gather strength in the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian revolts of 1905 and reached its highest point during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia which created a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat. Mathiez rejected the common view of Robespierre as demagogic, dictatorial and fanatical. Mathiez argued he was an eloquent spokesman for the poor and oppressed, an enemy of royalist intrigues, a vigilant adversary of dishonest and corrupt politicians, a guardian of the French Republic, an intrepid leader of the French Revolutionary government and a prophet of a socially responsible state. Mathiez held the highly prestigious Sorbonne chair in French Revolutionary Studies and was the founder of the Societe des Etudes Robespierristes which led to the creation in 1908 of the highly regarded journal Annales révolutionnaries that became Annales historiques de la Révolution française in 1924. Mathiez was active in the French Communist Party from 1920 to 1922. By 1930, he was attacked by Stalinist historians, who condemned Mathiez and his Jacobinism as adversaries of the proletarian revolution. He was a vigorous polemicist. In his own defense after 1930, he mounted a sharp critique of Stalinism. Notes Further reading Friguglietti, James. Albert Mathiez, historien révolutionnaire (1874-1932) (Paris: Société des études robespierristes, 1974), the standard scholarly biography. Friguglietti, James. "Albert Mathiez, an Historian at War," French Historical Studies (1972) 7#4 pp 570–86. in JSTOR. Friguglietti, James. "Albert Mathiez's Idea of Revolution and Revolutionary Terror," Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Proceedings (1974B), Vol. 1974, pp 22–33. Shulim, Joseph I. "Robespierre and the French Revolution," American Historical Review (1977) 82#1 pp. 20–38 in JSTOR. External links Annales historiques de la Révolution française 1874 births 1932 deaths People from Haute-Saône French Section of the Workers' International politicians French Communist Party politicians Socialist-Communist Union politicians Academic staff of the University of Paris 20th-century French historians Historians of the French Revolution École Normale Supérieure alumni French male writers University of Burgundy alumni