|
qkg:contextText
|
No original: "There was also a distinctive French attitude to the Soviet Union, in which thinking about Moscow is always somehow the same thing as thinking about Paris. The question of Stalinism was seen in France primarily as a historical conundrum: is the Russian Revolution the legitimate heir to the French? If so, should it not be defended against all foreign threats? The shadow of the French Revolution thus kept getting in the way, making it hard to see clearly what was happening in Moscow. So the show trials, which began in 1936, were seen by many French intellectuals, by no means all of them communists, as Robespierrian terror rather than totalitarian mass murder. (pt) |
