States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China

by Theda Skocpol

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. From France in the 1790s to Vietnam in the 1970s, social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. And it develops in depth a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, the author urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.

Genres: History, Politics, Sociology, Political Science, Nonfiction, China, Russia

426 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1979

About the author

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University and the Director of the Scholars Strategy Network. She is a past president of the American Political Science Association.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

This doesn't want a review, more a great sweeping diagram, like Minard's of Napoleon's 1812 campaign, with thick black arrows showing cause and effect, and parallel processes in the three old Regimes under consideration, however in the absence of that, I'll hack out a few words instead.

I was rereading this. I noticed that it was a bit difficult to read with the telly on in the background, the blathering of the television had a singular effect - my eyes would invariably slip down to the bottom right and catch on the final paragraph of the page. The first chapter was harder to digest than the others, but since in principle the author was simply saying that everyone prior to her who had written on the subject simply hadn't thought hard enough about it, I didn't feel that I had missed much. I did feel that she was channelling the spirit and insight of de Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the French Revolution, that no bad thing in my opinion, though had I been on the examining panel I would have asked her why she didn't explicitly address his opinions and explanatory framework, however I wasn't so I didn't and she was awarded her doctoral degree not that I feel she ought to have been failed for not mentioning him, but she does seem to be stepping in his considerable intellectual footsteps
.

Her aim is to drag us away from staring at the trees and get the reader to think about the whole forest for a change. Either this or having violently combined sociology and history into a single glass and knocked back the lot, came to to find herself sitting on the ridge of a faculty roof with a hell of a hangover. Possibly both.

For Skocpol, France, China and Russia in their pre-revolutionary guises were fundamentally similar, despite surface dissimilarities, and crumbled in the face of similar crises. In all three countries she feels a key point often overlooked was the international environment , the old regimes lost prestige and respect because of their inability to match external rivals. Without the undivided support of the dominant classes who made up the officer corps of the army, formed the administration and governed the countryside, they were unable to maintain order while peasant rebellions unleashed social change as she says:
In all three Revolutions, the externally mediated crises combined with internal structural conditions and trends to produce a conjuncture of (1) the incapacitation of the central state machineries of the Old Regimes; (2) widespread rebellions by the lower classes, most crucially peasants; and (3) attempts by mass-mobilising political leaderships to consolidate revolutionary state power. The revolutionary outcome in each instance was a centralised, bureaucratic, and mass-incorporating nation-state with enhanced great-power potential in the international arena. Obstacles to national social change associated with the pre-revolutionary positions of the landed upper class were removed (or greatly curtailed), and new potentials for development were created by the greater state centralisation and mass political incorporation of the New Regimes (p41)

She suggests that Max Weber has more to offer than Marx in understanding these massive revolutions, in that the outcome was in all three cases a dramatic increase in state power, particularly in Russia and China where the conflict with the countryside and the need to develop the revolution from the countryside respectively pulled state power deeper into rural communities than previous governments has aspired to, rather as Heiniken reaches the parts other beers can only dream of, so too a through going social revolution refreshes the whole of society and not just its jabbering mouth parts .

It's a book with a lot to offer and one can read it backwards, as a king, Emperor, empress or queen looking to preserve your personal ancien regime from violent change - top tip avoid quarrels with the dominant class and maintain some thousands of soldiers preferably foreign born with officers whose loyalty you can rely upon to crush committees or parliaments or States-Generals, it probably has less to offer the aspiring revolutionary as she claims to offer no single recipe for revolution stressing instead how differences between the countries shaped outcomes, and one can see how despite Soviet support for the Communists in China how a breech would inevitably develop between the two. I particularly enjoyed the paradoxes that for instance developed between the Jacobins and the countryfolk, I suppose repeated later in revolutionary Russia, with the new guys having to confirm title to what the peasants had seized for themselves, indeed having nothing else to offer that consistency other than blood, toil, and sweat only to find that the countryside was profoundly uninterested in the rest of their political programme thank you very much. Although one key lesson the aspiring social revolutionary can take away is to avoid the peripheries like the plague, work from the gravitational centres of power, not the apparent surface structures of power, but the gravitational centres - were economic and social power is constructed from - in these societies that meant the countryside, that was where people can from, where surpluses were created, unfortunately except in China, this is where people were minimally engaged by the social revolutionaries which created problems eventually downstream once they had all got that far.

