Abstract
The article, based on the personal research as well as on that of a French historian Sophie Wahnich, examines the figure of "the foreigner" or, more exactly, of the Other that has been retained in discourses of Czech and French prints during the French revolution. The primary question examining the role of the revolutionary event in the discourse formation of "foreignness" is explained on the Czech example, which is treated in the first part, by the stimulant function of "foreigner", becoming the "enemy", against who the people, at the moment of its national renaissance, can define themselves.
On the contrary, in the second part, the French case passes by two successive periods : initially, the revolutionary nation is based upon principles of universal humanism, where the figure of "the foreigner" looks devoid of sense, whereas during the Terror, it tends to the politics of suspicion which creates from "the foreigner" the incarnation of the anti-revolutionary Other inside the society, thus an agent of national discord.