The author of the essay analyzes the content of the collective monograph Révolutions et relectures du passé XVIII^e – XX^e siècle, edited by Sylvie Aprile and Hervé Leuwers in the French publishing house Presses universitaires du Septentrion. This collective work is based on the idea that in the era of revolutions, history is much more important for society than in other periods. The authors, exploring the revolutionary epochs of different countries – from Russia and Latin America, strive to show how attitudes to the past changed at crucial moments in history and how politics tried to put this past at the service of the present. The book consists of four parts, in each of which researchers try to answer such questions as how current events can be justified by history, how the revolutions of previous eras were used as a model and how people basing on the knowledge of history tried to predict the future course of events in order to avoid possible mistakes, how images of the past affect the construction of the present.

The study is realized in the State Academic University for the Humanities within the framework of the state task of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (project FZNF–2023–0003 Traditions and values of society: mechanisms of formation and transformation in the context of global history).