As per the title and a little bit of compare and contrast with reform movements in Prussia and Japan. Looks for common causes in social revolutions in France, Russia and China particularly the sharp downturn in popular mood from one of rising expectations to negative ones and failure on the part of existing state structures. Still the book stands I feel not so much on the account of the revolutions in France, Russia and China but more on why they didn't occur in England in the 17th century, or how in Prussia and Japan top down radical social change was accomplished without a breakdown of the state and without a social revolution. Here her ability like a cunning judge in a common law case to distinguish and find significant differences was more convincing particularly in the case of England, while reading than in retrospect while reviewing. In Japan and Prussia the administration was more bureaucratised than in France, Russia or China and so was more united and didn't divide over control over the state in the face of international threats and so pushed through dramatic change. In England the split within the dominant class over executive power in the 1640s and 50s didn't cause social revolution because, in her opinion of the structure of rural England - in France and Russia there were collective peasant institutions, in China there weren't, but the Party acted as an effective substitute for them eventually, once the Party let go of its obsession with controlling the cities through a revolutionary industrial proletariat . In England she argues the peasantry were already dying out while tenant farmers were effectively tied up through the economic power of the gentry landowners, hence social revolutionary movements like the Levellers or the Diggers remained too weak to break the power of the landowners. In Russia the peasants broke the landowners and drove them off the land while the Bolsheviks through an industrial proletariat and control over the railways managed to defeat political rivals they then had to break the peasantry, repeatedly, to achieve complete power largely by reverting to the old Regime practise of hanging and shooting first to build an army, later under Stalin to release agricultural produce to finance industrialisation. Anyway, a pretty good read, substantial with chewy analysis, nothing flippant or unsubstantial one feels the weakness of the mercantile periphery in all three cases and senses the improbability of building liberal regimes from such autocratic bricks on ancien regime foundations.

As Tocqueville saidThey took over from the old order not only most of its customs, conventions, and modes of thought, but even those ideas which prompted our revolutionaries to destroy it; that, in fact, though nothing was further from their intentions, they used the debris of the old order for building up the new.” or in everyday English - you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Since this is a 1979 book, Skocpol a name I'm happier to type than to say is overly rosy in her view of how egalitarian China was and how central the Peasantry remained as time went on, but then again time makes fools of us all.

[Letitia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My gosh this was heavy and dense but definitely worth it. I read it as an act of intellectual discipline, since I somehow went through undergrad and grad school without anyone ever assigning this to my class. I became very curious about revolutionary patterns and structure in the past few years, and of course this is the tome that all political scientists reference when you start talking about revolution.

It is only dense because of the complexity of the subject. Skocpol's writing is actually clear and as straightforward as she can make it, considering the topic. It is hard to find an academic who is not in love with their own nonsensical tautologies (I'm looking at YOU, Saskia Sassen), but Skocpol is so genuinely brilliant that pretension does not cloud her point.

Brilliance acknowledged, is this the final and definitive work on social revolutions? No, of course not, but even Skocpol herself mentions this in the conclusion. There are certainly gaps, although I would argue that to point them out is nitpicking, since her research is thorough. There are also counter arguments and modern examples of changing societies that she has not dealt with, and one element that I find lacking is the question of FAILED social revolutions and why they did NOT take in the way that France's, Russia's, and China's did. She never quite explores this.

What she does do is lay out a framework that was innovative and new when she wrote it. It explores the administrative and military breakdown (usually brought on by external powers) that must precede an empowering of the lowest economic levels of peasantry. She uses a classic Marxist model but does not rely on the pure rhetoric of proletariat v. bourgeoisie. Rather she speculates on the role that multiple levels of class play in a social revolution in an agrarian society, identifying gaps between land-owning and serf peasants, as well as between gentry, nobility, and actual heads of state. This is effectively done, and counters the narrative of a pure and powerful rising of the people despite all systems being set against them.

I am still not quite satisfied in my quest, which is to identify the base and broad conditions which must preface the rise of structural political change. My theory is that it is a trinity of a literate populace, broad repression of rights, and economic hardship. Still trying to find out if anyone has written on that already and if such a model has a specific term of reference.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Üç yıldız mı, yoksa dört yıldız mı versem bilemediğim kitaplardan. Skocpol Barrington Moore isimli ABD'li teorisyenin öğrencilerinden. Amerikan tedrisatından geçmiş tüm akademisyenler gibi, kafasında şablonlar var. Bunlardan birincisi şu biçimde: Dünyada bir demokratik rejimler var, bir de diktatörlükler. Avrupalı-Amerikan rejimler demokrasi, Çin-Sovyet rejimleri diktatörlük.

