“If the daimyo are bankrupt and the samurai are impoverished, their exactions from the people are heavier and the farmer suffers. If the peasantry is impoverished, the merchants and artisans likewise will suffer. In addition, great numbers of unemployed samurai (rōnin) will be produced and will be exposed to hunger and cold. Thus society as a whole will be afflicted with poverty and the heavens will cease to favour the shogun.”

samurai as an individual remained subject to all the disabilities arising from the possession of a fixed rice income in a money economy; and as the merchant became richer his wealth, it seemed to many, bade fair to undermine not only samurai solvency, but also samurai dominance of society at large.

Urban life gave him new tastes and opportunities and indulging them became part of his way of life, even though he could not easily afford them

p close, one can detect almost continuous adjustment by political parties to the preferences of voters. Over longer reaches of time, they appear to be moving in quicksand

More fundamentally, the organizations that tied voters to parties – including churches for confessional parties and unions for socialist parties – encompass a smaller share of the population and have less influence on those they do encompass.

ummarizing an extensive literature over the past decade, we describe the emergence of a transnational cleavage, which has as its core a political reac- tion against European integration and immigration.

globalization: the divide between the well educated and the less well educated, the opposition between social-cultural specialists and man- agers (‘middle class divide’), and the conflict between unskilled workers and social-cultural specialists

, these two groups should now be more strongly opposed on cultural matters. The location of partisan groups in the political space should therefore change.

the parties who appeal to the preferences of the ‘losers’ of globalization constitute the driving force of the current transforma- tion of the Western European party systems.

Contemporary opponents of the Meiji government, mostly liberals themselves, saw it as feudal and autocratic: an alliance of factions (hambatsu) institutionalizing the power of men from a small number of domains (Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen) who had come together to overthrow the bakufu in 1867-8

Thus it ensured that the twentieth-century Diet would be more representative of Japan's growing commercial and industrial class

such deadlocks recurred, and it began to seem that if the parties could not rule Japan, they could make it almost impossi- ble for anyone else to do so constitutionally.

Diet's ability to block any increases in the budget proved to be a much more potent weapon than Ito had expected, given that the first parliamentary decade was to be that of Japan's first modern war and the beginnings of its overseas expansion.

Because administrative rights are the sovereign prerogatives of the emperor, those who are given the responsibility of their exercise shall stand outside the various political parties."

helped protect the bureaucracy, both civil and military, from political meddling

they could make themselves coordinators of policy in their capacity as per- sonal advisers to the emperor. Because they acted outside the written constitution, they could do soflexibly and confidentially

genro, or elder statesmen - Ito, Yamagata, Matsukata Masayoshi, Inoue Kaoru, Kuroda Kiyotaka, and one or two others - personified the power of Satsuma and Choshu

ltd and his colleagues had then shaped this into a pluralis- tic constitution, in which office depended on merit, not birth, and the emperor's prerogatives were separately institutionalized in such bodies as the cabinet, the Privy Council, the Diet, and the general staff.

abinet's conduct was regarded in a legal sense as the exercise of an imperial prerogative legitimately based on the advice of imperial ministers."

accepted interpretation of the constitution that ministers enjoyed a dictatorial authority,

udicial power had to be exercised by the courts accord- ing to law; use of the legislative power required the consent of the Diet; executive action was the subject of advice by ministers, who had to countersign all decrees and similar documents

From remoteness he sanctioned policy, making the decisions of his ministers those of the state

they were formulated in terms of a mystical absolutism, based not on the emperor's responsibilities in government, but on his legiti- mating role, which derived in turn from his place in an "eternal" lineage

"the Government shall carry out the budget of the preced- ing year."

nnual budget needed its consent, but there were a number of significant exclusions

Diet "takes part in legislation, but has no share in the sovereign power," whereas ministers served "as media, through which the imperial commands are conveyed. . . . "

What is more, none of this depended on any kind of social contract or the performance of a particular function. The emperor ruled because he was descended from "a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal.

exercise legislative authority "with the consent of the Imperial Diet," which he could convoke, prorogue, and dissolv

Only the imperial house could become "the corner- stone of our country."

