DOCSLIB.ORG

Revolutions in German History: 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Revolutions in German History: 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90 Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg JÖRN LEONHARD Anatomies of failure? Revolutions in German history: 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90 Originalbeitrag erschienen in: Jörn Leonhard (Hrsg.): Ten years of German unification : transfer, transformation, incorporation? Birmingham: Univ. of Birmingham Pr., 2002, S. [21] - 55 Part I Historical and Foreign Policy Aspects I Anatomies of Failure? Revolutions in German History: 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90 JOrn Leonhard The problem of revolutionary experience in modern German history The developments in the Eastern part of Europe since summer 1989 brought back the concept of 'revolution' to the understanding of European history. Within a short period of time, revolution changed from an object far distant from the contemporary, into a fundamental experience of the present. History, in the eyes of many contemporaries, had reached the present: contrary to the assumption that the Cold War had both frozen the political constellations in Central Europe and defined the limits of civil rights movements in the member states of the Warsaw Pact, 1989 meant the returning experience of historical change and changeability, of ' Nriintierbarkeit, as the result of a rapid erosion of political legitimacy.1 22 JOrn Leonhard In the case of Germany, 1989/90 generated a new meaning of 'revolution', a concept which hitherto seemed to have been overshadowed by the ambiguous legacies of 'failed', 'incomplete', or 'missing' revolutions in 1848 and 1918, or the negative connotation of 1933 as a 'legal revolution' by which the first German democracy was overturned within its own constitutional framework.' In collec- tive memory, the events of 1968 were not regarded as a political 'revolution', but rather as a student revolt or a symbol of a cultural transformation.' In contrast, for the collective memory of most post-war Germans, 1933 and 1945 stood for the most fundamental turning-points in modern German history. In summer 1989, just weeks before the crisis brought about by GDR refugees in the Prague embassy led to the rapid delegitirnisation of the GDR's political and social elites, France had celebrated her Bicentenaire, the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution of 1789, accompanied by intensive discussions about the revolutions character and legacy, including highly controversial debates about the terrefir and the place of 1789 in French political culture.` In contrast, the two main exhibitions on 1789 in Germany reflected a particular distance towards the meaning of revolution in modern German history. Both exhibitions focused on 1789's indirect impact on Germany, on the export of revolutionary principles to Germany as part of the Napoleonic expansion and on the different responses to this challenge in the single German states: the political and constitutional reforms in the member states of the Confederation of the Rhine, especially in Baden, Wiirttemberg, and Bavaria, and the projects of the Prussian Reform era, following the Prussian defeat against Napoleonic France in 1806. 5 However, what distinguished German and French views on revolution as part of their his- tory was that in public discussions in France, the legacy of 1789 was primarily regarded as an integral and positive part of republican and democratic identity of the modern French nation. The revolution could thus serve as a collective `lieu de memoire', providing positive and integrative symbolic codes, binding together historical experience and political expectations.6 For the German dis- cussion, however, 'revolution' in general and 1789 in particular meant a rather distant event in history with no place in contemporary German political culture. Discussions rather focused on the lack of a German 1789 as part of a deviation from a Western path of apparently successful political modernisation. As the Historikerstreit, the debate about the comparability of the Nazi Holocaust and crimes committed by the Stalinist regime, demonstrated in the 1980s, collective historical memory was almost completely dominated by the impact of National Socialist dictatorship on modern German history. Earlier attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to revive a positive commemoration of 1848 as part of a democratic tradition in German history could not alter this dominating paradigm.7 In 1934 the German historian Rudolf Stadelmann had stated that all revolu- tions in German history, from Luther's reformation to the 'revolution' against Revolutions in German History: 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90 23 Napoleon, had failed because of the existence of the supranational Reich, which, symbolised in Charles V and Metternich, had absorbed the people's movements of the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Used to a reform-oriented state in the tradition of enlightened absolutism, Germany, according to Stadelmann, both in 1848 and in 1918 was too developed for a complete break with the past.8 His notion of a 'missed revolution' became a much debated but stable cornerstone of the historiographic paradigm of a German Sondenves in modern history: 'The heydays of our national past are not victories over the monarchy, but rather feats of glory and the achievements of statesmen, Frederick the Great and Bismarck.' Revolutions, by their very nature, seemed to be `un-German'.9 Heinrich August Winkler, in his recent history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history, concludes that the real 'German revolu- tion' was a revolution against Marxism and against West European democracy, which had to be defeated by those powers founded on the basis of successful revolutions in the seventeenth century, in 1776, 1789, and 1917: the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.1° What do these examples reveal about the understanding of 'revolution' in mod- em German history? Is there a justification, as still many would argue, for the lament of a lack of supposedly 'successful' revolutions or positive identification with revolutionary turning-points in modern German history? 