CC BY
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5. Магсумов Т. А. Современное состояние историко-педагогических исследований // Современные исследования социальных проблем (электронный научный журнал), Modern Research of Social Problems, №5(25), 2013. [Электронный ресурс]: Режим доступа: http://journal-s.org/index.php/sisp/article/viewFile/5201335/ pdf_193 (дата обращения: 01.02.2016).
America and France associated by idea of national freedom Pisarevskaya A. (Russian Federation)
Америка и Франция, связанные идеей национальной свободы Писаревская А. А. (Российская Федерация)
Писаревская Анна Альбертовна /Pisarevskaya Anna - студент, факультет свободных искусств и наук, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, г. Санкт-Петербург
Abstract: the article analyzes such concept, as "nationalfreedom", its origin in the USA and France and their interrelation.
Аннотация: в статье анализируется такое понятие, как «национальная свобода», его происхождение в США и Франции и их взаимосвязь.
Keywords: freedom, revolution, symbol, Constitution, idea. Ключевые слова: свобода, революция, символ, конституция, идея.
Freedom.. .what does it mean? Freedom- it is the power to act, speak and think freely which means to have liberty, be allowed unhampered boldness and separation, to be able to speak frankly and to be outspoken. [1]. Freedom is what everybody wants. Freedom is the condition of happiness. Fortunately, human freedom is inalienable right. The right to freedom means that everyone should have the opportunity to perform all acts and to behave within the law without infringing on the rights and freedoms of others. In the French Declaration of the rights of man and citizen 1789 it was noted that freedom is the ability to do whatever does not harm another.
Returning to the modern world, the first thing that comes to the mind of man, associated with freedom, is the Statue of Liberty - one of the most famous sculptures in the USA and in the world, often called "the symbol of new York and the United States", "symbol of freedom and democracy", "Lady Liberty". It is a gift of French citizens to the centenary of the American Revolution. It is followed by France, with its national idea "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité". Thus, I would highlight two countries that carry the idea of national freedom: the United States of America and the French Republic.
Donated by the people of France as a gift to the American people as a sign of friendship (strengthened during the years of the American revolution in 1884), the statue is considered a symbol of the U.S., symbolizing freedom and opportunities of this country. The formal name of the statue is "Liberty Enlightening the World". It depicts liberty as a woman in graceful, flowing robes, bearing a torch - a symbol of freedom that has the ability to avoid the chains of tyranny (the broken chains lies at her feet). On her head is a crown with seven rays, representing the seven seas and seven continents of the world. In crown there are 25 viewing windows that symbolize the earth's pearl and heavenly rays illuminating the world. In her left hand the woman holds a plate coated with the date of the American Declaration of Independence 4 July 1776.
Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to create to 1876 the monument to the centenary of the signing of the American Declaration of independence. The creation of the statue was a joint Franco-American project in which the U.S. built the pedestal, and the French made the statue and then collected it in the USA. At the ceremony, President Grover
Cleveland on behalf of the American people accepted the gift of the statue and said: "We will not forget that liberty here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected". [2]. In 50 years, October 28, 1936, on the anniversary of the opening of the statue, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt said: "Perhaps Providence did prepare this American continent to be a place of the second chance. Certainly, millions of men and women have made it that. They adopted this homeland because in this land they found a home in which the things they most desired could be theirs—freedom of opportunity, freedom of thought, freedom to worship God. Here they found life because here there was freedom to live". [3].
After the French Revolution - The Allegory of liberty became the official symbol of the French Republic. Images of Republican Liberty were decorated with the state seal, a distinctive mark of a member of the convent, coins, etc. In the years of the Republic in Paris were installed two statues of Liberty. One of them in October 1792, was on the Revolution square (today the Concorde), at the spot where formerly stood the monument to Louis XV. Freedom stood before the Parisians, full length, leaning on a spike. On her head was wearing Phrygian cap. Another statue appeared on the square Peak (now Vendome), at the site of the monument to Louis XIV. The statues of Liberty were in the principal towns of departments: in Nantes, Montpellier, Lyon, Troyes. Statues and busts of Liberty adorned the meeting rooms in the various government agencies, clubs and folk societies.
