The Anatomy of Revolution

Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (italics).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

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THE Anatomy of REVOLUTION

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BOOKS BY CRANE BRINTON

THE ANATOMY OF REVOLUTION THE LIVES OF TALLEYRAND

THE Anatomy of REVOLUTION

BY CRANE BRINTON ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. Publishers · New York

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Copyright, 1938, by W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. 70 Fifth Avenue, New York

First Edition

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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TO ALDEN AND HELEN HOAG, WHO LISTENED TO IT ALL

CONTENTS

FOREWORD 9

Chapter I. THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REVOLUTIONS 11

I. THE NECESSITY FOR A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH, 11. II. THE BARE ELEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHODS, 16. III. THE APPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC METHODS TO THIS STUDY, 21. IV. LIMITATIONS OF THE SUBJECT, 31.

Chapter II. THE OLD REGIMES 38

I. THE DIAGNOSIS OF PRELIMINARY SIGNS, 38. II. STRUCTURAL WEAKNESSES, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL, 39. III. THE DESERTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS, 52. IV. CLASSES AND CLASS ANTAGONISMS, 63. V. SUMMARY, 79.

Chapter III. FIRST STAGES OF REVOLUTION 82

I. THE ETERNAL FIGARO, 82. II. THE EVENTS OF THE FIRST STAGES, 85. III. SPONTANEITY OR PLANNING? 94. IV. THE ROLE OF FORCE, 105. V. THE HONEYMOON, 111.

Chapter IV. TYPES OF REVOLUTIONISTS 113

I. THE CLICHÉS, 113. II. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POSITION: RANK AND FILE, 117. III. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POSITION: LEADERS, 123. IV. CHARACTER AND DISPOSITION, 129. V. SUMMARY, 145.

Chapter V. THE RULE OF THE MODERATES 148

Part 2

I. THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERATES, 148. II. EVENTS DURING THE RULE OF THE MODERATES, 151. III. DUAL SOVEREIGNTY, 161. IV. WEAKNESSES OF THE MODERATES, 166. V. THE FAILURE OF THE MODERATES, 176.

Chapter VI. THE ACCESSION OF THE EXTREMISTS 179

I. THE COUP D’ÉTAT, 179. II. ORGANIZATION OF THE EXTREMISTS, 181. III. FITNESS OF THE EXTREMISTS, 193. IV. THE MACHINERY OF DICTATORSHIP, 206.

Chapter VII. REIGNS OF TERROR AND VIRTUE 212

I. PERVASIVENESS OF THE TERROR, 212. II. THE TERROR AND THE OUTSIDER, 214. III. THE TERROR AND THE INSIDER: THE RELIGIOUS PARALLEL, 220. IV. WHAT MAKES THE TERROR? 236.

Chapter VIII. THERMIDOR 244

I. UNIVERSALITY OF THE THERMIDOREAN REACTION, 244. II. AMNESTY AND REPRESSION, 247. III. RETURN OF THE CHURCH, 255. IV. THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE, 261. V. SUMMARY, 270.

Chapter IX. A SUMMARY OF THE WORK OF REVOLUTIONS 272

I. CHANGES IN INSTITUTIONS AND IDEAS, 272. II. SOME TENTATIVE UNIFORMITIES, 286. III. A PARADOX OF REVOLUTION, 299.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 303

I. HISTORICAL WRITING ON THE FOUR REVOLUTIONS, 303. II. THE WISDOM OF THE AGES, 310. III. THE MARXISTS, 312. IV. THE SOCIOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONS, 315.

INDEX 321

FOREWORD

This book is a modified and expanded form of lectures delivered in Boston in February and March, 1938, on the foundation of the Lowell Institute. I wish here to thank the officers of the Lowell Institute for giving me the opportunity to initiate this study, and my audience for the co-operation an audience--perhaps without knowing it--always gives. I wish also to thank those of my friends and colleagues with whom I have discussed the subject of this book for the last two years, and especially Professor L. J. Henderson, the effects of whose care, taste and judgment ought to be evident everywhere in a work he has gone over with great thoroughness; Professor W. S. Ferguson, who first called to my attention the inadequacy of important parts of my uniformities when applied to Athenian history; Professor R. B. Merriman, who very kindly placed the manuscript of his study of seventeenth-century revolutions at my disposal, and discussed it with me to the great profit of the present work; Professors Frederick Merk and A. M. Schlesinger and Dr. Richard Leopold, Americanists most gentle with me and helpful in my invasion of a field not my own; Dr. George Pettee; and Professor Penfield Roberts and Dr. O. H. Taylor who, if there is anything in the adage that solvitur ambulando, have had a large part in this book. Finally, I am very grateful to my research assistant, Miss Bernice Hempel, for patient and discerning help alike in the gathering and in the organizing of my materials.

