Revolutions: An Insight into a Five Centuries' Trend

Abstract

The year 2017 marked not only the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution of 1917, but also the 500 anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. It was just the Reformation that gave start to modern revolutions in Europe and the world. In the first part of the article we analyze the course of transformation of revolutions within historical process, in particular, how their world-historical role, the social bases, revolutionary ideologies, practices, and information technologies they applied have changed over the centuries. Then we show the important changes that occurred in revolutionary practice and the very understanding of the essence of revolution due to great revolutions. In the second part of the article we highlight some issues related to the theory of revolution, in particular, he defines the types of revolutions starting from religious to modernizing revolutions, and also points some important conditions for the revolutionary outbreak. In conclusion, we consider how and why the revolutions have been increasingly used as a geopolitical weapon. The year 2017 marked not only the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution of 1917, but also the 500 anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. We think that it was just the Reformation that produced the onset of modern revolutions in Europe and the world. This explains the title of the article. In its first part we analyze the transformation vectors of revolutions within historical process, in particular, how the social bases, revolutionary ideologies, practices, and applied information technologies have changed over the centuries. While considering these aspects we also consider various points related to the theory of revolution. In the second part we deal with some additional aspects of the theory of revolution. In conclusion, we focus on how and why revolutions have been increasingly used as a geopolitical weapon. Social Evolution & History / September 2018 172 In the present paper there is no opportunity to survey numerous scientific approaches to the definition of revolution. We should note that there is no generally accepted definition and it will hardly ever appear (see Grinin, Issaev, and Korotayev 2016; Grinin and Korotayev 2016). If we regard revolutions as a violent change of regime, we can say that they accompanied political history for many millennia. But such revolutions are mostly characteristic for the polis-type states with regimes oscillating from oligarchic (or tyrannical) toward democratic and then back. Thus, prior to the early modern period the revolutions mostly occurred in the states with political regime less common for the pre-industrial period. From revolutionary perspective the history of some Hellenistic states and Rome may be also presented as a struggle between social and political groups for the distribution of resources and power (see, e.g., Sorokin 1992, 1994; Nefedov 2007). We find something of political and social revolutions (or revolution attempts) in the medieval states (in Italy and some other countries). Social struggle was also observed in the history of some Eastern states but here the attempts to establish a new regime and, figuratively speaking, change ‘a constitution’, were quite infrequent. However, sometimes ther would outbreak a kind of social revolution when socio-economic (distributive) relations were transformed. There also took place devastating uprisings which would sweep away dynasties, as it happened in China. However, with all the abovementioned examples, in ancient times and medieval period there were no revolutions that сould enable societies' advance to a higher stage of social evolution. No doubt, revolutions played a role, but obviously less significant, in development in comparison with wars and other transformations. After revolutions the societies' production basis would not change so their progressive effect was much weaker than in the Modern era. Only starting from the modern period the revolutions became one of the leading driving forces of historical process (see Grinin 1997; Semyonov, Gobozov, and Grinin 2007; Travia and Morgania 2004; Goldstone 1991). Why did it happen? The reason is the transition to a new – industrial – production principle which started in the late fifteenth century (yet, its precursors became evident much earlier; for more details see: Grinin 2006; Grinin L. and Grinin A. 2015; Grinin, Korotayev 2015). Along with changing production pattern it was necessary to transform all other relations, so that a society could give abundant scope for the development of new productive forces. It was the revolutions that provided the break of the relations that hampered development. Thus, in the present article we mostly deal with new-type revolutions which were practically unknown in the history prior to the sixteenth century. We describe them as an extremely important phenomenon in terms of unfolding historical process and as a means to carry out the society's progressive development to increase its economic, cultural, political, and legal level. In other Grinin / Revolutions: An Insight into a Five Centuries' Trend 173 words, here we consider revolutions not just as a means of changing political regime, but also as a means of conflict resolution in the leading societies which already were the mainstream of technological, cultural and political development. Finally, we should note that the increasingly large role of revolutions in historical process was associated not only with the general technological transformations clearly manifested starting from the last third of the fifteenth century, but also with the concurrent breakthrough in information technologies. It is essential that any great revolution or a new wave of revolutions is somehow connected with emerging and essentially new or with improved media. In what follows, we try to trace this trajectory of revolutionary practices (in order to summarize it in the second part of the article). Section 1. EVOLUTION OF THE REVOLUTION 1.1. Early revolutions (the 16–18 centuries) On some preconditions for the revolutionary outbreak. There are a number of preconditions for the outbreak, development and success of a revolution. We can hardly analyze all of them in the present article, all the more so since this is a rather controversial issue. Here we will focus on four conditions which are hardly debated but are closely interrelated. The first precondition is the existence of a relatively new or modified ideology (its distribution may take place already before the revolution or just in its course). In our opinion, a revolution (as distincet from a revolt or insurrection) needs a new or modified ideology that can do more than just unite people (this can be done by protest moods, exacerbated needs and disasters, increasing resentments from oppression and injustice). Ideology can give a more or less clear idea (yet, at the level of rather universal slogans) that a certain political regime is better than the existing one, and to have a better life it is necessary to change (alternate) the latter. The second precondition, as already mentioned, consists in the available information technologies which appear important for many reasons since they serve to spread revolutionary ideology and propaganda and to attract supporters. Thus, according to well-known Lenin's expression, they are both a collective propagandist and a collective organizer. The third important precondition is a high literacy rate since revolutions can hardly occur in societies with 2–3 per cent of literate population and demand a considerable nuber of literate people. The fourth precondition is that since the movements' ideology involves institutional changes in political and social system, the revolutions could repeatedly and regularly occur only in urbanizing society with a certain literacy and cultural level and with intelligentsia already formed as a social group; in other words, in the society with started and developing modernization (on the relationship between Social Evolution & History / September 2018 174 revolution and modernization see Grinin 2013; 2017а; Grinin and Korotayev 2016). All four factors (new ideology, information technology, literacy and certain level of urbanization) are closely interrelated. Besides, we should note that revolutions may occur both in societies with majority or a large share of illiterate population and in a fully literate society. There are no any accurate criteria here. The same refers to urbanization level. But it is interesting to note that great revolutions may take place both in societies with predominant illiterate population (yet, the number of educated must be sufficeient enough, not less than 20–30 per cent) and in completely literate societies. Apparently, those revolutions turned great just because the revolutionary events actively engaged the most of population, i.e., peasantry. Why may we consider the Reformation as the first revolution of the early modern period? By the start of the Reformation all the mentioned and other preconditions for the revolutionary outbreak in Germany and some other countries were evident. The germs of modernization could be also traced. Germany was one of the most advanced countries in Europe in terms of urban development, trade, and industry (especially mining). The European silver originated from the mines of Saxony and Bohemia (Nef 1987: 735) while the mining was highly mechanized (for details see Baks 1986; Grinin 2006; Grinin L. and Grinin A. 2015, Grinin, Korotayev 2015). Not incidentally, printing was invented in Germany as well. Here it makes sense to pay attention to this new and enormously large-scale and powerful information technology which became the most important material basis preparing the religious revolution. As is wellknown, the book printing appeared in the mid-fifteenth century (1445) and quickly spread in Europe. In the fifteenth century criti