126-411: A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution , particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revolutionary" pertains to movements that would restore the state of affairs, or the principles, that prevailed during a prerevolutionary era. A counter-revolution
252-417: A power struggle between competing interest groups . In such a model, revolutions happen when two or more groups cannot come to terms within the current political system 's normal decision-making process, and when they possess the required resources to employ force in pursuit of their goals. The second-generation theorists regarded the development of revolutionary situations as a two-step process: "First,
378-543: A quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag had to be present in order to formally call up the bill. Leaving nothing to chance, Reichstag President Hermann Göring did not count the KPD seats for purposes of obtaining the required quorum. This led historian Richard J. Evans to contend that the Enabling Act had been passed in a manner contrary to law. The Nazis did not need to count the KPD deputies for purposes of getting
504-560: A soviet republic in Germany. After the defeat of the uprising, and the murder of KPD leaders Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Liebknecht and Leo Jogiches , the party temporarily steered a more moderate, parliamentarian course under the leadership of Paul Levi . During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the national Reichstag and in state parliaments. Under
630-612: A German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. The following day, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree . It used the provisions of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to suspend key civil liberties, ostensibly to deal with Communist acts of violence. Repression began within hours of the fire, when police arrested dozens of communists. Although Hitler could have formally banned
756-702: A Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating from the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another party claiming the KPD name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by several hard line communists who had been expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker . The KPD (Bolshevik) split off from
882-501: A change in social and political institutions. Jeff Goodwin offers two definitions. First, a broad one, including "any and all instances in which a state or a political regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular movement in an irregular, extraconstitutional or violent fashion". Second, a narrow one, in which "revolutions entail not only mass mobilization and regime change , but also more or less rapid and fundamental social, economic or cultural change, during or soon after
1008-495: A counter-revolutionary victory by the 'better citizens' over 'the mob' need not involve violence but can be attained through the enactment of just legislation. Revolution In political science , a revolution ( Latin : revolutio , 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone , all revolutions contain "a common set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to change
1134-667: A coup d'état in Prussia , the KPD issued a call for all workers to support a general strike under its own leadership, which only resulted in limited local action. The statement was added with a short call on the GGTUF , the SPD and the General Federation of Free Employees to join in, but the KPD's belief that social democrats would have to be 'coerced by the masses' meant that their leaders were never approached directly. The KPD tried
1260-465: A focus on political behavior "from below", but also a recognition of moments where "high and low" are relativized, subverted, or made irrelevant, and where the micro and macro levels fuse together in critical conjunctions. Economist Douglass North raised a note of caution about revolutionary change, how it "is never as revolutionary as its rhetoric would have us believe". While the "formal rules" of laws and constitutions can be changed virtually overnight,
1386-620: A forest [of social democrats]". Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy. For example, the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of "social fascism", and both Leon Trotsky from the Comintern 's Left Opposition and August Thalheimer of the Right Opposition continued to argue for a united front. Critics believed that the KPD's sectarianism scuttled any possibility of
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#17327728751541512-479: A group of brothers, some of whom are behaving justly while others are acting unjustly. When questioned about the optimal resolution, Cleinias suggests that the most effective judge would not necessarily be one who imposes the just to govern over the unjust, whether by force or consent. Instead, he advocates for a judge who facilitates reconciliation by establishing a mutually agreed-upon set of laws designed to maintain harmony among them. This implies Cleinias' belief that
1638-584: A new German realm by Prussia , chancellor Otto von Bismarck used policies favored by Socialists (such as state-sponsored healthcare) to undercut the opponents of the monarchy and protect it against revolution. Not long after the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and signing of the Treaty of Versailles , a failed coup d'état known as the Kapp Putsch was instigated by various elements opposed to
1764-412: A pattern of events arises that somehow marks a break or change from previous patterns. This change then affects some critical variable—the cognitive state of the masses, the equilibrium of the system, or the magnitude of conflict and resource control of competing interest groups. If the effect on the critical variable is of sufficient magnitude, a potentially revolutionary situation occurs." Once this point
1890-833: A recent military defeat, or economic chaos, or an affront to national pride and identity, or pervasive repression and corruption. Revolutions typically trigger counter-revolutions which seek to halt revolutionary momentum, or to reverse the course of an ongoing revolutionary transformation. Notable revolutions in recent centuries include the American Revolution (1775–1783), French Revolution (1789–1799), Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), Spanish American wars of independence (1808–1826), Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Xinhai Revolution in China in 1911, Revolutions of 1917–1923 in Europe (including
2016-458: A result of the 2011 Egyptian revolution , counter revolutionary techniques included: power outages by remnants of his regime, police allegedly refused to serve citizens and oil was thrown into the desert to halt gas station services. On 1 February 2012, the biggest tragedy in Egyptian football resulted in the deaths of 72 Al Ahly fans. It happened after exactly a year when Mubarak announced in
