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From Revolution to Krizis: The Transcending Revolutions of 1989-91 Author(s): Richard Sakwa Reviewed work(s): Source: Comparative Politics, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Jul., 2006), pp. 459-478 Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New York Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20434012 . Accessed: 06/12/2011 14:38
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Richard Sakwa
"Wars and revolutions...have century."' So Hannah Arendt determining, between Russia historical
the physiognomy of the twentieth begins her study of revolutions. Wars continue to be has changed, case wrote: as has the relationship of 1989-91 of power in in that the exemplary is the revolution
Tismaneanu
by World War
I, the Bolshevik
Russia inOctober 1917 and the long European ideologicalwarfare that followed
nature of the "revolutions" "refolution" to indicate ha[s] come to an end."2 There has been a long, if unilluminating, discussion of these years. Timothy Garton Ash coined the combination of reformist political over the the term
foundly revolutionaryconsequences of the events.3 JiirgenHabermas dubbed the an process "the rectifying revolution," attempt to overcome the distortionsof "actu
ally existing socialism" while recognizing that the logic of capitalist accumulation described the way battered down the "Chinese walls" (as the Communist Manifesto that cheap commodities forced all nations to adopt the capitalist mode of production) of postcapitalist as well precapitalist societies.4 Leslie Holmes characterized them as "rejective" revolutions, and in the case of eastern Europe they are doubly rejective, repudiating not only Communism but also the Soviet domination with which itwas
associated.5
Communism, of the fall of will discuss some aspects of the "epochality" in particular, the repudiation at the social level of revolution as an is defined as the eschatology of endowing parochial emancipatory act. Epochality events with universal significance. The emergence during the eighteenth century of a discourse of progressive social change based on a universal model of rationality and This article development This ideology all) was applicable to all societies was clearly an event of epochal significance. thinkers (but certainly far from in the hands of some Enlightenment a revolutionary approach political to social change, that the act of effect. For want of a better above all by Karl
combined with
rupture itself had a liberating and progressive idea of political Marx, revolution was combined with
459
Comparative
Politics
July 2006
its emancipationnot only from oppression but also from subordinationto contin
gency in the very broadest in Russia sense. This ideology can be called emancipatory war developed revolu tionism, and itwas implement revolutionism 1989-91, but also the project that in one way or another Lenin and Stalin sought to and that after popular the second world resonance Communism in eastern
European
country
of time, but in the modern social change. The Russian Marxist revolutionary
tion of western modernity while trying to fulfill it.This utopian project displaced
political discourse from pragmatic reason towards a political practice that generated closure and exclusivity.6 The pursuit of transcendent and universal (epochal) goals
crisis of the regimes and their ultimate dissolution certainly betoken failure, but the roots of the collapse lie not only in specific inadequacies of performance and adaptivity to changing global circumstances, but also in a deeper revolutionism and the contradiction arising from the combination of Enlightenment it is necessary emancipatory agenda. To understand precisely what ended in 1989-91
460
its failure.
Naturalistic ineluctable: this vision Copernicus larmovement Medieval messianism's vision of the future was clear and Cyclicity the final judgment and the end of the world. In the seventeenth century as circularity, gave way to a general concept of revolution just as in his De revolutionibus orbium caelestium in 1543 had noted the circu of the planets and the stars. Astronomy, and its social manifestation in
the form of astrology, introduced the transhistorical concept of revolution into the popular mind, as an infinite turn of the wheel of fate in individual lives and the rise and fall of constitutions in public life.10 Revolution would give way to restoration, as Clarendon Charles noted in the case of the reestablishment cyclicity II in 1660. Naturalistic of the monarchy as a form of revolution in the person of (the turn of the
wheel) is passive, reactive, and contingent. The next two types of revolution sought to transcend precisely the tyranny of the past, inherited authority, and ascriptive
quality of time that develops towards an unknown but usually improved version of the future. The naturalistic cycles of the rise and fall of empires, states, and constitu tions gave way to a new concept of revolution as an instrument of progressive social change. The concept thus gained a new meaning. As Koselleck notes: "The concept of 'revolution' is itself a linguistic summarizes the shift as follows.
