Albert Soboul

Albert Marius Soboul (April 27, 1914–September 11, 1982) was a French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. Born April 27, 1914 in Ammi-Moussa (Oran), Algeria, he lost his father in November 1914, during World War I. He and his older sister Gisèle lived first in Algiers, then in Nîmes in the care of his aunt Marie after their mother died in 1922. He received a sound education at the lycee of Nîmes, then at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and finally at the Sorbonne.

By 1936 he had already published a book on the revolutionary Saint-Just, written under the pseudonym "Pierre Derocles". Already involved in Communist Party activity, Soboul formally joined the party in 1939. Called up for military service that same year, he served in the horse-drawn artillery without seeing combat before being demobilized in 1940. Soon afterward he received a teaching position at the lycée of Montpellier, but was dismissed in July 1942 after organizing a student demonstration. He spent most of the war years doing research for the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires.

After the end of the German Occupation, Soboul returned to teaching, first at the lycée of Montpellier, then at the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot and finally the Lycée Henri-IV. Soboul became a close friend of the eminent historian Georges Lefebvre and wrote his 1,100-page doctoral dissertation, "Les sans-culottes parisiens en l'an II" ("The Parisian Sans-culottes in the Year II", 1958), under his direction. Soboul was promoted to the University of Clermont-Ferrand, then in 1967 to the chair of the history of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne.

Over the next fifteen years he published numerous historical works, notably the three-volume "La Civilisation de la Révolution française" ("The Civilization of the French Revolution"). He faced increasing opposition to his class-struggle interpretation of the period from "revisionists" such as Francois Furet and Denis Richet, and since his sudden death at his home in Nîmes on September 11, 1982, Soboul's reputation has dimmed. Nonetheless, his body of work, characterized by substantial research and clear style, remains an important contribution to the study of "history from below."

Soboul is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, not far from the graves of prominent Communist Party leaders and the Communards' Wall, where the last Communards were shot in May, 1871.

* A biography, "Un historien en son temps : Albert Soboul (1914-1982)", by Claude Mazauric & Hubert Delpont was published in 2003.