2142-705: A result, the KPD under Thälmann had a hostile, confrontational attitude toward the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as defenders of the capitalist status quo. Their perception was reinforced by the explicit anti-Communist views of numerous SPD politicians in the German and Prussian governments, including Chancellor Hermann Müller , Interior Minister Carl Severing , Prussian Minister President Otto Braun , Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski and Berlin Police chief Karl Zörgiebel. In
2268-527: A speech that there would be chaos if he stepped down, the very same day when armed thugs attacked protestors of the 2011 revolution. Many photographic and footage evidence also show that police and security forces in the stadium were unwilling to respond to the riot. Many argue that the riot was planned as a revenge against Ultras Ahlawy taking part in the 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak and their constant anti-governmental chants in matches. Finally on 3 July 2013, Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi overthrew
2394-523: A splinter Communist Party Opposition in 1928. The leadership of the German Communist party had requested that Moscow send Leon Trotsky to Germany to direct the 1923 insurrection . However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members. During the years of
2520-463: A state can be considered morally superior when the virtuous citizens triumph over the unruly masses and the less virtuous classes. He asserts, "the state in which the better citizens win a victory over the mob and over the inferior classes may be truly said to be better than itself, and may be justly praised." However, the Athenian presents a hypothetical scenario wherein someone must pass judgment on
2646-577: A super-majority of two-thirds of those deputies present and voting. However, Evans argued, not counting the KPD deputies for purposes of a quorum amounted to "refusing to recognize their existence", and was thus "an illegal act". The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. The most senior KPD leaders were Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht , who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout
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#17327728751542772-581: A united front with the SPD against the rising power of the National Socialists . Thälmann claimed that the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected and actively worked against the KPD's efforts to form a united front against fascism. The party itself, however, continued to publicly clash with the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation well into 1932. A brawl between Nazi and KPD lawmakers in
2898-440: Is opposition or resistance to a revolutionary movement. It can refer to attempts to defeat a revolutionary movement before it takes power, as well as attempts to restore the old regime after a successful revolution. Defunct Defunct The word "counter-revolutionary" originally referred to thinkers who opposed themselves to the 1789 French Revolution , such as Joseph de Maistre , Louis de Bonald or, later, Charles Maurras ,
3024-599: Is reached, a negative incident (a war, a riot, a bad harvest) that in the past might not have been enough to trigger a revolt, will now be enough. However, if authorities are cognizant of the danger, they can still prevent revolution through reform or repression. In his influential 1938 book The Anatomy of Revolution , historian Crane Brinton established a convention by choosing four major political revolutions— England (1642) , Thirteen Colonies of America (1775) , France (1789) , and Russia (1917) —for comparative study. He outlined what he called their "uniformities", although
3150-607: The 1928 Reichstag election , the KPD with 54 seats remained one of the largest and most politically potent Communist parties in Europe. Led now by Thälmann, who supported a close alignment with the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). At the time, the Comintern held the position that social democracy was social fascism and that it frustrated rather than helped the proletariat . As
3276-451: The 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum , an unsuccessful attempt launched by the far-right Stahlhelm to bring down the social democrat state government of Prussia by means of a plebiscite; the KPD referred to some within the SA as "working people's comrades" during this campaign. The KPD maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote. It gained 100 deputies in
3402-455: The American Revolution deviated somewhat from the pattern. As a result, most later comparative studies of revolution substituted China (1949) in their lists, but they continued Brinton's practice of focusing on four. In subsequent decades, scholars began to classify hundreds of other events as revolutions (see List of revolutions and rebellions ). Their expanded notion of revolution engendered new approaches and explanations. The theories of
3528-596: The FARC , and other left-wing guerrilla movements. Some counter-revolutionaries are former revolutionaries who supported the initial overthrow of the previous regime, but came to differ with those who ultimately came to power after the revolution. For example, some of the Contras originally fought with the Sandinistas to overthrow Anastasio Somoza , and some of those who oppose Castro also opposed Batista . During
3654-589: The German Communist Party (DKP). Following German reunification many DKP members joined the new Party of Democratic Socialism , formed out of the remains of the SED. In 1968, another self-described successor to the KPD was formed, the Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (KPD/ML), which followed Maoist and later Hoxhaist ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with
3780-629: The German Revolution of 1918–1919 , were also counter-revolutionaries. The Bolshevik government tried to build an anti-revolutionary image for the Green armies composed of peasant rebels. The largest peasant rebellion against Bolshevik rule occurred in 1920–21 in Tambov . General Victoriano Huerta , and later the Felicistas , attempted to thwart the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. In
3906-466: The Landtag of Prussia led to the creation of Antifa – short Antifaschistische Aktion , which the party itself described as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". Thälmann, however, reiterated that there was still a ‘principal fight’ to be led against the SPD and that there would be no ‘unity at all costs’. After Franz von Papen 's government carried out
