Ratio of need and accident of the French Revolution of XVIII age: historiographic aspect

The reconsideration and peculiar "audit" of the French Revolution of the 18th century proceeding in a world historiography are inevitable and for the Post-Soviet historical science which is in revision conditions, and often abandoning Marxist principles of knowledge. However, it is necessary to emphasize that revision of the Marxist concept of revolution inevitable disputes the truth and a question of its regularity. In resolving this issue, it is important along with use of achievements in this sphere of a foreign humanitaristics to rely on Russian historiographic tradition, including its pre-revolutionary period. This article considers the founder of the academic studying of history of the French Revolution of the 18th century in the Russian pre-revolutionary historiography V.I. Guerrier who defended a thesis about regularity of the French revolution of the 18th century from positions of idealistic historicism. In philosophico-historical views of Guerrier the important place was taken by a question of a ratio of need and accident at commission of historical events. Guerrier rejected the positivistic and Marxist idea of the natural-historical law, considering it as a killer of freedom of the moral choice and justification of "any violence". Impossibility of detection of natural laws in the history Guerrier based by the gnoseological analysis of the nature of an object of historical knowledge, defending an originality of the last. But rejecting the idea of natural-historical laws, Guerrier at the same time approved regularity of significant historical events, including also those which did not correspond to his moral ideals as, for example, the French Revolution. According to Guerrier, this revolution has been caused by a variety of reasons from which two reasons where of particular importance: the need for transformations existing on the eve of the revolution in France and inability of the feudal monarchy to make these transformations in the lawful way. Each of them had the roots in last history of France. Existence of the reasons in the past, Guerrier concludes, obliges the historian to look at the revolution in France as on "natural", "a logical conclusion of all previous history of this country". Thus, in Guerrier's understanding disclosure of regularity of the historical phenomenon means display it as a result of a number of the previous facts, long historical process, but a revolution happens not as a result of the objective law and as natural result of a certain policy of the definite governments which are not able "to follow a way of compromises and reforms" in time.

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