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Las Furias. Violencia y terror en las revoluciones francesa y rusa
El enorme y ambicioso trabajo que Arno J. Mayer publicó hace ya más de una década sobre el papel de la violencia y el terror en la revolución ve ahora la luz en castellano. En esta gran obra Mayer reflexiona acerca de uno de los principales problemas que han ocupado a los historiadores de la contemporaneidad: la relación entre violencia y revolución. Llevando a cabo un brillante análisis comparado de las revoluciones francesa y rusa, explica la violencia en función de la contingencia histórica y centra su atención en el modo en que los protagonistas respondieron a las enormes presiones y a las situaciones imprevistas que surgieron al combinarse la guerra civil con la guerra exterior, un fenómeno que recorre ambas revoluciones. A lo largo de cientos de páginas, Mayer despliega una extraordinaria erudición y un profundo conocimiento de la historia de las ideas, y propone interrogantes y argumentos sobre todas las cuestiones y derivas del fenómeno revolucionario. Una monumental obra maestra llamada a convertirse en un clásico de la Historia contemporánea.
804 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
About the author
Arno J. Mayer
16 books32 followersA specialist in modern Europe, diplomatic history, and the Holocaust, Arno Joseph Mayer was Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University. A self-proclaimed "left dissident Marxist", Mayer's major interests were in modernization theory and what he called "The Thirty Years' Crisis" between 1914 and 1945.
After fleeing the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1940, Mayer became a naturalized citizen of the United States and enlisted in the United States Army. During his time in the Army, he was trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland and was recognized as one of the Ritchie Boys. He served as an intelligence officer and eventually became a morale officer for high-ranking German prisoners of war. He was discharged in 1946. He received his education at the City College of New York, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and Yale University. He was professor at Wesleyan University (1952–53), Brandeis University (1954–58) and Harvard University (1958–61). He taught at Princeton University beginning in 1961.
After fleeing the Nazi conquest of Europe in 1940, Mayer became a naturalized citizen of the United States and enlisted in the United States Army. During his time in the Army, he was trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland and was recognized as one of the Ritchie Boys. He served as an intelligence officer and eventually became a morale officer for high-ranking German prisoners of war. He was discharged in 1946. He received his education at the City College of New York, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and Yale University. He was professor at Wesleyan University (1952–53), Brandeis University (1954–58) and Harvard University (1958–61). He taught at Princeton University beginning in 1961.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 2, 2019
An exciting work of comparative history, this book, as its subtitle tells us, analyses the violence and terror in the two most important revolutions in history: the French 18th Century revolution and the Russian's October one. In part one, Mayer states the conceptual signposts used later on in the book (Revolution, Counterrevolution, Violence, Terror, Vengence, and Religion). Then he proceeds in the remaining four parts, with a comparative study of both revolutions (usually in a first chapter on the French, followed by another one on the Russian) analyzing the events in light of the conceptual signposts of part one: the terror (both "red" and "white"), the peasant resistance (Vendée in France, the Ukraine and Tambov in Russia), the resistance of the churches, and the revolutionary wars (external in France, with Napoleon; internal in Russia, with Stalin). Overall, this is a book filled up with brilliant explanations and insights that, in the apt words of Tariq Ali quoted in the back cover, "is the first serious attempt to answer the revisionist historians, many of whom insist on viewing the past through a prism of present-day requirements". Very impressive.
March 10, 2026
Una pasada.
January 16, 2024
The book asks the following question, "What do the terror campaigns that accompanied the French and Russian Revolutions tell us about the possibility of revolutionary change without, or with minimal bloodshed."
The answer is profoundly dispiriting.
Its other signal virtue is contextualizing the atrocities, which took place in the face of internal struggles for power, civil war, and foreign interventions. Without excusing Stalin or the Jacobins, Mayer illuminates the straits in which they operated.
This is not the only book to read on these topics. It's a necessary one.
The answer is profoundly dispiriting.
Its other signal virtue is contextualizing the atrocities, which took place in the face of internal struggles for power, civil war, and foreign interventions. Without excusing Stalin or the Jacobins, Mayer illuminates the straits in which they operated.
This is not the only book to read on these topics. It's a necessary one.
