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The Role of Ideology in Revolutionary Terror: Comparisons of the French, Russian and Ethiopian Experiences

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The Role of Ideology in Revolutionary Terror: Comparisons of the French, Russian and Ethiopian Experiences International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) ISSN (Online): 2319-7064 Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2015): 6.391 The Role of Ideology in Revolutionary Terror: Comparisons of the French, Russian and Ethiopian Experiences Tsegaye Zeleke PhD candidate in History at University of South Africa Abstract: Events unfolded during the French Revolution immensely impacted on the ensuing political struggles across the globe. The Terror which took place in Russia and Ethiopia following the 1917 and 1974 Revolutions respectively were among the classic instances. This paper, therefore, attempts to encapsulate how ideology played a pivotal role in the ‘Revolutionary Terror’ orchestrated by the Jacobins in France, the Bolsheviks in Russia and by the Ethiopian Revolutionary forces. But one of the specific features of the Russian Revolution was the recurrent and extensive use of Terror. Yet among the waves of Terror unfolded in Russia, the first one (1918-21) is a classical revolutionary Terror akin to that of the Jacobins. Likewise the Terror that occurred in Ethiopia ostensibly from 1976 to 1978 under the leadership of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam is also akin to this wave of the Bolsheviks Terror. Hence, as indicated hereinabove, the paper compares the three revolutionary Terrors based on the roles of ideology as idiosyncrasy from which terror emanated. Keywords: Revolutionary Terror, Ideology, France, Russia, Ethiopia 1. Ideological Basis of the Terror It seems that the Jacobins of France were the first Revolutionaries who carried out Revolutionary Terror that Although ―the Terror‖ can be defined in many ways, here it had far reaching repercussions. Scholars do not agree on the refers above all to state policy during the period 1793– factors that precipitated the Jacobins Terror (1793-94). For 1794[in the case of France] that used institutionalized instance, Skocpol essentially accepts the interpretation violence and the threat of violence— primarily executions— which sees the outbreak of the international war as a crucial both to punish and intimidate the purported enemies of the factor leading to the Terror (Skocpol: 185-193; Maurois: nation ( Tacket : 2015:3) 313). Similarly Roger Price argues that the Jacobins were forced to carry out the Terror due to the outbreak of the Granted that ideology is more of a justification than a rebellion within France, renewed external threat and drive, the Ethiopian case illustrates how conflicts invasion and the need to enforce law of the maximum( between mutually exclusive elites favor the path of Price: 117-118). Yet again, according to Sewell, others have political outbidding mobilizing utopian projects so as treated ideology as either instrumental terms as an arm of to galvanize the support of the masses.( Mesay: 2011) factional struggle – or as a reflection of actors class positions (Sewell: 183-84). However, Furet refutes the It is apparent that ideology was one of the prime factors above interpretations. Instead he sees the Terror as behind the unfolding of the classical revolutionary terror. developing inevitably out of the ideology of the revolution. One of the authorities on the history of the Ethiopian The revolutionaries had borrowed from Rousseau a highly Revolution, Gebru Tareke, for instance, maintains that in abstract notion of „popular sovereignty‟ which insisted on countries where „revolutionary terror‟ unfolded, it is the unity of the „general will‟ (Furet: 61-63). In line with attributed to three causes ,namely, „ideology, historical this Tacket argues that the patriots of the French Revolution contingency, and desire for power‟ (Gebru: 41). Hence, in „naively adopted a utopian plan to remake society from top this paper, we shall succinctly disentangle how ideology was to bottom on the basis of reason‟ (Tacket: 2) employed by revolutionaries in all three cases to justify their actions during their respective instances of terror. It is argued that if a united „popular will‟ did not always manifest itself clearly in the cacophony of revolutionary Scholars like Bouloiseau maintains that born of „the passion debate, this was not because of real disunity, but because of of being right‟, ideology comprises a set of images and the view and deceptions of the people‟s enemies, who concepts, instrument of persuasion, and an emotional wished to restore the old regime by treachery. Given the driving force , for it aims at compelling and leading to primacy of this abstract notion of the united People‟s will, action. The milieu of struggle nurtured by ideology must dissent was