Few people know, but after only four years, the American community in Paris gave a return gift - a miniature copy of the statue of Liberty. Compared to her "American sister" Parisian "Liberty" has a more modest size. Now the Parisian statue of Liberty adorns the Eastern part of the Swan Islands. Her face turned to the West - to her "big sister", and on the plate in her hand stamped two important dates - the date of the American and French revolutions.
Are these two revolutions so important for French and American nations? I would say "Yes" as they formed present values of these two countries, including the idea of national freedom. The American Revolution was inextricably linked with transformations of the late eighteenth century, also occurring on the European continent. In time it almost coincided with the French revolution, and historically its origin is largely due to the same reasons. But first of all it should be emphasized that the American Revolution had been in different historical circumstances than the French. While France was a country with deep historical tradition and centuries-old culture, young America, or, rather, the English colonies in America were settled relatively recently, and had no time to get traditions and only began to create their own culture. Occupying a territory roughly equal to France, they had a 10 times smaller population. During the 4 - 5 centuries prior to the revolution, the population of France was kept approximately at the same level - about 18 million people. Since the mid XVIII century, it began to increase rapidly and by 1789, reached 26 million people. The population had grown, unemployment had appeared, introduced new taxes. The country experienced serious economic difficulties. One of their manifestations was the growth of prices. At that time in America in each generation the population doubled, partly due to the influx of new immigrants, and partly due to the high birth rate. But America unlike France did not know unemployment. Unlike Europe, in the colonies was not the food problem. The salary of an American worker by 30-100 per cent was higher than the earnings of the worker in England. The standard of living in the colonies was, on average, significantly higher than in Europe.
An important aspect of the origin of the two revolutions is their social roots, driving forces. As for America, this country did not know feudalism as a system. Unlike France, where the division of classes, the increasing class and social contradictions had pronounced, in America, class conflicts were less pronounced. In addition, the American Revolution was anti-colonial. It was a rebellion against the authority of the mother country. American and French revolutions were very different from each other. They were very remote from each other continents. Moreover, the geographic factor played a significant role in what America had achieved independence and the revolution was able to win. Both Revolutions marked the birth of new bourgeois nations. From the partitioned barriers of different French provinces and regions, and the separated and poorly connected separate American Colonies, new nations
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emerged. The French nation was formed in the XVI - XVIII centuries, i.e. mostly before the revolution. In America the revolution gave birth to the nation. The American Revolution preceded the French. The example of the victorious revolt had inspired the French revolutionaries and strengthened their faith in the success of the revolution. The policy documents of the American Revolution, the Declaration of independence influenced the French Declaration of the rights of man and citizen, and the Constitution of 1791 and 1793. However the creators of American and French revolutionary declarations and constitutions used one source - bourgeois ideas of the English philosophers and the French enlightenment. To understand what these ideas were, I will use the work of the French politician Alexis de Tocqueville "the old regime and the revolution".
In this book, Alexis de Tocqueville considers the causes of revolution in France in 1789. In the first Chapter of the third book the author reveals the role of the "people of Scriptures", that is, intellectuals in the French revolution. In the eighteenth century, they reach their greatest popularity. Tocqueville acknowledges that all intellectuals eventually came to the already existing concepts. These concepts can be found in the theory of "social contract". Representatives of this theory are Thomas Hobbes, J. Locke and J. J. Rousseau. The basic idea of this theory was that every person is born free and he is his own master, no one is able to subdue the person without his consent. Rousseau emphasized that people do not owe anything to those who they promised nothing. In the Declaration of Independence 1776, Jefferson proclaimed English and French Enlightenment ideas. The document has similarities with the theories of English philosopher John Lock on the rights of people and the government where he writes that people are inherently equal and in order to preserve freedom, they had to sign a contract that would ensure the protection of the rights of freedom, equality and property: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness" [4]. In the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen 1789, the basis was an idea of the equality and freedom that belongs to everyone from birth. Natural rights of man and citizen were declared the freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, the right to resistance to oppression. The main principles of the Constitution of 1791 — individual freedom, in the sense of personal integrity and independent personality manifestation in the realm of faith, thought, speech, and political freedom, in the sense of popular participation through representatives in the legislation and administration — became the basis of the subsequent French constitutions prior to the current inclusive. Thus, despite the different roots of American and French revolutions, we can see that in the end they both came to the idea of national freedom, which we can find in the founding documents of these nations.
