In the shadow of the major fi gures who created the Société des études robespierristes, it is possible to catch glimpses of less spectacular individual trajectories, though these are no less signifi cant for the evolution of this learned organization. Thus the historian of the Comite of General Security, Michel Eude (1909-1988), a member of the organization for nearly a half century and a retired conservator of the Marxist school, offers an alternative way of studying the SER: his relative anonymity and his intellectual status demonstrates this contrasting milieu, effecting a synthesis between different scientifi c and political personalities. His evolution as an historian brought him into constant contact with the world of the « études robespierristes » which was at the same time a vector of university initiation, an editorial platform, and fi nally, and above all, the essential support of a scholarly sociability.