Daha baştan bir yanılgı. Batı rejimleri kimin için diktatörlük, kimin için demokrasi? Batı rejimlerinde burjuvazinin çıkarları lehine alınan kararların, işçi sınıfı ve küçük-burjuva sınıfları lehine alınan kararlara oranı nedir? Batı demokrasilerinde parlamentolarda, medyada ya da kamusal etkinliklerdeki karar alma ve görüş bildirme süreçlerine burjuvazinin temsilcilerinin katılımı ile, işçi sınıfının temsilcilerinin katılımının oranı nasıldır? Bunları çözümlersek, Lenin'in dediğine geliriz: Baştan aşağı demokratik, ya da baştan aşağı diktatörlük olan bir rejim yok. Bir sınıf için demokrasi, diğerinin diktatörlüğü. Sovyet Anayasası'nın oluşturulması sırasında yapılan türden bir fikir alışverişi, kurulan halk meclisleri acaba Skocpol'ün demokrasi saydığı ülkelerin birinde gerçekleşti mi? Bir yıldız buradan gidiyor.

İkinci mantıksızlık: Skocpol kafayı yapısalcılığa takmış, ideolojinin, iradi olanın, öncülüğün hiçbir rolü olmadığını düşünüyor. Yani bir nevi, tarihte ne olmuşsa ancak öyle olabileceği için olmuş. Ne Bolşeviklerin izlediği siyaset, ne Çin komünistlerinin strateji ve taktikleri tarihsel olarak belirleyici değil. O toplumlarda ancak öylesi yapılabilirmiş. Ama Amerikalı boş durur mu, Stalin'e gelince bütün tarih anlayışını değiştiriveriyor: SBKP içindeki mücadele ve 1935 yılından başlayarak muhaliflerin tasfiyesi yapısal değilmiş, "Stalin'in muhaliflerini bertaraf edip tek başına iktidar olma arzusunun sonucuymuş." E oldu mu şimdi, hani tarihsel olaylarda arzular, tek tek bireylerin kararları, hırsları rol oynamıyordu?

Ancak kitap iyi araştırılmış. Üç önemli devrime dair genel bilgileri edinmek isteyenler için derli toplu bir anlatım. Ezen ve ezilen sınıfların durumu nasıldı, tarihsel gelişimleri nasıl oldu? Devrimlerin gerçekleştiği ülkelerin devletleri nasıl çıkmazlar yaşadılar, bunları anlamak için, eleştirel olmak kaydıyla yararlı. Ancak gerek devrim sonrası Sovyetler, gerekse de Çin halk cumhuriyetine ilişkin anlatımlarına çok da güvenmemek gerek. Tümü de ABD kaynaklı, hepsi de soğuk savaşın ideolojik yüküyle dolu kaynaklara yaslanılarak sonuçlar çıkarılmış. Güvenilir bulmadım.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only interesting if you are into social revolutions, specifically France, China and Russia. Long, hard to read. Adopts comparative approach to explaining social revolutions (int'l military threat, domestic crisis, etc.). Also analyses Prussia, England and Japan as case studies where social revolution did not occur.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

**Read for my 2022 political sociology comprehensive exams**

I definitely didn't read this book at a good time, and felt like I was hardly taking in any information. She provided a lot of historical background but so little of it stuck. There were some parts that didn't feel fully explained enough but that could just have been me too. It's a pretty big tasks to take, examining three major revolutions and seeing their comparisons and differences. Ultimately she disagreed with Marx's theory on revolutions, and I disagree with her, at least a little. Marx did not perfectly predict how proletarian revolutions would come about, but his theory of how revolutions occur, through class conflict, remains sound.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Structuralism!