11 If so, how far has this pattern been questioned by the experiences of 1989/90? This chapter tries to approach these questions by examining and comparing basic problems of the rev- olutionary turning-points of 1848, 1918 and 1989/90. This should not be misin- terpreted as an attempt to deny the fundamental difference in the historical contexts of these events or to formulate another theory of revolutions above and beyond essentially different contexts, 12 but as a historical comparison that can deepen the understanding of the particular meaning of revolution in modern German history and of the way this has been challenged by the events of 1989/90.13 The chapter is in five parts. An introductory section concentrates on the meaning of the concept 'revolution' in modern German history and tries to identify particular connotations. The following three sections focus on the revo- lutionary turning-points of 1848/49, 1918 and 1989/90 by means of a system- atic analysis that considers six factors: (1) origins and causes of the crisis of legit- imacy of existing regimes, (2) levels of revolutionary actions and communica- tion, (3) the relation between conflict and compromise strategies, (4) state versus society: revolutionary elements 'from below' and 'from above', (5) counter-rev- olutionary forces, and (6) levels of short- and long-term impacts as seen in polit- ical and constitutional change, social transformation and implications for nation- state building. A fifth section systematically summarises the results according to these factors and puts them into the context of changing patterns of revolu- tionary experience and its legacy in Germany. 24 JOrn Leonhard `A revolution in the positive meaning - `revolution as a political concept in Germany The primary meaning of the concept 'revolution', derived from the medieval Latin noun, is best caught by the modern English verb `to revolve'. According to this connotation, dominating in pre-1789 European political language, revolu- tion, similar to the celestial spheres in Ptolemaic astronomy or the relation between earth and planets as examined by Copernican astronomy, 'goes round and round' (John Dunn). In the course of the seventeenth century with its mech- anisation of the world of politics and the essentially imaginative role of astron- omy, 'revolution' was then first applied to examplts of political change in an explanatory framework. Thus the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 could be regarded as a 'return' to a political and constitutional balance that had been destroyed by the Great Rebellion of the 1640s — first described as the 'English Revolution' only in the aftermath of the French Revolution — and the absolutist Stuarts after 1660.14 In contrast, 'revolution' in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Germany retained the character of a foreign term, meaning 'revolt', 'turmoil' or else 'civil war', and, contrary to other Western European languages, entered the sphere of politics only very slowly. 15 'Revolution', according to the astronomic origin, referred to 'growth and decline, increase and decrease' of countries or states.16 Following the experience of the French Revolution, 'revolution' became a central concept of contemporary political discussion in Germany. In 1795 Konrad Engelbert Oelsner commented on the change from a circular meaning of revolution to one that described a linear historical development, transcending the seventeenth-century connotative limits: 'True, the revolution has turned in a circle, but this circle is a spiral from out
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Nationalism in the French Revolution of 1789
    The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Honors College 5-2014 Nationalism in the French Revolution of 1789 Kiley Bickford University of Maine - Main Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors Part of the Cultural History Commons Recommended Citation Bickford, Kiley, "Nationalism in the French Revolution of 1789" (2014). Honors College. 147. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/147 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NATIONALISM IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 by Kiley Bickford A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for a Degree with Honors (History) The Honors College University of Maine May 2014 Advisory Committee: Richard Blanke, Professor of History Alexander Grab, Adelaide & Alan Bird Professor of History Angela Haas, Visiting Assistant Professor of History Raymond Pelletier, Associate Professor of French, Emeritus Chris Mares, Director of the Intensive English Institute, Honors College Copyright 2014 by Kiley Bickford All rights reserved. Abstract The French Revolution of 1789 was instrumental in the emergence and growth of modern nationalism, the idea that a state should represent, and serve the interests of, a people, or "nation," that shares a common culture and history and feels as one. But national ideas, often with their source in the otherwise cosmopolitan world of the Enlightenment, were also an important cause of the Revolution itself. The rhetoric and documents of the Revolution demonstrate the importance of national ideas.
