The Russian “Glorious Revolution” of 1762 and the French “Bloodshed” of 1789 as Seen by Andrei Bolotov, a Russian Provincial Nobleman of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The article examines the political views of Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov, as expressed in his memoirs and handwritten collections of news from 1792–1793, which described the events of the French Revolution, as well as in other writings and translations made in the 1760s–1790s. Bolotov’s sources of information (foreign press, François Pictet, Christian Friedrich Schwan and Christoph Girtanner), his range of communication, and the nature of his writings suggest that his political outlook was not determined solely by the class perspective of a provincial landowner. His political views, formed under the influence of the Catherine ii’s coup of 1762, which he called the Russia’s “Glorious Revolution,” combined ideas underpinning Catherine’s absolutism with notions of natural law and drawn from European intellectuals.