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4032-563: The November 1932 elections , getting 16% of the vote and coming third. In the presidential election of the same year , its candidate Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%. In this period, while also opposed to the Nazis, the KPD regarded the Nazi Party as a less sophisticated and thus less dangerous fascist party than the SPD, and KPD leader Ernst Thälmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow
4158-587: The Qing dynasty by seizing Beijing in the Manchu Restoration . The anti-communist (and thus counter-revolutionary) Kuomintang party in China used the term "counter-revolutionary" to disparage the communists and other opponents of its regime. Chiang Kai-shek , the Kuomintang party leader, was the chief user of this term. The reason that the nominally conservative Kuomintang used this terminology
4284-523: The Red Front as enemies of the Nazis. Nevertheless, in practice the Nazis supported many of the same ideas as the counterrevolutionary factions and virulently opposed revolutionary Marxism (e.g., using the conservative Freikorps to crush Communist uprisings), ostensibly idealising German tradition, folklore, and heroes, such as Frederick the Great . The fact that the Nazis called their 1933 rise to power
4410-682: The Republican motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité . After the French Revolution, anti-clerical policies and the execution of King Louis XVI led to the War in the Vendée. The suppression of this counter-revolution produced what is considered by some historians to be the first modern genocide . Monarchists and Catholics took up arms against the revolutionary French Republic in 1793 after the government asked that 300,000 men be conscripted into
4536-532: The Russian Revolution and German Revolution ), Chinese Communist Revolution (1927–1949), decolonization of Africa (mid-1950s to 1975), Cuban Revolution in 1959, Iranian Revolution and Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, worldwide Revolutions of 1989 , and Arab Spring in the early 2010s. The French noun revolucion traces back to the 13th century, and the English equivalent "revolution" to
4662-468: The Weimar Republic , the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe and seen as the "leading party" of the communist movement outside of the Soviet Union. The party abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success. A new KPD leadership more favorable to the Soviet Union was elected in 1923. The party's left around Ruth Fischer , Arkadi Maslow and Werner Scholem took leadership of
4788-527: The Weimar Republic . It was led principally by Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz . During the Weimar era, the German Realm became an ideological battlefield between "red" and "white" factions, with the state eventually becoming bifurcated between the conservative Junker nobility which dominated the army and other high offices, including the presidency with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg , and
4914-438: The national revolution showed that they understood the popular hunger for some type of radical change; nonetheless, they understood the equally powerful popular impulse toward stability and continuity, and rejected the parliamentarianism of the Weimar Constitution as merely a first step towards Bolshevism. Thus, for instance, they catered to reactionary tendencies among the German people by propagandistic demonstrations linking
5040-614: The violent Islamic revolution in Afghanistan . At the same time, this definition is strong enough to exclude coups, revolts, civil wars, and rebellions that make no effort to transform institutions or the justification for authority." Goldstone's definition excludes peaceful transitions to democracy through plebiscite or free elections , as occurred in Spain after the death of Francisco Franco , or in Argentina and Chile after
5166-696: The "informal constraints" such as institutional inertia and cultural inheritance do not change quickly and thereby slow down the societal transformation. According to North, the tension between formal rules and informal constraints is "typically resolved by some restructuring of the overall constraints—in both directions—to produce a new equilibrium that is far less revolutionary than the rhetoric." Communist Party of Germany Former parties Former parties Former parties The Communist Party of Germany ( German : Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands , pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] ; KPD [ˌkaːpeːˈdeː] )
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5292-490: The "slow revolution" type identified by Tocqueville. Political and socioeconomic revolutions have been studied in many social sciences , particularly sociology , political science and history . Scholars of revolution differentiate four generations of theoretical research on the subject of revolution. Theorists of the first generation, including Gustave Le Bon , Charles A. Ellwood , and Pitirim Sorokin , were mainly descriptive in their approach, and their explanations of
5418-678: The Bourbon government in exile and the Papal States . The revolt, labelled pejoratively by opponents as brigandage , resulted in a bloody civil war that lasted almost ten years. In the Austrian Empire , a revolt took place against Napoleon called the Tyrolean Rebellion in 1809. Led by a Tyrolean innkeeper by the name of Andreas Hofer , 20,000 Tyrolean rebels fought successfully against Napoleon's troops. However, Hofer
5544-617: The Czar, followed by a rural revolution, followed by the Bolshevik coup in November. Katz also cross-classified revolutions as follows: A further dimension to Katz's typology is that revolutions are either against (anti-monarchy, anti-dictatorial, anti-communist, anti-democratic) or for (pro-fascism, pro-communism, pro-nationalism, etc.). In the latter cases, a transition period is generally necessary to decide which direction to take to achieve
5670-605: The East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of active KPDs to at least five (more or less). The Left , formed out of a merger between the PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative in 2007, claims to be the historical successor of the KPD (by way of the PDS). In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of democratic centralism , whereby different tendencies could confront each other and vote on different programmes and candidates that
5796-897: The KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be " fascists ". The KPD was banned in the Weimar Republic one day after the Nazi Party emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933. It maintained an underground organization in Nazi Germany, and the KPD and groups associated with it led the internal resistance to the Nazi regime, with a focus on distributing anti-Nazi literature. The KPD suffered heavy losses between 1933 and 1939, with 30,000 communists executed and 150,000 sent to Nazi concentration camps . According to historian Eric D. Weitz , 60% of German exiles in