    [Show full text]
  • The Fundamental Determinants of Anti-Authoritarianism
    The Fundamental Determinants of Anti-Authoritarianism Davide Cantoni David Y. Yang Noam Yuchtman Y. Jane Zhang* March 2017 Abstract Which fundamental factors are associated with individuals holding democratic, anti-authori- tarian ideologies? We conduct a survey eliciting Hong Kong university students’ political atti- tudes and behavior in an ongoing pro-democracy movement. We construct indices measuring students’ anti-authoritarianism, and link these to a comprehensive profile of fundamental eco- nomic preferences; personalities; cognitive abilities; and family backgrounds. We find that fundamental economic preferences, particularly risk tolerance and pro-social preferences, are the strongest predictors of anti-authoritarian ideology and behavior. We also study simulta- neously determined outcomes, arguably both cause and consequence of ideology. Examining these, we find that anti-authoritarians are more pessimistic about Hong Kong’s political out- look and about their fellow students’ support for the movement; their social networks are more political; they consume different media; and, they are more politically informed than other students. Our extraordinarily rich data suggest that individuals’ deep preferences should be considered alongside payoffs and beliefs in explaining political behavior. Keywords: Political movements, ideology, preferences *Cantoni: University of Munich, CEPR, and CESifo. Email: [email protected]. Yang: Stanford University. Email: [email protected]. Yuchtman: UC-Berkeley, Haas School of Business, NBER, and CESifo. Email: [email protected]. Zhang: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Email: [email protected]. Helpful and much appreciated suggestions, critiques and encouragement were provided by Doug Bernheim, Arun Chandrasekhar, Ernesto Dal Bo,´ Matthew Gentzkow, Peter Lorentzen, Muriel Niederle, Torsten Persson, and many seminar and conference participants.
    [Show full text]
  • How Revolutionary Was the American Revolution? The
    How Revolutionary Was The American Revolution? The American Revolution was a political revolution that separated England’s North American colonies from Great Britain and led to the formation of the United States of America. The Revolution was achieved in large part by the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), which was fought between England against America and its allies (France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic). The American Revolution embodied and reflected the principles of the Enlightenment, which emphasized personal liberty and freedom from tyranny among other ideals. The American revolutionaries and the Founding Fathers of the United States sought to create a nation without the shackles of the rigid social hierarchy that existed in Europe. Although the American Revolution succeeded in establishing a new nation that was built on the principles of personal freedom and democracy, scholars today continue to debate whether or not the American Revolution was truly all that revolutionary. Social and Ideological Effects of the American Revolution On the one hand, the American Revolution was not a complete social revolution such as the French Revolution in 1789 or the Russian Revolution in 1917. The American Revolution did not produce a total upheaval of the previously existing social and institutional structures. It also did not replace the old powers of authority with a new social group or class. On the other hand, for most American colonists fighting for independence, the American Revolution represented fundamental social change in addition to political change. The ideological backdrop for the Revolution was based on the concept of replacing older forms of feudal-type relationships with a social structure based on republicanism and democracy.
    [Show full text]
  • I. History and Ideology in the English Revolution1
    THE HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOL. VIII 1965 No. 2 I. HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY IN THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION1 By QUENTIN SKINNER Christ's College, Cambridge IDEOLOGICAL arguments are commonly sustained by an appeal to the past, an appeal either to see precedents in history for new claims being advanced, or to see history itself as a development towards the point of view being advocated or denounced.2 Perhaps the most influential example from English history of this prescriptive use of historical information is provided by the ideological arguments associated with the constitutional revolution of the seventeenth century. It was from a propagandist version of early English history that the 'whig' ideology associated with the Parliamentarians—the ideology of customary law, regulated monarchy and immemorial Parliamen- tary right—drew its main evidence and strength. The process by which this 'whig' interpretation of history became bequeathed to the eighteenth century as accepted ideology has of course already been definitively labelled by Professor Butterfield, and described in his book on The Englishman and his History.3 It still remains, however, to analyse fully the various other ways in which awareness of the past became a politically relevant factor in English society during its constitutional upheavals. The acceptance of the ' whig' view of early English history in fact represented only the triumph of one among several conflictinb ideologies which had relied on identical historical backing to their claims. And despite the resolution of this conflict by universal acceptance of the ' whig' view, the ' whigs' themselves were nevertheless to be covertly influenced by the rival ideologies which their triumph might seem to have suppressed.
