To the Finland Station
To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History ( German under the titles The way to Petersburg: Europe's revolutionary tradition and the emergence of socialism or On the way to the Finnish train station: On history and historiography ) is the best known Book by the American critic and writer Edmund Wilson (1895–1972). Published in 1940, the book presents the history of revolutionary thought and the emergence of socialism from the French Revolution , from Count of Saint-Simon , Rousseau , the collaboration between Marx and Engels , to Lenin's arrival at the Finnish train station in St. Petersburg ( Petrograd ) in April 1917, returning from a long exile to lead the movement that would culminate in the October Revolution .
The book is divided into three parts:
The first part deals with Jules Michelet (1798–1874) in five of eight chapters and then discusses the decline of the revolutionary tradition in relation to Ernest Renan , Hippolyte Taine and Anatole France .
The second part is about socialism and communism in sixteen chapters . The first four chapters deal with the origins of socialism in Babeuf , Saint-Simon , Fourier and Robert Owen and Enfantin and the American socialists Margaret Sanger and Horace Greeley . The second group of twelve chapters deals mainly with the development of the thought of Karl Marx (1818–1883) in the light of his influences, the partnership with Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) and the opposition of Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864) and Michail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876).
The third part comprises six chapters, each dealing with Lenin (1870–1924), Trotsky (1879–1940) and again Lenin. Among the important writings that have been mentioned are Lenin's What to Do? and Trotsky's Literature and Revolution & My Life , the Biography of Lenin and the History of the Russian Revolution .
The book also mentions Eleanor Marx (the daughter of Karl Marx), Nadezhda Krupskaja , Annie Besant , Charles Bradlaugh and Georgi Gapon .
See also
literature
- To the Finland Station. A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company 1940
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To the Finland Station. A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. London, Martin Secker & Warburg 1940
- German editions: The way to Petersburg. Europe's revolutionary tradition and the emergence of socialism. Translated from the American by Ehrenfried Klauer and Hans Stern. Rütten & Loening, Munich, 1963. Rütten & Loening, Munich undated
- On the way to the Finnish train station. About history and historiography. With an introduction by Renate Laux. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-518-06694-3 .