Looking back on his time as a Cuban-trained communist revolutionary, the French writer Régis Debray recalled that Chile’s Marxist president used to display on his desk a photo of guerrilla leader Che Guevara, inscribed: “To Salvador Allende, who is headed to the same place by a different . . . . Continue Reading »
The classic theory of revolution was formulated by Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed in The Ancien Régime and the Revolution that “it was precisely in those parts of France where there had been the most improvement that popular discontent ran highest.” Revolution is not generally . . . . Continue Reading »
As American society was roiled this summer by civil unrest, purges, and struggle sessions, I read Frank Dikötter’s The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, a recently published book that is newly relevant. The subtitle is a bit of historiographic trolling. “People’s history” is a . . . . Continue Reading »
The morality of tyrannicide is not much discussed in today’s kinder, gentler Catholic Church, but the subject once engaged some of Catholicism’s finest minds. Continue Reading »
Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Lifeby philippe girardbasic books, 352 pages, $29.99The Virginia planter and Fire-Eater Edmund Ruffin, who in 1865 blew his brains out rather than live under Yankee rule, called Toussaint Louverture “the only truly great man yet known of the negro race.” In . . . . Continue Reading »
Revolutions can be notoriously violent. However, in a brief few months in 1989, a landslide of peaceful revolutions replaced authoritarian dictators with democratic governments, defying the brutal legacy of popular revolution. In a period of a few months, revolutions took place in seven Eastern . . . . Continue Reading »
Anyone eager for an inside and in-depth exploration of the New Russian Revolution of August 1991 can thank a watchful Providence that James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress and America’s foremost historian of Russian culture, just happened to be in Moscow on library business when . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
