The Paris Commune and the Russian Revolutionary Imagination

• In Event: Soviet Legacies of the Paris Commune of 1871

Abstract

The Paris Commune provided the lessons, imagery, martyrs, and ethos for socialist radicals all across the world. Lenin came to see 1871 as an audacious vision of what a social revolution could be. But revolutionary Russia’s entanglement with the Commune did not begin there. The Commune was not merely inserted into the Russian revolutionary experience—as has frequently been suggested—as a Bolshevik imposition, an alien concept, or a cynical propaganda device. Far from it. From the outset, Russian émigrés and exiled radicals from across the Russian empire were at the heart of this audacious vision—embedding within it an added significance that would speak to coming generations. This paper examines the telling and retelling of the Paris Commune through revolutionary Russia and the early Soviet Union.

Author

• Andy Willimott, Queen Mary, U of London (UK)