ABSTRACT
In comparing the French and Russian Revolutions, one is impressed with the fact that the human mind reacts similarly to similar conditions, in spite of differences in time. In both the French and the Russian Revolutions the motives were freedom and justice. Ultimately the French Revolution influenced all of Europe, and as a result the nations from Greece and Spain on the south to Scandinavia on the north remodeled their governmental forms. In 1917 in Russia the first revolt against the Tsarist regime seemed to be the extension of the democratic principles of the French Revolution to Russia. But after the overturn of the Kerensky regime and the introduction of the communist idea the revolution developed along totally new lines, for which there is no historic precedent. In Russia disputes are settled by references to Karl Marx, just as in the French Revolution Rousseau's very words were often the final arbiters of policy.
