Question about Robespierre and The Terror

[fromrequired.livejournal.com]

 I don't have much knowledge about the French Revolution (as you can tell by looking at my userpic, I'm more of a WWII fangirl) but I'm greatly interested in it. 

So in my AP Euro History class, we had to watch this documentary about the French Revolution. I'll post a part of it below:

I'm sort of lost because I thought Robespierre originally was for the rights of the poor and the ordinary people? It doesn't seem plausible to me that he can just turn into a sanguinary dictator overnight. Even in my textbook it says that Robespierre killed everyone whom he deemed unfit for his "Republic of Virtue," but history is never that simple. I know, I study WWII ;)

Anyways, can y'all people enlighten me about the cause of The Terror and Robespierre's role in it? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions.


EDIT: Here's the part that succeeds it. It basically describes the fall of Robespierre and says he inspired later dictatorships and revolutions. 

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

That documentary is not the world's best. It's better than the recent BBC travesty, but I wouldn't trust it, or any textbook. Or any historian really, if what you really want is to understand Robespierre and/or the Revolution. Try to read primary sources, if you can - specifically concerning Robespierre, if you need your sources to be in English, try George Rudé's collection of writings by and about Robespierre (not to be confused with his biography). Failing that, Zizek recently published a collection of Robespierre's speeches, but the introduction is just about worthless and it's difficult to understand speeches out of context.

Unfortunately, most of the best information on the Revolution (and Robespierre) is only available in French.

I can give you my extremely generalized and short version of the answers to your questions, but you have no reason to take me at my word... Even so, you should know, first of all, that Robespierre was never accused of *being* a dictator in his lifetime, even by his bitterest enemies, only of *wanting* to be one. (It should also be noted that to people in the 18th century, the dictatorship was a Roman magistracy. When anyone from the time says "dictator" they're thinking more Sulla than Stalin.)
Second, the concept of the "Republic of Virtue" is a redundant one, since for any 18th century thinker from Montesquieu on, virtue (ie, the concept of participation in the Republic on the part of its citizens) was the foundation of any republic.
Third, Robespierre never stopped being for the rights of the poor and ordinary people.
Fourth, while everyone agrees that there was repression in the Year II, many historians are starting to question the usefulness of "the Terror" as a concept (J-C Martin demonstrates that it was never actually "put on the order of the day"; a number of studies analyze its invention post-Thermidor; M. Belissa considers that when people use the term Terror what they're really referring to is the popular government - an analysis borne out by the origins of the use of the term during the Revolution: in royalist newspapers decrying the "Terror" of the "Rights of Man and Citizen"; etc.) - as has often been noted with the term "Middle Ages" if you told someone in 1793-1794 that they were living under the Terror, they would have had no idea what you were talking about.
Fifth... well, I won't insult your intelligence by any lengthy explanation about how, say, Lenin's invocation of Robespierre tells you a lot more about Lenin than Robespierre.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Addendum to point four:

If what you really mean by asking what Robespierre's role in the Terror was is what was Robespierre's role in revolutionary repression, that question is slightly more complicated. In broad strokes: no, Robespierre did not have a problem with the idea of making it so counterrevolutionaries could not harm the Revolution, whether this meant with fighting them on the battlefield, with economic sanctions, with imprisonment, or, if necessary, with execution. Was Robespierre the only one who felt this way? No. Is the Republic in question "his" personal "Republic of Virtue"? Once again, no. Are counterrevolutionaries (defined by F. Gauthier as those who oppose the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and its being put into effect) figments of Robespierre's (or anyone else's) paranoid imagination? Not at all. But did Robespierre use the term counterrevolutionary to satisfy his bloodlust/paranoid fantasies/revenge, etc.? I can find no evidence that he did so and I don't believe it. Did Robespierre believe that everyone who was not a model citizen should be guillotined? There is a great deal of evidence, both in his words and his actions to show that this was not the case. Were there abuses during this period of revolutionary repression? Absolutely. Was Robespierre personally responsible for them? In the vast majority of cases, it can be asserted with confidence that he was not (most of them can be attributed to his political enemies). There are certain cases that are more open to discussion (ie, the trial and execution of the Dantonistes), but even there, any responsibility borne by Robespierre is a shared, not a personal responsibility, because, as noted above, he never had that kind of power. In short, Robespierre, active player in the fight against the counterrevolution with the means at his disposal? Certainly. Robespierre, bloodthirsty dictator? Certainly not.

But again, don't take my word on any of this. Read about it for yourself. (It sounds like you already know enough to not just blindly trust the first account you read, so it would be superfluous to warn you against that.)