History's Locomotives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World

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Yale University Press, 1. jaan 2006 - 360 pages
This masterful comparative history traces the West’s revolutionary tradition and its culmination in the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Unique in breadth and scope, History’s Locomotives offers a new interpretation of the origins and history of socialism as well as the meanings of the Russian Revolution, the rise of the Soviet regime, and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.
History’s Locomotives is the masterwork of an esteemed historian in whom a fine sense of historical particularity never interfered with the ability to see the large picture.
Martin Malia explores religious conflicts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, the revolutions in England, American, and France, and the twentieth-century Russian explosions into revolution. He concludes that twentieth-century revolutions have deep roots in European history and that revolutionary thought and action underwent a process of radicalization from one great revolution to the next. Malia offers an original view of the phenomenon of revolution and a fascinating assessment of its power as a driving force in history.

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Contents

Introduction Delineating the Problem
1
Historic Europe The Medieval Matrix and Its Internal Contradictions 10001400
11
Hussite Bohemia 14151436 From Heresy to ProtoRevolution
37
Lutheran Germany 15171555 The Reformation as SemiRevolution
60
Huguenot France 15591598
98
The Netherlands Revolt 15661609
115
England 164016601688 From Religious to Political Revolution
133
America 17761787 Revolution as Great Good Fortune
161
From the First Modern Revolution to the First Anticipated Revolution 17991848 The Nineteenth Century at a Glance
215
Marxism and the Second International 18481914
240
Red October The Revolution to End All Revolutions
253
Conclusion and Epilogue
279
Revolution Whats in a Name?
287
High Social Science and Staseology
302
Notes
317
Index
343

France 17891799 Revolution as Militant Modernity
178

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About the author (2006)

The late Martin Malia was respected as one of the great historians of Russia. Terence Emmons is professor of history, emeritus, Stanford University.

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