Browse Items (121 total)

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), whose original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was one of the chief figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After years spent in exile agitating in favor of Russian communism, he put his ideas into practice as one of…

Emerging from urban revolutionary politics was a workers’ movement called the sans–culottes, a reference to the attire of male artisans. Unlike their wealthier compatriots, they did not wear knee breeches, preferring pants. Thus were they named…

Jacques Roux, a former priest turned radical revolutionary, became the leading voice for a group known as the "Enraged," because they expressed constant anger at the unfairness shown toward the ordinary, poor people who made up the bulk of the…

In this article, Marat characteristically expresses his concern that, although new governmental institutions had been created, they remained under the control of aristocratic influences, hostile to the Revolution. This fear that those in power were…

A leading voice on behalf of greater popular participation and for social policies that would benefit the poor, the journalist Jean–Paul Marat used his radical newspaper The Friend of the People to criticize moderation. On 12 April 1793, the…

This image, also reproduced from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris, shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. The panels depict the former convent of the Carmelites (where 163 were killed) and the prison known as the Force, which had…

Yet another image from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. These panels reveal similar occurrences at the police prisons of the Chatelet and the Bic*tre, where altogether an estimated 800 were…

In one of the most widely reported incidents of the September massacres, a "jury" of twelve "commissioners" was formed spontaneously in the Saint–Germain Abbey to judge the refractory clergy held there as prisoners. After an interrogation and threats…

The journalist and politician Guiseppi Mazzini (1805–72) was the apostle of nationalism during the first half of the nineteenth century. He was exiled by the Austrians from his native Italy in 1831 and spent the next two decades working…

This image ridicules monks for contributing nothing to society, either economically or demographically, by depicting a group of them being taken from the monastery and drafted into the army, where they hope "to become good citizens" as was expected…