Moscou: unknown 1790-manuscript of the French Social Revolutionary Graccus Babeuf found in former Soviet collection
Moscow, 17 Nov 2007. A 214 year old major political and philosophical treaty by the French Social Revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf has been found yesterday in Moscow archives. “With all we know up to now, this can be called the major sensation of two centuries of Babeuf research”, says the finder Dr. Martin Kraemer-Liehn, a Moscou-based researcher on the past and future of Communism (*1971), just days ahead of the author’s 247th birthday.
The 150 pages manuscript with the title “Philosophical light or the real nature of what they call natural rights, international law and civil rights” was discovered yesterday during a routine check of archival cellars in the centre of Moscou. It appears to be written at a crucial stage of the French Social Revolution between March 1790 and 1791, undoubtedly by the hand of the famous Revolutionary and first Communist of modern times. It has survived unpublished and unknown by the worldwide Babeuf-community for more than a century in the hands of rather ignorant French privateers and finally disappeared under Soviet discretion in 1930 (with the technical title: RGASPI fond Babeuf opis 1 delo: 52).
Only after having confirmed the novelty of his findings in telephone calls with the international Babeuf community in Paris and the US, Dr. Kraemer could believe his luck: “My dream to discover Babeuf was born just this summer, when I was kept with thousands of fellow anti-capitalists in the Guantanamo-like prison cells around the G8-meeting of Heiligendamm (Germany).” Babeuf and other members of the “Society of Equals" were guillotined by a Bourgeois court in post-revolutionary Paris 1797 for advocating that "Nature has given to everyone the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property". 200 years later, in the course of a world crisis marked by increasing social inequality, the revolutionary power of this philosophy seems to have lost nothing of its militant appeal. “Babeuf’s struggle goes on – Capitalist repression cannot kill the power of his words”, says the finder in the Russian capital. An international publication of the Moscou manuscript is planned for the beginning of next year. Dr. Kraemer-Liehn is convinced that this unique material must be rendered as a public common and the rights of access to Babeuf should never again be trusted to bourgeois speculators and their counter-productive copy right laws.
You can contact Dr. Kraemer-Liehn in Moscow +7-499-6195513 only between 3.00 and 6.00 o’clock GTM,
filming and photo permission of the manuscript can be obtained at www.rgaspi.ru
The 150 pages manuscript with the title “Philosophical light or the real nature of what they call natural rights, international law and civil rights” was discovered yesterday during a routine check of archival cellars in the centre of Moscou. It appears to be written at a crucial stage of the French Social Revolution between March 1790 and 1791, undoubtedly by the hand of the famous Revolutionary and first Communist of modern times. It has survived unpublished and unknown by the worldwide Babeuf-community for more than a century in the hands of rather ignorant French privateers and finally disappeared under Soviet discretion in 1930 (with the technical title: RGASPI fond Babeuf opis 1 delo: 52).
Only after having confirmed the novelty of his findings in telephone calls with the international Babeuf community in Paris and the US, Dr. Kraemer could believe his luck: “My dream to discover Babeuf was born just this summer, when I was kept with thousands of fellow anti-capitalists in the Guantanamo-like prison cells around the G8-meeting of Heiligendamm (Germany).” Babeuf and other members of the “Society of Equals" were guillotined by a Bourgeois court in post-revolutionary Paris 1797 for advocating that "Nature has given to everyone the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property". 200 years later, in the course of a world crisis marked by increasing social inequality, the revolutionary power of this philosophy seems to have lost nothing of its militant appeal. “Babeuf’s struggle goes on – Capitalist repression cannot kill the power of his words”, says the finder in the Russian capital. An international publication of the Moscou manuscript is planned for the beginning of next year. Dr. Kraemer-Liehn is convinced that this unique material must be rendered as a public common and the rights of access to Babeuf should never again be trusted to bourgeois speculators and their counter-productive copy right laws.
You can contact Dr. Kraemer-Liehn in Moscow +7-499-6195513 only between 3.00 and 6.00 o’clock GTM,
filming and photo permission of the manuscript can be obtained at www.rgaspi.ru
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