Enlightenment vision was unknown ment. fulfilment, of the French These rationalism transformed and unknowable utopias laying the basis
product of modernity."Il
Koselleck's
translator
progress
and human
through
its articulation
revolutions...society which
as accelerating guarantees
contained
utopian
of their own
during perestroika, and he thereby repudiated the modern notion of revolution itself. He did not, however, repudiate the notion of a humane and democratic socialism; it was revolutionary socialism based on civil war that he sought to transcend. The pas sage of time retained a progressive element, and thus he sought to prevent a return to
the contingencyof naturalisticcyclicity. The French revolution is the first trulygreatmodern revolution.13 What made it
great was the appearance of Enlightenment revolutionism.14 Its exemplary exponent
461
Comparative
Politics
July 2006 "by appeal to reason and faculties; that the per from
was
theMarquis
fact that nature has set no term to the perfection fectability of man now onwards all historical was
of human
independent of any power that might wish civilizations and the standardization
Condorcet's project called for "the destructionof than the durationof the globe."16
of mankind tern of the Paris intellectual."17 As he put it in Progress than the acid corroding revolutions whose be subordinated order. 19 There was still some way metaphor macy sistible for the cyclical to go before the traditional concept of a revolution to the idea of revolution but amajor as a "ups and downs of human destiny," without law and legiti as an irre all obstacles to modernization, of the Human Spirit, custom was
to act as no more
to which modernity
but based on character and fate, gave way instrument of human reason and progress,
text that Kojeve should have taken Hegel's arguments to suggest the end of history; it the view that history is both knowable and was, in fact, the beginning. Historicism, controllable, was born.21 While repudiating the historicism implicit inMarxian revo lutionary socialism, Francis Fukuyama only succumbs to the more profound histori
revolution was highly political, "socialized," with "the political" of social processes
little more
act itself.23 and the logic of the emancipatory superstructure of law, individual freedom, and the state was reduced to no revolution and emanci in part from the coincidence the political of the Enlightenment
than an exploitative mode of production.24 The power of the Russian inwhich and the social were to differentiate
throughout the rest of the Soviet experience cal and what was social. Marxian revolutionary revolutionism, but deepened
socialism was a variety of a broader species, Enlightenment to encompass all aspects of the social. Revolutionary
462
ogy, inwhich the promise of universal salvation is translated into a programme of uni versal human emancipation."27 Lenin added a distinctive political style thatArfon Rees
and menting thepolitical aspectsof Enlightenmentrevolutionism the social aspectsof revolutionism. emancipatory
The destructive storm launched by Lenin after October 1917 failed even to reach the level of "the Paris intellectual" but was patterned after the standards of a deraci
Similarly, Erik van Ree argues that Stalin remained the Marxist were stresses it would "important branches" the Enlightenment be mistaken of the Enlightenment
features of Stalinism, notably the attempt to achieve a social order.32 Of course, Daniels is quite right to argue that of the revolution.. .to the wrong
socialism
the solution
and found, but because technological (above all in the sphere of information and communications) during perestroika. The putative restoration of naturalistic
ComparativePolitics
July2006
The Transcendence of Revolutionism Enlightenment revolutionism and its emancipatory socialist offspring appeared to have exhausted themselves intellectually even before they expired as a political
movement. From Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre to Max Weber, Eduard
Bernstein,Karl Popper,andmany others, theEnlightenmentnotion of revolutionand its emancipatoryversionwere accompaniedby a sophisticatedand explicitly antirev olutionary ideology.Bernstein's revisionism repudiatedapocalypticconceptions that capitalismwould collapse because of its inherenteconomic contradictions,while
reasserting the centrality of democracy in the socialist project and the unity of ends criticized the limitations of the "intellectual strategy of modernization of bureaucratic pater and means, which meant tools" of Marxism, determinations giving up on the idea of a "final goal."35 In The Protestant the political
nalism, "a social order inwhich maximum regulation, instrumental reason and impersonality had triumphed the expense of individualresponsibility,"led him to at
believe mode that socialism "was poised to intensify inWeber's this system view, rather than to abolish revolutionism as a archaic and it."37 Rather than representing the cutting discourse, edge of modernity,
itself became
(From under
of Leonid
of a decayed
464
RichardSakwa
his views sion of in numerous works the two hundredth that together represent perhaps the most sustained and
ing ideologies.
