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About 1 hr0 learners Rev. 2026-10-26 0
In May 1791 Maximilien Robespierre stood before France's National Assembly and asked it to abolish the death penalty, calling it unjust and useless. Three years later he was a leading figure in a government that sent thousands to the guillotine, and then he went there himself. How does a movement for liberty end up killing its own champions, while another, like the crowds that filled Prague's squares in 1989, can change a whole system without a single death?
That puzzle runs through everything here. Historians, sociologists and political scientists have argued for a century about why regimes collapse, why moderates lose to radicals, why some new governments learn to hand over power and others never do, and whether unarmed movements really beat armed ones. The evidence is richer and messier than either romantics or cynics expect. Anyone who works through it should come away able to read a crisis in the news with sharper questions: who is really claiming power, who has stopped obeying, and what the methods being used today are likely to grow into tomorrow.
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