So I've been studying the French Revolution and how various groups, nations and political identities view it's legacy and what I found interesting was that while he is traditionally associated as the forerunner of 20th century totalitarianism, French academia actually had a positive, borderline apologetic, image of Robespierre from the work of Jean Jaurès up to the late 20th century due to a strong Marxist base in academia, this base shifted when the Revisionist school analysis of the French Revolution came to be combined with expanding knowledge of the atrocities of the Communist bloc and the collapse of the USSR.
But what would be Robespierre's reputation if 20th century totalitarian ideologies never came to be? Let's say the October Revolution was averted because Kerensky withdrew from WWI or the Romanovs reformed Russia in time. This of course takes Fascism and Nazism down with Communism. So any totalitarian ideology as we would associate with Bolshevism, Stalinism, Fascism and Maoism would only exist in the mind and on the drawing board. Would it be the same as today, even more negatively than it is today, evenly split on the basis of political ideology, even more positive than what it is OTL with a lack of a figure "reminding" us of "the horror", or dependent on the conduct, ideology or the scale of any atrocities committed by any autocratic government that could be a replacement for what we consider totalitarianism.
But what would be Robespierre's reputation if 20th century totalitarian ideologies never came to be? Let's say the October Revolution was averted because Kerensky withdrew from WWI or the Romanovs reformed Russia in time. This of course takes Fascism and Nazism down with Communism. So any totalitarian ideology as we would associate with Bolshevism, Stalinism, Fascism and Maoism would only exist in the mind and on the drawing board. Would it be the same as today, even more negatively than it is today, evenly split on the basis of political ideology, even more positive than what it is OTL with a lack of a figure "reminding" us of "the horror", or dependent on the conduct, ideology or the scale of any atrocities committed by any autocratic government that could be a replacement for what we consider totalitarianism.
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