In the fifth week of Political Studies, fellows will focus on revolution and tyranny—and what becomes of statesmanship in times of crisis and upheaval.

The first section, led by Dr. Flagg Taylor, examines the distinctive tyranny that dominated much of the twentieth century: totalitarianism. Through the writings of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Hannah Arendt, and Václav Havel, fellows will study the nature of “ideological tyranny” and its effort to control not only politics but conscience itself. Their reflections open broader questions about justice, moral courage, and the limits of human freedom under oppressive regimes.

The second section, led by Matthew Continetti, turns to revolution and its critics. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington defined conservatism as the defense of inherited institutions against radical challenge. Conservatives, in this view, emerge amid upheaval to explain why the structures that give life direction and meaning are worth preserving. Fellows will trace this response across three revolutions: the American, through the Federalist effort to secure liberty by constitutional design; the French, through the critiques of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre; and the Russian, through Winston Churchill’s warnings about Bolshevism and the rise of twentieth-century anti-Communist conservatism. Through close reading and discussion, fellows will consider what conservatism reveals about the enduring tension between renewal and preservation in political life.

Image: Kazimir Malevich, Red Cavalry Riding, 1932

Prof. Taylor on Women of the Gulag

This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 32 fellows will be selected.

Faculty

Matthew Continetti

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his work is focused on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century.

Flagg Taylor

Flagg Taylor is the Executive Director of the Center for Civics, Culture, & Society, at Miami University. His research specialty is in the history of political thought and American government, especially the question of executive power. He is Chair of the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

Readings:

  • Xenophon, Hiero or the Skilled Tyrant
  • Carl Friedrich, “The Unique Character of a Totalitarian Society,” from The Great Lie, pp. 16–25

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What does Xenophon’s portrait of Hiero suggest about the longings of a tyrant?
  2. What does the dialogue suggest about the possibility of a reformed or stabilized tyrannical rule?
  3. According to Friedrich, what are the distinguishing characteristics of a totalitarian regime?

Readings:

  • Hannah Arendt, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” from The Great Lie, pp. 124–46
  • Alain Besançon, “On the Difficulty of Defining the Soviet Regime,” from The Great Lie, pp. 31–50

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is the character of “totalitarian lawfulness,” according to Arendt?
  2. Why, according to Besançon, does the Soviet regime escape the regime classification schemes of Aristotle and Montesquieu?
  3. What is the unique role that ideology plays in a totalitarian regime according to both Besançon and Arendt?

Readings:

  • Arthur Koestler, The God That Failed
  • Czeslaw Milosz, “The Pill of Murti-Bing,” from The Great Lie, pp. 329–45
  • Czeslaw Milosz, “Child of Europe” (a poem)

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does Koestler account for his own conversion to Communism? How does Koestler’s account compare to Milosz’s portrait of intellectuals’ attraction to Communism?
  2. What accounts for Koestler’s disenchantment with the Communist Party and his eventual departure from it?
  3. In the poem “Child of Europe,” the “we” of Section 1 ends up dispensing a certain kind of wisdom to the “child of Europe” in Sections 2–8. What is the character of that wisdom?

Readings:

  • Václav Benda, “The Parallel Polis,” from The Great Lie, pp. 460–76
  • Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” from The Great Lie, pp. 477–508
  • Václav Havel, Audience, Unveiling, and Protest (3 one-act plays)

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is the “parallel polis,” and what is it meant to accomplish?
  2. What is the role of ideology in a post-totalitarian regime?
  3. Explain Havel’s green-grocer and the significance of this image.
  4. Who is Ferdinand Vaněk, and what effect does he have on his interlocutors in these two plays?

Readings:

  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “We Have Ceased to See the Purpose,” from The Great Lie, pp. 541–52
  • Pierre Manent, “The Return of Political Philosophy,” from The Great Lie, pp. 575–92

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Explain Solzhenitsyn’s critique of a certain idea of progress.
  2. According to Pierre Manent, what is the relationship between totalitarianism and modern science on the one hand and modern democracy on the other?
  3. What is the broader meaning of the struggle of central European dissidents, according to Chantal Delsol?

Readings:

  • Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775
  • The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
  • Shays’ Rebellion: Historical Background
  • Letter from Daniel Shays and Daniel Gray to Benjamin Lincoln, January 25, 1787
  • Letter from George Washington to Henry Knox, December 26, 1786
  • John Adams, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America,”The Political Writings of John Adams, pp. 105–07; 114–18
  • The Constitution of the United States of America
  • The Federalist 1, 6, 9, 10, and 51

Readings:

  • The Declaration of Rights of Man and of Citizen, August 26, 1789
  • Selections from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
  • Selections from Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791)

 

Discussion Questions:

  • How does Burke differentiate between natural liberty and citizenship? How do revolutionaries and conservatives understand these ideas differently?
  • What does Burke think made the revolutionaries dissatisfied with the old regime? Why was this dissatisfaction misguided?
  • Why does conservatism rely on a system of manners or “the decent drapery of life” that undergirds politics? Why does he use the story of the Royal Family’s kidnapping as an example of the decline of politeness? What does the revolutionary effort stand to gain from ripping down this drapery?
  • Why ought the state have an established church? Can Burke convince us to reconsider the separation of church and state? How does atheism support the revolutionaries’ aims?
  • How does Burke think that the critical attitude leads the National Assembly to “love men too little?” How does this differ from the disposition of “the true lawgiver?”
  • Does Burke disagree as much with the core values of the Revolution as he does its methods? With which principles, outside of those concerning revolution as such, does the Burkean conservative disagree?

 

Readings:

  • Alexander Hamilton,“The Spectacle of Revolutionary France,” April 7, 1789
  • Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, June 19, 1792
  • John Quincy Adams, Letters of Publicola (1792)
  • Selections from De Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1753–1821)
  • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826

 

Readings:

  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
  • I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Ch. III, pp. 33–50 (1917)
  • Winston Churchill, Speeches: “The Bolshevik Menace” (1919); “Bolshevism and Imperial Sedition” (1920); “The Socialist Peril” (1922)
  • Winston Churchill, “Zionism vs. Bolshevism” (1920) [Vol. IV of Collected Essays, pp. 26–30]; “Socialism and Sham” (1924) [Vol. II of Collected Essays, 124–27]

Readings:

  • “A.J. Cook Tells His Own Story” (1926)
  • Churchill, “Speeches on the General Strike” (pp. 477–84)
  • Churchill, “The Creeds of the Devil” (1937) [Vol. II of Collected Essays, pp. 394–97]
  • Churchill, “Leon Trotsky, alias Bronstein,” from Great Contemporaries (1937), pp. 192–200

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