5 - Revolution

Summary

This chapter focuses on the causal relationship between the First World War and the revolutionary transformations that took place towards its end. When revolution broke out during the First World War, it broke out first in Russia. It was war that generated the tensions and pressures that precipitated the Russian Revolution. The German Revolution itself began with a revolt by sailors and by soldiers stationed within the country. Revolutionary sailors and soldiers acted as missionaries for revolution, and workers' and soldiers' councils formed. The revolution unleashed by the First World War thus needs to be seen in the context of the violence unleashed through war. At its most basic, the revolutionary element of the First World War was violence, the remaking of political, economic and social formations through violence. In fact, the revolutionary violence and the violent revolutions of the First World War remade the modern world.