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Russian Radicals and the West European Revolutions of 1848
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The unsuccessful European revolutions and successful counter-revolutions of 1848–49 elicited complex and surprisingly little-studied responses in Russia. The court, the bureaucracy and the upholders of the status quo in general reacted much as they had to the great French Revolution of 1789. Their never banished fears of Western revolutionary contagion were fanned anew. This new paroxysm of anxiety was reflected in panicky domestic measures of repression, such as the arrest of a number of members of the relatively harmless Petrashevski discussion group, including the novelist Dostoievski, and in such foreign policy acts as Russian armed intervention against the Hungarian liberal revolution.
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References
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