Gorbachev political was one of the first to realize that the choice was indeed between and thus instru
individualrights to be relegitimatedinSoviet discourse.He tried to purge emancipa of while drawingon theuniversalprogressivismof tory revolutionism its distortions was cleansing, to remove the Enlightenment revolutionism. Gorbachev's revolution
deformations agenda, and accretions of the operating ideology to allow a return to the core
with his integrative ideas.However, the cleansing process came into contradiction
since integration in the event turned out to be something much larger than simply a return to core principles. His attempt to put an end to the permanent civil war inherent in emancipatory revolutionism transcended the language of class poli tics but failed to find an adequate revalidated nation or people, or indeed individual social subject, on which to base his integrative postrevolutionary politics. Itwas his as a political order was accompanied by tragedy that the dissolution of Communism the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a state. This coincidence was in part an out come of a long-term economic crisis, but itwas farmore than this.47 Gorbachev questioned "Marx's formula that revolutions are the locomotives of history" and proclaimed that "I renounce revolution as a means of solving prob lems."48 In its place he adopted a policy of evolutionary reform, although couched in in the rhetoric of revolutionism. He insisted, for exam the early days of perestroika is a revolution."49 By the time of the twenty was describing itself as "the party of party congress in 1990 the CPSU
national consensus."50 Although still defending the "socialist choice," the concept of
as civil war had been decisively repudiated. Unlike his Czech colleague and long-time friend, Zdenek Mlynar, who after the crushing of the Prague Spring understood that it would be impossible to devise a democratic variant of Leninism, revolution
465
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Politics
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remained Gorbachev
loyal
to within-system
reform and the modernization of as the repudiation of the logic of the true to the spirit of democratic was committed social to dismantling revolution the outside
revolution while
ism.52 By the summer of 1988 at the latest Gorbachev small group of supporters ary changes-both in the Soviet
ence to Enlightenment revolutionism and neo-Leninist principles and his cleansing strategy, which came ever more into contradiction with the real transcendence of these ideas that had taken place among large sections of society, above all the intelli gentsia.57 Only sections of the bureaucracy remained loyal to a residual Leninism, and thus objective pressures drove Gorbachev into alliance with parts of the nomen klatura elite at the very time that he was repudiating the principles on which the rul hensible ing status of that elite was based. Out of this situation emerged confusion of the winter of discontent of 1990-9 1. the almost incompre
shift affecting not only former Communist countries but also the wider world.58 It represented a turning point no less profound than 1789 or 1917. The sig nificance of the new epoch and the role of eastern Europe in establishing it has, however, Habermas last book been denigrated by almost every major commentator argued that not a single theoretical innovation came stressed the untheoretical on the issue. out of eastern
466
RichardSakwa
ing else of is visible in the ruins of the communist societies other than the familiar of or the of
that is anything but derivative up the era of postcommunism and retrograde. The new period ismarked by a return to naturalistic cyclicity, but it opens the door to a fourth phase in our understanding of historical time.
The transcending revolutions were part of the logic of what may at the end of the whole period of modern development. Alain Touraine has argued (echoing Condorcet) that "the idea of revolution is at the Antirevolutions be called antirevolutions
which would destroy all social and cultural traditions, resist thatuniversal inspiration This rationalcapitalistic andwestern-cen all beliefs, privileges and communities."62
tered view of modernization envisage an alternative, even became dominant, and even today it is difficult to less with the failure of the Communist and most
modernizationprocesses. nationalisticallyinspired In the past thosewho opposed revolutions were called counterrevolutionaries, a
term coined by Condorcet within and applied by the Bolsheviks to define their opponents in
467
Comparative
Politics
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the gains of the revolution. The order on which Horvath and Szakolczai even before dissolution
revolutionary
a long process
the events of 1989-91.66 The Soviet regime sapped the via bility of its own ideology by suppressing all sources of internal renewal.67
The revolutionsof 1989-91 generatedamiserablyweak countermovementfor the obvious reason that the historical conjuncture that the original socialist revolutions The concept of an emancipatoryrevolutionhad reflectedhad long since disappeared.
itself become an irrelevance, and in the absence of a new universal transformatory
ideology thewhole concept of revolutionfell intodesuetude.The Japaneseoption of without revolutionappears to have triumphed.68 transformation
Features of the Transcending Revolutions There was regimes, a profound but also logic not only in
in the manner
were transcending, only over not which theywere disposed of.69These revolutions
the Communist systems of power, but also repudiating based.70 The argument human destiny would the political practices that the and logic on which naturalistic cyclicity, they were where so far has suggested
468
Richard Sakwa
East European modes dissident thinking, and she concurs with Isaac in dismissing the view
The subjectof the transcending revolution was no longeran elite bandof intellec tual-revolutionaries nor the desperatemass of exploited peasants or immiserated workers of classical revolutionarydiscourse, but society itself, reflecting not the
amorphous the positive classlessness goals of the universal of earlier debates about the end of ideology but expanding class of modernity. The role of intellectuals the expansive dynamic
remains a matter of debate, but the Polish case demonstrates of its antirevolution.