    [Show full text]
  • Ten Canons of the Proletarian Revolution
    Ten Canons of the Proletarian Revolution New York Labar New$ Cornpan7 (Soclalfet Labor Partp) 45 Rose St., New Yark 1988 THE CREED OF A REVOLUTrONIST. Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to make it known. -P&4 Ems of Damid Bs Lum. cwwmB 1905, HewYorL;~Nc~p"s& All rights reMmed. The Ten Canons of a Revolutionist are, as they originally stand, part of the second part-The Warning of the Gracchi--of 'Two Pages from Roman His- tory," being lessons deduced from blunders or weak- nesses of the two Gnccbi brothers in their struggle with the Roman patriciate. Beyond a doubt, these Ten Canons are the clearest, the most concise outline of con- duct of:the ProIetarian Revolution that have ever been permed They amount practically to a code of revolu- tionary conduct and tactical ethics. Because of this, we have considered it valuable and proper to publish them in handy pamphlet form by themselves, so that the rest of the material, however significant in itself, shall not detract attention fmm these revoIutionary canons, so important and essential that they ought to be engrayed on the mind of every revolutionist, the "leaders" as well as the rank and Me. The srrmqth, the cool, relentless and unassaabble logic of each of these rules of conduct, could never at any time fail to strike the revaIutionist, bur it is only since the Praletarian Revolution actually got into action that we can fully appreciate these revolutionary "ten commandments." So concrete are they that they might the rocks by the lure of the Cadmmt
    [Show full text]
  • Social-Property Relations, Class-Conflict and The
    Historical Materialism 19.4 (2011) 129–168 brill.nl/hima Social-Property Relations, Class-Conflict and the Origins of the US Civil War: Towards a New Social Interpretation* Charles Post City University of New York [email protected] Abstract The origins of the US Civil War have long been a central topic of debate among historians, both Marxist and non-Marxist. John Ashworth’s Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic is a major Marxian contribution to a social interpretation of the US Civil War. However, Ashworth’s claim that the War was the result of sharpening political and ideological – but not social and economic – contradictions and conflicts between slavery and capitalism rests on problematic claims about the rôle of slave-resistance in the dynamics of plantation-slavery, the attitude of Northern manufacturers, artisans, professionals and farmers toward wage-labour, and economic restructuring in the 1840s and 1850s. An alternative social explanation of the US Civil War, rooted in an analysis of the specific path to capitalist social-property relations in the US, locates the War in the growing contradiction between the social requirements of the expanded reproduction of slavery and capitalism in the two decades before the War. Keywords origins of capitalism, US Civil War, bourgeois revolutions, plantation-slavery, agrarian petty- commodity production, independent-household production, merchant-capital, industrial capital The Civil War in the United States has been a major topic of historical debate for almost over 150 years. Three factors have fuelled scholarly fascination with the causes and consequences of the War. First, the Civil War ‘cuts a bloody gash across the whole record’ of ‘the American .
