On Albert Soboul’s approach towards the book “Napoleon Bonaparte” by A.Z. Manfred
Poghosyan Varoujean
In the present article, Varoujean Poghosyan discusses the relationship of prominent French historian Albert Marius Soboul (1914-1982) with Soviet historians, in particular with the world-renowned specialist on Napoleonic studies Albert Manfred (1906-1976), whose relationships began in the second half of the 1950s. Being one of the leaders of the journal “Annales historiques de la Révolution française”, he greatly contributed to the publication of scientific articles by Soviet historians in France in the 1960s and 1970s. His Soviet colleagues, in particular A. Manfred organized the translation of his three books and numerous articles into Russian and published them in the Soviet Union. In 1973, A. Soboul organized the translation of “his friend and brother” A. Manfred’s book “Napoleon Bonaparte” into French in order to publish it in the French publishing house “Éditions sociales”. He greatly contributed to this rather difficult task, even making linguistic corrections to the translated version of the book. However, he failed to publish the book translated in 1975 in France, which was later published in Moscow in 1980.
Research for this article was funded with the support of project № 14.Z50.31.0045 from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.