Crane Brinton presents a comparative anatomical study of four successful modern revolutions: the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution. The author sets aside political bias and moralizing to approach the subject with scientific detachment, treating revolutions much like fevers that follow a predictable pathological course.
The study begins by examining the old regimes, noting that revolutions do not typically erupt in backward or economically depressed societies. Instead, they occur in progressively developing states where the central government is chronically short of money and structurally inefficient. During this prodromal stage, the ruling class grows intellectually and morally divided, losing its self-confidence and failing to make effective use of force. Simultaneously, the intellectuals desert the established order, popularizing a myth of a better world based on nature or ideological necessity.
Following the first overt clashes and the collapse of traditional authority, power shifts to the moderates. These moderate reformers—such as the Presbyterians in England, the merchants in America, the Girondins in France, and the compromisist socialists in Russia—assume control of the legal government. However, they soon find themselves caught between unyielding conservatives and aggressive extremists. Operating under a dual sovereignty, the extremists—such as the Independents, Jacobins, and Bolsheviks—wield tight discipline through parallel institutions like the New Model Army, Jacobin clubs, and soviets.
As the moderates attempt to govern, they falter under the demands of war, economic strain, and their own democratic scruples. They hesitate to suppress radical dissent, thereby paving the way for a coup d'état by the extremists. The accession of the extremists ushers in the crisis stage, marked by reigns of terror and virtue. During this period, the state undergoes a strict ideological purification, mobilizing all resources for defense and enforcing compliance through extreme violence and centralization.
Eventually, the high tension of the terror burns itself out, leading to the Thermidorean reaction. This phase brings a universal exhaustion and a return to moderate, everyday living. Amnesties are granted, the church returns, and people seek pleasure and normality. While the society is never entirely remade, it emerges from the cycle permanently altered in its institutions and ideas, having established a new social and political equilibrium.
