2021, Vol., No.44

Korean Review of French History 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, who died in June 2020 at the age of 85, was one of the most subversive historians in French contemporary history and fascism. Sternhell was able to show that history was the most subversive discipline because his research was closely linked to life and practice. Above all, his belief in the Enlightenment was the foundation of his historical studies and practical life, and the basis for his conviction that a transformation toward a freer and more equal world is possible.

This essay tries to evaluate the works about the French fascism and the fascist ideology left behind by Zeev Sternhell, a Polish-born Israeli historian and political scientist, and identifies some interpretative issues regarding fascist studies. To this end, his studies are considered, divided into three themes of the origin, nature and genealogy of fascism. Critical attention is paid to his famous theses on the birth of fascist ideology in France before the World War I, the ‘Neither Right nor Left’ synthesis which was based on the revolutionary ‘third way’, and the relationship between fascism and the Anti-Enlightenment tradition that dates back to the eighteenth century. A careful look at his theses reveals that they have grown out of the method and perspective of the intellectual history which attempted to search for the ideological archetype of fascism. Sternhell’s studies in the French fascism and the fascist ideology set up a criterion for comparing the fascist phenomena and offered the possibility of understanding their interactions by extending the scope of the previous fascist studies based on the national histories of Italy and Germany. However, it seems that he interpreted the history of fascism exclusively through the prism of thoughts and ideas without situating them in the specific historical contexts and political situations. In short, in order to develop his scholarly legacy, what we need is more political, more social history, or, at least, the intellectual historical approach a little bit closer to social history.

This study has two goals. One would like to examine the achievements of Sternhell’s history, who died last year in 2020, focusing on French nationalism and fascism. Examining the core debates over Sternhell’s questions and issues in the historical academia will in itself be a work to reflect on the historiography of French fascism. Another is to look at international debates and issues about the origins of French fascism that have persisted for a long time. These two are related to each other. The study of Sternhell’s history and the method of historiography is the work of reviewing and organizing the research history of French nationalism and fascism. This study focuses on the late 19th to early 20th centuries, which is noted as the origin of the French fascist ideology. This period is important because it is the starting point of the “Sternhell’ Thesis” controversy, which argues that the intellectual soil where the roots of the French fascist ideology grow naturally were being cultivated. In the end, this study can be said to be an attempt to establish the position of Sternhell in the historiography of French nationalism and fascism.