As Alain Touraine puts it, "Solidarity was at the same time a social movement and an action for the liberation of society."76 The antipolitical style of the struggle of civil society against the Communist state marginalized the role of
normative characterof these antirevolutions. sciousness) thanby the inherently The natureof these revolutionsreflectedobvious tacticalconsiderations.77 "self-limiting"
But their "gentleness" was more transformation to which than incidental; itwas intrinsic to the very model of they aspired.78 Itwas both their strength and weakness. in the transcending revolutions is used in at least three specific sens
Civil society es. First, it is an act of historical reconstitution, returning to Europe in the philosoph ical sense of reconnecting with traditional liberal discourses of the West from to Locke, Mill, and beyond. Second, it is a form of resistance, whereby Hobbes oppositionists sought to create spaces in civil society where the logic of action did not so much directly challenge the party-state as ignore it, a policy of circumvention that proved extremely effective in delegitimating the Communist regimes in eastern Europe and eroding their base in society.79 Third, it is a form of emancipation. In the latter sense the concept assumed and capitalism notion of antipolitics ismost of the new politics communism the outlines of a positive program to transcend both politics for the social body itself. The closely associated with George Konrad, but the features remain at best vague.80 The self-limiting of a understanding by recovering
sphere of politics separate from the state, however, did not deny a legitimate role for the state, and thus differed from Marx's view on its ultimate transcendence or the anarchist denial of a valid role for itwhatsoever. While Havel's critique condemned modernity and technology in general, thinking on antipolitics contained a critique of liberal capitalism as well as the general discontents of modern times. The classic lib eral distinction between state and society was maintained in repudiation of the spirit of 1917 and indeed of 1789.81 The "carnival of revolution" in 1989 prefigured the
469
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of legitimate violence.
State power
ness, mafia, privilege and persecution."83 Konrad noted that "I know of no way for
Eastern Europe to free itself from Russian military py them with our ideas."84 And compatriots. As the idea, of course, was the notion of living in truth, society triumphed; as a
limitations
rich in political
was the repudiation of violence and the practice of the mass peaceful popular demonstration. This practice has been much noted in the case of eastern Europe (with the singular exception of Romania), but is perhaps even more impressive in Russia, Ukraine, extended, Russia lasting and the Baltic some republics, where popular mobilization was far more two years rather than ten days as in Czechoslovakia. In was witnessed in demonstrations of hundreds of thou
popular mobilization
sands of people between 1989 and 1991, in the explosion of social activism, and in the electoral politics inwhich official candidates were defeated throughout Russia in the March scending 1990 parliamentary revolutions elections. In their refusal to take up arms, the tran that had for so long been a beginning with and culminating the various in the for struck a direct blow at the violence the prevalence of forum politics,
of antipolitical bodies like Civic Forum in the Czech lands and Citizens in Slovakia in November 1989. If Michnik against Violence sought to subvert the Communist regime by ignoring it, in the USSR such a strategy, where the opening for overt political activism was measured not in decades but by little more than sev eral dozen months, civil society activism was instead directed towards the state.85 in Because of the lack of a tradition of an autonomous sphere of civil association Russia, the regime had a point when it argued that it had no one with whom it could
470
Richard Sakwa
negotiate. Instead,the system itself sought to sponsorparties and other civic associa
tions.86
The thirdpoint follows from the second: the negotiated (and electoral)natureof
the exit attempts from Communism in a number of countries, in particular Poland to believe and in
lutionism had been transcended. Gorbachev's policies had deep social roots and shouldnot be considered a voluntaristicact divorced from the context.Gorbachev's
personal decisions were scended the premises important, but they emerged out of a long tradition that tran and emancipatory revolutions. This tradi Kantian ethics of both progressivist
of personal responsibility.
of 1844, which
revolution was
associated with civil war, not necessarily taking a violent form but dominated by the logic of a society riven by conflict and characterized by a shifting war of position between two great forces in which politics was no more than instrumental. The domestic roots of the cold war should thus be stressed, a cold war in which the pro tagonists were allegedly locked in battle until the end of history. All this was swept away in 1989-91 together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant cold
471
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war played out on the larger stage. Emancipatory revolutionism had exhausted itself and with it, almost as an afterthought, the Leninist party. The end of Soviet Communism put an end to all talk of revolutionary socialism.88 Of course, revolu
to restore legitimate authority and are rooted in naturalistic cyclicity, the concept of time in Enlightenment and emancipatory revolutions is linear and the ultimate goal chiliastic.
emancipatory.
