A review of The Anatomy of Revolution by Crane Brinton: The commonalities of revolutions


Introduction

Can we compare Joseph Stalin to Oliver Cromwell? What сharacteristics do major revolutions share? The American historian Crane Brinton described the common characteristics of four revolutions in The Anatomy of Revolution, published in 1938 and revised in 1965.


Key features

Crane Brinton distinguishes the popular use of the word “revolution” from the narrowly defined use that he analyzes. A true revolution involves suddenly replacing a group, leading a territory, with an opposition group, usually through a violent uprising.

During the English, the French, the American, and the Russian revolutions, an oppressed majority rebelled against the ruling minority. Governments failed in their attempts to crack down on the rebels and prevent the revolution. Although the Russian revolution was not democratic, Englightenment ideas influenced it.

Crane Brinton argues that the class struggle, though important in each revolution, was not the sole cause. In these four revolutions, the old regimes were not economically retrograde, yet large populations were discontented. The ruling class had barred entrepreneurs from making political decisions. It was not the poor who led the revolts. In all four countries, the old regimes had attempted failing and unpopular reforms. Each revolution began in hope and literal interpretation of ideals but ended in tyranny.

The American revolution did not follow that pattern, and Brinton used it as a control. Unlike the other three, the American revolution was both territorial and a part of a social movement. Also, terror did not occur during the American revolution to the same extent. There was no clear split between moderates and extremists during the American revolution.


The revolutionists

Contrary to stereotypes, most revolutionists were neither inexperienced nor immature. Some had previous experience in business or politics. Most revolutionists were in their thirties and forties when they became leaders. This is younger than most politicians in more stable societies, but not precociously young.

Struggles between moderates and extremists

After the old government was overthrown, struggles between moderates and extremists followed. There were dual sovereignty periods when an illegal extremist rival government challenged the legal moderate government. In Russia, France and Great Britain, extremists won. Most people regarded the moderates in power as heirs of the old regime. The moderates had failed to organize armies strong enough to maintain power. The moderates tried to compromise, but extremists took advantage of their weaknesses. Furthermore, the moderates still had to face opposition from conservative supporters of the old regime.

When the radicals came to power in the four countries that Brinton studied, they shared several traits. Small shares of the population belonged to formal organizations in power, and even fewer participated. Their fewness, devotion to their ideas and submission to their leaders, kept them united. Many common people once politically active soon stopped participating in elections. Except for the American revolution, regimes degraded into dictatorships.


The reign of terror

Under each dictatorship, not only political opponents but also common people risked persecution. The new governments confiscated property, though only the Bolsheviks planned to eventually eliminate all private property. Streets, cities, buildings and events were renamed to fit the new ideology. New governments imposed prohibitions, such as on gambling and drinking, and restricted religious practices. Restrictions on personal freedoms would become more lax when each country had its Thermidor, or period of convalescence from the revolution.


The Thermidor

England, France and the Soviet Union experienced periods when each continued to be ruled dictatorially, but politics also began to resemble a pre-revolutionary state. After the dissolution of the Rump Parliament in 1653, followed by the rule of Oliver Cromwell until 1659, and by the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, England became a monarchy again. In France, the removal and execution of Maximilien Robespierre in 1794 was the beginning of the Thermidorean reaction. According to Brinton, the New Economic Policy that Lenin initiated in 1922 was the first stage of such a period in Russia. After Stalin defeated Trotsky in the late 1920s, he gained enormous power and the second stage began. During this stage, Stalin resumed some pre-revolutionary policies, such as prohibiting abortions and relaxing restrictions on religion. The American Revolution did not follow this pattern, though Jeffersonians during the Federalist period argued that Washington was a dictator that the Revolution had created.


Overall effects

According to Brinton, though political systems in England, France and the Soviet Union gradually began to resemble pre-revolutionary systems in many ways, revolutions ended the worst inefficiencies and abuses of old systems. New governments were more centralized and responded better to the needs of the average citizen. Outdated practices, such as using the old Julian calendar in Russia, ended.


