Populo Summer 2017

revolutionary, revolutionary.” 136

but

Lenin

that

made

Marxism

In the case of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 themselves, this essay will conclude by combing the various conceptual aspects of this essay in order to understand just how and why the French and Russian Revolution were so substantially different. In the run-up the 1789, political discussion in the aforementioned salons and coffee shops was dominated by discussion of French national debt and crown spending; the state had been plunged into debt due to the Seven Years War 1754-1763 and the American War of Independence 1775-1783. Between 1771 and 1781, Director General of Finance Jacques Necker produced the compte rendu an annual summary of state revenue and expenditure. The compte rendu was published for the general public and had an enormous effect on increasing public interest into crown spending. By 1786, new Director Charles Alexander de Colonne understood that he needed to receive public support in order to enact his controversial financial reform programme. 137 A handpicked committee was drawn up in 1787 called the Assembly of Notables, seen as the true seal of approval for public interest; the Assembly shortly disbanded, citing they were not a true representation of France as a whole. 138 Both the Assembly and the public urged for a 136 Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 , (2014) p. 23. 137 “It is impossible to tax further, ruinous to be always borrowing … the only remedy, the only course left to take, the only means of managing finally to put the finance truly in order, must consist in revivifying the entire state by recasting all that vicious in its constitution”; as printed in William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 69. 138 “We are not representatives of the Nation … but we declared that altho’ we had no right to impede, it was our right to advise unless

60

Made with FlippingBook HTML5