Product Description

The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism. Flying in the face of history, violence is dismissed as rare, immoral, and counterproductive. Arguing against this pervasive wishful thinking, the distinguished historian Arno J. Mayer revisits the two most tumultuous and influential revolutions of modern times: the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Although these two upheavals arose in different environments, they followed similar courses. The thought and language of Enlightenment France were the glories of western civilization; those of tsarist Russia's intelligentsia were on its margins. Both revolutions began as revolts vowed to fight unreason, injustice, and inequality; both swept away old regimes and defied established religions in societies that were 85% peasant and illiterate; both entailed the terrifying return of repressed vengeance. Contrary to prevalent belief, Mayer argues, ideologies and personalities did not control events. Rather, the tide of violence overwhelmed the political actors who assumed power and were rudderless. Even the best plans could not stem the chaos that at once benefited and swallowed them. Mayer argues that we have ignored an essential part of all revolutions: the resistances to revolution, both domestic and foreign, which help fuel the spiral of terror.

In his sweeping yet close comparison of the world's two transnational revolutions, Mayer follows their unfolding--from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses; the escalation of the initial violence into the reign of terror of 1793-95 and of 1918-21; the dismemberment of the hegemonic churches and religion of both societies; the "externalization" of the terror through the Napoleonic wars; and its "internalization" in Soviet Russia in the form of Stalin's "Terror in One Country." Making critical use of theory, old and new, Mayer breaks through unexamined assumptions and prevailing debates about the attributes of these particular revolutions to raise broader and more disturbing questions about the nature of revolutionary violence attending new foundations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #577549 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

J.W. Thackey, History
Probably the best comparative study of the French and Russian Revolutions to date.

Review
[An] impressively measured, frank and thoughtful book. . . . Ambitious . . . Continuously suggestive and inquiring.
(John Dunn The Times Literary Supplement )

[An] enormous and ambitious work. . . . Comparing the French and Russian revolutions, Mayer focuses on how they reflected the struggle between revolutionary ardor and counterrevolutionary resistance, antireligious fervor and religious intransigence. He stresses the contingencies affecting revolutionary terror rather than the ideology or psychology of leaders. [Mayer's] examination of conceptual signposts such as revolution, violence, vengeance, and terror is a useful contribution to the history of ideas.
(Stanley Hoffman Foreign Affairs )

A courageous and dispassionate reflection on the French and Russian revolutions. This is the first serious attempt to answer the revisionist historians, many of whom insist on viewing the past through the prism of present day requirements. Mayer reminds us that revolutions by their very nature provoke a violent response from those being deprived of power.
(Tariq Ali The Financial Times )

Probably the best comparative study of the French and Russian Revolutions to date. Carefully researched and filled with cogent and insightful analysis, it is mandatory reading for all scholars in the field.
(J.W. Thacker History )

Mayer's absorbing recapitulation of these ultimately tragic events leaves the reader with the desire to read more about the French and Russian Revolutions: the best compliment any historical work can receive.
(Library Journal )

There are many ways to read this long, rich and idiosyncratic book. As Mayer warns, objective and value-free study of the subject is impossible . . . Mayer traces the road from reform to rage and terror, one of menace and fear, vengeance and countervengeance, exhilaration, self-delusion and mutual carnage. He has wise things to say about the blending of traditional enmities and new war cries, and about the clash between urban imperialism and rural distrust, about the satisfaction of butchering familiar enemies rather than complete strangers, about the rise of informing as a civic virtue. . . . [A] long, rich, and idiosyncratic book.
(Eugen Weber New York Times Book Review )

Mayer boasts a long record of intellectual provocation. . . . [Here he] minimizes the rold of both ideology and the personality of the revolutionaries. Violence, he argues, resulted from seismic collisions of old order and new. . . . Indeed, Mayer demonstrates, some of the bloodiest episodes of both revolutions occurred as old animosities between Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, and contending groups in the countryside turned into armed antagonisms.
(Corey Robin Boston Review )

"[Mayer] insists that contrary to such conservative scolds as Edmund "Burke and Hannah Arendt, violence is not the product of ideological intoxication; it is an objective historical necessity in all polities. Citing an array of hard-headed thinkers from Machiavelli to Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. . . .Mayer affirms that violence has been indispensable to every 'founding act' in history, even in such legalistic polities as our own--a proposition which it is difficult to dispute.
(Martin Malia Los Angeles Times Book Review )

Review
A remarkable new insight into the comparative social dynamics of revolutions and terrors, which provides very strong arguments against common stereotypes and misleading conservative interpretations.
(Pierre Bourdieu )

Customer Reviews

A fascinating study of revolution and counter-revolution
The Furies: violence and terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, by Arno J. Mayer, Princeton University Press, 2000, hardback, 716 pages, £21.95, ISBN 0-691-04897-5

In this book, Mayer studies the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. He seeks to explain why the peoples made these great revolutionary advances, and also why the nobility fought to destroy them and to restore the savage old orders. He studies the role of religion in the counter-revolutions, particularly the Papacy's bitter hostility to the Revolutions, compared to its notorious slap on the wrist for the Nazi counter-revolution. He cites Michelet's famous remark that the numbers killed by the Spanish Inquisition in just one province of Spain far exceeded the number killed by those defending France and its Revolution. The Inquisition was the crowning revelation of Christianity's ingrained violence, its hostility to people who dared to think for themselves, and to think differently from the Church: for six centuries, the leaders of the Catholic Church ordered the killing of millions of men and women for the glory of God. After the French Revolution, the British ruling class organised the foreign counter-revolutionary war. This enormously increased the economic, social and military difficulties faced by the new Government. Later in the war, Napoleon continued France's defence against the counter-revolution, upheld the Revolution's destruction of the nobility's privileges, and extended its gains abroad. After the end of World War One, the rulers of the British, US and French states united in 'helping the Whites overthrow the Bolshevik regime', as Mayer writes. Their intervention prolonged the civil war, enormously increasing the suffering of the Soviet people, and adding to the huge economic, social and military difficulties faced by the new Government. Stalin played a key part in defending the Soviet Union against the Intervention; later, he expanded the Revolution's gains and, after defeating Hitler's counter-revolutionary intervention, extended these gains to the nations of Eastern Europe. However, studies that focus on the violence and terror involved in counter-revolutions, even those studies, like Mayer's, that explain why people defended their countries' Revolutions, tend to overlook those Revolutions' tremendous achievements. Of course, people fought to survive the furies of the counter-revolution, but they also fought to build better societies, and they succeeded.

Will Podmore 04.01.01 350 words