The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions.

by Arno J. Mayer

Release Date: 01 January, 2002

Edition: Paperback

Price:

More Info

The thesis is strong, but the argument is weak

Arno Mayer's "The Furies" show the qualities that were present in his two previous works on, respectively, pre-1914 Europe and the Holocaust. They are based on secondary sources, and they clearly articulate a theme that had been percolating through the historiography of their subject. "The Furies" is a comparative history of the French and English revolutions and is divided into five parts. The first deals with "conceptual signposts" such as revolution, counterrevolution, violence, terror, vengeance and religion. The second part is an overview of the process of the terror, the third looks at "metropolitian condescension and rural distrust," the fourth looks at the revolutions' challenges to the bigotry of the established church and the fifth looks at the international context of Napoleon and Stalin.

Why did the Furies arise? Mayer emphasizes such aggravating factors as domestic and foreign counter-revolution, the collapse of the old state, and personal and popular vengenace. There was considerable ideological fanaticism, but it was as much effect as cause of the violence. On Russia he declares "Even in normal times, let alone in a time of troubles, Russia defied governance as a single unit--a single sovereignty--by virtue not only of its sheer expanse but also its bewildering diversity of cultures, its uneven levels of development, its primitive state of transport, and its encumbrance by a torpid peasant world. The rich but refractory endowment of vastness, diversity, and unsimultaneity was at least as burdensome as the enduring deficit of democratic thought and praxis." (233-34)

Although there is much to be said that for that last statment, ultimately this is a disappointing book. A synthesis is rarely more than the sum of its part and Mayer's work suffers from the fact that the literature on French and Russian terror is less sophisticated than work on, say, the Holocaust. Mayer cannot read Russian, and while he can read French he is not an expert on 18th century French history. Much of the book consists of competent, uninspired narrative detailing the course of atrocities (but oddly enough omits the Prairial executions).

There are other conceptual weaknesses. Mayer states (4) that revolutions cannot exist without religious conflict. But the Chinese civil war and revolution cannot really be considered one. His discussion of peasant rebellion in France does not emphasize that much of Peasant France either did not rebel or did support the republic (326-28). He dismisses the American revolution as insufficiently revolutionary (26) on the grounds that it was a "restoration"; but this begs the question of how the American colonies received these glorious institutions in the first place.

The comparative discussion on Napoleon and Stalin is too long (533-701) and much of it consists of padded history. Oddly enough Mayer does not mention Orlando Figes' vicious circle of conscription: the Bolsheviks needed to form an army but economic crisis made them unable to feed it. So mass desertion resulted, requiring further conscription and more strains on the economy. Nor does he mention the arguments of Lars Lih and William G. Rosenberg on the pervasiveness of the economic crisis.

More could have be done to criticize the ideological determinism of the Furet school. More use could have been made of Timothy Tackett's massively documented work on the National Assembly and about their pragmatic, non-philosophe nature. Mayer could have mentioned Barry Shapiro and the moderate attitude of the 1789-91 authorities to rumours of counter-revolutionary plots. He could have noted Emma Rothschild's portrait of a pluralist, liberal Condorcet. On the other hand Mayer does point out that Burke stated before the outbreak of the war that the revolutionaries had no right to expect civilized warfare (121). It is interesting to hear de Tocqueville complain that the philosophes are unfairly denigrated in contemporary France (46). It is important to notes that when Pope Pius VI condemned the Civil Constitution of the clergy he not only criticized its ham-handed nature but the very idea of granting non-Catholics toleration at all (427-30). Mayer does remind us that counter-revolutionaries are more than capable of terror, and one should remember the 20,000 slaughtered by the Russians in one day in Warsaw in 1794, or the 30,000 killed when Britian suppresed an Irish bid for independence in 1798. One should especially remember the 150,000 Haitians who died (30% of the total) resisting Napoleon's attempt to re-establish slavery there. In conclusion there is much to be said for the thesis, but the argument could use more work.

Fascinating study of counter-revolutionary violence

In this book, Mayer studies the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. He seeks to explain why the peoples made these great revolutionary advances, and also why the nobility fought to destroy them and to restore the savage old orders. He studies the role of religion in the counter-revolutions, particularly the Papacy's bitter hostility to the Revolutions, compared to its notorious slap on the wrist for the Nazi counter-revolution. He cites Michelet's famous remark that the numbers killed by the Spanish Inquisition in just one province of Spain far exceeded the number killed by those defending France and its Revolution. The Inquisition was the crowning revelation of Christianity's ingrained violence, its hostility to people who dared to think for themselves, and to think differently from the Church: for six centuries, the leaders of the Catholic Church ordered the killing of millions of men and women for the glory of God. After the French Revolution, the British ruling class organised the foreign counter-revolutionary war. This enormously increased the economic, social and military difficulties faced by the new Government. Later in the war, Napoleon continued France's defence against the counter-revolution, upheld the Revolution's destruction of the nobility's privileges, and extended its gains abroad. After the end of World War One, the rulers of the British, US and French states united in 'helping the Whites overthrow the Bolshevik regime', as Mayer writes. Their intervention prolonged the civil war, enormously increasing the suffering of the Soviet people, and adding to the huge economic, social and military difficulties faced by the new Government. Stalin played a key part in defending the Soviet Union against the Intervention; later, he expanded the Revolution's gains and, after defeating Hitler's counter-revolutionary intervention, extended these gains to the nations of Eastern Europe. However, studies that focus on the violence and terror involved in counter-revolutions, even those studies, like Mayer's, that explain why people defended their countries' Revolutions, tend to overlook those Revolutions' tremendous achievements. Of course, people fought to survive the furies of the counter-revolution, but they also fought to build better societies, and they succeeded.