Volume 28, Number 1 · February 5, 1981
Were These Revolutions Necessary?
By Richard Lowenthal
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China
by Theda Skocpol
Cambridge University Press, 407 pp., $7.95 (paper)
In this important and original book, Theda Skocpol seeks to discover the common causes and results of modern social revolutions, defined as 'rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures…accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below.' By analyzing the great French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian and Chinese revolutions of our century, she hopes to arrive at a general understanding of the phenomenon. Each of those revolutions, in her view, started with the collapse of an autocratic monarchy, a collapse caused by inability to resist foreign pressures effectively. Each was propelled at a decisive stage by a mass uprising of the peasantry. And each resulted in the creation of a centralized state machine of a new type.
Review, 3831 words
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