understood not as a normal fact of political life, provide both reasons for living and reasons for dying. The but as a plot , a symptom of treachery against the people and content of ideology is said to have been manifold, namely, the Revolution and dissidents had to be purged to uphold the spiritual and concrete, personal and collective. By alluring to virtue – indeed the very existence - of the revolutionary all these motivations, the Jacobins of France succeeded in state. Therefore, according to Furet, the Terror was creating an amalgam whose roots go back to Roman history generated by a continuing dialect between the notion of and enlightenment (Bouloiseau: 30-31). general will and the aristocratic plot, and was implicit in the revolutionary ideology from the beginning (Furet: 63). Sewell also concludes, although the Terror developed through the „circumstances‟ of the war and attending Volume 5 Issue 10, October 2016 www.ijsr.net Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY Paper ID: ART20162336 DOI: 10.21275/ART20162336 1098 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) ISSN (Online): 2319-7064 Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2015): 6.391 political struggle, its dynamic was essentially internal and peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in ideological (Sewell: 183-84). revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is Furet even goes to some length, for instance, to argue that powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, Robespierre‟s personal characteristics were extraneous to his severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue… role in the revolution. Robespierre was a dominant figure Break the enemies of liberty with terror, and you will be not because he was the „incorruptible‟, nor because of his justified as founders of the Republic. The government of the exceptional political talents, but because he succeeded in revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny (Cited “becoming an embodiment” of revolutionary ideology in Hunt: 46-47). (Furet: 56). Revolutionary ideology itself, not Robespierre, was the significant historical actor. It is said, “The Hence, the Terror was an emancipation of virtue for Revolution would speak through him…he was the mouth Robespierre and other radicals because they believed that it pieces of its purest and most tragic discourse” (Ibid). was indispensable for the security of the new republic. It was not conceived as the arbiter of conflicting interests, but Sewell elaborates vividly how ideology played its own role rather as a mechanism for ensuring that individual will were in the radicalization and apparently eruption of the Terror in forged into one, single, general or national will (ibid). France by summarizing the philosophy of the then existing political clubs/organizations. For the Feuillants, Sewell argues that the French Revolution was an ideological Constitutional monarchists, the distinction between the event of the first magnitude. If anything, its ideological „aristocracy‟ and the „people‟ was above all legal; aristocrats outcomes were even more important than its class or state were those who had privilege that separated them from the building outcomes (Sewell: 194). common people and the common law. In Girondin and Jacobin discourse the distinction became increasingly As to the Russian Bolshevik Terror, sources indicate that the political: aristocrats were those who opposed the Bolsheviks leaders resort to Revolutionary Terror is often Revolution, or those who opposed the radicalization of the explained by the constant reference by the Russian leaders Revolution. The Sans-culottes while accepting the Jacobins to the experience of the French Revolution ,i.e., to the and Girondin‟s views, added important nuances of their Jacobins Terror ( Charles: 286, 291; Shteppa: 75) . Among own: “aristocracy” was also the rich who lived better than the Bolshevik leaders, Lenin greatly admired the Jacobins. them and cared more about their gold than about the And even Marx, the German philosopher, by whose republic; or wore breeches instead of the baggy trousers of philosophy many of the Bolshevik leaders were influenced, the common people. Sans-culottes were radical republicans blamed the communards in 1871 for not having used who, to signify that they were manual workers, wore baggy terrorist methods in the way Jacobins had done. Thus, trousers rather than knee breeches of the pre-Revolutionary Marxists and Leninists believed that Revolutionary Terror aristocrats (Paxton: 177). Moreover, for the Sans-Culottes, was the inevitable concomitant of a dictatorship. It seemed the „aristocratic plot‟ was also responsible for the high that they were adamant that it was inconceivable to have a prices of food stuffs. Aristocrats were systematically dictatorship of the proletariat without it (ibid). withholding grain from
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