Revolutions and Revolutionaries

Download or read book Revolutions and Revolutionaries written by Alan John Percivale Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violent political upheavals have occurred as long as there have been political communities. But, in Europe, only since the French revolution have they sought not merely to change the rulers but to transform the entire social and political system. One of A.J.P. Taylor's themes in this generously illustrated book, based on his 1978 television lectures, is that revolutions and revolutionaries do not always coincide: those who start them often do so unintentionally, while revolutionaries tend to be most active in periods of counter-revolution. In his lively and combative style the author traces the line of development of the revolutionary tradition from 1789 through Chartism, the social and national upheavals of 1848, the 'revolutionaries without a revolution' of the following sixty years - Marx, Engels, Bakunin, and others - to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.