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have some weird background with this book. My first job out of grad school was for a nonprofit that the author started, dedicated to getting social scientists (like herself) to more effectively engage with the policy process. The nonprofit did what they do and my job, which involved trying to hammer into the heads of social scientists that they couldn’t just drop their papers into the laps of elected representatives and expect said politicians to act on the papers’ implications, ended after about ten months. Theda, as they called her in the office, didn’t do much with the day to day but it was understood she was the source of power. We were citizens of the Skocpolis. I only met her briefly. I sometimes wonder if our manager, knowing my socialist leanings and being a somewhat nervous type, thought it wouldn’t be a great idea, the grand old lady of liberal social science, used to decades of Harvard deference, and the red rando who didn’t always know or care about social pecking orders, being in too close proximity…

Anyway! Skocpol was not, in my very limited experience, the compulsive left-puncher that various others trying for influence in the Democratic Party (technically, the group was nonpartisan, but Republicans have their own ways of leveraging their, errrm, thinkers) often turn into. But in this, the monograph that made her reputation in that year of years 1979, she threw ‘bows left and right and mostly left in her effort to define revolution. What makes revolutions? Why do they happen when they do?

Skocpol, she informs us, is no “voluntarist.” It’s structural facets of historical-sociological situations that lead to revolutions! Funny- this is back before Marxists slid into their contemporary reputation as being arch-determinists. Skocpol dings Marxists for attributing too much to the will of revolutionaries, and also for reducing what makes revolution possible to class structure. Class is important! She demurs. But before we get to the “but,” she has to take down her old cohort, the modernization theorists who were well past their expiration date by the late seventies but holding on, as old academics too. You can’t explain revolutions as some automatic process that happens when institutions are insufficiently “modern” for conditions or don’t match public values, or personality types or whatever structural-functionalist voodoo the old modernization guys thought they could do.

“Bringing the state back in” – Skocpol started doing that in the late seventies, and History is such a slow academic field we were still acting like it was a big new deal when I was in grad school thirty years later! It’s actually state structures, and the international scenes in which they are situated, that are what people have been missing about revolutions. Especially Marxists, who “reductively” (shouldn’t “reducing” the chaos of circumstance and making a clear through line be a good thing? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?) dismiss the state as the “organizing committee of the ruling class.” Not so, Skocpol tells us! The state is autonomous! And we need to treat it as such not only to understand how revolutions arose in France, Russia, and China, but also the courses they took towards tyranny etc.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been on organizing committees. The idea that Marx was trying to say that states acting as organizing committees of a class means that their interest and actions could be reduced to what the class they represented wanted or what was best for that class or even just basic ideas of means-end rationality flies in the face of the nature of committees, organizing and otherwise. Yes, states don’t act straightforwardly in class interest, but they still act in class interest. It’s just that circumstances make things less than straightforward, much of the time.

So, it’s something of a straw-Marx and, to a lesser extent because some of them were class reductionists or whatever, straw-Marxists, that Skocpol beats on, here. To her credit, Skocpol does not ignore the class situation in her three case studies. She means it when she says class struggle is a part of these situations. But this book’s reputation rests on an analysis of state policies. The funny thing is… that seems more like a job for history, with its eyes for incident and contingency, than for sociology and political science, even historical sociology. The actions of the state actually seem more incidental than structural, down to some “autonomous” nature of the state that can be turned into a general category of analysis which we can “bring back in” anywhere. But this is social science, liberal social science at that, and ideal types are the name of the game.

Among other things, all three old regimes — the Bourbons, the Romanovs, and in their different ways the old Manchu regime and the Koumintang that followed them — Skocpol deals with had deeply stupid and fucked up priorities when it came to personnel decisions, budgeting, more or less every aspect of governance. Wouldn’t… that seem to imply there’s something about these states that got them to make bad, arguably suicidal, choices? Older “neutral” (read, revolution-skeptic) analysts of these things, from Carlyle on, had answers- the welter of incident and a vague pattern of decay, for the smarter ones, some conspiracy (usually led by, who else, the Jews) for the dumber, meaner, more activist ones. Skocpol punts to the nature of states, to protect and propagate themselves, but… for what? For whom? Might we suggest… a certain… class??

Anyway. This is far from the worst analysis (the non-academically-employed rando said to the two dozen randos who read him out of friendship about one of the most prominent social scientists of her time- and one who has done yeoman service holding back the tide of the quants, to boot, good on her). But the idea that this was, pardon the term, revolutionary social science thinking… well, in an academy where the Marxists themselves tend to be less revolutionary you’d like, maybe, but you know what they say about lands and blind people and one eyed people etc etc. ***

