You Say You Want A Revolution: Radical Idealism and Its Tragic Consequences

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...