Yuri Chekalin
The transformation of political vocabulary represents only the first stage in the symbolic reconstruction of legitimacy.
Toward the Symbolic Reconstruction of Authority
Words acquire their fullest political meaning when they become embodied in public ceremonies, commemorative practices, national symbols, civic rituals, monuments, and the visible performance of political authority. Revolutionary governments therefore moved beyond language to reshape the symbolic landscape of political life itself. It is to these processes of ritual and symbolic innovation that the analysis now turns.
Crowds, Political Participation, and the Experience of Revolution
The preceding sections have examined how revolutionary governments sought to reconstruct political legitimacy through new institutions, political language, and public ritual. Yet these developments raise another historical question. Why did revolutionary symbols and ceremonies acquire such extraordinary political force? The answer cannot be found solely in official decrees or constitutional documents. Revolutions were also lived experiences in which large numbers of people participated directly in political events. Crowds became visible actors in moments of celebration, protest, mourning, insurrection, and public deliberation. Understanding their role is therefore essential to any historical analysis of revolutionary legitimacy.
Crowds, however, should not be understood simply as irrational or uncontrollable forces.
Modern historiography has demonstrated that collective action often possessed its own internal organization, political objectives, and social composition. Revolutionary crowds included workers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, women, students, and local communities whose motivations varied considerably. Participation in collective political action was shaped by economic conditions, political beliefs, local traditions, and immediate historical circumstances.
The crowd was not a single historical actor but a dynamic form of political participation.
France: From Subjects to Citizens
The French Revolution transformed ordinary people from spectators of political authority into increasingly visible participants in public life. Demonstrations, petitions, popular assemblies, civic festivals, and the activities of political clubs created new opportunities for collective political engagement. The storming of the Bastille, the Women’s March on Versailles, and numerous local revolutionary movements became powerful symbols not only because of their immediate political consequences but because they embodied the belief that the nation itself had entered history as an active political force.
Participation in revolutionary ceremonies reinforced this transformation. Citizens did not merely observe public festivals; they marched, swore civic oaths, elected representatives, joined the National Guard, and celebrated national anniversaries. Political authority increasingly appeared as something enacted collectively rather than received passively from above.
Yet participation was neither uniform nor uncontested. Revolutionary France experienced profound political divisions, regional differences, religious conflict, and violent confrontation. Crowds could support constitutional reform, demand more radical change, or resist revolutionary policies altogether. Their historical significance therefore lies not in ideological uniformity but in their capacity to shape political events during periods when established institutions had lost authority.
Russia: Revolution in an Age of Mass Politics
The Russian Revolution unfolded in a political environment already transformed by industrialization, urbanization, mass literacy, and modern communications.
Demonstrations, strikes, factory meetings, soldiers’ assemblies, and political rallies became defining features of the revolutionary years. The collapse of imperial authority in February 1917 was accompanied by unprecedented forms of public participation across the empire.
The soviets themselves reflected this new political reality. Whatever their subsequent evolution, they initially represented institutions through which large numbers of workers and soldiers sought political representation during a period of institutional uncertainty. Public meetings, debates, demonstrations, and electoral processes became central elements of revolutionary political life.
The Bolsheviks proved particularly effective at participating in and shaping these new forms of political mobilization. Their success cannot be explained solely by symbolic language or organizational discipline, nor solely by social and economic conditions. Rather, it emerged from the interaction of political leadership, institutional development, wartime circumstances, competing revolutionary movements, and the active participation of diverse social groups. Crowds formed part of this historical process, but they did not determine its outcome by themselves.
Elias Canetti and the Historical Experience of Crowds
At this point Elias Canetti’s reflections provide an important interpretive perspective. Unlike many political theorists, Canetti approached crowds not primarily as constitutional or sociological phenomena but as forms of collective human experience. He argued that crowds temporarily dissolve ordinary social distinctions, generating a powerful sense of equality, shared purpose, and emotional intensity. Such experiences, he suggested, help explain why moments of mass participation often leave enduring political and historical memories.
The comparative evidence from France and Russia lends qualified support to this insight. Revolutionary gatherings frequently created powerful experiences of collective identity that strengthened emerging political communities. Public ceremonies, demonstrations, assemblies, and commemorations enabled participants to experience political transformation directly rather than merely observe it from a distance.
At the same time, the historical record also indicates the limits of Canetti’s explanatory framework. The emotional dynamics of crowds cannot by themselves account for the establishment of durable political authority. Revolutionary governments succeeded or failed not only because they mobilized collective participation but because they developed institutions, organized administration, managed military conflict, addressed economic challenges, and negotiated the practical demands of governing complex societies.
Canetti therefore illuminates one essential dimension of revolutionary politics without exhausting its historical explanation. His work helps historians understand why collective participation could become emotionally compelling, but it does not replace the broader institutional, social, economic, and political analyses required for a comprehensive interpretation of revolutionary change.
Comparative Conclusions
The French and Russian Revolutions demonstrate that crowds were neither accidental by-products of revolution nor independent engines of historical development. They were participants in a broader process through which political legitimacy was contested, negotiated, and reconstructed. Their importance lay not simply in their size but in their capacity to embody emerging political communities during moments when older structures of authority had lost credibility.
The comparative evidence thus suggests that revolutionary legitimacy was constructed through the interaction of several mutually reinforcing elements: political participation, symbolic language, public ritual, institutional innovation, and effective governance. Crowds provided visibility and emotional force to revolutionary transformation, but they acquired lasting historical significance only when their aspirations became connected to institutions capable of sustaining political authority beyond the revolutionary moment itself.
To be continued…
Dmitri Drobnitsky
Andrey Vedyaev
Alexander Rimov