My analysis

In my opinion, the English and the French revolutions have more similarities, compared with the other two. As Brinton correctly indicates, the American Revolution differed from the other three in that it was territorial and involved no clear division or violent clashes between the moderates and the extremists. The Loyalists supported the British crown. The few leaders who protested the policy of Britain, yet opposed Independence, were incomparable to moderates in other revolutions. For example, John Dickinson argued that the colonists’ liberties were being infringed, but they should not resist violently. He refused to sign the Declaration of Independence. Yet other leaders allowed him to take part in writing key documents. After his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “A more estimable man, or true patriot, could not have left us,” reports Jack Rakove, of American History Magazine. In contrast, the radicals persecuted the moderates in England, Russia and France once they seized power.

Brinton argues that the United States has been relatively stable since its independence. However, some historians regard the Civil War as the Second American Revolution. For example, Charles Beard argues that the war of 1861-1865 involved more extensive property expropriation, including $2 billion of slaves, than the war of 1776-1783. The number of people killed in the Civil War was about equal to the number of slaves in 1776, reports Staughton Lynd, of The Journal of Negro History. The American revolution had established the United States as an independent constitutional republic and a federation. The Civil War united the country under a single economic system based on free labor. No other country became split among territorial lines or had to fight slavery after its revolution.

The Russian Revolution caused more terror and more fundamental developments than the other three. A new country - the Soviet Union - was created. After World War II, the spread of Marxism triggered revolutions elsewhere. The Soviet regime was repressive, yet many people feel nostalgia for its extensive welfare benefits and strict legislation. No leader that ruled the other three countries during their revolutions is as controversial as any head of the Soviet state.

Brinton’s analysis pertains in some ways to the collapse of the USSR. The emerging class of entrepreneurs was discontented with the Communist regime. Violent uprisings did occur, but it was the unsuccessful August Putsch of 1991 that revealed the ineptitude of the Communist Party, leading to counter-revolution. Though the leaders who broke up the Soviet Union were in the ruling party, they were younger than the average top-ranking party official. At the time that he was in power, Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), the first and last Soviet President, was younger than most leaders of the Politburo, where the average age of a member was 69.8 years as of 1982, reports Mathis Chazanov, of UPI Archives. Boris Yeltsin (b. 1931), Leonid Kravchuk (b. 1934), and Stanislav Shushkevich (b. 1934) were also comparatively young when they signed the Belavezha Accords that dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991. All three were more radical than Gorbachev.

CIS countries had their own struggles and repressions. Even under the more liberal Yeltsin, Russia cracked down on dissidents, such as during the storming of the White House, the building of the Supreme Soviet, in 1993. This was also a short period of dual sovereignty in Russia, since the Supreme Soviet had appointed Alexander Rutskoy to be acting President, in place of Yeltsin. The more radical Yeltsin won the struggle, though he was already legally in power, unlike in the revolutions Brinton described.

The rehabilitation of the Soviet past in the Russian media, militarization, new tensions with the West and protectionism suggest that Putin’s Russia is undergoing a Thermidor. (In Kazakhstan, the situation is not as clear-cut, since its government is devoted to free trade and remains geopolitically neutral. However, the opposition has been hardly represented in the legislature and some partial reversals of earlier reforms, such as the nationalization of the pension system, did occur.)

The color revolutions in some countries after 2000 continued this counter-revolution. They involved replacing post-Soviet leaders with leaders that attempted or claimed to pursue more liberal policies. As I shall show in the next post, each government that came to power after color revolutions repressed opponents.



Book reviewed

Brinton, C. The Anatomy of Revolution: Revised and expanded edition. New York. 1965.


Other references

Chazanov, M. Arvid Pelsche, the oldest member of the aging Politburo... UPI Archives. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/11/16/Arvid-Pelshe-the-oldest-member-of-the-aging-Politburo/1311406270800/. 1982.

Lynd, S. Rethinking slavery and reconstruction. The Journal of Negro History. 50(3): 198-209. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2716012.

Rakove, J. The patriot who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence. http://www.historynet.com/the-patriot-who-refused-to-sign-the-declaration-of-independence.htm. American History Magazine. 2010.