November 21, 2016
Mayer's attempt at synthesis and comparative studies comes off a little fast and loose with the details and proves unconvincing in many places because of his reliance on secondary literature to prove his points. Things of value: comparison of Gallican and Orthodox Churches in Old Regime France and Russia through their respective revolutions and raising the question of counterrevolution as a necessity of revolution.
April 1, 2025
viva la revolución, más si es roja
January 23, 2026
Started this book over the summer, didn't touch it for most of the fall, and then actually read all of it through late December/January.
This was a really long book. I liked it and it was well worth the read but I think it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter, in large part because each chapter was basically a rearticulation of the same fundamental theme: the reciprocal escalation between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces (the "friend-enemy dissociation"), and the progressive hollowing out of the middle. Each chapter proceeds roughly in chronological order, and covers the same time period, so by the end you have read three parallel accounts of the French and Russian Revolutions, each centered on a different perspective: avenging violence, religious conflict, and the urban-rural divide. The escalating military violence between the nascent revolutionary government and counterrevolutionary political forces is primary of course, but the unfolding of revolutionary violence across the full spectrum of society is only comprehensible when all the other aspects are brought into play.
One of the things that is really hard to get across without reading the book is just how interconnected the cycle of escalation is, across political, military, religious, and ideological dimensions. Wartime exigencies led to the Levee en masse, the Maximum, and the Reign of Terror. The Levee en Masse resulted in peasant revolts against an intrusive, modern, urban revolutionary state. Overstretched nationalist armies conducting counterinsurgency campaigns resulted in religious backlash, leading to outright holy war, leading to state violence against the clergy, and so on, and so forth. The dry accountings of death counts, tortures, beatings, and rapes are so repetitive in this book that your eyes just sort of start to glaze over them.
While the bulk of the book is about the immediate revolutionary periods, from the storming of the Bastille to the Thermidorean Reaction and from the February Revolution to the end of the Russian Civil War, Mayer dedicates a couple hundred pages at the end to analyzing more closely the geopolitical dimensions of revolutions. This part felt somewhat hastily tacked on, in that I felt like there was still a lot to expand on. The process of state formation and institutionalization of the revolutions is something I'm in particularly interested in, so I was a little disappointed in this, but frankly that's its own book.
The gist of it is to discuss how the French Revolution was "externalized" and the Russian Revolution was "internalized." What he means by this is that even after the establishment of a stable revolutionary government, the geopolitical conflicts created by the revolution continued. The French Directory/Consulate/Empire engaged in a practically unceasing string of wars of conquest, spreading the revolution at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the pathologies of the Soviet Union can be attributed in large part to its siege mentality. The human cost and breakneck pace of Soviet industrialization was immense, but only exceeded by the reality of the threat against it.
As Stalin wrote in 1931, almost ten years exactly before Operation Barbarossa "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under."
This was a really long book. I liked it and it was well worth the read but I think it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter, in large part because each chapter was basically a rearticulation of the same fundamental theme: the reciprocal escalation between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces (the "friend-enemy dissociation"), and the progressive hollowing out of the middle. Each chapter proceeds roughly in chronological order, and covers the same time period, so by the end you have read three parallel accounts of the French and Russian Revolutions, each centered on a different perspective: avenging violence, religious conflict, and the urban-rural divide. The escalating military violence between the nascent revolutionary government and counterrevolutionary political forces is primary of course, but the unfolding of revolutionary violence across the full spectrum of society is only comprehensible when all the other aspects are brought into play.
One of the things that is really hard to get across without reading the book is just how interconnected the cycle of escalation is, across political, military, religious, and ideological dimensions. Wartime exigencies led to the Levee en masse, the Maximum, and the Reign of Terror. The Levee en Masse resulted in peasant revolts against an intrusive, modern, urban revolutionary state. Overstretched nationalist armies conducting counterinsurgency campaigns resulted in religious backlash, leading to outright holy war, leading to state violence against the clergy, and so on, and so forth. The dry accountings of death counts, tortures, beatings, and rapes are so repetitive in this book that your eyes just sort of start to glaze over them.
While the bulk of the book is about the immediate revolutionary periods, from the storming of the Bastille to the Thermidorean Reaction and from the February Revolution to the end of the Russian Civil War, Mayer dedicates a couple hundred pages at the end to analyzing more closely the geopolitical dimensions of revolutions. This part felt somewhat hastily tacked on, in that I felt like there was still a lot to expand on. The process of state formation and institutionalization of the revolutions is something I'm in particularly interested in, so I was a little disappointed in this, but frankly that's its own book.