CRANE BRINTON

PEACHAM, VERMONT. July 2, 1938.

Chapter ONE THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REVOLUTIONS

I. The Necessity for a Scientific Approach

We are today very much aware of revolution. The bare word itself is likely to set stirring a whole set of sentiments and associations in the mind of any modern man or woman. For some, perhaps for most in the older democracies of the West, these sentiments are not far from fear and dislike. For others, revolution is still a word of good promise, a beginning of better things, a necessary part of the progress of the race. Once, indeed, and not so very long ago, hopeful liberals could believe that certain favored countries--England, the United States, Germany, the good little countries of Europe like Switzerland and Holland, possibly even the classic land of revolution, France--had outgrown this kind of political instability. Freedom in the long run might slowly broaden down from precedent to precedent everywhere, even in South and Central America. All this seems, like so many other Victorian hopes, very distant to us now.

For our postwar world has produced a series of revolutions by no means limited to lands in general political disrepute. Russia in 1917, Central Europe in 1918-19, Italy in 1923, Spain in 1931, Germany again in 1933, all underwent violent changes of government to which the name revolution is usually attached. Some of these revolutionary movements were, indeed, not strictly in the nineteenth-century pattern: they were put through, not in the name of liberty, equality, fraternity, but in the name of authority, discipline, power. They were, if you like, authoritarian, conservative, reactionary. Hitler and Mussolini did not talk the language of Hampden, Patrick Henry, Mirabeau, Mazzini, nor even that of Marx and Engels.

The older democracies, as yet apparently stable politically, have undergone a series of economic strains which certainly appear more serious than similar strains they survived successfully enough in the nineteenth century. The breakdown of the Versailles settlement, the return of international anarchy, the difficulties of government finances, contributed further to a sense of insecurity in these democracies. Recent events in Russia have, to put it mildly, bewildered and discouraged those outside that country who in one degree or another looked hopefully on the Russian revolution. The whole tone of writing on politics has changed, especially in countries like England, France, and the United States. Prophets of doom are now almost as common as prophets of progress used to be in the good old days when we could blandly rejoice in clichés like “Evolution, not Revolution.”

Even in the United States, where pleasant memories of 1776 are incorporated into such unrevolutionary bodies as the Daughters of the American Revolution, the great crash of 1929 set all sorts of people to worrying about, or hoping for, a catastrophic overturn. Sober people in conservative circles began to discuss whether a little farm in Vermont wouldn’t give them subsistence and reasonable safety from the wandering robber-bands of the coming Reign of Terror. Hopeful radicals, too well read in Marx, began to discuss whether economic privation might not make a majority of American workers realize that they are a proletariat, and not a group of potential capitalists. Down through Hollywood and the columnists there ran the naïvely cynical catch phrase, “Comes the revolution....”

It is, then, almost impossible for us in these days to be indifferent toward revolutions. Yet we shall not go far towards understanding them unless we can maintain toward them, if not indifference, at least detachment. This last word, one may hope, is not just a favorable way of saying what “indifference” says unfavorably. A physician may feel far from indifferent towards his patient, but he will not be a good physician unless he is detached in his observation and treatment of his patient’s malady. We may dodge here a whole lurking set of philosophical difficulties, and say simply that what we commonly call modern science has as one of its basic elements the detachment of the scientist. The scientist, as a private person, may love and hate, hope and fear; as a scientist, he must try to leave all this behind when he enters his laboratory or his study.

To attempt to maintain in the analysis of human affairs the detachment of the physicist or the chemist is very difficult, and to a great many upright and intelligent people seems unprofitable, even treasonous. You should, they feel, hate Hitler all the time, before, while, and after you start explaining him; otherwise your explanation may edge into extenuation.

But to understand all is by no means to pardon all. At any rate, the scientific understanding of the place of the mosquito in yellow fever has not led us to tolerance of, or indifference to, that particular type of mosquito. Quite the contrary. We cannot, of course, expect such immediate and apparently spectacular results as were obtained with yellow fever from the study of man in society, from what are a bit optimistically called the social sciences--anthropology, economics, political science, history, sociology, and the like. But we may well consider the possibility of approaching the study of revolutions in something of the spirit the natural scientist carries to his work.

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