5922-639: The KPD in 1924; Ernst Thälmann was allied to this faction and became a member of the politburo and was appointed KPD vice-chairman in January 1924. Stalin engineered the Fischer leadership's removal in August 1925, and installed Thälmann as party chairman. From 1923 to 1928, the KPD broadly followed the united front policy developed in the early 1920s of working with other working class and socialist parties to contest elections, pursue social struggles and fight
6048-541: The KPD in turn began aligning with the Comintern's ultra-left Third Period , under the slogan "Class against class", the KPD turned to viewing the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as its main adversary. The term social fascism was introduced to the German Communist Party shortly after the Hamburg Uprising of 1923 and gradually became ever more influential in the party; by 1929 it
6174-542: The KPD was "outlawed" on the day the Reichstag Fire Decree was issued, and "completely banned" as of 6 March, the day after the election. Shortly after the election, the Nazis pushed through the Enabling Act , which allowed the cabinet–in practice, Hitler–to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag, effectively giving Hitler dictatorial powers. Since the bill was effectively a constitutional amendment ,
6300-568: The KPD, he did not do so right away. Not only was he reluctant to chance a violent uprising, but he believed the KPD could siphon off SPD votes and split the left. However, most judges held the KPD responsible for the fire, and took the line that KPD membership was in and of itself a treasonous act. At the March 1933 election , the KPD elected 81 deputies. However, it was an open secret that they would never be allowed to take up their seats; they were all arrested in short order. For all intents and purposes,
6426-443: The KPD, were killed, 200 injured, and over a thousand people taken into police custody, many of whom were also not involved in the initial KPD rallies. Only 66 of those arrested were charged and 44 convicted. The events of Blutmai deepened the split between the SPD and KPD, the two major left-wing parties of the Weimar Republic, making a united stand against the growing strength of far-right parties more difficult. Tensions soured,
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#17327728751546552-605: The KPD. The Revolutionary Shop Stewards , a network of dissenting socialist trade unionists centered in Berlin, were also invited to the congress, but ultimately did not join the KPD because they deemed the founding congress too syndicalist -leaning. The Party's first Central Committee consisted of Hermann Duncker , Käte Duncker , Hugo Eberlein , Paul Frölich , Leo Jogiches , Paul Lange , Paul Levi , Karl Liebknecht , Rosa Luxemburg , Ernst Meyer , Wilhelm Pieck , and August Thalheimer . There were seven main reports given at
6678-428: The Kuomintang. Chiang showed extreme rage when he was called a warlord, because of its negative, feudal connotations. Chiang also crushed and dominated the merchants of Shanghai in 1927, seizing loans from them, with the threats of death or exile. Rich merchants , industrialists , and entrepreneurs were arrested by Chiang, who accused them of being "counter-revolutionary", and Chiang held them until they gave money to
6804-401: The Kuomintang. Chiang's arrests targeted rich millionaires, accusing them of communism and counter-revolutionary activities. Chiang also enforced an anti-Japanese boycott, sending his agents to sack the shops of those who sold Japanese made items and fining them. He also disregarded the internationally protected International Settlement, putting cages on its borders in which he threatened to place
6930-579: The Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure. A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937–1938 and executed, among them Hugo Eberlein , Heinz Neumann , Hermann Remmele , Hans Kippenberger , Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert , or sent to the gulag , like Margarete Buber-Neumann . Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim and Erich Mielke (later
7056-533: The Nazi state to the traditional Reich ("realm" or "empire") by referring to it informally as the "Drittes Reich" ("Third Realm"), implying a specious continuity between it and the historic German entities appealing to German reactionaries: the Holy Roman Empire (the "First Realm") and the German Empire (the "Second Realm"). (See also reactionary modernism .) Many historians have held that
7182-534: The PDS subsequently merged with the SPD splinter faction WASG to form Die Linke . Before the First World War the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of
7308-455: The Polity data series—which evaluates the degree of democratic or autocratic authority in a state's governing institutions based on the openness of executive recruitment, constraints on executive authority, and political competition—is inadequate because it measures democratization, not revolution, and doesn't account for regimes which come to power by revolution but fail to change the structure of
7434-525: The Republican military in the levée en masse . The Vendeans also rose up against Napoleon 's attempt to conscript them in 1815. The German Empire , and its predecessors the Holy Roman Empire and German Confederation , operated under counterrevolutionary principles, with these monarchical federations crushing attempted uprisings in, for example, 1848 . After the 1867 – 71 creation of
7560-617: The Republican side, the acts of the Communist Party of Spain against the rural collectives are also sometimes considered counter-revolutionary. The Carlist cause began with the First Carlist War in 1833 and continues to the present. The White Army and its supporters who tried to defeat the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution , as well as the German politicians, police, soldiers and Freikorps who crushed
7686-419: The SED to form a small branch in West Berlin , the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin . The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7 percent of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War and the subsequent widespread repression of the far-left soon caused a collapse in the party's support. The reputation of the party had also been damaged by
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#17327728751547812-415: The Soviet Union had been liquidated during the Stalinist terror and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration. The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in