    [Show full text]
  • 1848 Revolutions Special Subject I READING LIST Professor Chris Clark
    1848 Revolutions Special Subject I READING LIST Professor Chris Clark The Course consists of 8 lectures, 16 presentation-led seminars and 4 gobbets classes GENERAL READING Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851 (Cambridge, 1994) Dieter Dowe et al., eds., Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform (Oxford, 2001) Priscilla Smith Robertson, The Revolutions of 1848, a social history (Princeton, 1952) Michael Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution (London, 2009) SOCIAL CONFLICT BEFORE 1848 (i) The ‘Galician Slaughter’ of 1846 Hans Henning Hahn, ‘The Polish Nation in the Revolution of 1846-49’, in Dieter Dowe et al., eds., Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform, pp. 170-185 Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford, 2010), esp. chapters 3 & 4 Thomas W. Simons Jr., ‘The Peasant Revolt of 1846 in Galicia: Recent Polish Historiography’, Slavic Review, 30 (December 1971) pp. 795–815 (ii) Weavers in Revolt Robert J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge Mass., 1974) Christina von Hodenberg, Aufstand der Weber. Die Revolte von 1844 und ihr Aufstieg zum Mythos (Bonn, 1997) *Lutz Kroneberg and Rolf Schloesser (eds.), Weber-Revolte 1844 : der schlesische Weberaufstand im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Publizistik und Literatur (Cologne, 1979) Parallels: David Montgomery, ‘The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of 1844’ Journal of Social History, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Summer, 1972), pp. 411-446 (iii) Food riots Manfred Gailus, ‘Food Riots in Germany in the Late 1840s’, Past & Present, No. 145 (Nov., 1994), pp. 157-193 Raj Patel and Philip McMichael, ‘A Political Economy of the Food Riot’ Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 32/1 (2009), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • French Revolution and English Revolution Comparison Chart Print Out
    Socials 9 Name: Camilla Mancia Comparison of the English Revolution and French Revolution TOPIC ENGLISH REVOLUTION FRENCH REVOLUTION SIMILARITIES DIFFERENCES 1625-1689 Kings - Absolute monarchs - Absolute monarchs - Kings ruled as Absolute - English Kings believed in Divine - James I: intelligent; slovenly - Louis XIV: known as the “Sun King”; Monarchs Right of Kings and French did habits; “wisest fool in saw himself as center of France and - Raised foreign armies not Christendom”; didn’t make a forced nobles to live with him; - Charles I and Louis XVI both - Charles I did not care to be good impression on his new extravagant lifestyle; built Palace of did not like working with loved whereas Louis XVI initially subjects; introduced the Divine Versailles ($$) Parliament/Estates General wanted to be loved by his people Right Kings - Louis XV: great grandson of Louis XIV; - Citizens did not like the wives of - Charles I did not kill people who - Charles I: Believed in Divine only five years old when he became Charles I (Catholic) and Louis were against him (he Right of Kings; unwilling to King; continued extravagances of the XVI (from Austria) imprisoned or fined them) compromise with Parliament; court and failure of government to - Both Charles I and Louis XVI whereas Louis XVI did narrow minded and aloof; lived reform led France towards disaster punished critics of government - Charles I called Lord Strafford, an extravagant life; Wife - Louis XVI; originally wanted to be Archbishop Laud and Henrietta Maria and people loved; not interested
    [Show full text]
  • The Iranian Revolution, Past, Present and Future
    The Iranian Revolution Past, Present and Future Dr. Zayar Copyright © Iran Chamber Society The Iranian Revolution Past, Present and Future Content: Chapter 1 - The Historical Background Chapter 2 - Notes on the History of Iran Chapter 3 - The Communist Party of Iran Chapter 4 - The February Revolution of 1979 Chapter 5 - The Basis of Islamic Fundamentalism Chapter 6 - The Economics of Counter-revolution Chapter 7 - Iranian Perspectives Copyright © Iran Chamber Society 2 The Iranian Revolution Past, Present and Future Chapter 1 The Historical Background Iran is one of the world’s oldest countries. Its history dates back almost 5000 years. It is situated at a strategic juncture in the Middle East region of South West Asia. Evidence of man’s presence as far back as the Lower Palaeolithic period on the Iranian plateau has been found in the Kerman Shah Valley. And time and again in the course of this long history, Iran has found itself invaded and occupied by foreign powers. Some reference to Iranian history is therefore indispensable for a proper understanding of its subsequent development. The first major civilisation in what is now Iran was that of the Elamites, who might have settled in South Western Iran as early as 3000 B.C. In 1500 B.C. Aryan tribes began migrating to Iran from the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea and from Central Asia. Eventually two major tribes of Aryans, the Persian and Medes, settled in Iran. One group settled in the North West and founded the kingdom of Media. The other group lived in South Iran in an area that the Greeks later called Persis—from which the name Persia is derived.
