The logic of outcome

Revolutions reverse political structures to such an extent that political analysis can hardly escape approaching them as an outcome of a specific historical development. The deep political and social transformations in the wake of revolutions on both the domestic and international level largely eclipsed the situational premises of the French Revolution in 1789 or the Russian Revolution in 1917. The focus on the outcomes of revolutions such as the birth of the nation-state, republicanism, or the consolidation of Soviet communism downplays the importance of turmoil, violence, and uncertainty. Similarly, the revolutions of 1989 in eastern Europe and soon after in the collapsing Soviet Union were almost immediately approached from the developmental perspective of ‘transitions to democracy’.

Animated by normative expectations of structure and order, interpretations of radical change in modern political societies have privileged a view on political transformations that was guided by goals of development or political modernisation. In a similar vein, the cataclysmic power of historical revolutions has induced analysts to view their causality as being rooted in something akin to fate: revolutions are not made; they come.