"it was a matter of prime necessity that these units . . . should combine and cooperate as a solid and compact organization for the attainment of the common weal,"

success in this depended on cohesion and efficiency.

essence of this belief found expression in the constitution, many of them would regard it as no more "Japanese" than the cabinet system, or French criminal law, or an army recruited by conscription and dressed in foreign-style uniforms.

It must operate within a framework of law, which it existed to uphold, a restraint symbolized by the requirement that the ruler's executive actions required the countersignature of a minister, just as his legisla- tive actions required the consent of parliament

it belonged to a monarch, standing above the struggle and embodying in himself the general interes

constitution to impose a frame- work of law such as would moderate this struggle and harmonize competing interests.

former implied freedom within the law, involving the regulation of social groups through legal institutions, in order that all might enjoy the benefits of security and stability

t was then protected from political pressures - within the establishment, as well as outside it - by being conducted, first, in Ito's residence in Tokyo and then in his summer villa on an island in Tokyo Bay.

Westernizing was frequently offensive to those who held them

One purpose of having a constitution was to consolidate this gain, that is, to ensure that men of substance would see enough advantages in the regime to make them want to cooperate with it, leaving the police to deal with the rest.

It provided the government with ample excuse for the use of army and police, on the grounds that the party was acting illegally, and it frightened the more moderate leaders into breaking with the radicals

arliamentary government in Japan would be weak or even subversive government, destroying thefirm central direc- tion on which the whole future of the country depended

hat the emperor retain the right to appoint and dismiss ministers and senior officials; that the cabinet not be subject to "the intervention of parliament," the ministers being directly responsi- ble to the emperor in departmental matters; and that the government be freed from financial control by the parliament by providing for the budget of the previous year to be continued in force whenever the parliament rejected the current budget proposals.

Japan's leadership must seek to disarm its critics, but not at the cost of ceding real power

one that would not be able to challenge the executive

referred to the imperial line as "unbroken for ages" and the emperor as "sacred and inviolable," possessing "the power of adminis- tration," it also described the legislative power as "divided between the Emperor and Parliament.

The change did not in any way reduce the authority of the executive, acting through the Center Chamber (Sei-in), but it did set up a machinery for constitution making

he chief change then made was the introduction of districts (gun) and cities (shi) as intermediate units within the prefec- tures, each having an elected assembly and an appointed head

They were entitled to discuss other matters put to them by the governor; but to make sure that they did so in a suitably responsible manner, any action they recommended was subject to veto by the governor and approval by the home minister.*

Rather, it reflected several converging influences: a steady improvement in the government's facilities for suppressing samurai and peasant unrest; a growing awareness of the need for a wider base of support within the population, if Japan were to be strong in any Western definition of the term; and a recognition that leaders were available who could organize an alternative regime, should those in power fail

contributed to a shift in government policy away from a preoccupation with feudal opinion and toward the assimilation of new groups into the Japanese ruling class

apan might again face the combination of foreign and domestic dangers that had brought down the Tokugawa

he was reflecting the political aspirations of men who had achieved a measure of wealth and local influence in the economic conditions of the late Tokugawa period but had so far been denied any share in running the affairs of the country

Okubo was well enough satisfied with the Dajokan as it stood, that is, a strong executive, a legislature (Sa-in), consisting of members of the nobility and others "specially selected," and a clear separation of powers, which denied to the legislature any executive role.

requiring the retention of "the supreme power of the emperor."*

It provided for the emperor to have extensive powers, which the Dajokan would wield in his name

ajokan was reorganized in 1871, the legislative function was entrusted to the Left Chamber (Sa-in). It seemed even less likely to weaken the essentially authoritarian character of the regime than its predecessor was.

desire to give Japan an international image of "enlighten- ment," which would reinforce its efforts to revise the unequal treaties of 1858

In both contexts it was possible to appeal to Western models and precedents

ritten constitution, combining a tradi- tional rationale of imperial sovereignty with what seemed to be a compatible form of Western political thought, was the chosen means for achieving it.