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

In States and Social Revolutions Theda Skocpol aims to provide a new investigation into the revolutions of France, Russia, and China through a comparative analysis. As well, Skocpol defines these three events as social revolutions, which are "rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures; and they are accompanied…by class-based revolts from below.” Importantly, Skocpol highlights transnational and world-historical relationships that previous theories overlooked. The state is also a large focus of the book, allowing it agency rather than the state being only "arena in which conflicts…are fought out.”
Skocpol divides her book into three sections. The introduction outlines and explains current approaches to studying social revolutions. These include social-scientific theories such as Marxist, aggregate-psychological, systems/value consensus, and political-conflict theories, which focus on "conceptual schemes…meant to be applicable across many particular historical instances.” In contrast, she emphasizes understanding the “generalizable logic at work” in the three sets of revolutions. Therefore, the reader should not expect a new theory laid out at the book’s completion. Instead, it is a comparative and structural analysis that aims to address the impact of international and intranational influence on social and state structures.
The second section, containing Chapters 2 and 3, consider the political crises and peasant uprisings in the old regimes. Chapter 2 makes sense of the state and the state's relationship to the dominant class, economy, and foreign pressures prior to the revolutions. Particular importance is paid to the effect that international military pressures played in each state’s crisis. For example, Russia faced repeated failures in World War I, which created internal conflicts. Chapter 3 reverses this analysis by focusing on the peasant classes role. Skocpol punctuates the three examples of completed revolutions with two “negative” examples, Japan’s Meiji Restoration and Prussia’s Reform Movement, where "powerful landed classes were absent, so that the old-regime states were more highly bureaucratic.” In these examples, issues around foreign opposition could be confined and solved within the state. The third section analyzes the specific impacts of the social revolutions against the countries' specific structural backgrounds. The specific aspects of each old regime impact the development of the new regime.
Skocpol’s work is most substantial in the equal attention paid to both the state and peasant sides of each social revolution. Her work also provides a new and essential analysis of local and international factors that played a role in the revolutions. However, a look over Skocpol’s bibliography and notes reveal her work to be mainly based on secondary sources, especially in English. It is unreasonable to expect Skocpol to be fluent in three vastly different languages to be able to read various primary sources in those languages. However, such an ability would have provided more nuance to her analysis rather than relying on conclusions drawn by other historians and sociologists.
Skocpol succeeds in providing a detailed comparative analysis of social revolutions in France, Russia, and China. She provides a balanced approach to discussing internal, external, class, and state relationships that impacted each old regime's fall and how each new regime grew out of such factors. Both similarities and differences between the social revolutions receive attention. Skocpol provides examples of where revolutions failed to occur and what conditions differed in these countries. Although her work is primarily based on secondary sources and does not provide a new theory to replace the ones she initially criticizes, this does not detract from the book’s overall argument. This book provides essential insights and perspectives to understanding these social revolutions.

[Zanela]

There is a tendency to divert from common scholarship on revolutions on Skocpol’s end, where instead of discussing revolutions through collective endeavors, the author instead considers particular, consequential moments within such instances. Skocpol is interested in underscoring the value of structures in revolution, analyzing these cases through three levels: first, through a “non-voluntarist structural perspective”; second, through understanding social revolutions as part of the structure of the international scene; and third, that States are “autonomous (though of course conditioned by) socioeconomic interests and structures.”

Essential to Skocpol’s work is her definition of social revolutions. To her, the delineation between a revolution and a rebellion lies in whether social structures have been re engineered and remade. Social revolutions, therefore, occur through rapid changes in social structures supplemented by risings from the bottom. This definition provides a few crucial points worth remembering: first, the social revolution must be of both political and social change, and second, that it must be change administered by those below.

In this work, three countries and their revolutions are studied: France, Russia, and China. Skocpol argues that these three counties, albeit externally different, had underlying similarities, fundamentally grounded. Such revolutions groaned, and eventually collapsed, under the weight of similar exigencies. For one, these three countries operated under institutions and structures with no alterations under colonial leadership and ascendancy. Furthermore, Skocpol asserts that the ‘old regimes’ in these three countries manifested similarities: first, that they were agrarian states marked by political ambiguity and wealth; and second, that they were proto-bureaucratic autocracies burdened by the need to gain on the growing military and economic strength of their neighbors. These given trends, Skocpol argues, factor into a few considerations: first, that they were rendered incapable through external pressures, second, that the lower classes were both empowered and emboldened, and finally, that leadership was mobilized to “consolidate revolutionary state power” (p. 41).