The gist of it is to discuss how the French Revolution was "externalized" and the Russian Revolution was "internalized." What he means by this is that even after the establishment of a stable revolutionary government, the geopolitical conflicts created by the revolution continued. The French Directory/Consulate/Empire engaged in a practically unceasing string of wars of conquest, spreading the revolution at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the pathologies of the Soviet Union can be attributed in large part to its siege mentality. The human cost and breakneck pace of Soviet industrialization was immense, but only exceeded by the reality of the threat against it.
As Stalin wrote in 1931, almost ten years exactly before Operation Barbarossa "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under."
April 6, 2026
Mayer really gets to the heart of revolutionary in this work, examining the dynamics underlying its otherwise mysterious appearance. Mayer begins with a series of conceptual chapters to flesh out the historiographic significance of his subject matter: terror, violence, revolution, religion, and counterrevolution. Mayer adopts a dialectical approach to concepts and events throughout the text, and the following chapters illustrate the depth of his conceptual framework.
In short, he demonstrates that revolution necessarily results from and engenders the state’s loss of a monopoly on violence to various organized groups within society, and that the dynamics of counterrevolution compel revolutionaries to control the violence concomitant with the collapse of sovereignty via terror. He uses the cases of France and Russia to demonstrate this thesis, and they adequately flesh out the concepts he outlined in the introduction while also deepening the reader’s understanding of the French and Russian Revolutions in their domestic and international contexts. Mayer excels as a historian of international relations and is sure to constantly emphasize the centrality of international counterrevolution as a galvanizing factor in revolutionary crises and the wars they inevitably engender. He also deserves credit for refusing to deny religion its place in revolutionary conflicts; his chapters on religion in France and Russia during their respective revolutions is easily one of the most informative.
Such clear-sighed, historically informed scholarship not weighed down by the ideological prejudices of Burke or Hayek is a crucial contribution to our understanding of revolutions in the longue dureé. As Mayer points out in the introduction, conditions of inequality and immiseration today suggest that revolution is not off the table for the 21st century. Understanding the dynamic forces compelling revolutionaries to make such harrowing decisions as war on the monarchies of Europe in 1792 or Red Terror in 1918 seem less daunting and condemnable than inevitable as byproducts of the polarizing dynamics of revolution. This book deserves careful study, as do all of Mayer’s works.
In short, he demonstrates that revolution necessarily results from and engenders the state’s loss of a monopoly on violence to various organized groups within society, and that the dynamics of counterrevolution compel revolutionaries to control the violence concomitant with the collapse of sovereignty via terror. He uses the cases of France and Russia to demonstrate this thesis, and they adequately flesh out the concepts he outlined in the introduction while also deepening the reader’s understanding of the French and Russian Revolutions in their domestic and international contexts. Mayer excels as a historian of international relations and is sure to constantly emphasize the centrality of international counterrevolution as a galvanizing factor in revolutionary crises and the wars they inevitably engender. He also deserves credit for refusing to deny religion its place in revolutionary conflicts; his chapters on religion in France and Russia during their respective revolutions is easily one of the most informative.
Such clear-sighed, historically informed scholarship not weighed down by the ideological prejudices of Burke or Hayek is a crucial contribution to our understanding of revolutions in the longue dureé. As Mayer points out in the introduction, conditions of inequality and immiseration today suggest that revolution is not off the table for the 21st century. Understanding the dynamic forces compelling revolutionaries to make such harrowing decisions as war on the monarchies of Europe in 1792 or Red Terror in 1918 seem less daunting and condemnable than inevitable as byproducts of the polarizing dynamics of revolution. This book deserves careful study, as do all of Mayer’s works.
February 12, 2018
Great book highlighting similarities between French and Russian revolutions. Also discusses requirements for a revolution and why smaller revolutions ultimately failed.
July 26, 2024
Un super bouquin.
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September 9, 2024"If you solve the French Revolution, you solve the history of Capitalism and European politics of the last 200 years" - Sean Lawrence
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May 23, 2026essential-history-stories tragedy-resilience-literature-suffering
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews