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The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions.
The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism.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 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 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.
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 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.
736 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
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734 people want to read
About the author
Arno J. Mayer
16 books31 followersA specialist in modern Europe, diplomatic history, and the Holocaust, Arno Joseph Mayer was Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University. A self-proclaimed "left dissident Marxist", Mayer's major interests were in modernization theory and what he called "The Thirty Years' Crisis" between 1914 and 1945.
After fleeing the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1940, Mayer became a naturalized citizen of the United States and enlisted in the United States Army. During his time in the Army, he was trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland and was recognized as one of the Ritchie Boys. He served as an intelligence officer and eventually became a morale officer for high-ranking German prisoners of war. He was discharged in 1946. He received his education at the City College of New York, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and Yale University. He was professor at Wesleyan University (1952–53), Brandeis University (1954–58) and Harvard University (1958–61). He taught at Princeton University beginning in 1961.
After fleeing the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1940, Mayer became a naturalized citizen of the United States and enlisted in the United States Army. During his time in the Army, he was trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland and was recognized as one of the Ritchie Boys. He served as an intelligence officer and eventually became a morale officer for high-ranking German prisoners of war. He was discharged in 1946. He received his education at the City College of New York, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and Yale University. He was professor at Wesleyan University (1952–53), Brandeis University (1954–58) and Harvard University (1958–61). He taught at Princeton University beginning in 1961.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 12, 2024
Indispensable book by a fascinating historian who despite not being a Marxist came via the most intense study to view WWI as a "preemptive counter revolution", an analysis taken up in Pauwel's The Great Class War.
Side note: A jewish refugee, Meyer enlisted in US army intelligence and was Wernher Von Braun's "morale officer"!
Side note: A jewish refugee, Meyer enlisted in US army intelligence and was Wernher Von Braun's "morale officer"!
November 2, 2019
An exciting work of comparative history, this book, as its subtitle tells us, analyses the violence and terror in the two most important revolutions in history: the French 18th Century revolution and the Russian's October one. In part one, Mayer states the conceptual signposts used later on in the book (Revolution, Counterrevolution, Violence, Terror, Vengence, and Religion). Then he proceeds in the remaining four parts, with a comparative study of both revolutions (usually in a first chapter on the French, followed by another one on the Russian) analyzing the events in light of the conceptual signposts of part one: the terror (both "red" and "white"), the peasant resistance (Vendée in France, the Ukraine and Tambov in Russia), the resistance of the churches, and the revolutionary wars (external in France, with Napoleon; internal in Russia, with Stalin). Overall, this is a book filled up with brilliant explanations and insights that, in the apt words of Tariq Ali quoted in the back cover, "is the first serious attempt to answer the revisionist historians, many of whom insist on viewing the past through a prism of present-day requirements". Very impressive.
January 16, 2024
The book asks the following question, "What do the terror campaigns that accompanied the French and Russian Revolutions tell us about the possibility of revolutionary change without, or with minimal bloodshed."
The answer is profoundly dispiriting.
Its other signal virtue is contextualizing the atrocities, which took place in the face of internal struggles for power, civil war, and foreign interventions. Without excusing Stalin or the Jacobins, Mayer illuminates the straits in which they operated.
This is not the only book to read on these topics. It's a necessary one.
The answer is profoundly dispiriting.
Its other signal virtue is contextualizing the atrocities, which took place in the face of internal struggles for power, civil war, and foreign interventions. Without excusing Stalin or the Jacobins, Mayer illuminates the straits in which they operated.
This is not the only book to read on these topics. It's a necessary one.
November 21, 2016
Mayer's attempt at synthesis and comparative studies comes off a little fast and loose with the details and proves unconvincing in many places because of his reliance on secondary literature to prove his points. Things of value: comparison of Gallican and Orthodox Churches in Old Regime France and Russia through their respective revolutions and raising the question of counterrevolution as a necessity of revolution.
April 1, 2025
viva la revolución, más si es roja
January 23, 2026
Started this book over the summer, didn't touch it for most of the fall, and then actually read all of it through late December/January.
This was a really long book. I liked it and it was well worth the read but I think it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter, in large part because each chapter was basically a rearticulation of the same fundamental theme: the reciprocal escalation between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces (the "friend-enemy dissociation"), and the progressive hollowing out of the middle. Each chapter proceeds roughly in chronological order, and covers the same time period, so by the end you have read three parallel accounts of the French and Russian Revolutions, each centered on a different perspective: avenging violence, religious conflict, and the urban-rural divide. The escalating military violence between the nascent revolutionary government and counterrevolutionary political forces is primary of course, but the unfolding of revolutionary violence across the full spectrum of society is only comprehensible when all the other aspects are brought into play.
