bricolage
14th November 2010, 23:44
In the back of a pamphlet I've got on the 2005 riots in France called 'Nights of Rage', there is a section called 'On Riots'. In it it says the following;
Any attempt to overturn the world by the modern poor has begun with riot: 1789, 1848, 1871, 1917, 1968, and 1978 in Iran and Nicaragua... If on the one hand there are riots that do not lead to revolution or insurrection, on the other all revolutions and insurrections begin with riots.
Now I'm sure a lot of this is over-eager insurrectionist writing but what I am most interested in here is the historical dates it mentions (and any others that people might be able to add). I'm not too knowledgeable on a lot of them but for starters I wouldn't say the Paris Commune came from rioting, March 18 saw a spontaneous uprising of mainly women attempting to prevent the cannons being taken out of the city, but it was not a riot, there was no mass violence just to blocking of troops.
In terms of 1917 I'm quoting here from short book I found from something called the 'Then and There Series' entitled 'Lenin and the Russian Revolution'. In reference to the February revolution it has this to say;
It began over bread, or rather the shortage of it. Indeed one writer said that 'Tsar hunger' began the revolution. In Petrograd long queues of women and boys were told at the end of February that there was no bread. The people refused to believe this, and began to riot. The police tried to stop them, so the people began to fight with them and shout, 'down with the police', and, 'down with the war'. The riots got worse, and the factory workers joined in, many going on strike, especially the 30,000 men from the great Putilov factory. At this point the government called in the army, but thought there were 160,000 troops in Petrograd, they were nearly all recent recruits who had not been properly trained and who did not obey orders unthinkingly. They refused to obey their officers, some of whom were killed, while other fled, and the soldiers began to shoot the police who were still fighting for the Tsar; indeed people believed that the police had machine-guns on rooftops and in church towers from where they could fire on the crowds. Even the Cossacks refused to fight for the Tsar, and the government was quite powerless.The book is intended as a very basic introduction so obviously it is a pretty weak historical source but I am just wondering if anyone can confirm or challenge the basic jist of what is says here.
One last thing about the same time period and from the same book. It goes on the quote the Tsarina at the time, a comment which I found very interesting as it seems to echo many comments you get about riots today, but of course she would be proved very wrong;
'This is a hooligan movement, young people run and shout that there is no bread, simply to create excitement, along with workers who prevent others from working. If the weather were very cold they would all probably stay at home. But this will pass and become calm.'
Any attempt to overturn the world by the modern poor has begun with riot: 1789, 1848, 1871, 1917, 1968, and 1978 in Iran and Nicaragua... If on the one hand there are riots that do not lead to revolution or insurrection, on the other all revolutions and insurrections begin with riots.
Now I'm sure a lot of this is over-eager insurrectionist writing but what I am most interested in here is the historical dates it mentions (and any others that people might be able to add). I'm not too knowledgeable on a lot of them but for starters I wouldn't say the Paris Commune came from rioting, March 18 saw a spontaneous uprising of mainly women attempting to prevent the cannons being taken out of the city, but it was not a riot, there was no mass violence just to blocking of troops.
In terms of 1917 I'm quoting here from short book I found from something called the 'Then and There Series' entitled 'Lenin and the Russian Revolution'. In reference to the February revolution it has this to say;
It began over bread, or rather the shortage of it. Indeed one writer said that 'Tsar hunger' began the revolution. In Petrograd long queues of women and boys were told at the end of February that there was no bread. The people refused to believe this, and began to riot. The police tried to stop them, so the people began to fight with them and shout, 'down with the police', and, 'down with the war'. The riots got worse, and the factory workers joined in, many going on strike, especially the 30,000 men from the great Putilov factory. At this point the government called in the army, but thought there were 160,000 troops in Petrograd, they were nearly all recent recruits who had not been properly trained and who did not obey orders unthinkingly. They refused to obey their officers, some of whom were killed, while other fled, and the soldiers began to shoot the police who were still fighting for the Tsar; indeed people believed that the police had machine-guns on rooftops and in church towers from where they could fire on the crowds. Even the Cossacks refused to fight for the Tsar, and the government was quite powerless.The book is intended as a very basic introduction so obviously it is a pretty weak historical source but I am just wondering if anyone can confirm or challenge the basic jist of what is says here.
One last thing about the same time period and from the same book. It goes on the quote the Tsarina at the time, a comment which I found very interesting as it seems to echo many comments you get about riots today, but of course she would be proved very wrong;
'This is a hooligan movement, young people run and shout that there is no bread, simply to create excitement, along with workers who prevent others from working. If the weather were very cold they would all probably stay at home. But this will pass and become calm.'