7938-458: The Vendée and of the monarchies that put down the various Revolutions of 1848 . The royalist legitimist counter-revolutionary French movement survives to this day, albeit marginally. It was active during the Révolution nationale of Vichy France , though, which has been considered by René Rémond not as a fascist regime but as a counter-revolutionary regime, whose motto was Travail, Famille, Patrie ("Work, Family, Fatherland"), which replaced
8064-502: The Zentrale. The other group was also elected at the Congress, but was nominated from the districts they represented who represented the wider party. In 1920, the Zentrale (mirroring its Russian counterpart) split itself into two bodies: a Political Bureau ( Politburo ) and an Organization Bureau (Orgburo). Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them. The KPD employed around about 200 full-timers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received
8190-405: The cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo , which overthrew the Parthenopean Republic and allowed the Bourbon dynasty to return to the throne of the Kingdom of Naples . A resurgence of the phenomenon happened during the Napoleon's second Italian campaign in the early 19th century. Another example of counter-revolution was the peasants' rebellion in Southern Italy after the national unification , fomented by
8316-446: The causes and implications of revolution. The initial fourth-generation books and journal articles generally relied on the Polity data series on democratization . Such analyses, like those by A. J. Enterline, Zeev Maoz , and Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, identified a revolution by a significant change in the country's score on Polity's autocracy-to-democracy scale. Since the 2010s, scholars like Jeff Colgan have argued that
8442-455: The conduct of the Red Army during its occupation of eastern Germany , which included looting , political repression, and mass rape . On orders from Joseph Stalin, the Communist deputies to the Parlamentarischer Rat refused to sign West Germany's Basic Law to avoid recognizing the political legitimacy of West Germany. At the 1953 election the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats, never to return. The party
8568-427: The demise of their military juntas . Early scholars often debated the distinction between revolution and civil war. They also questioned whether a revolution is purely political (i.e., concerned with the restructuring of government) or whether "it is an extensive and inclusive social change affecting all the various aspects of the life of a society, including the economic, religious, industrial, and familial as well as
8694-443: The democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi , who was the first president to be elected by the Egyptian people since the proclamation of the republic in 1953. The counter-revolution ended when Al Sisi was sworn as Egypt’s 6th president in June 2014. In the Laws , Plato relates a dialogue between Cleinias of Crete and an unnamed Athenian interlocutor. Part of their discourse touches on counter-revolution. Cleinias posits that
8820-478: The desired form of government. Other types of revolution, created for other typologies, include proletarian or communist revolutions (inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aim to replace capitalism with communism ); failed or abortive revolutions (that are not able to secure power after winning temporary victories or amassing large-scale mobilizations); or violent vs. nonviolent revolutions . The term revolution has also been used to denote great changes outside
8946-513: The dominance of the third generation's theories. The old theories were also dealt a significant blow by a series of revolutionary events that they could not readily explain. The Iranian and Nicaraguan Revolutions of 1979, the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines , and the 1989 Autumn of Nations in Europe, Asia and Africa saw diverse opposition movements topple seemingly powerful regimes amidst popular demonstrations and mass strikes in nonviolent revolutions . For some historians,
9072-578: The entire party would then follow. The leading body of the party was the Congress , meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee , which was made up of people elected at the Congress in two different ways. One group of people was elected directly by the Congress and had to live where the leadership was resident; these members formed
9198-538: The fall of the monarchy, was vehemently opposed to a socialist revolution. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske recruited former right-wing military officers and demobilized veterans and formed various Freikorps and anti-communist paramilitaries to violently suppress all revolutionary activity. During the failed Spartacist uprising in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated
9324-566: The first Bundestag (West German Parliament) elections in 1949. The KPD was banned as extremist in West Germany in 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court . In 1969, some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the German Communist Party (DKP), which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed. In East Germany,
9450-404: The first category. They utilized theories of cognitive psychology and frustration-aggression theory to link the cause of revolution to the state of mind of the masses. While these theorists varied in their approach as to what exactly incited the people to revolt (e.g., modernization, recession, or discrimination), they agreed that the primary cause for revolution was a widespread frustration with
9576-626: The founder of the Action Française monarchist movement. More recently, it has been used in France to describe political movements that reject the legacy of the 1789 Revolution, which historian René Rémond has referred to as légitimistes . Thus, monarchist supporters of the Ancien Régime following the French Revolution were counter-revolutionaries, as were supporters of the War in
9702-607: The founding congress: These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartacist League, but members of the International Communists of Germany also took part in the discussions. Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a revolution in Germany, and attempts to bring down the interim government and create a revolutionary situation continued during 1919 and 1920. Germany's SPD leadership, which had come to power after
9828-772: The head of the Stasi in East Germany), denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD . In East Germany , the Soviet Military Administration in Germany forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946. Although nominally a union of equals, the SED quickly fell under communist domination, and most of
