lewis “The Emergence of Modern Turkey” (1961). About the North: B. Zh. Khovd “Scandivian countries 1720-1865”, 2 vols. (1943). About Ireland: E. Strauss “Irish Nationalism and British Democracy” (1951) and “The Great Famine, from Recent Irish History” (1957). About the Netherlands: H. Pirenne, "History of Belgium", V-VI (1926, 1932), R. Demolin, "The Revolution of 1830" (1950) and H. R. C. Wright, "Free Trade and Protectionism in the Netherlands 1816-1830" (1955).

And a few comments about the main works. “Encyclopedia of World History” (1948) by W. Langer or Plotz “Main Dates of World History” (1957), “Chronicle of European Civilization 1501-1900” (1949) by A. Mayer. “Dictionary of Statistics” (1892) M. Malkhala. Among the encyclopedias on history is the new “Soviet Historical Encyclopedia” in 12 volumes.” In the Encyclop6die de la Pleiade there is a non-

SO MANY volumes on general history, literary history, history of research and history of science. Cassell's Encyclopedia of Literature (2 volumes). And edited by E. Blom and Gravi, “Encyclopedic Dictionary of Music and Musicians” (9 volumes) (19S4). “Encyclopedia of World Art”, (from 15 volumes I-V were published). "Encyclopedia of Social Sciences" (1931).

The following atlases: “Atlas of the History of the USSR” (1950), J. D. Feig “Atlas of African History” (1958), H. W. Hazard and H. L. Cook “Atlas of Islamic History” (1943) J. T. Adams “Atlas of American History” (1967) and the main ones - J. Engel “The Great Atlas world history"(1957) and R. McNally "Atlas of World History" (1957).

SYNTHETIC HISTORY OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Eric Hobsbawm AGE OF REVOLUTION Europe 1789 - 1848

Artist T. Neklyudova Proofreaders: O. Milovanova, V. Yugobashyan

Delivered as a set on 10/24/98. Signed for publication on November 30, 1998. Format 60x90/16. boom. offset. CG Times typeface. Offset printing. Uel. p.l. 30.0.

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Eric Hobsbowl! born in Alexandria in 1917. He was educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge. Member of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, holder of honorary degrees from universities in several countries. Before retirement, he worked at Birbeck College, University of London, and then at the New School for Social Research in New York. His works: Primitive Rebels, Laboring Men and Worlds of Labour, industry and Empire and Bandits.

Dedicated to the twentieth century, the trilogy of the famous British historian Eric Hobsbawm is one of the greatest achievements of modern historical thought.

Since the publication of the first volume of this outstanding work (more than three decades ago) until today, Hobsbawm's research has consistently been included in almost all catalogs of books on general history offered to the English-speaking reader. The answer to this phenomenal success is simple: after several decades of persistent and painstaking work, the English scientist created a detailed and original overview of the most important phenomena and processes characteristic of European society in the period between 1789 and 1914. At the same time, he did not only summarize the facts, 1 Yu tried to fit them into the system of historical synthesis, “to recreate the spirit of that time.”

In The Age of Revolution, Hobsbawm traced the transformation of European life between 1789 and 1848. using the example of the “dual revolution” - the Great Freight Revolution 1 and the industrial revolution.

British historian Eric Hobsbawm's latest book promises to show us, in the author's words, "what happened to the art and culture of bourgeois society after that society itself ceased to exist forever with the passing of the generation of 1914" (p. 9). One of the most famous historians of our time, Hobsbawm, a left-wing man symbolically born in 1917, lived a long life. He dedicated his famous trilogy about the 19th century (“The Age of Revolution,” “The Age of Capital,” “The Age of Empire”) and the adjacent work “The Age of Extremes,” dedicated to the 20th century, to understanding the most significant historical events of the modern era. In this extensive research array, the historian’s key thoughts about the trends that have distinguished the last century and a half have found a fairly complete and comprehensive embodiment. Thus, one could hardly expect fundamentally new judgments from his next book. But before turning to it, it is appropriate, in my opinion, to recall previous works, especially since the new book is their logical continuation.

I will give just two quotes that are very characteristic of Hobsbawm. So, about the 19th century he wrote:

“It was a century that transformed the world due to the novelty of revolutionary change. All those who created it and participated in it in the “developed” West knew that it was destined to become a century of outstanding achievements, a century of solving all the main problems of mankind and eliminating all obstacles along the way. The bourgeoisie looked forward to an era of endless improvement and growth, material, intellectual and moral, through liberal progress; the proletarians expected the same thing - through revolution. But both of them were waiting. They expected it as a result of certain efforts and struggle.”

The 19th century is the era in which this historian specialized, so his sympathies for this period are quite understandable. Beginning with the French Revolution, this century became a time of great hope, incorporating fundamental events: the emergence of modern ideologies, industrial growth, urbanization, the emergence of the socialist movement and nationalism. As for the 20th century, Hobsbawm is less optimistic about its results:

The “Short Twentieth Century” ended with international instability of an unclear nature. At the same time, no mechanisms were formed to overcome it or control it. The reason for this was not only the genuine depth and seriousness of the international crisis, but also the obvious failure of all programs - both old and new - to improve the human lot."

