revolution

When we speak of the English, the French, the American revolutions, we refer to revolutions from below, and not from above; to the popular attack against authoritarian systems not to the seizure of power by an authoritarian system. ― It was in this sense that Marx and Engels used the term revolution, and it was in this sense that Lenin believed he had started his revolution. He was convinced that the avant-garde expressed the will and the interests of the vast majority of the population, even though the system he created ceased to be the expression of popular will. But the Communist „victories“ in Poland, Hungary, etc., were not „revolutions“ they were Russian military take-ovens. Neither Stalin nor Khrushchev are revolutionaries; they are leaders of conservative, bureaucratic systems, the very existence of which is based on unquestioning respect for authority. ― (1961a: May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy, New York (Doubleday) 1961, p. 134.)