Testament book or the work of a lifetime? Ultimately, do the two not converge? Due to its central theme, as well as the circumstances of its publication, one year after the author’s death, Martin Malia’s “History of Revolutions” takes the reader well beyond just a descriptive, albeit brilliantly historical account of the major upheavals that shook the world and influenced its evolution. This impressive accumulation of knowledge and reflection leaves an intellectual imprint which, doubtlessly, many descendants will aim to follow. The author, who taught at both the University of Berkeley and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, offers in this work an “analysis of the revolutionary tradition leading to the major communist revolutions of the 20th century.” As a scientist, handling his subject of study meticulously but without bias, Martin Malia aims to illuminate, in a “historical” approach, a series of cases to ultimately establish “the concept of revolution.” A revolution does not occur just anywhere or anytime, according to him. It is a historical phenomenon specific to the European space, or even to its “zone of influence.” Therefore, outside Europe, no revolution? The author’s death by no means limits this approach, especially since he expressed his intention to add chapters on post-war revolutions and on other continents.
His fundamental idea, he draws from the Russian revolution, where he remains one of the great specialists. Hence, a large part of his life was spent “reconceptualizing” this revolution for which none of the traditionally advanced explanations—a process with a beginning, a middle, and an end—completely satisfied him. From the introduction, the author formulates “seven general considerations” to guide the reader through the outlines of his approach: fundamentally European in origin, the revolution must be studied “historically” and “in a Western manner.” It is a transformation primarily political and ideological, and not the fruit of social struggles—”a necessary but not sufficient cause,” unlike the existence of a centralized state or an old regime against which this “generalized revolt” occurs. Hence, far from replicating a unique model, the idea that each revolution draws inspiration from the previous to “achieve a higher degree of radicalism,” even “extremism.” Possessing what seems to be a reading framework—a grid with multiple modulations imposed by any progressive approach—the author tackles this European zone through three main chapters: the first one invokes, from the millennium to the end of the 16th century, these “three Europes,” firstly the “Western Atlantic,” then Germany beyond the Elbe, and finally the “Muscovy.” Hence the examples chosen in this initial development: the “proto-revolution” in 15th century Hussite Bohemia—a movement that would become “the scenario of European revolutions up to 1789,” the Lutheran Reformation in the mid-16th century, and the revolt of the Netherlands between the mid and end of that same era. One particularly appreciates the passage on the “Münster Commune” of 1534-1535, a sharp demonstration that “theology serves only to veil political and social grievances” and that a “mini revolution in a single city cannot survive in a non-revolutionary society.” In a second development, labeled as “classic Atlantic revolutions,” Martin Malia analyzes the throes of the great “English rebellion,” not without noting the anomaly of its historiography: it would take, according to the author, nearly two centuries for the “violent and bloody events of the 1640-1660 period to be recognized as a full-fledged revolution.” A specificity explainable by the “ideological envelope” of this revolution and its “moderate political impact:” the English revolution encompasses all the elements previously stated by the specialist, but its conservative and restorative hue, a “Puritan-Parliamentary revolution,” softens the upheavals it sparks. On the other side of the Atlantic and nearly a century later, America also experiences its revolution “abnormal in political form” yet respectful of “European revolutionary processes.” A revolution almost by “chance,” dares the author for a “Stamp Act,” a tax on stamps imposing from 1765 the purchase of official paper, obviously a monopoly of the British Crown, for all kinds of legal and commercial transactions. An initiative quickly abandoned but not quickly enough to defuse a second wave of protests, this time armed, which will lead to separation from Great Britain in 1776. If the French example of 1789 ends this second chapter, it nevertheless serves as a hinge to the last development, this “next step” to quote the author, with an objective significantly more amplified to the point of losing all previous benchmarks: the October Revolution of 1917. “Second coming of 1789,” this “revolution to end all others” will ultimately fail its objective: to establish an ideal society since the Russian example will be one “of a world overturned where ideology determines the political structure.” Although he does not cite it, the author was perhaps thinking of Trotsky’s famous 1923 letter addressed to the Central Committee where he already denounced the “bureaucratic hierarchy become the apparatus that creates the Party opinion and its decisions.” A revolution still beset with anomalies since this radical, extreme reply to 1789 will experience neither “Thermidor nor Bonapartism.”
One can nevertheless raise some questions about the author’s final hypothesis on considering the events of November and December 1989 as “a counter-revolution” that would have destroyed the “irreversible achievements of October”: nothing is less certain when scrutinizing the current Russian political system, still marked by the same authoritarian tradition, inaugurated under the empire of the Tsars and continued by the Soviet regime. The real parenthesis, the only counter-revolutionary moment was probably that as chaotic as it was generating freedoms, of the Yeltsin years. Should we then add to the revolutionary process a “third way,” neither Thermidorian nor populist? A survival path, somewhat in the image of Jared Diamond’s theory on the political factor that “decides the maintenance or disappearance of human societies.” With a question in the case of contemporary Russian politics: can the ultimate and salvific adaptation of the political system, in other words “reformism,” constitute the culmination of a revolutionary phenomenon?
Martin Malia, “History of Revolutions”, Tallandier Editions, 2008.
