Russian intellectual discourse on the French Revolution as a representation of the West rather than a symbol of revolution.

The Bolsheviks sought legitimacy and inspiration in historic revolutionary traditions, and Jay Bergman argues that they saw the revolutions in France in 1789, 1

Sandwiched between the East and West, Russian intellectuals have for centuries been divided geographically, politically, and culturally into two distinct groups

The collapse of the Imperial regime in Russia excited intellectuals of all political persuasions to compare pre-Revolutionary Russia with revolutionary France.

In a pioneering exploration of the intellectual and literary exchange between Russian émigrés and French intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, Leonid Livak p