Excerpt from the book chapter: "In France, for roughly half a century, Marxist historians enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the academic historiography of the French Revolution. Beginning in 1928 the Sorbonne's prestigious chair in the History of the French Revolution was reserved for historians with a demonstrable commitment to socialism. The combination of a rigid hierarchy in French academia and a leftist orientation among French intellectuals more generally - -particularly during the quarter century after World War II, when the fabled anti-fascist record of communism provided it with moral authority - made it nearly impossible to challenge he reigning orthodoxy..."