Revolution

By Gilbert Pleuger

new perspective Vol 3,  No 1

DURING THE FIRST MONTHS of this year there have been pictures of violence in Albania, Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Sierra Leone in the Media. Every few months a revolution or attempted revolution is reported. The word revolution is used not only in connection with political events: people also speak of ‘the green revolution’, ‘the electronic revolution’, ‘the cultural revolution’ (Mao’s inspired changes in China, 1968) and even ‘the revolution in expectations’. Revolution is a notion which will occur time and time again in the study of Modern History.

Initially used to describe astronomical movement, in the later Middle Ages revolution was applied, also, to a great change of circumstance in a situation and, by 1600, to describe the complete overthrow of a government. Political events in France in and after 1789 were called a revolution almost immediately, and it was the vigour of these events, the extent to which people’s lives were changed, the Europe-wide impact of the happenings in France and its continuing importance in the political life of the states of Europe, which greatly increased the usage of the word. By the late nineteenth century, and the increased pace of change in the economy and society, revolution began to be used to describe social and economic change. J.R. Green, for example, in his A Short History of the English People, 1874, has a chapter on ‘Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions’.

Revolution always describes change. Even in its astronomical application the word is used to describe change in position. While all revolutions involve change, not all change can be described as revolution. Change that may be called a revolution must have characteristics which a (mere) change lacks. That which is particular to the class of change which warrants the different name revolution is either the great speed and/or the great extent of change or it is the great number of people affected and/or the great degree to which people and their lives are affected by change. The latter pair of characteristics more readily relates to social and economic change while the former more readily relates to political change. A society which urbanised and industrialised quickly, such as Stalin's Russia during collectivisation, is justly described as having undergone a social and economic revolution.

Analysis of political revolutions presents a complicated picture. Peter Calvert in A Study of Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1970, starts with a definition of political revolution as ‘a complete overthrow of the established government of a country or state by those who were previously subject to it; a forcible substitution of a new ruler or form of government’. The emphasis here is on revolution as historical events but he accepts there are other circumstances which can be called revolution namely:

• a process in which the political direction of a state becomes increasingly discredited in the eyes of either the population as a whole or certain key sections of it. Such a process may culminate in the revolutionary event … or in the change of government by more peaceful means;

• a more-or-less coherent programme of change in either the political or the social institutions of a state, or both, induced by the political leadership after a revolutionary event, the transition of power, has occurred; or

• a political myth that gives to the political leadership resulting from a revolutionary transition short-term status as the legitimate government of the State.

Carl Leiden and Karl M. Schmitt in The Politics of Violence: Revolution in the Modern World, Prentice-Hall, 1968, classify revolutions under five heads: 1 mass; 2 millennial; 3 spontaneous; 4 conspiratorial; and 5 militarised mass. Revolutions follow a wide variety of courses but Leiden and Schmitt, nevertheless, generalise the stages of revolution as: Stage 1 violence and the destruction of the existing regime. This stage will include: (a) the expulsion of the old ruling elite; (b) the breakdown of old loyalties; and (c) the undermining of the old ideology. Stage 2 is the construction of an alternative for the replacement of (a), (b) and (c) in the first stage. Stage 3 is characterised by a reduction in the vigour of revolutionary activity and an increased wish to return to normalcy and a tendency toward the centralising of authority.

Revolution is a concept used by historians by which they gather together a series of events and, by labelling them, provide a shorthand for an easier description and analysis of the past. But the label should be used with care and marginal cases considered with circumspection. For example, is it correct to label the events in Russia in 1905 a ‘revolution’ and is the violence in Albania part of a revolution or an expression of deep-seated lawlessness in a society where the government has lost much authority? Unless the concept is applied with care, the concept will be devalued because of the loss of sharpness of definition, rather like a poorly focused photograph which appears smudged.