Bicentennial of the French Revolution

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BICENTENNIAL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

POLITICAL CONTROVERSIES AND DEBATES
SEEKING NATIONAL SUPPORT
BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution should be seen as part of a cycle initiated by previous commemorations, both during the revolutionary period proper and at a later stage, in 1889 and 1939 respectively.

POLITICAL CONTROVERSIES AND DEBATES

The 1989 celebration inherited the pedagogical and symbolic ambitions of its predecessors—to educate the citizenry and to accomplish such significant gestures as planting liberty trees, holding meetings or republican banquets, and transferring last remains to their ultimate burial place in the Pantheon. In the context of that tradition, two phenomena were particularly noteworthy: a commemoration calendar generally reduced to the year 1789 (with the sole exceptions of the victory of Valmy and the proclamation of the Republic in September 1792) and far-ranging controversies about diverse themes such as the actual meaning of the concept of revolution, the contents of social rights—such as the right to work, the right to social protection, and the right to education proclaimed in 1793—and the use of violence during the Revolution.

The Revolution was instrumental in shaping French political culture, and each commemoration has born the mark of important historical and political debates. Needless to say, in the years leading up to the bicentennial celebration in 1989 the fate of the Republic was no longer at stake. Nevertheless, there was a weakening of the economic and social interpretation of the Revolution as a result of social change and progress, which is associated with Marxism. During the period from 1986 to 1989 wide coverage was given to François Furet's thesis, which views the revolutionary course as the by-product of a political game while ruling out the notion that the Terror may have been induced by "compelling circumstances." Critics further to the right in the political spectrum put the French Revolution on trial because of the failure of its Russian counterpart. From this point of view, the French Revolution was seen as the beginning of totalitarianism rather than of democracy. The repression of the Vendée uprising (1793–1796), during which thousands of people died, was even sometimes presented as the first instance of genocide in modern times. It became clear that the legacy of the Revolution as a whole was in need of reassessment regarding its conformity to the Republican doctrine.

From 1986 to 1988 the Right was in power—with the conservative Jacques Chirac serving as prime minister during the presidency of the socialist François Mitterrand—and the Left started mobilizing in the run-up to the bicentennial. Celebrating the Revolution became one way of safeguarding the identity of the Left, fighting to preserve the past as a key to building up the future. Networks were set up, such as CLEF, the network formed by the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme and the Ligue de l'Enseignement, and "Vive 89!," which was an association founded by historian members of the French Communist Party or those sympathetic to the party, although it was not directed by the party itself. Both groups criticized the government's Bicentennial Mission, led by Edgar Faure, for planning a half hearted and too-critical commemoration that failed to present the Revolution as a promise.

The 1988 electoral victory of the Socialist Party as well as Mitterrand's appointment of Jean-Noël Jeanneney as the new president of the Bicentennial Mission after Edgar Faure's death somewhat reduced causes for apprehension. Jeanneney redirected the official sense of the commemoration from a search for a minimal consensus emphasizing human rights toward a message, more in consonance with previous commemorations, exalting the concept of the Revolution as a "rupture" with the past and the "luminous side" of the Revolution in an attempt to understand the process of revolutionary violence rather than reprove it. Still, difficulties continued, since commemorating a revolution at a time when revolutions were on the ebb provoked irony from the media. The desire for commemoration itself was seen as archaic because it expressed a degree of confidence in the future and in progress that seemed no longer to be the order of the day.

SEEKING NATIONAL SUPPORT

To ensure the success of the bicentennial celebration, the Mission entrusted a well-known advertiser, Jean-Paul Goude, with the task of designing and organizing the 14th of July parade. This parade, which would take place during the G-7 summit, was to be the high point of the commemoration. The artist decided to avoid pure historical evocation and instead, playing with national stereotypes, depicted "globalization on the move" through a planetary musical interbreeding that announced the triumph of human rights. The aesthetic choices, the refusal of a heavily educational bias—quite unexpected in such circumstances, and the dramatic tension produced by the huge black-draped drum opening the parade, symbolizing China's Tiananmen Square repression, which had occurred that same year, convinced the media of the value of such a commemoration.

Although at the national level reluctance about commemorating the bicentennial of the Revolution was widespread—a result of the controversies over its possible interpretations—most regions were proactive in its celebration. In almost all départements (counties), towns, and villages, ambitious commemorative programs were put together. In the smallest villages trees of liberty were planted, giving people an opportunity to gather together and celebrate—sometimes the traditional values of the place, rather than revolutionary values as such. In many areas festive traditions, often forgotten, were reactivated and reinvented. All over the country the bicentennial presented an opportunity for communities to present live historical shows and for local assemblies to inaugurate cultural policies. Whereas the Right-Left division was noticeable at the national level (most leaders of the right wing decided not to attend Goude's parade and criticized the government for wasting money on the celebrations), most local communities, whatever their political affiliation, devoted a significant budget to the commemoration. The will to assert a local identity undoubtedly overcame reluctance with respect to the bicentennial commemoration, even if, as was the case in Vendée or in the city of Lyon, the claimed identity was that of a tradition opposed to the Revolution. Thus, national support for the bicentennial commemoration was characterized by local appropriations of the event as an opportunity to create new sociabilities and by a concern for a collective identity linked to the entry into a postnational era.

See alsoFrance.