1917 war ein bedeutendes Jahr des historischen Umbruchs im Weltmaßstab, in dem der Grundstein für prägende Strukturen des 20. Jahrhunderts gelegt wurde. Den Zeitgenossen waren diese globalen Zusammenhänge bewusst; doch in der auf nationale Belange beschränkten Geschichtswissenschaft spielten sie jahrzehntelang kaum eine Rolle. Dieser Band vereint neue Forschungen, die die transnationalen Verbindungen der unzähligen Aufstände, Rebellionen und Revolutionen sowie der gewaltsamen Reaktionen darauf in den Jahren zwischen 1917 und 1920 in allen Weltteilen aufzeigen.

Stefan Rinke ist Professor für Geschichte Lateinamerikas an der FU Berlin. Michael Wildt ist Professor für Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert mit Schwerpunkt Nationalsozialismus an der HU Berlin.

Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: An Introduction Stefan Rinke and Michael Wildt Revolution is a concept of modernity. As Reinhart Koselleck informs us, "revolution" in the pre-modern era meant "recurring crisis". In keeping with the times, Copernicus thus called his book on the movement of the stars, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. The North American and especially the French Revolution forged a new understanding of the term. Since then, revolution has marked a break in the continuity of history, a political and social upheaval and reorganization of social relations, and a radical opening of the historical horizon. At the same time, it is associated with the notion of progress toward a better world. "Revolutions are the locomotives of history", Karl Marx remarked, aptly formulating this historico-philosophical narrative framework. But who are the locomotive drivers, the stokers, or the passengers of the "revolutionary train"? Who are its conductors? Theorists have been quick to identify the carriers of the revolution. Traditionally, it has been the people, the lower class, the oppressed. But rarely has it been recounted whether the people, the lower class, the oppressed actually participated in the uprising against their oppressors. The urban masses in Paris who stormed the Bastille and killed the commanders did not represent the French people. And, as the elections to the Constituent Assembly showed, the small group of Russian Bolsheviks could not even unite the majority of the Russian working-class behind them. In Mexico, the various factions were so at odds with each other that they fought a protracted civil war which claimed more victims per capita than the First World War in all the belligerent countries of Europe. Who, then, are the "stokers"? The actual revolutionary actors who make sure in the various phases of the uprising that the course of events does not come to an abrupt halt? The ones who see to it that the king, the tsar, the president are overthrown, the existing political institutions are destroyed, and new representational systems are established? To fully grasp what a revolution is, a careful, nuanced look at its actors, their heterogeneity, and their fluidity, is indispensable. Those who believe in the legitimate advance of history have no qualms about interfering with it. Indeed, they "organize" the revolution, as Lenin demanded, without the passengers knowing about it or even asking where they are headed. In this case, it is the avant-garde-those at the front of the locomotive holding the levers of power-that determines the timing and the legitimacy of the revolution. If the uprising succeeds, and the old regime collapses as in Paris in 1789, Mexico in 1911, or St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1917, then the revolution's favorable outcome comes as a vindication to the revolutionaries. This by no means settles the issue of legitimacy, however. It is precisely because the success cannot last and difficulties, setbacks, and threats inevitably arise that the victory at the seizure of power is not enough. Revolutionaries are measured by whether they manage to sustain the power they have acquired, to give lasting form to the upheaval. Increasingly, the revolutionary violence directed against the oppressors is turned against those who were themselves oppressed. In France and Mexico, as well as in Russia, the revolutionaries stood with their backs to the wall. In order to hold on to power, they resisted by applying excessive force. This terror against the counter-revolutionaries, the "enemies of the people", is inherent to revolution. Critical to its analysis, then, is an attentive and differentiated, not just an essentialist, study of violence. Such a study includes its forms, actors, perpetrators, victims, bystanders, locations, circumstances, and dynamics, as well as its radicalization. While the revolutionaries prefer to blame foreign powers for the counter-revolution and to eliminate them as "enemies of the people" in order to maintain the veneer of a "united people", the revolutions themselves are what divide society. Even when large masses of the population support the overthrow of the old regime, as in Cuba in 1959, Iran in 1978 or Ukraine in 1990, there are always other groups that do not support the revolution or even oppose it (if only because their welfare had been tied to the old regime). Counter-revolution is inherent to revolution. Indeed, the major studies from Michel Vovelle or François Furet and Denis Richet on the French Revolution demonstrate the centrality of tradition and religion, especially in the provinces and the rural and agricultural areas where the call for an uprising is met with incomprehension and resistance. Or how, as in the Russian case, the peasants constituted the backbone of an alleged proletarian revolution because it was the previous czarist rule that had destroyed the traditional order in the countryside. The Bolsheviks not only promised peace, but also a just social order in which the soil would belong to those who cultivated it. The aims of the followers of Emiliano Zapata in Mexico were similar. It was nearly a "revolution" in the traditional sense: Zapata's Plan de Ayala in November 1911 and the decree on the soil (one of the first policies issued by the Bolshevik government at the beginning of their rule in October 1917) meant the restoration of the rural community that had been destroyed by its dependency on lease agreements with landowners. Just as the French revolutionaries liked to invoke antiquity and to portray themselves in terms of past models, the Bolsheviks had a tendency to view themselves as Jacobins-as dogged and unyielding revolutionaries who would brook no compromise with the old ruling class. The Mexican insurgents, on the other hand, appealed to a mythicized indigenous past. The fact that the revolution promised a better future, while legitimizing itself on the basis of a putative history, indicates the continuing ambivalence of "revolution" as a concept. An uncertain leap into the future, after the institutions of the present have been smashed, is easier to make when it is perceived as the restoration of a previously just order that was defeated by the former rulers. A revolution thus merges entirely different ideas, wishes, expectations, and hopes that are supposed to be satisfied through the overthrow of the old and the establishment of something new. Perhaps this is what defines the revolutionary moment: As the confluence of otherwise disconnected things, it gives rise to the force, the violence, that bursts open and sweeps aside the ruling system. Nothing could be more misleading, therefore, than to comprehend revolutionaries as a homogeneous political or even social unit. Rather, it is necessary to differentiate between various groups and interests, which, in turn, are able to develop and realign themselves in different ways over the course of the revolution. It is, finally, important to not simply buy into the self-descriptions of unity and cohesion that the revolutionaries present to the public. A revolution, not least, opens up a realm of opportunities. The innumerable everyday descriptions from revolutionary Russia tell us, first of all, that the overthrow of the old order meant the empowerment of the many. The masses seized power, which was ripe for the taking, and satisfied their own needs. It was a scene of anarchy and violence, in which the people simply took from the propertied class what they wanted. The Bolsheviks' universal call to plunder the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie-to delight in their property and to carry out violent looting as compensation-led to the radical obliteration of the old social order. It was on the latter's ruins that the Bolsheviks were then able to emerge as an order-giving power. As we know, the annihilation of the regime in 1917 was not exclusively a Russian problem. It was certainly not strictly a European on...