ABSTRACT
The citizen must be represented as a landlord, merchant or peasant in the legislature. Russian thinkers at this time, like Speranski, were interpreting the French Revolution in a manner in keeping with the Russian preference for councils based on occupation. The small Russian privileged class feared the ideas of the French revolution from the start, but now the despotic actions of Napoleon and his obvious intention to dominate Europe by force aroused the inarticulate Russian masses, and laid the foundations of a real national revival and resistance to foreign aggression. Yet the French Revolution did leave a legacy of liberalism in thought and literature, which reached its high point in the poet Pushkin at this time. The romantic school of Russian authors were influenced by writers of a similar school in England, such as Byron, and perhaps a more hopeful foundation was laid for an Anglo-Russian understanding of the future.