However, it was not in any other respect Chinese. The examinations in question were designed to test skills that were entirely Western in origin and methodology.

This completed the move away from inherited status as the prime qualification for government offic

All other recruits to government posts would have to pass the relevant examinations.

oreign criticism of the Japa- nese legal system was holding up progress on treaty revision

nvisaging examinations in law, economics, and political science, by which candidates would be admitted to posts at appropriate levels

here were clearly some argu- ments in favor of devising rules for appointment and promotion that would both disarm such opposition and make for smoother working of the kind of bureaucracy that was taking shape after 188

to, following discus- sions with Sanjo, ordered a revision of this clause.

Thus, although the ministers continued to be in theory responsible directly to the emperor in departmental matters, they were in fact clearly subordinated to the prime minister in a manner similar to that laid down in the Prussian regulations of 1810, on which the Japanese ones were chiefly based.

remained a tension between samurai "upstarts" and surviving court nobles, particularly as several of the latter had potentially pow- erful positions in the emperor's entourage

rovide the basis for a reliably conservative House of Peers in the new constitution then under discussion.

The aim of much of this was to make a "strong" government more efficient by making it more Western, the decisions being taken against a background of rising criticism at home about the arbitrary behavior of the Meiji leadership and a series of clashes with China over Korea, which in 1884-5 brought the two countries close to war

"Neither be led astray by current opin- ions, nor meddle in politics, but with single heart fulfil your essential duty of loyalty."

"Wealth and strength," though a classical slogan, was everywhere being interpreted in ways that owed more to Europe's example than to China's,

a concentration of power at the center in the hands of an oligarchy of court nobles and ex-samurai, and an authoritarian control, exercised by the bureaucrats of the capital over governmental organization in the provinces and extending the boundaries of administration far beyond the traditional ones of collecting taxes and maintaining order.

Many of those whom the Meiji leaders appointed to subordinate positions were predictably men on whose loyalty they could rely because of past political associations, or "ex- perts" possessing useful skills, such as a knowledge of Western meth- ods and technology.

upervision exercised over prefectural administration by To- kyo was extended into the larger local communities

eporting directly to the em- peror as commander in chief.

There were a few significant adjustments in the names and func- tions of ministries, mostly related in some way to the extension of the central government's power over the country or to plans for moderniza- tion.

The central group of officials remained much the same as before, though the number of its members shrank still more, and the samurai among them emerged more openly as men in authority.

uthority rested with a close-knit group of men who had a good deal of political experience. The figureheads of 1868-9 had largely been discarded.

Power was to be restricted to a very small number of persons.

The surrender of domain registers had been followed on August 15, 1869, by a major restructuring of the central government, of which the chief characteristic was a further strengthening of the executive, now renamed the Dajokan.

est sank back into relative anonymity, often re- spected but no longer privileged, either becoming, like the landlords and merchants, part of an emerging bourgeoisie, or descending into the ranks of peasants and laborers.

he daimyo and some upper samurai now joined the court nobles in a comfortable and digni

Inevitably, it also brought unrest and discontent, which played a significant part in the origins of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.

Consequently, if spending was not to be crippled by this charge, the government had either to find new sources of revenue or to accept the political risks inherent in shedding much of the burden in some fairly drastic way

meant that an upward revision of tax rates was vital to the financial needs and hence to the very existence of the imperial regime

One empha- sized the question of law and order, pointing out that the considerable variations in the land tax among the localities had produced much popular unrest which the government so far lacked means to control.

