Zhou En-lai was once asked for his opinion on the ramifications of the French Revolution. His response was cryptic. 'It is too early to tell', he said.
That was China's revolutionary leader expressing what was a philosophical view of a defining moment in history. But as the world observes yet one more anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, it makes sense to reflect on the many ways in which life around the world was to change in the decades and even in the two centuries-plus following the uprising of the French people.
Of course, the immediate aftermath of the revolution of 1789 was a long and disturbing series of bloodletting in the country. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette would lose their lives under the guillotine. But, as has been said, revolutions often consume their heroes as well. And so it was that Danton and Robespierre perished in the fury of the tumult they helped to generate.
There were the scores of others who went the same way. But the revolution survived. It paved the way to republicanism in France. It gave the country a democratic system of governance which has endured despite the bumps on the road.
Revolutions have transformed lives. Prior to 1789, the American Revolution of 1776, strengthened through a Declaration of Independence spelling out the rights of a people who had put an end to imperial power exercised from distant London, was to be a harbinger of pluralistic aspirations in the times to be.
For the men behind the revolution --- George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson --- the goal was clear: men and women possessed the natural and political right to choose their government and were empowered to remove their rulers should governance dwindle into misrule or inefficiency. Government by the consent of the governed was the principle accruing from 1776.
The themes underscoring revolutions through the ages have never been uniform. They have never been a rule of thumb to be applicable everywhere. And yet the objective has been the same, namely, an assertion of the power of citizens. In both America and France, it was citizen power which asserted itself and was systematically reinforced with the passage of time.
If in 1776 and 1789 it was the majesty of the people which rose out of the mists of despondency, in other lands revolution was sometimes brought about in a nuanced way, the strategy being to consciously create the conditions needed to overthrow a corrupt political order.
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia falls in this category. Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin did not arouse people in the loud way that the French and the Americans did. There was a method to their radicalism, which was to let the corruption of a tottering monarchy build itself into a state, fester into an odoriferous boil, with a long suffering working class decisively giving it a final push.
The Bolshevik Revolution was therefore dependent on strategy resting on an infinity of patience. The strategy was the political education of the exploited class, which education was disseminated through clandestine activity at industrial installations and among the agrarian community. The Kerensky government, in wobbly power after the fall of the descendants of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, predictably fell before the communist onslaught.
Revolutions have impact, in diverse ways. The French Revolution opened the door to liberty, equality and fraternity for the people of France. Note, though, that it was not replicated elsewhere. Nor did its leading elements pretend that similar uprisings could be fomented in the rest of Europe. And that was the difference between 1789 and 1917.
Lenin and his friends, though immediately confronted with internal as well as external enemies determined to snuff out their achievement, had a strong belief in the future of the system they were putting in place. They were convinced their achievement could be extended to regions beyond Russia. Marxism was, after all, a call for workers across the globe to unite. In other words, internationalism governed the spirit of the 1917 exercise.
And yet some revolutions have caused great misery to people who expected positive change to lead them out of the woods. In Iran, the movement against the Shah quickly turned into a wave which promised better days. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the promise of enlightened Islamic rule. He ended up disappointing the millions of Iranians who had through the generations suffered under Reza Pahlavi and his father.
Revolutions cause, in the natural order of things, sunlight to stream into the lives of millions. But Khomeini's revolution quickly became an abject lesson in defenestrating an intolerant ruler followed by new authoritarianism splashed on popular dreams. Khomeini carefully presided over the decline of the revolution into a theocracy. If he was bitter in exile during the Shah's years, he let the bitterness go on.
The revolution dwindled into hostage-taking, as the 444-day plight of American diplomats would demonstrate to the world. Minus the early days and minus liberalism, the revolution does not recall the spirit which shook up Iran in the late 1970s.
Obscurantism defeats a revolution or does not let it happen. But obscurantism has no place in revolutions brought about by long suffering and longer patience, by a belief in the idea that the destiny of nations must be shaped by men committed to the promotion of the common weal. Men planning revolutions must suffer beyond measure before they reach their goal.
Mao Zedong once spoke of beauty being at the top of the mountain. He and his comrades, fighting Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese militarists all at the same time and losing thousands of men in the process, did not abandon the Long March. The march ended in weariness but nevertheless in triumph at Tienanmen Square in October 1949.
Mao and his successors, holding fast to the ancient idea of China being the centre of the world, were intent on ensuring that the rest of the world came to their door. The rest of the world today may be worried about China and so may imagine that organisations like the Quad may contain it. The larger truth is that the Chinese Revolution has caused necessary havoc around the world.
On the one hand, the ability of communism to raise the self-esteem of a nation is a truth to be graciously acknowledged. On the other, the Chinese Revolution, in terms of geopolitics, has outpaced its foes politically and is now gliding past nations to transform China into an unstoppable economic powerhouse.
Mikhail Gorbachev could not build on Lenin's politics. Xi Jinping has not let the lamp lit by the Great Helmsman be extinguished.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
