The notion that there is a "tradition" of revolution, with
discernible origins, is the fatal preconception of this huge
undertaking. Billington, Director of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars in Washington and a historian of
Russia, makes the further mistake of taking the Russian Revolution
as an archetype. The central theme thus becomes revolutionaries as
secular prophets seeking heaven on earth - and organizing
themselves into secret societies with occult foundations in hidden
knowledge and ritual. Although the occultism is said to originate
in the Illuminati and other German groups, the ideological origins
are traced to the French Revolution's left wing. The emphasis on
secularism, which follows from Billington's Russian orientation,
means that he ignores earlier manifestations of social revolution
within a lived religious experience - such as the Diggers and
Levellers of the English Revolution, the Protestant peasant
uprisings in Germany, or the radical Puritan elements in the
American Revolution. The French Revolution's substitution of
classical Greek and Roman symbolizations for religious symbols and
references fits into Billington's framework - it coalesces with the
mystic revival of Pythagoras and neoplatonism on the occult side:
but it also, crucially, accords, with his presumption that
organized efforts at social change are ipso facto mystical
aberrations. Billington goes on to trace the path of this
revolutionary tradition through Europe and North America - where
the Molly Maguires fit in - to Russia. Throughout, he focuses on
the intellectuals and publicists who figure so prominently on the
surface of revolutionary movements - Mater, Paine, Marx, etc. - and
gives little weight to the aspirations of the artisans, urban poor,
and peasants who responded to their words and deeds (or didn't
respond). Nineteenth-century Russian revolutionaries - the
caricatured anarchists with smoking bombs - are the perfect images
of Billington's "tradition"; but a closer look at either
emancipatory social movements or the social history of 19th-century
revolutions would have shown how atypical they actually were.
Billington may think that because Paine lived in a menage a trois
with the anarchist Buonnarotti and his wife, and saw Pythagoras as
the symbol of liberatory knowledge, his thesis is proved; this is
only a tradition by innuendo. (Kirkus Reviews)
This book traces the origins of a faith--perhaps the faith of the
century. Modern revolutionaries are believers, no less committed
and intense than were Christians or Muslims of an earlier era. What
is new is the belief that a perfect secular order will emerge from
forcible overthrow of traditional authority. This inherently
implausible idea energized Europe in the nineteenth century, and
became the most pronounced ideological export of the West to the
rest of the world in the twentieth century. Billington is
interested in revolutionaries--the innovative creators of a new
tradition. His historical frame extends from the waning of the
French Revolution in the late eighteenth century to the beginnings
of the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century. The
theater was Europe of the industrial era; the main stage was the
journalistic offices within great cities such as Paris, Berlin,
London, and St. Petersburg. Billington claims with considerable
evidence that revolutionary ideologies were shaped as much by the
occultism and proto-romanticism of Germany as the critical
rationalism of the French Enlightenment. The conversion of social
theory to political practice was essentially the work of three
Russian revolutions: in 1905, March 1917, and November 1917. Events
in the outer rim of the European world brought discussions about
revolution out of the school rooms and press rooms of Paris and
Berlin into the halls of power. Despite his hard realism about the
adverse practical consequences of revolutionary dogma, Billington
appreciates the identity of its best sponsors, people who preached
social justice transcending traditional national, ethnic, and
gender boundaries. When this book originally appeared "The New
Republic" hailed it as "remarkable, learned and lively," while "The
New Yorker" noted that Billington "pays great attention to the
lives and emotions of individuals and this makes his book
absorbing." It is an invaluable work of history and contribution to
our understanding of political life.
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