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and the peasantry into the national polity ... " Marxism thought it knew both
how to do it and why it had not been done, and could not be done, the first
time around.
In France, after two centuries of relative instability (Bosher counts
sixteen constitutions and notes, with fine irony, that constitution-writing is a
distinctive branch of French literature), the task has in fact been completed:
at any rate, the deep chasm between 'the public' and 'the populace' has now
been eroded. There is no longer an alien populace, bloodthirsty both in sup–
port
and in opposition ofRevolutionary principles, and needing to be drowned
in
blood if it is to be controlled. The last reenactment of the Revolution, in
1968, was almost pure psychodrama, with the dead being countable on the
fingers of one hand. Just how this was achieved no one quite knows; late in–
dustrial affluence most clearly had a great deal to do with it.
The principles of the French Revolution have ceased to be contentious
or septic in France:
quatorze juillet
is simply the day on which one finally
leaves Paris to go to the
cote.
It is in Russia that the themes which pervade
Bosher's account are resonant, crucial, loaded with uncertainty and tension,
pregnant with good and evil possibilities. The categories which Bosher says
he finds more useful than 'class' or other sophisticated notions, namely
public
and
populace,
are still in use,
nur mit ein bisschen anderen Worten,
in Russia.
Bosher thinks that in France, the victory of the Dreyfusards marks the con–
version of the
populace
to the principles of the French Revolution. By the
same token, he should be more worried by the abandonment of those princi–
ples by the
public
when it endorsed, as he admits, Petain and Vichy.
In Russia, an enlightened
public
is now eager to secure accountable and
law-bound government from authorities not too disinclined to grant them (in
this respect resembling Bosher's account of Louis XVI); but both partners in
this dalogue, however, are afraid of what may happen if the
populace
really
takes part. In Russia, the public is known as the
intelligents,
the populace as
narod.
It
is the most deeply felt distinction in Russian society. The past record
of the populace is as bloody as that of its French counterpart. No one knows
its real present mood: does it yearn to tear its betters to pieces, both for
having perpetrated the Revolution
and
for now wishing to soften and reform
it? Or has it, on the contrary, quietly come to resemble its
present
French
counterpart, and does it crave stability above all things, so as to enable it to
enjoy its benefits (great in comparision with the past, even if small in com–
parison with the West)? No one really knows: big decisions are made on the
basis of guesswork concerning this issue. The
perestroichiks
would push
harder
if
they were not, like their predecessors the
philosophes,
scared stiff of
the
people.
So the issues of the French Revolution are still with us, but are no
longer being played out
in
France. Bosher, while rightly rebuking the French
for their insularity, largely restricts his discussion to intra-hexagone matters.
