The revolutionary mania for renaming seems also to tend to
confuse and annoy the outsider. The English confined their efforts largely to
the names of persons, where they achieved some remarkable results. We are all
familiar with Praise God Barebone, and Put-Thy-Trust-in- Christ-and-Flee-Formication
Williams is no doubt more than a legend. The Puritans of course drew chiefly
from the Bible and from evangelical abstractions—Faith, Prudence, Charity, and
so on. The French drew from the virtuous days of Roman republicanism,
from the abstractions of the Enlightenment, and from their own leaders and
martyrs. Francois-Noel Babeuf, the forerunner of Socialism, renamed himself
Gracchus Babeuf. Claude Henri, Comte de St. Simon, kept his Christian names,
but dropped the compromising contact with a saint, and became Claude Henri
Bonhomme. The unfortunate Leroys (Kings) found it well to change to Laloys
(Laws) or something equally patriotic. One faithful Jacobin had his child
republicanly baptized Libre Constitution Leturc.
The French, however, did not stop with persons. Corrupt street names were changed, the Place Louis XV becoming Place de la Revolution, the rue de la Couronne becoming rue de la Nation. Place names underwent wholesale and inconvenient changes. Most of the Saints were dropped. Lyons, having sinned against the revolution by siding with the Federalists, on being taken by troops of the Convention was rechristened Commune Affranchie (FreedTown) Le Havre became Havrearat.
In the conventional greeting of one's fellows, monsieur became citoyen. For a while the word “roi" was under a taboo as definite as the kind the anthropologist studies, and was actually cut out of classic authors like Racine. There was an attempt, possibly serious, possibly journalistic, to change “reine abeille” into “abeille pondeuse”—“queen bee” into “laying bee.”
In their determination to uproot everything of the contaminated past, the French revolutionists decided to revolutionize the calendar. So they made twelve new months, and named them, in poetic French, after the glorious works of Nature—germinal, the month of buds, fructidor, the month of ripening, brumaire, the month of mists.
Although the French boasted the universality of their revolutionary
aims and principles, they were apparently undisturbed by the narrow limitation
of their new calendar to French climatic conditions. The calendar is, of
course, most inappropriate to Australia.
The Russians, in addition to their fondness for personal revolutionary noms de guerre, have been particularly addicted to changing place names, and unlike the French, they keep changing them. Catherine the Great, in particular, had put herself on the map as successfully as did Alexander the Great, but she has vanished altogether from Soviet Russia. Ekaterlnodar became Krasnodar; Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk; and Ekaterinoslav, Dnepropetrovsk. Stalin, at his height memorialized even more effectively in place names than Catherine, has now vanished from the map. Stalingrad, once Tsaritsyn, is now Volgograd; Stalin Peak, highest point in the USSR, is now Mt. Communism.
From long Socialist tradition, “comrade” took the place occupied by “citizen” in the French Revolution. Children, too, were given names as suitable to the day as were Praise God and Libre Constitution to their day. Vladilen or Vladen, a telescoping of Vladimir and Lenin, is one of the most shockingly unconventional to an old Russian.
This renaming is clearly one of the uniformities we can list for all our revolutions. Even the moderate American Revolution indulged in some renaming. Boston saw King Street and Queen Street give way to names like Federal and State, thoroughly suited to the new regime; but for some reason or other the tainted name of Hanover Street survived.
Revolutions are often subtle but manifest in what the desire. One is the destruction of the past. When that destruction occurs is often different in various revolutions but it is clearly a pathognomonic sign of the revolution and its movement.
The French Revolutionists tore down the past including the calendar. The Russian had to rename every city and piece of land. These events are manifest in every revolutionary, independent of their goals. Thus what we see today is a clear indication of an attack by revolutionaries, yet we fail to grasp their ultimate goals.
Posts