[David Montano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough one to rate in accordance with the very loose schema I've developed in my head after past ratings. Is the book easy to recommend to someone? Not really. Unless you have a deep, deep interest in social science and very specifically in comparative politics this one is going to scare you off from the introduction. Even in the bulk of its material, if a reader hasn't, in at least one point of their lives, had a familiarity with relevant actors and events concerning each social revolution \ States and Social Revolutions won't hold your hand! In fact, since I unfortunately do not have a great grasp on the history of the Chinese Revolution, it felt as though I lost out on some comprehension, I had with the two revolutions I was more familiar with. Not to say Skocpol inadequately describes the historical processes each revolution goes through, it’s just that her attention is elsewhere.

Damn, but it really is a rigorous and well thought out piece of sociological work. While Skocpol is certainly very committed to her structuralist and institutionalist frameworks in explaining the characteristics these states end up with after revolutionary remodeling, overall, the book offers so much more. There is a small but good comparison regarding reform movements in 1848 Germany and 1868 Japan that didn't end up in a revolutionary schism of the state. Skocpol also explains how certain social classes in each state studied acted in their economic interest to affect political change, which isn't a new type of analysis but was expertly considered and provided a cohesive, enjoyable read. The conclusions at the end of "Part I" and "Part II" as well as the end of the book as a whole are the gold standard at bringing everything back into focus while also being succinct. I've seen criticism that the case studies used seem "cherry picked" or that Skocpol's definitions are outdated or misinformed, but I definitely did not see any glaring issues from this first read. (Although, this could be from ignorance) This book definitely lives up to its landmark status and is a great jumping off point for various different academic pursuits.

[Viktor Sidorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main idea of ​​the book is this: the "old order" is collapsing under pressure from outside, peasant revolts finish them off inside, and then revolutions create new strong nation-states. According to the feeling of T. Skocpol, when analyzing peasant structures and revolutions, she “pulled an owl on the globe.” The author is well versed in the structures of the peasantry, but the influence of this very rebellious peasantry on the destruction of the old monarchical order is exaggerated. Little attention has been paid to the external context, and yet it was it that caused the destruction of poorly modernized monarchies.

From the interesting: I liked the author's criticism of classical Marxism. The state is not derived from the ruling class and its interests. The state is an independent actor, while the strongest and its interests may diverge from the interests of the ruling classes. This is especially true in the aggravation of the international situation. The current thesis for 2022, however.

Successful was the analysis of the actions of the revolutionaries in all three states outside the analysis of their ideologies. Rationalism and survival in a revolutionary era becomes more important than utopias and ideals. Slogans are good for mobilizing the masses. I always tell students: Stalin was not a communist. Just look at the rejection of revolutionary art and the return to Empire and neoclassicism. This is simply a consequence of the birth of a new hybrid Stalinist ideology, hopelessly far from the original theory of Marx ...

The book is difficult. Historical sociology for specialists. The level of the text is approximately for graduate students of the history department, sociology or political science

[Can Şarman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skocpol’un Devletler ve Toplumsal Devrimler kitabı tartışmaya açık bir kitap.
Kitabı okumaya başlamadan önce okuduğum yorumlarda, kitabı okurken ve kitabı bitirdiğim şu saatlerde hala bu tartışmalar tam olarak yerine oturmuş değildir.

İlk başta pozitif taraflardan konuşmak isterim.
Meraklısı için Fransız, Rus ve Çin devrimlerini tarihi konjonktürde çok güzel ve akıcı anlatıyor. İlgilenenlere 5nci, 6nci ve 7nci bölümleri okumalarını tavsiye ederim.

Gelelim negatif kısıma….
Skocpol’un ideolojik bakış açısı her sayfada buram buram kokuyor.
Bizler, okuyucu olarak da şunu soruyoruz “iyi de bu devrimler bu kadar ruhsuz ve amaçsız mı?”

Skocpol’a göre toplumsal devrimler, doğal afetlere benzerler. Neden oldu gibi şeylere devlet odaklanmaktansa sürece dayanmalı ve sonrasında yoluna devam etmelidir.

Günümüz dünyasında, özellikle de 2025 Türkiye’sinde bu geçerli bir kavram değildir.
Devletler ve toplumlar, kişilerden oluşur.
Bu kişiler duygusaldır, irrasyoneldir, bazen hareketleri aşırıya kaçar bazende barışçı olarak ilerlerler.

Bu konuları ele almadan ne bir devletin ne de bir toplumsal devrimin incelenemeyeceğini dişünüyorum.