9954-417: The late 14th century. The word was limited then to mean the revolving motion of celestial bodies. "Revolution" in the sense of abrupt change in a social order was first recorded in the mid-15th century. By 1688, the political meaning of the word was familiar enough that the replacement of James II with William III was termed the " Glorious Revolution ". "Revolution" is now employed most often to denote
10080-545: The late 1920s, Mexican Catholics took up arms against the Mexican Federal Government in what became known as the Cristero War . The President of Mexico, Plutarco Elias Calles, was elected in 1924. Calles began carrying out anti-Catholic policies which caused peaceful resistance from Catholics in 1926. The counter-revolution began as a movement of peaceful resistance against the anti-clerical laws. In
10206-646: The lead-up to the 1929 celebration of International Workers' Day , SPD Minister Grzesinski threatened to ban the KPD and its organizations if they acted in defiance of a ban on public gatherings in Berlin ordered by the city's police chief Karl Zörgiebel of the SPD. The attempted banning galvanized the KPD, who responded by exhorting workers to defy the ban and organize peacefully, but to be prepared to strike on May 2 "if Zörgiebel dares to spill workers' blood". The KPD proceeded with May Day marches in Berlin. The Berlin Police responded with an immediate, harsh, and disproportionate crackdown. Often without regard to whether
10332-470: The leadership of Ernst Thälmann from 1925 the party became thoroughly Stalinist and loyal to the leadership of the Soviet Union , and from 1928 it was largely controlled and funded by the Comintern in Moscow. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as " social fascists ";
10458-472: The leftist revolutionaries who attempted several coups in the 1920s and later gained a base in parliament via the Communist Party of Germany , which, being internationalist in nature, opposed the extremist nationalism of the new Nazi Party . The Nazis, by making common cause with the counterrevolutionaries against the Communists, effected a takeover of the German state, at first under the adopted imagery of
10584-406: The likelihood of international disputes. Revolutions have been further examined from an anthropological perspective. Drawing on Victor Turner's writings on ritual and performance, Bjorn Thomassen suggested that revolutions can be understood as "liminal" moments: modern political revolutions very much resemble rituals and can therefore be studied within a process approach. This would imply not only
10710-701: The merchants. The Kuomintang's alliance with the Green Gang allowed it to ignore the borders of the foreign concessions. A similar term also existed in the People's Republic of China , which includes charges such collaborating with foreign forces and inciting revolts against the government and ruling CCP . According to Article 28 of the Chinese constitution , The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; It penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt
10836-540: The mid-19th century Bakumatsu , especially during the Japanese civil war of 1868–1869, the pro-bakufu forces and especially the samurai (and after the period ex-samurai) were left without money since their skills are obsolete, so they banded up with the eastern shogunate led by the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu who wished to drive foreign and especially Western European and American influence against
10962-441: The monarchical era and only later (after the death of Hindenburg) under purely Nazi imagery. The Nazis did not publicly characterise themselves as counterrevolutionaries; they condemned the traditional German forces of conservatism (e.g., Prussian monarchists , Junkers , and Roman Catholic clergy ), for example in the Nazi Party march Die Fahne hoch which labeled them as reactionaries ( Reaktion ) and counted them together with
11088-553: The more recalcitrant members from the SPD side of the merger were pushed out in short order. By the time of the formal formation of the East German state in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party, and developed along lines similar to other Soviet-bloc communist parties. It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in East Berlin , forcing
11214-565: The party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and trade union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time. Through the 1920s, the KPD was racked by internal conflict between radical and moderate factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Joseph Stalin and Grigory Zinoviev in Moscow . Germany
11340-517: The party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern. Under Thälmann's leadership, the party was closely aligned with the Soviet leadership headed by Joseph Stalin ; Thälmann has been described as "the driving force behind Stalinization in the mid to late 1920s" and "Stalin’s right hand in Germany". After winning control from his former leftist allies, he expelled the party's Right Opposition around Heinrich Brandler . After
11466-513: The party was merged, by Soviet decree, with remnants of the Social Democratic Party to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) which ruled East Germany from 1949 until 1989–1990; the merger was opposed by many Social Democrats, many of whom fled to the western zones. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , reformists took over the SED and renamed it the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS); in 2007
11592-445: The periphery of a country; others started with urban insurrection aimed at seizing the country's capital city. Revolutions can be inspired by the rising popularity of certain political ideologies , moral principles, or models of governance such as nationalism , republicanism , egalitarianism , self-determination , human rights , democracy , liberalism , fascism , or socialism . A regime may become vulnerable to revolution due to
11718-424: The persons involved were demonstrators or bystanders, they forcibly and violently dispersed the crowds that formed. As the day progressed, street battles developed between the protestors and the police, who used firearms and armoured cars. The violence lasted until the afternoon of 3 May, mostly in the working-class neighbourhoods of Wedding and Neukölln . An estimated 33 civilians, none of whom were involved with
11844-509: The phenomena of revolutions were usually related to social psychology , such as Le Bon's crowd psychology theory. The second generation sought to develop detailed frameworks, grounded in social behavior theory, to explain why and when revolutions arise. Their work can be divided into three categories: psychological, sociological and political. The writings of Ted Robert Gurr , Ivo K. Feierbrand, Rosalind L. Feierbrand, James A. Geschwender, David C. Schwartz , and Denton E. Morrison fall into