    [Show full text]
  • Discerning the Global 1989 Through the Lens of 1989 As World-Historical
    www.ssoar.info Discerning the global in the European revolutions of 1989 Armbruster, Chris Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Arbeitspapier / working paper Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Armbruster, C. (2008). Discerning the global in the European revolutions of 1989. (Working Paper Series of the Research Network 1989, 12). Berlin. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-27092 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de Working Paper Series of the Research Network 1989 Working Paper 12/2008 ISSN 1867-2833 Discerning the Global in the European Revolutions of 1989 Chris Armbruster Executive Director, Research Network 1989 www.cee-socialscience.net/1989 Research Associate, Max Planck Digital Library, Max Planck Society www.mpdl.mpg.d Abstract With the benefit of hindsight it becomes easier to appraise the historical significance and impact of the European revolutions of 1989. By a privileging a global point of view, it becomes possible to leave behind the prevalent perspective of 1989 as a regional transition of Central Europe only. This essay does not substitute the stultifying regional perspective for a globalist
    [Show full text]
  • The Urban Response to the Rural Land Reform During the Chinese Civil War: 1945-1949
    Illinois Wesleyan University Digital Commons @ IWU Honors Projects History Department 2001 The Urban Response to the Rural Land Reform During the Chinese Civil War: 1945-1949 Elizabeth Grad '01 Illinois Wesleyan University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/history_honproj Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Grad '01, Elizabeth, "The Urban Response to the Rural Land Reform During the Chinese Civil War: 1945-1949" (2001). Honors Projects. 15. https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/history_honproj/15 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Commons @ IWU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this material in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This material has been accepted for inclusion by faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ©Copyright is owned by the author of this document. • THE URBAN RESPONSE TO THE RURAL LAND REFORM MOVEMENT DURING THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR: 1945-1949 By: Elizabeth Grad • 1 Introduction China's internal condition immediately following the end ofJapanese occupation was complicated and precarious. The conflicting interests ofthe Kuomintang and the Communists were pushing the nation into civil war and pressure from the United States only hastened the collapse ofan already weak: internal structure. The Japanese occupation of China during the war had significant implications and affected the political fortunes of the Kuomintang and the Communists in diverse ways.
    [Show full text]
  • Unravelling the Ukrainian Revolution: “Dignity,” “Fairness,” “Heterarchy,” and the Challenge to Modernity
    Unravelling the Ukrainian Revolution: “Dignity,” “Fairness,” “Heterarchy,” and the Challenge to Modernity Mychailo Wynnyckyj National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Department of Sociology Abstract Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity,” spanning both the 2013-2014 protests in Kyiv’s city center and the mass mobilization of grass-roots resistance against Russian aggression in 2014-2015 and thereafter, manifest new interpretations of ideas and philosophical concepts. In the first part of the article we unravel the meaning of the Ukrainian word hidnist (roughly translated as “dignity”)— a moniker of the revolution whose significance remains underestimated. In the second part we situate Ukraine’s revolution within a broader context of “modernity” and suggest its individualist foundation may be replaced by a form of “personalism”— an ethic that echoes that of Ukraine’s revolutionaries. In the third part of the article, we delve into the substance of the revolution’s agenda: its protagonists’ promise to build a non-hierarchical community of “fairness” (spravedlyvist). In the fourth and final section, the main argument of the article is summarized, namely: that the shift from individualism to personalism in social interaction and the transition from hierarchy to heterarchy in power relations, particularly with respect to institutionalizing “fairness,” embodied in the various structures and organizations formed during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, may have been reflective of more comprehensive trends in ideational change affecting European (Western) civilization. KeyWords: Ukraine, Revolution, Euromaidan, personalism, dignity, heterarchy. In late 2013 and early 2014, over multiple weeks in sub-zero temperatures, hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kyiv (and in other cities across Ukraine), displayed amazing levels of civic activism, self-organization, and spontaneous cooperation while demonstrating their individual and collective displeasure with their rulers.
    [Show full text]