Revolution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised -- Gil Scott-Heron "As a revolutionary thinker de Sade was in complete opposition to all his contemporaries firstly in his complete and continual denial of a right to property, and secondly in his view of the struggle as being not between the Crown, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy or the clergy, or sectional interests of any of these against one another (the view of all his contemporaries) but of all these more or less united against the proletariat." --The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis de Sade (1935), Geoffrey Gorer "The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it. –— "Catechism of a Revolutionary" (1869) Sergey Nechayev , incipit |

Illustration:Liberty Leading the People (1831, detail) by Eugène Delacroix.
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A revolution (from Late Latin revolutio which means "a turn around") is a significant change that usually occurs in a relatively short period of time. Variously defined revolutions have been happening throughout human history. They vary in terms of numbers of their participants (revolutionaries), means employed by them, duration, motivating ideology and many other aspects. They may result in a socio-political change in the socio-political institutions, or a major change in a culture or economy.
Scholarly debates about what is and what is not a revolution center around several issues. Early study of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from psychological perspective, soon however new theories were offered using explanations for more global events and using works from other social sciences such as sociology and political sciences. Several generations of scholarly thought have generated many competing theories on revolutions, gradually increasing our understanding of this complex phenomenon.
See also
- Social Movements
- Age of Revolution
- Classless society
- Passive revolution
- Political warfare
- Psychological warfare
- Rebellion
- Reformism
- Revolutionary wave
- Right of revolution
- Subversion
- User revolt - A phenomenon related to the modern Internet
Lists of revolutions
- List of revolutions and rebellions
- List of fictional revolutions and coups
- List of uprisings led by women