Does this freedom exist in the minds of people in the following years? I would definitely say yes, besides it not only survived, but also significantly strengthened. The image of freedom remained in the memory of the French as a symbol of the revolution. It merged with the image of Marianne, an allegory of the French Republic. A vivid example is the famous painting of Eugene Delacroix «Liberty leading the people», or, as it is called, «Freedom on the barricades», written under the fresh impression of the July revolution of 1830. Woman with naked breasts, Phrygian cap on her head, holding in one hand the tricolor flag, and in the other a bayonet, lead rebels and looks like the sister of the many goddesses of Liberty appeared during the French revolution of the XVIII century. At the same time it is perceived as the Republic - Marianne, and as an allegory of the French revolution, inspiring the struggle of the revolutionaries of the XIX century. In 1848, the words «Liberty, Equality, Fraternity» for the first time became the official motto of the French Republic. The victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution brought to power the Provisional government, its first address to the
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nation on 24 February 1848, ended with the words: «La liberté, l'égalité et la fraternité pour principes. Le peuple pour devise et pour mot d'ordre. Voilà le gouvernement démocratique que la France se doit à elle même, et que nos efforts sauront lui assurer» [5]. The revolutionary triad was written on the tricolor flag the next day of the Second Republic.
In 1831, the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America to study the penitentiary system of the United States. However, Tocqueville writes about the structure of democratic society in general. The result of this journey is the book «Democracy in America». Tocqueville understood democracy as the absence of class distinctions, civil (political) equality. He believed that the objective of democracy as government by the majority is the welfare of the population. The world is going to equal conditions of existence for all people. Its political form is a democracy that is based on equality of conditions. The result is freedom, the components of which are: the absence of arbitrariness (legality), the federation (taking into account the interests of some parts of the state), public associations, independent media, and freedom of conscience. The reasons for the establishment of democracy in America Tocqueville believed the implementation of the principle of separation of powers, broad local self-government and decentralization, the jury and control officials of the court, freedom of conscience and the religious sentiment, preventing the degeneration of democracy, the Constitution, providing order in the state and preventing the infringement of civil rights, and character of the colonists — enterprising people, of average ability, with an adventurous spirit and a thirst for freedom, prone to religious freedom and purity (the puritans), and difficult living conditions that promoted equality and mutual assistance. «J'ai pensé que toutes les causes qui tendent au maintien de la république démocratique aux États-Unis pouvaient se réduire à trois: La situation particulière et accidentelle dans laquelle la Providence a placé les Américains forme la première; La deuxième provient des lois; La troisième découle des habitudes et des mœurs» [6].
Thus, for me now there are two countries that carry the idea of freedom - France and the United States of America. They are so different, in terms of building a society and the causes which led to their democratic beginning but one thing remains certain - these two countries are similar in the context of the existence of the idea of national freedom. And to finish I'd like to end with the last sentence of the speech of the American President Franklin Roosevelt on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty: «For each generation the more patriotic part is to carry forward American freedom and American peace by making them living facts in a living present» [7].
References
1. Tokvil A. de. Staryj porjadok i revoljucija. Per.s fr. M.Fedorovoj. M.: Mosk. filosofskij fond, 1997.
2. Tokvil' Aleksis de. Demokratija v Amerike: Per. s franc. / Predisl. Garol'da Dzh. Laski. -M.: Progress, 1992. - 554 s.
3. Fursenko A. A. 'Amerikanskaja revoljucija i obrazovanie SShA' - Leningrad: 'Nauka', 1978 - 414 s.
4. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique I (1835). Paris: Les Éditions Gallimard, 1992. Collection: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (tome I: pp. 1 à 506).
5. Journal "La Republique", Bureaux à Paris, 26 february 1848.
6. [Электронный ресурс]: URL: http://www.redcoat.me.uk/page7.htm (дата обращения 11.02.2016).
7. [Электронный ресурс]: URL: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/grover-cleveland-dedicates-statue-of-liberty (дата обращения 13.02.2016).
8. [Электронный ресурс]: URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15210 (дата обращения 15.02.2016).
9. [Электронный ресурс]: URL: http://www.constitution.org/us_doi.pdf (дата обращения 14.02.2016).