The very language used to describe politics, the language of political analysis and the terms applied to describe political concepts, buckle under the pressures generat ed by the end of the revolution. The price to be paid for the end of the revolution has been noted by the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. "In France, politics has always If the Revolution been defined by the Revolution. ceases to be desirable, then so does politics. Perhaps what we are witnessing now is the death of politics."90 The revolution has ended, but a disenchanted order takes its place in which the unpre dictable and multiple political mobilization. of political intervention paralyze conscious consequences The bases for political intervention are not clear. The absence of utopia and the possibility (however illusory) of a total and revolutionary change in social existence afflicts art and culture in the broadest sense. Another place of the
imagination longerexists. no Moreover, the transcending antirevolution enormousconsequencesfor the con has
duct of politics in the postrevolutionary era. The new politics is torn between a return to naturalistic cyclicity and the development of a fourth circle of political activism ground ed in the practices of the transcending revolution itself.With the end of the idea of revo lution as a way of overcoming contingency in human affairs, the notion of crisis needs to be elaborated more. For the Greeks krizis was amoment of reflection in the life of the
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Richard Sakwa
community, while the Chinese character for the concept ismade up of symbols for dan inter
ger and opportunity. The language of crisis in part reflects a return to naturalistic revolution, but there is still crisis, but a crisis born no longer out of a belief but by its absence. Contemporary dency towards the passive.91 At lives on inmovements politics and popular political the same time the positive
pretations of human destiny, but it also poses a new challenge. Today, there is no longer in progress subjectivity have a ten
The politics of krizis is a form of resistance arise from the realities of society. There and indeed the relativization
words), "consciousnessultimatelydeterminesbeing...the key to the future lies not in the external,objective conditionof states-political, military, economic, technologi Ethics andmorality, cal but in the internalsubjectivecondition of individuals."92
living by truth and rejecting doubt, contains political Only subject the lie, worked in particular as potent weapons against the party no emerging to treat the the than state, and they now act as the basis of a new moral its own dangers, culture. The new culturalism, an opportunity
out of new patterns of stratification.93 But it also provides as amoment of history. to examine hierarchies
a critique of naturalism can allow human development In the countries of the antirevolution Russia and other postcommunist
latent.
Contemporary
future or, as he puts it, in anthropological postcommunist weighted manent demands modernist the balance
and expectation.95
between
and expectation
to the former as a result of the failure of utopian aspirations vested in the per civil war of emancipatory to the mean revolutionism. Transcendental increased emancipatory localized historicism of the Fukuyama fulfill these expectations is decreased. type. Although Societies where to modernity
473
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social optimism
is on the wane. The future is no longer justice but a thin consciousness has decreased, compensated gave way by the to spatial
fundamental
thinking associated
to the environment
itwas precisely
the impossibility
of adaptation
the social revolution,thepostcommunist restorationismore complex than those fol lowing theEnlightenment revolutions. Only with the fall of the revolutionaryregime
can a politics grounded tions of 1989-1991 in the political concerns of society emerge. The antirevolu mark not only the point at which the revolution ended but the resolution remains to be found.
NOTES
Iwould 1. like to thank Yitzhak Brudny, Robert V Daniels, and Andreas Umland for their support and help
ful comments. Arendt, On Revolution 1973), p. 11. Some of the ideas in this (London: Penguin Books, are drawn from Richard Revolutions of Sakwa, "The Age of Paradox: The Anti-revolutionary in Twentieth-Century inMoira Donald Revolution and Tim Rees, eds., Reinterpreting 1989-91," Europe Hannah in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., The Revolutions of 1989
chapter
(London: Macmillan, 2001), pp. 159-76. 2. Vladimir Tismaneanu, "Introduction," (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 1.
in Hungary and Poland," The New York Review of Books, Aug. 3. Timothy Garton Ash, "Refolution The New York Review of Books, 17, 1989, pp. 9-15; also, Timothy Garton Ash, "Reform or Revolution?," Oct. 27, 1988, pp. 47-55. Revolution "What Does Socialism Mean Today? The Rectifying and the Need 4. J?rgen Habermas, for New Thinking on the Left," New Left Review, 183 (September-October 1990), 3-21. Leslie Holmes, also, of Communist Power (Oxford: Polity Press, 1993), p. xi md passim; An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). i 6. See Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (New York: Philip Allan, 1990); Jerzy Szacki, Utopia see Jerome M. Gilison, to the USSR, The Soviet 1990). For application traditsiya (Moscow: Progress, Press, 1975). For an interesting Soviet analy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Image of Utopia 5. Leslie The End Holmes, Post-Communism:
i budushchee sotsializma sis, see M. P. Kapustin, Konets Utopii? Proshloe 1990). (Moscow: Novosti, 7. Robert V Daniels, The End of the Communist Revolution (London: Routledge, 1993). 8. Neil Harding, in John Dunn, "The Marxist-Leninist The Unfinished Detour," ed., Democracy: Press, 1993), pp 155-88. Journey, 508 BC toAD 1993 (Oxford: Oxford University
474
Richard Sakwa
For a useful the USSR, Russia, empirical analysis, see Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: is the concept of experiment States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). However,
9.
