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Harbinger of New Realities
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11228 |
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BOOK WORLD
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5 / 1986 |
1,790 Words |
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Jean-Pierre Gabriel
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"Only those blind to the repression of the Soviet empire would be irritated by Revel."
--Le Monde
To many of his fellow journalists, political essayist Jean-Francois Revel doggedly sticks to his reputation as a troublemaker. In 1970, he outraged the European intelligentsia by maintaining in his book Neither Marx nor Jesus that the winds of change for long to come were to be expected not from the Soviet world, nor from Europe or the Third World, but from the United States.
In 1976, he went further in The Totalitarian Temptation by demonstrating that Stalinism was not an accidental deviation, but the real essence of communism, that the communists had always made fools of the socialists, and that capitalism, far from being an absolute evil, was, on balance, rather positive. Those things were not easy to say in the years when the so-called "union of the Left" was blossoming in France and gathering socialists and communists for a common program of government.
In 1983, Revel struck again with How Democracies Perish, a brilliant essay showing how all past attempts of accommodation with the Soviet bloc have failed and represent nothing but a means for Moscow to expand and a way for the democracies to dig their own graves.
The book immediately made a tremendous impact in France where it remained on the best-seller list for twenty-four weeks. The monthly literary magazine Lire said it ought to be considered not only as another statement thrown in the political debate but "an event in the history of ideas." Historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie paralleled Revel's sounding of the alarm against Soviet totalitarianism with Demsthenes' warning to the Asthenians about the threats facing their democratic regime. And even the daily Le Monde, known for its liberal-left sympathies, noted that "Only those blind to the repression of the Soviet empire would be irritated by Revel."
How Democracies Perish met with success not only in France but all over the world and especially in the United States where Revel had won wide readership with The Totalitarian Temptation. The book became a reference in conservative circles when Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick quoted from it in her address to the Republican National Convention during the summer of 1984.
Soviet Expansionism
How Democracies Perish starts with a shocking remark which reflects the philosophical skepticism and fundamental pessimism of the author. Democracy, after all, says Revel, could very well prove to be nothing more than "a brief parenthesis in history." This parenthesis, which was opened no more than two centuries ago, could be "closed again under our eyes" due to the inability of democracy to defend itself against its enemies.
Challenging the view of nineteenth-century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, Revel doesn't think that the threat facing democracy is from within. The danger is not, as de Tocqueville feared, the possibility of democracy evolving towards a soft form of dictatorship where public opinion would impose its view upon each individual, but rather, the threat is from
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