@Finnegan I agree with your point, but I was not saying that "all" revolutions end in tyrrany, only that many do, and that violent revolution as a means of positive change has a poor track record. The reasons for that are not necessarily the ideals of the revolutionaries themselves, who tend to be utopian idealists, but rather the way that a successful insurrection creates a window of political chaos following it that can be exploited by bad actors.
Take the external factors at work in the examples you cite: do you not consider that those enemies chose to attack precisely because the nation was in a state of chaos following the complete removal of its previous power structures? Revolutions aren't wise when you have neighbours who don't like you.
No. I do not. The French Revolution expropriated the old feudal aristocracy and its
Ancien Regime of outdated tithes, tariffs, and fealty to the landed aristocracy that had become a brake on the birth of the new economic, political and technological order. In that sense it was an inevitable historical development. The class that was expropriated- the old feudal aristocracy- understandably reacted unfavourably to developments and attempted counter-revolution. Yes, Prussia may well have opportunistically attacked, but the aristocracy would have attempted to claw back the gains of the revolution in any case.
The Russian Revolution of October 1917 was immediately followed by the invasion of something like fifteen counter-revolutionary White armies intent on strangling the revolution at birth. Vehement and robust defence was necessary if the gains of the revolution were to be defended and it was not to be stillborn.
Nor do I accept that revolutionaries are utopian idealists. There was nothing idealist and utopian about wanting to overthrow centuries of murderously oppressive Czarism, end the slaughter of the Great War and provide ordinary people with decent standards of living and sufficient food to eat.
Regarding neighbours, the great tragedy of the Russian Revolution was that it was the only successful workers revolution in history, but took place in the backward and largely agrarian country of Russia (albeit with highly concentrated centres of industry in St. Petersburg and Moscow). The revolution spread to the most industrially advanced country in Europe at that time, Germany. But the KPD had nothing like the numbers that the Bolshevik Party enjoyed in Russia. Had the German revolution succeeded, we would now be living in a socialist society.
The reasons both the French and Russian revolutions (and any other for that matter) took the course they did are multifarious and highly complex, and are poorly accounted for by claiming they merely produce chaos. But I return to my point that the violence occasioned by the revolutions themselves are simply dwarfed by the violence endured by the pre-revolutionary populations of both countries.
When people inevitably say “ah yes, but look how it turned out” as a means of castigating revolution
per se, I’m reminded of both Germany in 1923, and the words of the Provisional IRA following Thatcher’s narrow escape in the Brighton bombing of 1984- “we only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky for the rest of your life.”