not developed theoretically. 10. Fred Halliday, Revolution Duke University Italy, it signified 11. Press, 12. 13. was
and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (Durham: Press, 1999), p. 31, notes that, when the concept of revoluzione emerged in late medieval radical change that returned to an earlier era. Time (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Futures Past: On the Semantics Reinhart Koselleck, of Historical p. 40. 1985), inKoselleck, Futures Past, p. xv. Keith Tribe, "Translator's Introduction," The American revolution from 1776 might in defense of what
have been epochal in its consequences, but in form it they claimed to be ancient liberties and rights. It was on the "C'est une exclaimed, night of July 14, 1789, that Louis XVI, on hearing news of the fall of the Bastille, r?volte," to which his informant, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, gave his famous correction: "Non, Sire, c'est une r?volution." Arendt, On Revolution, p. 47. The word "revolution" was here used for a revolt of colonists the last time in its old sense of the restoration an irresistible colonists 14. movement to the future. of legitimacy, but also for the first time in its new sense of revolution of the type pursued by the American Liberatory type of universal revolutionism. the late Enlightenment thought, human sacrifices. This view was con
in 1776 now gave way to a new stresses of Enlightenment paper only one aspect outcomes would be worth that suggested benevolent philosophisme This demned, Michael
For a recent study, see Roy Tseng, The Sceptical for example, by Michael Oakeshott. Idealist: as a Critic of the Enlightenment Oakeshott (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003). The sacrificial came out against revolution. for example, See Reinhart Rousseau, approach was far from universal. and the Pathogenesis Koselleck, (Oxford: Oxford Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment of Modern Society Press, 1988), p. 161, n7. University 15. de Caritat, Marquis is A Sketch for a Historical Picture The main work by Antoine de Condorcet, in 1794, the year that he poisoned in prison. As a himself of the Progress of the Human Mind, written Girondin deputy, he had been incarcerated by the Jacobins. 16. Marquis (London: 1955), A Sketch for a Historical Picture de Condorcet, of the Progress of the Human Mind Social Theory: A Historical Introduction p. 4, cited in Alex Callinicos, (Cambridge: 1999), p. 25. From Enlightenment to Revolution (Durham: Duke
is by Eric Voegelin, Press, 1975), p. 167. University 18. Cited inArendt, On Revolution, p. 29. 19. For a recent study, see David Williams, Press, 2004). University 20. Arendt, On Revolution, 21. For a brilliant
Condorcet
and Modernity
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
p. 42. of this theme, see Guy Debord, exposition Zone Books, 1995), esp. ch. 5, "Time and History." 22. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," The National
The Society
of the Spectacle
(New York:
Interest (Summer 1989), 3-17; Francis and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Fukuyama, The End of History on Marx's weakness as a theorist of politics, For comments 23. see, for example, Gianfranco Poggi, The Development State: A Sociological Introduction (London: Hutchinson, of theModern 1978), p. ix and Critical of Marxian and Jean L. Cohen, and the Design
passim. 24.
See Jean L. Cohen, Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Massachusetts Press, 1982); also, Andrew Arato University Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). 25. Cf. Stephen E. Hanson, Time and Revolution: Marxism (Chapel Hill: University 26. Aron, Raymond of North Democracy Carolina Press, 1997). and Totalitarianism
of Soviet
(London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson,
1968);
475
Comparative
Robert 27. 28.
Politics
July 2006
Idea (London: Allen & Unwin, C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary 1970). John Gray, "Fanatical Unbelief," Prospect (November 2004), 68. to Stalin: E. A. Rees, Political Thought from Machiavelli Revolutionary
Machiavellism
(Basingstoke: 2004). Palgrave Macmillan, to a collection In his introduction 29. disregard revealed From for human
of hitherto unpublished documents, Pipes notes Lenin's "utter "Lenin is life, except where his own family and closest associates were concerned." as a thoroughgoing in these documents Richard Pipes ed., The Unknown Lenin: misanthrope." the Secret Archive (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 8, 11.
