Crane Brinton’s Theory Question

The school year has started again and this term we are jumping right into writing our blog posts. In class we have been studying and learning about different revolutions and a man named Crane Brinton who wrote a theory about all revolutions. Brinton wrote this theory in a book in 1938 called the Autonomy of a Revolution where he talked about his studies of four revolution to find similarities between each of them.

: Crane Brinton

He compares the revolutions he researched to a fever because as he said it can be avoided and cured, when and if it occurs because nobody wants a fever.

With all this information about revolutions and Crane Brinton, we had to come up with a question that dove deeper into his theory, This is what I’m going to be talking to you about in this blog post. My question is “Do post-1938 revolutions follow Crane Brinton’s theory about revolutions?” To answer my question I researched 3 different revolutions. The Iranian revolution, the Turkish revolution and the Ukrainian revolution.

These are the four stages of a revolution that each revolution needs to follow.

Stage one (incubation stage)
The government is weak
They are in some sort of financial crisis
There is a huge Class difference
Sense of government injustice( the people feel like they are being wronged by the government)
People that speak and write against the government
Military

Stage two (moderate stage)
At this stage the moderates are in charge
Protests occur
Violence in small scales
Moderates give less violent ideas to solve their problems
Radicals give extreme ideas to solve problems

Stage three (crisis stage)
Radicals gain power
Violence increases dramatically
Spies are used to spy on enemies
Moves against religious institutions

Stage four ( recovery stage)
the violence has stopped
Started to rebuild government the same with small changes
Moderates return to power
Revolution either ends in peace or war.

The first revolution I researched was the Iranian revolution in 1979. It first started in 1978 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spoke out against the western influences from the religious Centre of Iran, Qom (a city in Iran). He spoke out because of “the rigging of elections and other constitutional abuses, neglect of the poor and the sale of oil to Israel.” Iranians were not satisfied with economic success because there weren’t nearly enough jobs for the amount of people.

Job Search

The initial amount of protesters was very small but as army and military forces started firing on these people the protest got bigger and bigger. They were upset because the American lifestyles were imposed as the ideal and it left no room for their culture.

On January 16th 1979, Shah Pahlavi’s(the leader of Iran) fled Iran because prosperity wasn’t enough to keep him in power. The Government that eventually replaced the monarchy was based on Khomeini’s ideas of a “perfect government”. This perfect government consisted of a legislator, a president, and or a prime Minister and the Faqih (supreme ruler) which was Khomeini, the person who started the revolt. Iran’s government looked like other governments but it was different because the Faqih has the power to intervene in the name of Islam and has more power then most monarchs in a monarchy. Crane Brinton’s theory applies to this revolution because the country went through the 4 stages which resulted in a new leader who didn’t change Iran for the better.

This is a picture I made to represent the Iranian Revolution
The second revolution I researched was the recent Turkish revolution. While researching about this revolution I found out that it was actually a coup which means it wasn’t an actual revolution so I’m going to find out the reason why it doesn’t fit Crane Brinton’s theory and what could have made it a revolution. This modern day coup just happened this year on July 15th. Over the past decade, the current president of Turkey, Erdagon, has gained full control over the educational, judicial, police and military structures in Turkey. He has converted the education system into a religious institution, taken away freedom of speech, press and democratic protests as well as taken control of all media.

This is a picture I made to represent the Turkish coup

The Government and judicial workers felt dissatisfied with the lack of rights so they tried to overthrow the government by starting a coup. The reason that this coup didn’t become a revolution is because the government took back control at what would have been stage 3 of Crane Brinton’s theory. These coups have been an ongoing rivalry between citizens and the government in Turkey from the past 40 years. This is an ongoing loop from stage 1 to stage 3, never reaching stage 4(the recovery stage) of the theory, as long as the government continues to not address the tension and continues to narrow down the opportunity of rights and freedom then the violence will continue to get more drastic each time the people revolt.

The third revolution is the Ukrainian revolution which took place in 2014. The president, Yanukovych abused his power, violated the human rights of people, and was involved in government corruption. In February 2014, over a course of five days, there were violent protests and riots against the government which resulted in Yanukovych and many high government people fleeing the country. Following the ousting of the president, there were changes made in the political and social system to bring back the constitution that was in place between 2004 and 2010 prior to Yanukovych.

Human Rights

This is a great example of his theory because it consists of each stage of a revolution. Starting with the people who want a change in stage one, protests and civil unrest in stage two, in stage three they drove the ruler out of the country and in stage 4 they rebuilt the government back to the democratic government that was in place prior to Yanukovych being in power.

I found this research very interesting because even years after the revolutions that Crane Brinton studied, modern revolutions and coups still follow his theory. In the Turkish coup, you could see how it didn’t quite reach the 4th stage which would make it a true revolution because the government stayed in power but there may be a year when the full revolution takes place.

I would enjoy researching more revolutions in the future to see if more modern day revolutions apply this theory.