The question arises: why did the 19th century, in the scientist’s mind, turn out to be “long”, while the 20th century was “short”? According to the historian, a century ends at the moment when what the old era was based on collapses, opening the way for a new one. In this sense, the starting point of the 20th century was marked with the beginning of the First World War - it was then that the collapse of bourgeois society occurred. For the Marxist Hobsbawm, the last century was shaped largely by the 1917 revolution in Russia, so it ended in 1991 with the collapse of Soviet Union. What will happen next and what the era that inherited the “short” 20th century will turn out to be, the author did not dare to predict in his previous works.

But let's return to "Broken Time". From last work from an outstanding historian you involuntarily expect something generalizing; in this case, a systematization of the turbulent cultural life of the past two centuries would suggest itself. Expectations, however, are not met: the book lacks internal integrity, having collected very dissimilar materials under its cover: Hobsbawm’s lectures at a music festival in Salzburg, Austria, given in various years (more than half of them have not been previously published), his reviews of various scientific works, as well as several independent articles. In other words, in “Broken Time” you should not look for any discoveries that revolutionize the scientific world; the author’s thought in these texts flows very slowly. Hobsbawm thoughtfully and thoroughly talks about the phenomena and events that interest him, argues with other researchers, and comments on all sorts of issues from the height of his own experience.

The lack of integrity, however, does not make the book less meaningful. In separate chapters, each of which represents an independent article, an understanding of the processes that in one way or another affect the current culture is proposed. In addition, since all the texts were written in a new historical reality, after the end of the “short” 20th century, the master still shares some cautious judgments about what awaits culture and society in the new century with the reader. “What remains, what is preserved in memory and what is still used from the heritage of classical bourgeois culture?” - this question, posed by Hobsbawm in one of the chapters, can well be considered central both for this book and for modern culture as a whole (p. 179). It’s hard not to notice that contemporary art has long gone beyond the usual aesthetic boundaries. The reflection of reality, as well as the cultivation of a sense of beauty, have ceased to be the primary tasks of art. Today conceptualism is in fashion: anything can have cultural value - there would be something to say.

Reflecting on the culture of the 20th century, Hobsbawm critically evaluates capitalism and the society it created mass consumption:

“The real danger of an industrial culture that eliminates competitors in order to become the sole vehicle of spiritual values ​​is that it leaves no alternative to the world of mass production, and this is a very dubious world. […] The main thing they are accused of popular culture“, - it creates a closed world and thereby deprives humanity of the main thing: the desire for a perfect, good world, this great dream of man” (p. 325).

But was there any alternative to the current state of culture? It is obvious that modern art is forced to adapt to a world oversaturated with information, just as a century ago the artistic avant-garde, to which the author also pays a lot of attention, was forced to adapt to the emergence of new ways of representation. If earlier painting was actually the only way of reflection, then at that moment it yielded this function to photography and cinema. The avant-garde at one time tried to give people something that they could not get from other forms: for example, the Cubists sought to “turn” the depicted object inside out, to show its essence and “inside”, and the Suprematists wanted to go beyond the depicted image, emphasizing the essence subject and its fundamental principles. The artistic avant-garde, according to Hobsbawm, wanted to leave the confines of fine art, to become something fundamentally new, thereby expressing a protest against the strengthening dominance of technology. This art form was revolutionary in nature; By the way, in one of the chapters the author enthusiastically talks about the development of the avant-garde in the first decade after the 1917 revolution in Russia. But, having broken with traditional fine art, the avant-garde became incomprehensible to most people. Meanwhile, the demand for art accessible to the masses remained unsatisfied; Thanks to this, pop art arose, which not only came to terms with the era of mass consumption, but also actively “flirted” with it. The famous Campbell Soup cans demonstrate this perfectly.

Cultural life, recalls Hobsbawm, has always reflected the basic trends in the development of society. Intertwining social reality and art in his book, he examines culture in the light of a certain historical context. Interesting, for example, is the chapter “Culture and Power,” devoted to the connection between art and politics. We are talking here primarily about dictatorial regimes, since their rulers have the greatest need for art to serve the authorities. Art can indeed give a lot to a dictatorship: for example, it glorifies it through architectural structures, and also creates public spaces for mass events. Art is capable of instilling certain values ​​in the population, but, working for the authorities, it ceases to be free and loses its true meaning. Hobsbawm makes his attitude towards dictatorial regimes quite clear:

“The destruction and repression of the era of dictators are more obvious than its achievements. These regimes were better at preventing undesirable authors from producing undesirable works than at finding good art that expressed their aspirations” (p. 289).

In general, Hobsbawm’s book is, as they say, “for experienced users.” It definitely cannot be called a consistent guide to the history of culture and society of the 19th-20th centuries, but for those who want to deepen their knowledge and supplement it with the thoughts of an outstanding scientist of our days, it will definitely be interesting.