and the Leap to the Kingdom The Rise and Fall of the 30. Andrzej Walicki, Marxism of Freedom: Communist Utopia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin (London: Routledge, 31. 2002). 32. Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, David L. Hoffman, 1917-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). 33. Robert V Daniels, Canadian 34. 35. Slavonic Modernization and the Paradox of Twentieth-Century "Revolution, Canadienne des Slavistes, 42 (September 2000), 250. Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation (New York: Russia,"
Papers/Revue
Evolutionary Ethic
Schocken
Revolutions
38. See, in particular, S. M. Frank, 1909, reprinted Frankfurt a.M., Posev, 1967), pp. 175-210. (Moscow: the threat posed to the achievements 39. David Anin noted that in 1917 the inability to understand of "was not an accidental the February revolution feature but a 'psychological by left-wing maximalism state' that pervaded all parties or, rather, the whole The Tyranny of Paris over Petrograd," Soviet Studies, 40. Ibid., p. 34. 41. 42. 43. Russian 20, (1968-69), intelligentsia." 22. Cited by John Keep, "1917:
(London: Routledge, 1992). Polity Press, 1995), pp. 23-24. "Etika nigilizma," in Vekhi: Sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii (Oxford:
'Iz glubin', Iz glubiny: Sbornik statei o russkoi revolyutsii (Moscow: 1989). A. Solzhenitsyn et al., From under the Rubble (London: Fontana/Collins, 1974). the role of westernized elites is important, as argued by Robert D. English, Although of the West:
Russia
and
Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia Gorbachev, were no less significant. Press, 2000), native sources of antirevolutionism University see Alexander Yakovlov, The Fate of Marxism In English, in Russia 44. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Alexander Yakovlov, Striving for Law in a Lawless Land: Memoirs of a Russian Reformer A Century in Soviet Russia Yakovlov, (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995); Alexander (New of Violence the Idea Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). 45. kultura, July 15, 1989, p. 3. Sovetskaya 46. See Philip Conscience, Boobbyer, RoutledgeCurzon, 47. Vladimir
Dissent
and
Reform
in Soviet
Russia
(London:
2005). The Challenge Russia in Mau and Irina Starodubrovskaya, of Revolution: Contemporary theHistory Press, 2001). (Oxford: Oxford University of Revolutions inM. S. Gorbachev, On My Country and the World (New York: Columbia 48. Quoted retrospectively New Thinking for Our Country sotsializmu: Programmnoe and the World (London: Collins,
Press, 2000), p. 11. University 49. Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: 1987), p. 49. 50. K gumannomy, demokraticheskomu
zayavlenie
XXVIII
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1990), p. 7. 51. Mikhail Gorbachev and Zden?k Prague Spring, and the Crossroads
on Perestroika, with Gorbachev Conversations Mlyn?fi, Press, 2002). (New York: Columbia University of Socialism
476
Richard Sakwa
Brown argues that Gorbachev was "an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary by convic Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 308. 53. Ibid., p. 309 andpassim. 54. and Shevardnadze: Pavel Palazchenko, The Memoir My Years with Gorbachev of a Soviet Park: Pennsylvania State University 370. Press, 1997), p. Interpreter (University 52. Archie tion." Archie 55. A. S. Chernyaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym: Po dnevnikovym zapisyam (Moscow: in the Oxford 1993), p. 519. Progress-Kultura, 56. See Stephen F. Cohen, "The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in Rethinking Soviet Union," the Soviet Experience: Politics since 1917 (Oxford: and History Press, 1986), ch. 5. University 57. Gorbachev's continued declarations is sensitively portrayed by Leszek Kolakowski, 58. of Krishan Kumar, "The Revolutions Society, Political 59. 21
Studies,
to Communism of allegiance up to and beyond the 1991 coup "Amidst Moving Ruins," in Tismaneanu, ed., p. 56. 1989: Socialism, and Democracy," Capitalism Theory and Krishan Kumar, "The 1989 Revolutions and the Idea of Europe,"
"What Does Socialism Mean Today?," p. 5. in Claus Offe, "Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition East Central Europe," Social Research, 58 (Winter 1991), 865-902. au XXe si?cle (Paris: Robert 61. Fran?ois Furet, Le Pass? d'une illusion: Essai sur l'id?e communiste 1995), p. 13. Laffont/Calmann-L?vy, Habermas, 60. 62. 63. Alain Touraine, Krishan Kumar "The Idea of Revolution," Theory, Culture and Society, 1 (June 1990), 121. in Krishan Kumar, ed., Revolution: The Theory and Practice "Introduction," and Nicolson, (London: Weidenfeld 1971), p. 2. "Supposed Dangers of a
