Rethinking The Category Of Revolution

• Main Author: S G Ilinskaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2015-12-01
• Series: RUDN Journal of Political Science
• Subjects: суверенитет; народ; власть; элита; легитимность; свобода; этничность; категория; ценность
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/political-science/article/view/8943

The subject of the study is the category of revolution. The author tries to understand how revolution as a legitimate government overthrow of a sovereign nation works as a concept in current political situation. In her view, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran it becomes quite impossible to classify the revolution as the bourgeois and socialist, since 1991 - to talk about it in line with the theory of change of social formations. In her article the author analyzes the results of the overthrow of the government during the revolution as a legitimate act, and explains why, in her view, the concept of the revolution is “dead”. The category of revolution is studied by the author through techniques of political Conceptology. As the methods of investigation the author used comparative, historical method, and methods of analytic philosophy. The main conclusion of the study is the exhaustion of modern concept of revolution because of its ambiguity and elevated semantic load, which are stretching the notion of enabling and legitimizing any illegal overthrow of the government, including those which are not in the interests of “sovereign nation”. The concept of revolution in the way in which we are accustomed to perceive it, has exhausted itself, because it consists of continuous fiction, but in today's world radically change the structure of suppression and oppression.