Nevertheless, Japan acquired by this step an in- strument that soon showed itself capable of imposing order at home. During the next ten years or so, peasant rebellion was gradually sup- pressed.

met with serious opposition from men who re- sented the adoption of any kind of military structure that did not give the samurai an entrenched position.

Stability at home and defense against foreign attack, as Yamagata saw it, "were aspects of a single problem."

These recommended that conscripts be "trained and drilled in Western tactics," and "organized into units regardless of whether they be samu- rai or commoners."

little real choice, as China's institutions, to which Japan had always turned in the past, had been as much discredited by recent history as Japan's had been.

The availability of Western models for the most part determined what they should be

the Meiji leaders had to devise a machinery for administering the large areas hitherto ruled by feudal lords, and recruit officials for running it; to organize a military and police force to do what the samurai had done as part of their feudal duty; to introduce courts and codes of law to replace those established by feudal custom; and to create a tax system that would provide a central revenue, making good the loss from feudal dues.

entail a further attack on samurai privilege, andfinancingit would require funds that at present were allocated to the domains.

national army, loyal to the emperor and not to a variety of feudal lords, was one obvious desideratum

hen it seemed that other means must be found.

promoting men of talent," was to make the incidence of these economies very uneven, because the method chosen was to cut most hereditary stipends, some- times savagely, while maintaining or increasing those that were paid for holding office

surrender of domain registers (hanseki-hokari) in the summer of 1869 had by no means solved the problem of national unity

review of samurai stipends and a simplification of samurai ranks, implying that although the samurai would remain a privileged class, their status and perquisites would now be subject to central direction.

new peerage (kazoku), combining court nobles and feudal lords

apppointing them imperial governors (chiji) - not on an hereditary basis, thanks to Kido - of the lands they had formerly held in fief, allowing them to retain a generous one-tenth of their revenues as household expenses but requiring them to use the rest in ways specified by the central government.

drafted a compro- mise plan, accepted by senior officials early in July, which was de- signed to ensure that the daimyo would surrender their hereditary rights in name but retain enough authority in practice to satisfy, or at least conciliate, the more conservative

uncertainty about how to "manage" a situation to which familiar tech- niques would cease to apply

One was the knowl- edge that many lords and upper samurai, including some on whose support the court continued to depend, would be resentful of such a move, perhaps to the point of open opposition

merchants and rich peasants, at least in some rural areas, had become resentful of their own low status in feudal society and felt little desire to perpetuate it.

felt rather imprecisely that better things could be expected from an emperor who embodied all that was best in Japanese tradition.

y an offer to make them members of a reconstituted aristocracy, give them substantial stipends, and open their way to office; whereas their followers could be conciliated by being incorporated into the national army and bureaucracy or enabled to return to the land.

Japan were to be modern, manifesting a stability that was as important to foreign trade as it was to national strength, then it needed, in Parkes's view, to rid itself of an outmoded form of government.

o dominant personality who could make himself shogun or kampaku and demand obedience, what was to be the basis of the government's authority?

o forming a government, even, as some historians have seen it, creating an oligarchy.

he emperor indicated that what was done was done by the emperor's will, making opposition to it a form of lese-majeste"

a change in Japanese constitutional practice, by which the emperor was to be much more closely associ- ated with the actions of the state than for several centuries past.

The second point is that it is an "imperial" document, not merely because it refers to "the imperial polity," but still more so because it takes the form of an undertaking by the emperor personally, not through some katnpaku or shogun acting in his name.

One is that it is an appeal for unity, not a statement of immediate policy, despite the guarded references to a new kind of relationship with the West.

did not do so decisively enough, however, to make those domains independent of the other great lords who had cooperated in the final coup d'eta

the bakufu, while preventing its replacement by an equally unwel- come hegemony on the part of Satsuma and Chdshu

Their less powerful allies consequently sought means of forestalling this eventuality, occasionally using a Western-style constitutionalist argument for the purpose

It set out the ultimate desideratum as being "to make the sixty-odd provinces of the country into a single imperial stronghold and so ensure the peo- ple's unity."