Press, (Cambridge: Cambridge University "La contre-r?volution 18, reads as follows. r?volution." 65. 66. Arendt, Agnes On Revolution, p. 18. Horv?th and Arp?d Szakolczai,
on France of Counter-Revolution," in Considerations 1994), p. 105. The original, cited inArendt, On Revolution, p. ne sera point une r?volution contraire, mais la contraire de la
The Dissolution
of Communist
Power:
The Case
of Hungary
1992). (London: Routledge, 67. Dmitrii Furman, "Revolyutsionnye S. N. Eisenstadt 68. and Eyal Ben-Ari, Paul,
1990). See also S. N. Eisenstadt, (New York: Free Press, 1978). Study of Civilizations see Agnes Heller For an illuminating discussion 69. of the question, and Twilight Universalism Transaction (New Brunswick: of Radical
1 (1994), 9. Svobodnaya mysl', Models of Conflict Resolution the Transformation of Societies: and Ferenc
"The Breakdown in Tismaneanu, of Communist Eisenstadt, Regimes," 70. David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). "A New Evolutionism," 71. Adam Michnik, of California Press, 1985), pp. 135-48. University inDark Times 72. Jeffrey C Isaac, Democracy ter "The Meanings of 1989." 73. 640. 74. 75. Ibid., p. 648. Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas Kings (Budapest: Central Jeffrey C Isaac, "The Strange Silence in Letters from (Ithaca: Cornell Prison
Essays
(Berkeley:
University
Press,
of Political
Theory," Political
Theory,
1995),
of Dissidence European
Europe:
Citizen
Intellectuals
and
Philosopher
University
477
Comparative
76. Alain
Politics
Touraine
July 2006
Poland 1980-81
(Cambridge:
Cambridge Princeton
University
Press, Press,
Staniszkis,
Self Limiting
Revolution
(Princeton:
University
1984). 78. Arato, "Interpreting 1989," p. 613. 79. The landmark western formulation State: Poland State: New 1980-81," Telos, 47 (1981), Perspectives
European
of the strategy is Andrew Arato, "Civil Society against the See, in particular, John Keane, ed., Civil Society and the and Civil (London: Verso, ed., Democracy 1988); and John Keane, 23-47. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984). Towards a Dynamic Theory of Real Socialism Princeton
Society (London: Verso, 1988). 80. An Essay George Konr?d, Antipolitics: L. Nowak, Power and Civil Society: 81. Greenwood Press, 1991), p. 57. 82. 2002),
(Westport:
Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe (Princeton: stresses the long-term, eclectic, and popular nature of the movement peace
environmentalists, feminists, systems away in 1989, encompassing and even professors of sociology. 83. David Selbourne, Death of the Dark Hero: Eastern Europe, 1990), p. 236. 84. 85. Konr?d, See M. Antipolitics, Stephen
campaigners, (London:
1987-90
Cape,
p. 129. in the New Russian and Regime Fish, Democracy from Scratch: Opposition Revolution Press, 1995). (Princeton: Princeton University 86. One of the founders of the Russian Christian Democratic Movement, the former priest Vyacheslav in 1990 he "refused the honour of being Polosin, notes how at the time of the RCDM's founding congress Vladimir version of Zhirinovsky." i ikh realizatsiya," 12, 2000, p. 4. "Zamysly Apr. NG-Religii, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Zhirinovsky, Party, was accused of being a KGB stooge in the democratic movement. Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992), chs. 7 and 8. of course, is still prone to crises, but the immediate prospects of an ideology based on Capitalism, the abolition of private property and the market would appear to be slim. For an excellent debate on the on the Fate of Ideological Shtromas ed., The End of "isms "? Reflections Politics subject, see Alexsandras 88. after Communism's (Oxford: Blackwell, Collapse 1994). 89. See, for example, Antonio Negri, Time for Revolution 90. The Observer, May 7, 1995, p. 16. 91. 92. Andrew (London: Continuum, 2003). 87. the clerical
Gamble, Politics and Fate (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). and N. Wood, Timothy Garton Ash, "Does Central Europe Exist?," in G. Schopflin eds., In Search of Central Europe (Oxford: Polity Press, 1989), pp. 200-1. A point argued, 93. for example, Social Revolutions in the Modern World by Theda Skocpol, Press, 1994), p. 203. (Cambridge: Cambridge University 94. Return One author who has most systematically tried to deal with of the Political (London: Verso, and other works. Bo 1993); Chantai Mouffe, this question is Chantal Mouffe, The The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso,
Petersson,
National
Self-images
Identities
in Russia
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), esp. pp. 107-12. An argument made by Voegelin, From Enlightenment 97.
to Revolution,
478