The concept of revolutionary war: classical understanding vs. the concept of French military theorists

The concept of "revolutionary war" has existed in the intellectual space for a long time and in each specific context is adequately understood by the participants in the discussion. However, to date there is neither a clear definition of this concept, nor, even more so, a developed concept of this phenomenon. Moreover, there is no understanding that representatives of different national cultures can put completely different meanings into this concept, which can complicate an adequate understanding of scientific and journalistic texts written by representatives of a different cultural and scientific tradition. Thus, this article is devoted to examining the evolution of ideas about revolutionary war since the end of the 18th century, since it was the war of the first coalition and the Napoleonic wars that later served as the empirical material on which ideas about the essence of revolutionary war were formed. The emergence of ideas about the specifics of revolutionary war as an armed struggle for progressive values ​​among representatives of different political forces during the French Revolution was analyzed.The further evolution of this concept is considered in the views of Simon Bolivar, F. Engels, V.I. Lenin and Mao Zedong, who developed a practical concept for waging a revolutionary war in the conditions of weak, agrarian and semi-colonial China in the 1930s. It is shown how the unique historical experience of the French, who encountered the practical application of Mao's recommendations in Vietnam from the Viet Minh, led to the fact that France formed its own original concept of revolutionary war, which exists to this day, within the framework of which this concept acquires a completely different meaning than in the classical version, which naturally changes the interpretation of many historical and modern military conflicts, which would be useful to take into account when working with French-language historiography.

revolutionary war, the French Revolution, Robespierre, Brissot, Bolivar, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong, guerilla, revolutions