What gave a degree of realism to the last of these was evidence of a possible stalemate in the struggle among competing feudal alliances.

n all the disputes that followed the opening of the ports, men turned to the emperor for validation of their actions, thereby giving the court a new contemporary importance

Japan's political institutions remained no- tionally monarchical and autocratic, like those of medieval Europe; the shogun closely controlled the court but acted in the emperor's nam

more convenient to use him than to find another source of legitimacy

choice - between tradition and moder- nity aroused powerful emotions.

Western models had a measure of propa- ganda and diplomatic value, insofar as their adoption might persuade foreigners of Japan's right to the label "civilized," and hence to their respect

Whereas unity depended in some degree on Japaneseness, that is, on the maintenance of certain traditional attitudes and the institutions embodying them, the strength of govern- ment required elements of Western technology, like modern weapons and communication

a search for strong government and national unity.

esire to evolve ways of meeting that threat and averting the danger of a total Japanese submission to imperialism.

Japanese tradition and recent history ensured that it must focus on the emperor,

Because the Tokugawa had been defeated and there had emerged no single victorious feudal lord who could aspire to the office of shogun - Satsuma came closest - the country's new rulers had then to work out an alternative framework through which authority could be exercised.

Despite its prevalent use, recent evidence—especially from Western Europe—suggests that the structure of party competition has changed in recent decades, leading to the mobilization of culturally rooted issues relating to traditional lifestyles, rights of immigrants or Islam.

This commission had vast powers, such as more or less complete control over the government budget (Article 232), and authority over future government loans (Article 234).

ar between the two successor states would decide the relative position between them.

French and British authorities found themselves in permanent competition, often violent, for sovereignty in these states

British construed a very dependent form of “independence” for Iraq in 1931 as a still more economically frugal means of reconciling imperial and state interests in Britain,

rogrammed for independence on the date of its manufacture

French Armée du Levant occupied Damascus and forced the exile of Faysal. The League of Nations approved the French mandate for Syria in July 1922

In Anatolia, Turkish and Greek successor states would demarcate the limits of imperial sovereignty. Empire thus became what successor states as well as imperial states made of it in the former Ottoman domains.

“France” as a nation state had to have something to show for its victory, somewhere.

Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles accorded Japan the German concessions as a cessation of sovereignty without an expiration date. In short, empire in China remained what states made of it

” Any reasonable notion of self-determination had to require that sovereignty over the province return undivided to the struggling Chinese republic.

he Japanese position thus exposed the uncomfortable nature of all such arrangements in the new world order.

Shandong affair made the awkward silence in the covenant speak on existing imperial arrangements.

. “Self- determination” collided with the sanctity of international agreements among recognized nation states

The empire could expand in Asia through the Mandate system, with the approval of the Western allies. Its uncontroversial acquisition of Class C Mandates in the Pacic islands north of the equator afrmed this notion.

“empire” did not have a consistent logic. As peace-making moved beyond Europe, empires could evoke state identities for imperial ends, and states could demarcate the limits of empires.

Imperial sovereignty had never been unitary. But the covenant made its irregular character a matter of international relations

The mere existence of Class A Mandates posed uncomfortable questions about empires, because they implied that non-white peoples were eligible for self-determination. E

The covenant included a clear racial hierarchy among non-Europeans in the future mandates.

the “sacred trust” of their sovereignty over themselves was to be administrated on provisional basis by the mandatory powers accountable in some way to the League. Mandatory rule, in short, had within it a presumption of independence and thus an implicit expiration date.

But the covenant certainly did not imply unrestricted sovereignty on the part of the mandatory power.

Other forms of difference, notably race, could determine whether individuals or categories of individuals were eligible to make a covenant at all. Its “successful” management of difference, Wilson believed, had made the United States a universal example to inspire the world.

