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Revolution From Above
A revolution from above refers to major political and social changes that are imposed by an elite on the population it dominates. It usually occurs in urban areas in the capital city. By contrast, the plain term revolution suggests that pressure from below is a major driving force in events, even if other social groups cooperate with—or ultimately capture—the movement. The phrase was coined by the Spanish writer Joaquín Costa in the 19th century.Stanley G. Payne, ''The Franco Regime'', p. 10 In contrast, a "revolution from below" refers to a grassroots campaign against elites. Some examples *Enlightened absolutism in 18th-century Europe *The Constitution of the German Confederation (1871) and the formation of the German Empire *Fascism *Stalin's Collectivization of agriculture * De-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev *German reunification *White Revolution in Iran See also *'' Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the '' Cambridge Dictionary'', the "elite" are "those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type." American sociologist C. Wright Mills states that members of the elite accept their fellows' position of importance in society. "As a rule, 'they accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work, and to think, if not together at least alike'." It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Universities in the US Youthful upper-class members attend prominent preparatory schools, which not only open doors to such elite universities as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, but also to the univ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his 1956 secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, which denounced Stalin's cult of personality and the Stalinist political system. Monuments to Stalin were removed or toppled, his name was removed from places, buildings, and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum (from 1953 to 1961 known as Lenin and Stalin Mausoleum) and buried. These reforms were started by the collective leadership which succeeded him after his death on 5 March 1953, comprising Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926 where he remained until his death in 1937. Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His '' Prison Notebooks'' are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, folklore, religion a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passive Revolution
Passive revolution is a transformation of the political and institutional structures without strong social processes by ruling classes for their own self-preservation. The phrase was coined by the Marxist politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci during the interwar period in Italy. Gramsci's use of the term Passive revolution describes a gradual but continuous reorganization of the state and economy in order to preserve the power of the elite by incorporating or neutralizing the power of adversarial groups through transforming them into partners, all without overcoming the fundamental social contradictions. Gramsci argued that when a social group lacks the strength to establish hegemony, it will instead choose a path where its interests and demands will "be satisfied by small doses, legally, in a reformist manner-- in such a way that it was possible to preserve the political and economic positions of the old ruling class." This "avoid the popular masses going through a per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Bureaucrats And Development In Japan, Turkey, Egypt, And Peru
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform. It may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. In broad usage, the terms ''armed forces'' and ''military'' are often treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces, not belonging to a recognized state; though they share many attributes with regular military forces, they are less often referred to as simply ''military''. A nation's military may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. It covers an area of , making it the 17th-largest country. Iran has a population of 86 million, making it the 17th-most populous country in the world, and the second-largest in the Middle East. Its largest cities, in descending order, are the capital Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, and Tabriz. The country is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified by the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Revolution
The White Revolution ( fa, انقلاب سفید ''Enqelāb-e Sefid'') or the Shah and People Revolution ( fa, انقلاب شاه و مردم ''Enqelāb-e Shāh o Mardom'') was a far-reaching series of reforms resulting in aggressive modernization in Iran launched on 26 January 1963 by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which lasted until 1979. The reforms resulted in a great redistribution of wealth to Iran's working class, explosive economic growth in subsequent decades, rapid urbanization, and deconstruction of Iran's feudalist customs. The reforms were characterized by high economic growth rates, major investments in infrastructure, substantial growth in per capita wealth and literacy of Iranians. The economic growth and education advancement arguably paved the way for the Shah's military arms build-up and the establishment of Iran as a major geopolitical power in the Middle East. It consisted of several elements, including land reform, sale of some state-owned factories t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the German Reunification Treaty entered into force dissolving the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: link=no, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR, or East Germany) and integrating its recently re-established constituent federated states into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: link=no, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD, or West Germany) to form present-day Germany, has been chosen as the customary '' German Unity Day'' () and has thereafter been celebrated each year from 1991 as a national holiday. East and West Berlin were united into a single city and eventually became the capital of reunited Germany. The East Germany's government led by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (a communist party) started to falter on 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collectivization In The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union introduced the collectivization (russian: Коллективизация) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into collectively-controlled and state-controlled farms: ''Kolkhozes'' and ''Sovkhozes'' accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for the processing industry, and agricultural exports via state-imposed quotas on individuals working on collective farms. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrializa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due to perceived oppression (political, social, economic) or political incompetence. Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions, usually in response to perceived overwhelming autocracy or plutocracy. Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center on several issues. Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, '' Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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