11970-465: The political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization , and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as mass demonstrations , protests, strikes, or violence." Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and varied in their methods, durations and outcomes. Some revolutions started with peasant uprisings or guerrilla warfare on
12096-550: The political sphere. Such revolutions, often labeled social revolutions , are recognized as major transformations in a society's culture, philosophy, or technology, rather than in its political system . Some social revolutions are global in scope, while others are limited to single countries. Commonly cited examples of social revolution are the Industrial Revolution , Scientific Revolution , Commercial Revolution , and Digital Revolution . These revolutions also fit
12222-508: The political". There are numerous typologies of revolution in the social science literature. Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated between: One of the Marxist typologies divides revolutions into: Charles Tilly , a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated between: Mark Katz identified six forms of revolution: These categories are not mutually exclusive; the Russian Revolution of 1917 began with an urban revolution to depose
12348-464: The psychological school, they differed in their definitions of what causes disequilibrium, but agreed that it is a state of severe disequilibrium that is responsible for revolutions. The third group, including writers such as Charles Tilly , Samuel P. Huntington , Peter Ammann , and Arthur L. Stinchcombe , followed a political science path and looked at pluralist theory and interest group conflict theory . Those theories view events as outcomes of
12474-442: The psychological security necessary for autonomous conscience and liberal ideals to become internalized, an integrated part of the 'new men'… regenerated by Wesleyan preaching." The practice of temperance among Methodists, as well as their rejection of gambling , allowed them to eliminate secondary poverty and accumulate capital. Individuals who attended Methodist chapels and Sunday schools "took into industrial and political life
12600-755: The qualities and talents they had developed within Methodism and used them on behalf of the working classes in non-revolutionary ways." The spread of the Methodist Church in the United Kingdom, author and professor Michael Hill states, "filled both a social and an ideological vacuum" in English society, thus "opening up the channels of social and ideological mobility… which worked against the polarization of English society into rigid social classes." The historian Bernard Semmel argues that "Methodism
12726-649: The reception hall of the City Council. Rosa Luxemburg was initially against the setting up of a new party but joined the KPD after her initial hesitation. Apart from the Spartacists, another dissident group of socialists called the International Communists of Germany (IKD), also dissenting members of the Social Democratic party but mainly located in Hamburg , Bremen and Northern Germany , joined
12852-596: The remaining legitimacy of the pro-democratic parties - such as the Social Democrats, the State Party, and the German People's Party - in favor of the anti-democratic parties. They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers. In 1931, the party reported a membership of 200,000. The KPD leadership initially first criticised but then supported
12978-495: The revolutionaries of Emperor Meiji who sought to modernize Japan with the states of Western Europe as Japan's example. The war ended with a small number of casualties, most of whom were the samurai. Years later though, western samurai and imperial modernists then engaged in the deadlier Satsuma Rebellion . In 1917, during the Warlord Era general Zhang Xun attempted to reverse the 1911 Revolution that brought an end to
13104-592: The revolutionary government of Fidel Castro . In the 1980s, the Contra -Revolución rebels fighting to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua . In fact, the Contras received their name precisely because they were counter-revolutionaries. The Black Eagles , the AUC , and other paramilitary movements of Colombia can also be seen as counter-revolutionary. These right-wing groups are opposition to
13230-602: The rise and spread of Methodism in the United Kingdom prevented the development of a revolution there. In addition to preaching the Christian Gospel, John Wesley and his Methodist followers visited those imprisoned, as well as the poor and aged, building hospitals and dispensaries which provided free healthcare for the masses. The sociologist William H. Swatos stated that "Methodist enthusiasm transformed men, summoning them to assert rational control over their own lives, while providing in its system of mutual discipline
13356-458: The rise of a third generation of theories, put forth by writers such as Theda Skocpol , Barrington Moore , Jeffrey Paige, and others expanding on the old Marxist class-conflict approach. They turned their attention to "rural agrarian-state conflicts, state conflicts with autonomous elites, and the impact of interstate economic and military competition on domestic political change." In particular, Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions (1979)
13482-575: The rising right-wing militias. For example, in October 1923 the KPD formed a coalition government with the SPD in the states of Saxony and Thuringia . However, the Reichswehr legally overthrew these governments by force, through a constitutional process called Reichsexekution . In 1926 the KPD worked with the SPD on a referendum to expropriate the German nobility, together mobilising 14.4 million voters. The party's first paramilitary wing
13608-434: The same tactic again after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor but was widely ignored by other organisations and individual workers this time as well. On 27 February, soon after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in
13734-411: The second generation came under criticism for being too limited in geographical scope, and for lacking a means of empirical verification. Also, while second-generation theories may have been capable of explaining a specific revolution, they could not adequately explain why revolutions failed to occur in other societies experiencing very similar circumstances. The criticism of the second generation led to
13860-745: The socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals. The term was widely used during the Cultural Revolution , in which thousands of intellectuals and government officials were denounced as "counter-revolutionaries" by the Red Guards . Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, the term was also used against Lin Biao and the Gang of Four . After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak ’s government as
