About the Author

François Furet (1927-1997), educator and author, was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and was elected, in 1997, to become one of the "Forty Immortals" of the Académie Française, the highest intellectual honor in France. His many books include Interpreting the French Revolution, Marx and the French Revolution, and Revolutionary France. Deborah Furet, his widow, collaborated with him on many projects.

Reviews

A bestseller in France translated into 13 languages, this lucid "interpretive essay" is a particularly Eurocentric "history of the illusion of Communism during the time in which the USSR lent it consistency and vitality." Despite the broad promise of the title, Furet (1927-1997), a noted historian of the French Revolution (Revolutionary France, etc.), limits his study to Europe, especially France, and barely addresses the post-Khrushchev years. Both European fascism and communism, he argues, were antibourgeois passions fueled by mass politicization and post-WWI social fracturing. Quite interesting for American readers are his portraits of European intellectuals who, despite evidence of Soviet depredations, remained loyal to the revolutionary ideal. Also valuable is his close study of antifascism in France, where antifascist communists gained prominence. In one of the few allusions to the American scene, he notes that European intellectuals lacked a Hannah Arendt to conceptualize both the fascism they had opposed and the communism they embraced under the heading of totalitarianism. While he claims, a bit sweepingly, that the communist idea has now been liquidated, he astutely notes that the problems communism professed to solveÄthe tensions inherent in bourgeois democracy between the needs of humanity and the needs of the marketÄremain. That insight is a fitting coda to this solemn and measured obituary of the communist idea. (June)

Furet, who gained prominence as a historian of the French Revolution, died shortly after this book, his last, became an unexpected best seller in France. Turning to the question of the "universal spell" of communism and the impact of the Soviet experiment on European intellectual life, Furet argues that Russia's October Revolution affirmed "the role of volition in history and of man's invention of himself." Lenin and his followers were able to offer working-class militants and disaffected intellectuals the "modern elixir" of a complete break with bourgeois society. After the triumph of the Bolsheviks, "no country, no matter how distant, exotic, or unlikely, would be considered ineligible to be a combatant in the universal revolution." The problem, of course, was that the revolution promised more than it was able to deliver. According to Furet, the early Soviet system was "fraudulent" and politically inept, and the rise of Stalinism only deepened the regime's authoritarianism. Furet writes with wit and insight, and even those who might disagree with his conclusions will find much of substance in this volume. Recommended for public and academic libraries.ÄKent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.