Word: thermidorean
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Dates: during 1979-1979
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...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 horror often engenders a Thermidorean reaction (named for Thermidor, the month of the French revolutionary calendar in which the reaction occurred), when moderates regain control and the nation begins a period of convalescence. But ahead lies the danger of the fifth stage: the coming of a dictator still fired by some revolutionary zeal, and beyond...
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