13986-408: The socio-political situation. The second group, composed of academics such as Chalmers Johnson , Neil Smelser , Bob Jessop , Mark Hart , Edward A. Tiryakian, and Mark Hagopian, drew on the work of Talcott Parsons and the structural-functionalist theory in sociology. They saw society as a system in equilibrium between various resources, demands, and subsystems (political, cultural, etc.). As in
14112-462: The state and society sufficiently to yield a notable difference in the Polity score. Instead, Colgan offered a new data set to single out governments that "transform the existing social, political, and economic relationships of the state by overthrowing or rejecting the principal existing institutions of society." This data set has been employed to make empirically based contributions to the literature on revolution by finding links between revolution and
14238-455: The struggle for state power". Jack Goldstone defines a revolution thusly: "[Revolution is] an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine authorities. This definition is broad enough to encompass events ranging from the relatively peaceful revolutions that toppled communist regimes to
14364-454: The summer of 1926, fighting broke out. The fighters known as Cristeros fought the government due to its suppression of the Church, jailing and execution of priests, formation of a nationalist schismatic church, state atheism , Socialism, Freemasonry and other harsh anti-Catholic policies. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba was conducted by counter-revolutionaries who hoped to overthrow
14490-617: The traditional paradigm of revolutions as class struggle -driven conflicts centered in Europe, and involving a violent state versus its discontented people, was no longer sufficient to account for the multi-class coalitions toppling dictators around the world. Consequently, the study of revolutions began to evolve in three directions. As Goldstone describes it, scholars of revolution: The fourth generation increasingly turned to quantitative techniques when formulating its theories. Political science research moved beyond individual or comparative case studies towards large-N statistical analysis assessing
14616-603: The uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. At its peak, the party had 350–400,000 members in 1920. The party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the much smaller Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches , Paul Levi became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin , Paul Frölich , Hugo Eberlein , Franz Mehring , Julian Marchlewski , August Thalheimer , Wilhelm Pieck and Ernst Meyer . Levi led
14742-569: The war. Left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split. From the split emerged the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League ; the latter formed the core of what would become the KPD. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany. The KPD held its founding congress in Berlin from 30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919, in
14868-413: Was a landmark book of the third generation. Skocpol defined revolution as "rapid, basic transformations of society's state and class structures ... accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below", and she attributed revolutions to "a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving state, elites and the lower classes". In the late 1980s, a new body of academic work started questioning
14994-635: Was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period , an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany , and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956. Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists who had opposed the war, the party joined the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, which sought to establish
15120-527: Was an antirevolutionary movement that succeeded (to the extent that it did) because it was a revolution of a radically different kind" that was capable of effecting social change on a large scale. In Italy, after being conquered by Napoleon's army in the late 18th century, there was a counter-revolution in all the French client republics . The most well-known was the Sanfedismo , a reactionary movement led by
15246-617: Was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany . The decision was upheld in 1957 by the European Commission of Human Rights in Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany . After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership re-founded the party in 1968 as
15372-551: Was being propagated as a theory. The KPD regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany and held that all other parties in the Weimar Republic were "fascist". The Nazis achieved an electoral breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag election . By the early 1930s, the political situation in Weimar Germany was extremely unstable after the onset of the Great Depression . The Depression effectively destroyed
15498-554: Was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern for "indiscipline". Further leadership changes took place in the 1920s. Supporters of the Left or Right Opposition to the Stalinist -controlled Comintern leadership were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler , August Thalheimer and Paul Frölich set up
15624-418: Was that the party had several leftist revolutionary influences in its ideology left over from the party's beginnings. The Kuomintang, and Chiang Kai-shek used the words " feudal " and "counter-revolutionary" as synonyms for evil, and backwardness, and proudly proclaimed themselves to be revolutionary . Chiang called the warlords feudalists, and called for feudalism and counter-revolutionaries to be stamped out by
15750-505: Was the Roter Frontkämpferbund (Alliance of Red Front Fighters), which was founded in 1924 but banned by the governing Social Democrats in 1929. By 1927, the party had 130,000 members, of whom 40,000 had been members in 1920. From 1928 onwards (after Stalin reinstated Thälmann as KPD leader against the majority of the KPD central committee in the wake of an embezzlement scandal involving Thälmann's ally John Wittorf ),
15876-538: Was ultimately betrayed by the Treaty of Schönbrunn , which led to the disbandment of his troops and was captured and executed in 1810. The Spanish Civil War was a counter-revolution. Supporters of Carlism , monarchy, and nationalism (see Falange ) joined forces against the (Second) Spanish Republic in 1936. The counter-revolutionaries saw the Spanish Constitution of 1931 as a revolutionary document that defied Spanish culture, tradition and religion. On
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