Word: historians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...revolutions are unique, for roughly the same reasons that, as Tolstoy said, all unhappy families are unhappy in different ways. In The Anatomy of Revolution, the late Crane Brinton, the Harvard historian, attempted to formulate the stages of revolution. First, in Brinton's model, comes the euphoric phase of good feeling, when expectations and perfectionist rhetoric run high. Soon the practical tasks of governing split moderates and radicals. In the second stage, extremists rise and consolidate their power. Next comes the Terror, when the regime desperately tries to accomplish revolutionary goals no matter what the cost in blood. This...
...Historian Walter Laqueur warns against rigid analogies. If anything, says Laqueur, "you should compare Iran not with France, not with Russia, but with the revolutionary movements in Spain beginning in 1808 against Napoleon, where the revolt was carried out by the crowd, by the mass of people." Princeton University Political Scientist Robert C. Tucker suggests some similarity to the Russian uprising of 1905. Thousands of unarmed striking workers marched on the Czar's Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. Government soldiers fired on the crowd, killing and wounding hundreds. More strikes broke out. Peasant and military groups revolted. Says Tucker...
...copies. The semidocumentary movie made from it, with Narrator Orson Welles rumbling warnings that the world may be coming to an end, is currently among the top ten moneymakers out of Hollywood. Why the success of an apocalyptic message? "Storm warnings, portents, hints of catastrophe haunt our times," says Historian Christopher Lasch. "Impending disaster has become an everyday concern...
...Historian Andrée Conrad sees disastermania in sociological terms. In a recent review of 20 catastrophe books for the quarterly Book Forum, she argued that disaster writing and entertainment are safety valves for hostility toward a complicated culture. Says Conrad: "For one exhilarating and guilt-free moment, the whole teeming supermarket cart of capitalist goodies is sent hurtling down the aisle and crashes through the façade." The films, in her view, also ease the dread of death, since there is comfort in knowing that everyone almost always dies together. Concludes Conrad: "The success of disaster entertainment...
Contemporary events offer a constant workout for the enterprising historian. American installations and American arms have bulked large in the modernization program for Iran in recent decades, but the program has been unexpectedly upset by a social revolution in a religious form. Meanwhile, after thirty years of estrangement, American business is now undertaking to assist modernization in China, where the social revolution of Mao Tse-tung has already occured. Iran and China could hardly be more different, but the American approach to the two places may have certain similarities worth pondering...