Revolutions: An insight into a five centuries' trend

Abstract

The year 2017 marked not only the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution of 1917, but also the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. It was just the Reformation that gave start to modern revolutions in Europe and the world. In the first part of the article we analyze the course of transformation of revolutions within historical process, in particular, how their world-historical role, the social bases, revolutionary ideologies, practices, and information technologies they applied have changed over the centuries. Then we show the important changes that occurred in revolutionary practice and the very understanding of the essence of revolution due to great revolutions. In the second part of the article we highlight some issues related to the theory of revolution, in particular, he defines the types of revolutions starting from religious to modernizing revolutions, and also points some important conditions for the revolutionary outbreak. In conclusion, we consider how and why the revolutions have been increasingly used as a geopolitical weapon.