But in the Wilsonian Promised Land, all nation states, including the Great Powers and the empires directed, would operate in accordance with the will of the liberal individuals included in the political community.

uccessor states sought expansion to include lands inhabited by “exiled” ethnic minorities across Central and Eastern Europe

In the event, successor states became mini-empires internally. They hierarchically structured ethnic difference with increasing zeal as the interwar years continued.

As the Other of Empire, a proper successor state logically would seek to eradicate politically signicant difference within its borders.

A successor state could fully realize its national and historic boundaries only at the expense of its neighbors—a specic variety of the realist security dilemma.

the “successor state” in multinational Central and Eastern Europe had come to mean an agent structured by an impossibility—a unitary, sovereign state that reconciled national and “historic” boundaries.

“National” boundaries determined who could belong to the political community under what circumstances, and were thus cultural as well as territorial.

“to each nation, its state.” Under “national self-determination,” “nation” came to mean ethnicity, dened primarily by some combination of language, culture, and religion.

the Bolsheviks sought to instrumentalize nationalism toward the disruption of imperial sovereignty everywhere, b

The Bolshevik “Peace Decree” of 26 October 1917 was a call not so much for peace as for a transformation of the war.

Above all, the Paris Peace Conference legitimized ethnically demarcated successor states to replace the multinational dynastic empires on the European continent.

But the peacemakers of 1919 had gone to considerable lengths to preserve German unity and independence, notably in opposing French efforts to detach the Rhineland.

launched the transformation of the norms and standards of international relations that established the self- determining nation-state as the only legitimate political form throughout the globe.”

Wilsonianism would legitimize a specic kind of agent as the successor to empire in Europe

successor states would demarcate the limits of the “victorious” empires, at precisely the moment that the victorious empires appeared geographically to be at their zenith. Empires became what states made of them.

Paris Peace Conference contributed to the normalization of the nation state, through legitimizing successor states to the multinational empires in Europe and Anatolia, and through the creating of nation states-in-the-making under the League of Nations Mandates.

glory of imperial aggrandizement after the Great War would prove eeting

“blue water” empires based in trade and extraction beyond Europe survived,

The apparent outcome of the war appeared to prove the advanced decrepitude of empires based on dynastic loyalty. The multinational land empires of the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottomans disintegrated, along with that of the Hohenzollerns.

perpetual fear for their own safety in a zero-sum quest for “security.” An empire can be safe only if its rivals are less safe

aim was no longer militarily to defeat an opposing army and to impose one’s conditions (however harsh) on the vanquished, as had been the case during the Great War, but to annihilate those who stood in the way of the creation of new utopian societies

they differed markedly in their ability to act independently and to succeed in implementing their aims.

morbid fantasy of encirclement by nihilistic forces of disorder inspired conservative and counter-revolutionary politics across Europe

many of the leaders of post-1945 decolonisation move- ments experienced the political discourses (and broken promises) of 1918 as something formative

politics of the purified com- munity was a prominent element of peasant dreams, workers’ ambitions and bureaucratic models of a People’s Community.

perceived need to cleanse communities of their alien elements before a utopian new society could emerge, to root out those who were perceived to be harmful to the balance of the community.

as many former paramilitary leaders (notably in the case of the demise of the SA in Nazi Germany in 1934) had to learn the hard way, this did not prevent the new political leadership from ridding itself of its paramilitary activists once they were seen as no longer useful.

In the case of Italian fascism and German National Socialism, but also in Atatürk’s new Turkey or in the Baltic dictatorships of Smetona, Ulmanis and Päts, paramilitary movements contributed strongly to their establishment and were often held up as the origin of the new ‘paramilitary states’

nation-building process came at a high price, paid in particular by the minorities of the country.

