People of the Revolution and the USSR

Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) Communism 1917–2012

Historian of revolution’s social foundations and later memory

Born in Alexandria in 1917 and raised in Vienna and Berlin, he wrote the ‘long 19th century’ trilogy, beginning with The Age of Revolution, on the making of industrial capitalism and nationalism.

A British Marxist historian who taught at Birkbeck for many years, Hobsbawm treated the French and Industrial Revolutions together in The Age of Revolution. Echoes of the Marseillaise examined the French Revolution’s reception in later politics and historical writing. The course uses his work to consider class, social structures and changing revolutionary legacies. His interpretations must be distinguished from contemporary primary sources and from other historians’ readings.