«No one had thought of establishing a System of terror» Reflections on the book by M. Biar and M. Linton
Bovykin Dmitry
In their monograph "Terror. Demons of the French Revolution" Michel Biard and Marisa Linton offer a new understanding of one of the most controversial phenomena of the French Revolution - the Terror. They aim to prove that the Terror did not have a clear chronology, was not carried out according to a pre-planned plan and, ultimately, was not a "system" as many historians believe: this concept was invented by Thermidorian propaganda. The book touches on a wide range of issues directly or indirectly related to the Terror: it analyzes in detail the historiographical disputes both about the essence of the phenomenon itself and its chronology, touches on the connection between Terror and various concepts of the Enlightenment, studies the use of the word "terreur" under the Ancien Régime and in the early years of the Revolution. The authors reconstruct the logic of the creation and development of emergency institutions of power and emergency justice bodies, tell in detail about the history of the transfer of the actual governance of the country into the hands of the committees of the Convention and the activities of representatives of the people in missions, the political struggle in the National Convention.
The study was supported by a grant of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 25-18-00108 (https://rscf.ru/en/project/25-18-00108/).