War of Liberation’ (I ̇stiklâl Harbi, 1919 to 1923) was in essence a form of violent nation- state formation that represented a continuation of wartime ethnic un-mixing and exclusion of Ottoman Christians and Armenians from Anatolia – a process that began long before the proclamation of a Turkish nation-state on 29 October 1923.6

Serbian and pro-Yugoslav paramilitary groups, emboldened by victory in the Great War, played an important role as para-state actors, shoring up the territorial gains made during the war and violently suppressing those opposing them

slogan of ‘self-determination’ provided a powerful rallying cry for the mobilisation of anti-imperial emotions and personnel, the nascent national movements of Eastern Europe quickly encountered opposition from various camps

claims for national independence were opposed by other ethnic groups.

the idea of creating ethnically homogeneous nation- states proved to be yet another important source of post-war violence in much of Europe at the end of the Great War.

Defeat (or the perception of a ‘mutilated victory’) and the fear (or reality) of revolution created the climate for violent clashes between movements of different political creeds, but the geography and intensity levels of violence also depended on a third factor: ethnic conflicts in the shatter zones of Europe’s land empires.

ost-war rejection of Italy’s claim to Dalmatia (and the ongoing quarrel over Fiume) frustrated those with maximalist expectations.

refused to accept that military defeat had caused the collapse of the Central European empires, creating national variants of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend,51 and regarded the Armistice as an intolerable insult to their honour as ‘militarily undefeated’ officers

In explaining their refusal to demobilise (or desire to remobilise) and their determination to continue their soldierly existence after November 1918, paramilitary activists across Central Europe frequently invoked the horrors of returning from the front in 1918 to an entirely hostile world of upheaval, a perception triggered by both the temporary collapse of military hierarchies and public order.

Where the state had been defeated, however, either in reality or in perception (as with nationalist circles in Italy), it was more difficult for the state to play this role; indeed, it may have done precisely the opposite, exacerbating violence and generalising it to a host of groups and individuals who chose to take it on themselves to redress defeat and national humiliation

ome of age in a bellicose atmosphere saturated with tales of heroic bloodshed but had missed out on their first-hand experi- ence of the ‘storms of steel’, the militias appear to have offered a welcome opportunity to live a romanticised warrior existence

Europe’s horrified ruling elites feared a Jacobin ‘apocalyptic’ war, many Europeans after 1917 suspected that Bolshevism would spread to ‘infect’ the rest of the old world, prompting violent mobilisation and action against the perceived menace.

Even in those countries where the likelihood of a Bolshevik takeover was marginal – as in Germany or Austria – the successful consolidation of power by a determined revolutionary minority of Russian Bolsheviks quickly injected a powerful new energy into politics and triggered the emergence of determined counter-revolutionary forces, for whom the violent repression of revolution, and more especially of revolutionaries, constituted their over- riding goal

The case that (at least initially) seemed to follow the Russian model most closely was that of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March to August 1919) under Béla Kun, which copied the Russian Red Guards in an attempt to safeguard the gains of the revolution before being overthrown by a joint Romanian-Czechoslovak military intervention and replaced by Miklos Horthy’s counter-revolutionary regime, a regime that used extreme violence to avenge the crimes of the so-called ‘Red Terror’.

Yet whatever the colour of the flag under which the overwhelmingly illiterate peasant warriors were fighting – red, white, green or black – ideology seemed to have mattered less than survival under dangerous and bewildering conditions in which the ruling political regimes changed several times per year

more especially the levers of violent action, had passed to new figures, who depended on their radicalism of both rhetoric and action for their authority.

f new political personnel – revolutionary and counter-revolutionary in both a social and a political or national sense – which tried to implement ideas that were not in themselves new, but which now became the object of prolonged armed conflict.

From 1917 onwards, hungry bands of deserters terrorised the countryside, prompting the mobilisation of various peasant self-defence groups.

he chronic shortages in essential goods, caused by dislocations of war, depletion of reserves and distribution problems which escalated dramatically after 1917, led to a raw struggle for collective and individual survival.