You Say You Want A Revolution: Radical Idealism and Its Tragic Consequences. By Daniel Chirot (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2020) 171 pp. $29.95

Abstract

More than eighty years ago, Crane Brinton published The Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1938), a pioneering attempt to elucidate the regularities in the origins, course, and outcome of revolutions. Brinton’s theories stemmed from, and were limited to, an analysis of the canonical European revolutions—England in 1640, France in 1789, and Russia in 1917. But another canonical revolution occurred in 1989, with the overthrow of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. Greater attention to history as a global process has also brought extra-European upheavals to the fore—before 1945, in Mexico and China, and afterward, in Cuba, Iran, and Angola, among other places. A number of social scientists have had a shot at producing a more encompassing anatomy of revolution, including Gurr, Moore, Tilly, and Skocpol.1 In his new book on the subject, Chirot casts his net widely, drawing on examples from around the world during the past 350 years, not just the usual left-wing suspects but fascist regimes as well. Keeping an eye on contemporary trends toward authoritarian nationalism, Chirot devises a gloomy theory of the roots and outcomes of revolutions, strongly suggesting the preferability of peaceful reform. A comparison of his treatment of examples with empirical evidence shows that his theory works better as political polemic than as a guideline for historical investigation.Chirot begins his book with an outline of how revolutions begin and end: When old regimes undergo disruption in their legal stability because of incompetent leadership, a politically moderate leadership takes control. But these reformers are unable to compete with, or work with, the ideologically extreme radicals whose prospects considerably improve after the outbreak of counter-revolution, incipient civil war, or outside intervention. Once in power, the radicals’ attempt to implement their utopian ideals leads to violence and mass death. Ultimately, revolutionary fanaticism recedes, resulting in an authoritarian and corrupt regime. In many ways, Chirot’s narrative seems like an offshoot of Brinton’s idea of a revolutionary fever curve, mounting to a peak of radicalism before declining.Chirot has chapters illustrating each of these four steps. For the first, he chooses France, Russia, and Iran, comparing clueless Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and Reza Pahlavi; ineffectual Gilbert du Motier (Marquis de Lafayette), Alexander Kerensky, and Shapour Bakhtiar; and militant Maximilien Robespierre, Vladimir Lenin, and Ruhollah Khomeini. A chapter about the fatal consequences of radicals in power illuminates the Nazis’ genocidal racial policies, Joseph Stalin’s collectivization, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, and the policies of the Khmer Rouge. One on the corrupt late phase of revolutionary regimes highlights African countries and the Eastern Bloc of the 1980s.Three problems emerge from this procedure. One is that Chirot cannot integrate all four phases of the model into each revolution. Take for instance, the communists’ coming to power in China by overthrowing the regime of the Guomindang. Whatever their many faults, the Guomindang were far from being ineffectual political moderates. A related issue is that important revolutions in the modern world do not fit the model well. A high point of the book is Chirot’s discussion of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and its aftermath during the next three decades, but neither ineffectual moderates nor genocidal radicalism seem to have existed there.The single biggest problem with the work is that it leaves out many revolutions with different outcomes. Although the Russian Revolution of 1917 ended with radicalized totalitarian rule, the uprisings in other defeated powers of World War I in the following year did not have the same outcomes: Moderates retained power in Germany and Austria, and counter-revolution was triumphant—with the help of outside intervention—in Hungary. Revolutions in which moderates retained power—the European revolutions of 1830—or in which moderates, aligned with counter-revolutionaries, defeated radicals—Europe in 1848 and Portugal in 1974—lie outside Chirot’s framework. Incipient revolutions crushed by mass murder—Indonesia’s in 1965 and Central America’s in the 1980s—do not make an appearance in Chirot’s account either.Finally, less a criticism than an observation about procedure, Chirot treats the entire past 350 years as one homogeneous era. Changes in social structure and different levels of economic development, technology, media, global interactions, forms of warfare, and ideology play, at best, a subordinate role in his account. In other words, particularity and periodization are absent. In light of these observations, the book presents a strong argument for vigorous, competent reformers to deal with contemporary crises rather than letting radicals enact dubious schemes, but it is less helpful for historians seeking the assistance of broad social-science theories to comprehend revolutions.