ABSTRACT
Representatives of the left wing of Russian social democrats often looked to the French Revolution to support their ideas. The right wing of the Russian social democrats was in close contact with the European social democrats and was thus aware of the prevailing mood. For this reason, it did not believe in the international scope of the revolutionary process. The situation with the leftist group of the Russian social democratic movement was altogether different. Lenin turned to the French Revolution to define the similarities as well as the dissimilarities between it and the Russian Revolution. He also used the French Revolution to demonstrate how the Bolsheviks could retain power, while leading the worldwide revolutionary movement. The French Enlightenment was an intellectual veneer for the majority of the Russian gentry and it had little effect on their actual social position. However, some Russian aristocrats took the ideas of the French Revolution to heart and decided to implement them.