One of the things that is really hard to get across without reading the book is just how interconnected the cycle of escalation is, across political, military, religious, and ideological dimensions. Wartime exigencies led to the Levee en masse, the Maximum, and the Reign of Terror. The Levee en Masse resulted in peasant revolts against an intrusive, modern, urban revolutionary state. Overstretched nationalist armies conducting counterinsurgency campaigns resulted in religious backlash, leading to outright holy war, leading to state violence against the clergy, and so on, and so forth. The dry accountings of death counts, tortures, beatings, and rapes are so repetitive in this book that your eyes just sort of start to glaze over them.
While the bulk of the book is about the immediate revolutionary periods, from the storming of the Bastille to the Thermidorean Reaction and from the February Revolution to the end of the Russian Civil War, Mayer dedicates a couple hundred pages at the end to analyzing more closely the geopolitical dimensions of revolutions. This part felt somewhat hastily tacked on, in that I felt like there was still a lot to expand on. The process of state formation and institutionalization of the revolutions is something I'm in particularly interested in, so I was a little disappointed in this, but frankly that's its own book.
The gist of it is to discuss how the French Revolution was "externalized" and the Russian Revolution was "internalized." What he means by this is that even after the establishment of a stable revolutionary government, the geopolitical conflicts created by the revolution continued. The French Directory/Consulate/Empire engaged in a practically unceasing string of wars of conquest, spreading the revolution at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the pathologies of the Soviet Union can be attributed in large part to its siege mentality. The human cost and breakneck pace of Soviet industrialization was immense, but only exceeded by the reality of the threat against it.
As Stalin wrote in 1931, almost ten years exactly before Operation Barbarossa "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under."
This was a really long book. I liked it and it was well worth the read but I think it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter, in large part because each chapter was basically a rearticulation of the same fundamental theme: the reciprocal escalation between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces (the "friend-enemy dissociation"), and the progressive hollowing out of the middle. Each chapter proceeds roughly in chronological order, and covers the same time period, so by the end you have read three parallel accounts of the French and Russian Revolutions, each centered on a different perspective: avenging violence, religious conflict, and the urban-rural divide. The escalating military violence between the nascent revolutionary government and counterrevolutionary political forces is primary of course, but the unfolding of revolutionary violence across the full spectrum of society is only comprehensible when all the other aspects are brought into play.
One of the things that is really hard to get across without reading the book is just how interconnected the cycle of escalation is, across political, military, religious, and ideological dimensions. Wartime exigencies led to the Levee en masse, the Maximum, and the Reign of Terror. The Levee en Masse resulted in peasant revolts against an intrusive, modern, urban revolutionary state. Overstretched nationalist armies conducting counterinsurgency campaigns resulted in religious backlash, leading to outright holy war, leading to state violence against the clergy, and so on, and so forth. The dry accountings of death counts, tortures, beatings, and rapes are so repetitive in this book that your eyes just sort of start to glaze over them.
While the bulk of the book is about the immediate revolutionary periods, from the storming of the Bastille to the Thermidorean Reaction and from the February Revolution to the end of the Russian Civil War, Mayer dedicates a couple hundred pages at the end to analyzing more closely the geopolitical dimensions of revolutions. This part felt somewhat hastily tacked on, in that I felt like there was still a lot to expand on. The process of state formation and institutionalization of the revolutions is something I'm in particularly interested in, so I was a little disappointed in this, but frankly that's its own book.
The gist of it is to discuss how the French Revolution was "externalized" and the Russian Revolution was "internalized." What he means by this is that even after the establishment of a stable revolutionary government, the geopolitical conflicts created by the revolution continued. The French Directory/Consulate/Empire engaged in a practically unceasing string of wars of conquest, spreading the revolution at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the pathologies of the Soviet Union can be attributed in large part to its siege mentality. The human cost and breakneck pace of Soviet industrialization was immense, but only exceeded by the reality of the threat against it.
As Stalin wrote in 1931, almost ten years exactly before Operation Barbarossa "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under."
February 12, 2018
Great book highlighting similarities between French and Russian revolutions. Also discusses requirements for a revolution and why smaller revolutions ultimately failed.
July 26, 2024
Un super bouquin.
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September 9, 2024"If you solve the French Revolution, you solve the history of Capitalism and European politics of the last 200 years" - Sean Lawrence
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews