Georges Lefebvre (1874-1959) was a French historian, who was considered in his day to be the leading authority on the French Revolution, with a formidable scholarly reputation, editing the most respected journal on the subject, Annales historiques de la Révolution française and holding the position of Professor of the History of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne. A lifelong socialist, he became more and more influenced by Marxism about the time of the Second World War. He often wrote from a viewpoint which he felt the peasant of the time would have held, as shown in his groundbreaking work, Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française (1924). Lefebvre was influenced by the Marxist idea that all of history relates to the conditions of the working class, as manipulated by the upper class; however, he was primarily an historian, not a polemicist, and he saw history in its full complexity: as an interplay of social, economic and political factors. 1874 (MDCCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A historian is someone who writes history, and history is a written accounting of the past. ... The French Revolution (1789–1799/1804) was a vital period in the history of French, European and Western civilization. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. ... Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and to the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead... In a detail of Brueghels Land of Cockaigne (1567) a soft-boiled egg has little feet to rush to the luxuriating peasant who catches drops of honey on his tongue, while roast pigs roam wild: in fact, hunger and harsh winters were realities for the average European in the... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

Lefebvre's account of the origins of the French Revolution was written in Quatre-Vingt-Neuf, and published in 1939 to mark the sesquicentennial of the events of 1789, but the Vichy government that took over the following year wanted no left-wing history or sympathetic understanding of the Revolution, as they drew their support from the anti-republican right. The régime suppressed the book, ordering 8,000 copies to be burned; as a result the work was virtually unknown in its native land until it was reprinted in 1970. Its reputation was already secure in the Anglophone world, however, since the English translation, The Coming of the French Revolution (1947) had established it as a clear, yet subtle, classic. It remains the definitive explanation of the Marxist interpretation of the causes of the revolution. His seminal work, La Révolution française (revised edition, 1951) was translated into English as two volumes: The French Revolution (1962-4) and The French Revolution from 1793 to 1799 (1964). He also wrote a study of the most famous general and ruler in the history of France in Napoléon (4th edition 1953; translated in 2 volumes, 1969). An anniversary is a day that commemorates an event that occurred on the same day of the year some time in the past. ... For other uses of Vichy, see Vichy (disambiguation). ... A General is an officer of high military rank. ...

See Also

• Great Fear
• French Revolution