Burada bir örnek vermek isterim.
Maximilien Robespierre, Fransız devriminin en tartışmalı tarihi figürlerinden biridir.
Kendisi idealist bir hukukçudur.
Teröre karşı barış ve demokrasi için çalışmış biri bile olsa dönemin aşırıklarına kurban olmuş birisidir.
Kimileri Terör döneminin başı der, kimileri ise demokrasinin başı der Robespierre için.
Her ikisi de doğrudur.


Ne yazık ki kitap bu konuları ele almıyor…

[Ava · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I was assigned this book for my world history class and I have never been so confused about a book in my entire life. This book is both dense and dry with Skocpol trying to include in depth analyses of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. Did she do a good job of that? No. She assumes the reader already knows a lot about these revolutions, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it’s something that makes it difficult to read if you aren’t fully educated in any of these revolutions. I’m only well versed in the French revolution and not the others.

In addition to the assuming of knowledge, Skocpol starts her book by calling out specific historians like Alexis de-Tocqueville, Eric Wolf, Karl Marx etc. who’ve written about revolutions in the past and proceeding to criticize their analysis and say they’re wrong and essentially she’s right (even before she gets into her argument). I personally don’t like when historians do that. So we were off to a bad start there.

While I have other criticisms, the biggest I have is that this book is boring. I am in undergrad, this book is very difficult to follow. My professor who assigned it even said that he wouldn’t have understood this during his time in grad school. IF THATS THE CASE WHY MAKE YOUR UNDERGRADS READ IT???

Whatever, this book kind of sucks.

[Joseph Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions is a thoroughly well-researched book which offers a truly novel perspective on the French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

It does not receive five stars, however, for two major reasons:
(a) it is not particularly well-written; and
(b) Skocpol's socialist ideals cause her to understate the human cost of - and to overstate the progress inaugurated by - the Chinese Revolution, in particular.

Although the quality of Skocpol's analysis enables the excusal of the former point, the latter point is indefensible.

[Wessel · Rating 3 out of 5]

annoying marxist, 2/5 for her arrogant know-all persistence throughout 280 pages

[Med · Rating 4 out of 5]

بعضی از قسمت هاشو خوندم و خیلی حاهاشو هم نه اما کتاب جالبی هست

[Marin Beal · Rating 3 out of 5]

love that I'm giving a soci classic 3 stars

love even more that I'm not explaining why

email me at my work email if u really care

[Gabe Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I find myself disagreeing with some of Skocpol's conclusions, her analysis is top notch and a fascinating read.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was very interesting but was a very difficult read.

[Francesca Ricci · Rating 5 out of 5]

How much incompetence will a society take from authorities in context of historical setting before revolution? 3 countries compared in a masterful way helps in understanding human nature.

[TR · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comparative-historical analysis of the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions that does a very good job of accounting for the structural differences between each case. The state as a Janus-faced structure dealing with internal and external pressures is a pseudo-theoretical perspective coming directly out of this book. I really enjoyed reading it and expect most academics in sociology, psychology, political science, economics, history and other related fields to find something interesting in it. Similarly, non-academic folks interested in history and revolutions will enjoy this book too.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a structuralist approach to why revolutions happen based on narrative comparing the revolutions in France (1789), Russia (1917) and China (1949). The author's argument is tendentious, but there are good analyses of the three revolutions and the reader gets a lot of insight into the academic debates about these powerful social movements and why they happen.

[Yimin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The endeavour to interpret social transformation in "state-social revolution" framework is remarkable for two points: the use of comparative historical analysis; and the enough attention paid to socio-economic/international contexts, which fundamentally shaped path of revolutions.

[Felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have red this book its good in how revolution affect the society

[bangkit aditya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geez, I think this is the best of her. The true revolution is the one that altered the foundation of social structure.

[Nanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

baca yang versi terjemahan dalam rangka mempelajari studi kasus. kasusnya tiga negara: Perancis, Cina, Rusia. kajiannya historical sociology.

bener gak tuh. dah lama banget. jadi kangen buku ini.

[Sarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I friggin' love Theda Skocpol.

[cait(lin) · Rating 5 out of 5]

changed my view of revolution forever

[Vaughn · Rating 3 out of 5]

holy crap--why can't sociologists write things more concisely?

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very on point! Anyone who is interested in war and/or the development of revolutions must read this book.