Cities are changing sites of revolution and rebellion, contestations over forms of power and social relations. As historical and contemporary instances, revolutions present alternative views of world-making and contestations over the organization of society and relations of power. To better understand this phenomenon, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has assembled a panel discussion of Professor Mark Beissinger’s book, The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Princeton University Press, 2022). Join us for an exploration of how and why cities have become primary sites of revolutionary disruptions in the contemporary world.

Examining the changing character of revolution around the world, The Revolutionary City focuses on the impact that the concentration of people, power, and wealth in cities exercises on revolutionary processes and outcomes. Once predominantly an urban and armed affair, revolutions in the twentieth century migrated to the countryside, as revolutionaries searched for safety from government repression and discovered the peasantry as a revolutionary force. But at the end of the twentieth century, as urban centers grew, revolution returned to the city—accompanied by a new urban civic repertoire espousing the containment of predatory government and relying on visibility and the power of numbers rather than arms.

Using original data on revolutionary episodes since 1900, public opinion surveys, and engaging examples from around the world, Mark Beissinger explores the causes and consequences of the urbanization of revolution in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beissinger examines the compact nature of urban revolutions, as well as their rampant information problems and heightened uncertainty. He investigates the struggle for control over public space, why revolutionary contention has grown more pacified over time, and how revolutions involving the rapid assembly of hundreds of thousands in central urban spaces lead to diverse, ad hoc coalitions that have difficulty producing substantive change.

Author of The Revolutionary City:

Mark R. Beissinger, Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics, Princeton University

“Author Meets Critics” Expert Discussants:

Dina Bishara (Assistant Professor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations)Bryn Rosenfeld (Assistant Professor, Department of Government/A&S)Sidney Tarrow (Emeritus Maxwell Upson Professor, Department of Government/A&S; Adjunct Professor, Cornell Law School)
Moderator:

Rachel Beatty Riedl (Einaudi Center Director; Professor, Department of Government/A&S and Cornell Brooks School)

Co-Sponsors:

Institute for European Studies, Einaudi CenterSoutheast Asia Program, Einaudi CenterReppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Einaudi CenterInstitute of Politics and Global Affairs
About the Forum:

The “Author Meets Critics” forum stages scholarly conversations around the Einaudi Center’s research priority areas: Democratic Threats and Resilience, and Inequalities, Identities, and Justice.

Attendance Requirements:

In-person attendance is open to the Cornell community: Cornell ID and mask REQUIRED

Register here.

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was largely informed by his notion of a shared Russian-Ukrainian history, which allegedly does not give Ukraine the right to a sovereign state. The current conflict in Ukraine is, in this sense, also a dispute about history. This panel brings together two leading historians of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War to discuss the war’s roots and significance from a historical perspective. The speakers will address key questions such as: What has Ukraine’s relationship with Russia been over the long term and how might the war change it? Does the war in Ukraine mark a break with the post-Cold War order, a return to the Cold War, or the beginning of something completely new? How should we think about China’s role in the conflict? Is the war a moment of opportunity or crisis for the West?

Serhii Plokhy is Mikhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He has written broadly on the history of Eastern Europe and Ukraine, on issues ranging from the premodern and early modern history of Eastern Slavs, to the Soviet Union’s collapse, nationalism and nationalist myth-making, and Chernobyl. His many publications include Yalta: The Price of Peace, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Chernobyl: The History of a Tragedy. Professor Plokhy’s most recent work, Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster, will be published later this year.
This event is co-sponsored by The Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Odd Arne Westad is the Elihu Professor of History at Yale University, where he also teaches in the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and serves as director of International Security Studies. Professor Westad specializes in modern international and global history, especially the history of eastern Asia since the 18th century. He has published widely on the history of the Cold War, China-Russia relations, and the Chinese civil war and Communist party, and is currently working on histories of empire and imperialism, above all in Asia. Through books such as Cold War and Revolution, Decisive Encounters, The Global Cold War, and The Cold War: A World History, Westad has revolutionized the field of Cold War history.

Europe’s “Eastern Crisis” has witnessed the massing of military forces, armed intervention, and the forceful occupation of territory, combined with harsh rhetoric and outright falsehoods that hinder the pursuit of diplomatic solutions. The situation is eerily reminiscent of the 1930s, when another authoritarian state sought to reverse the consequences of what it perceived as an unfair peace settlement and mounted an aggressive campaign that engulfed the world in a disastrous war. An interdisciplinary panel of Russian, Ukrainian, and US experts will help us understand how we got to this point and what can be done.

Panelists

Mark R. Beissinger, Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics, Princeton University

Bryn Rosenfeld, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University

Kateryna Pishchikova, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations, eCampus University

Nicholas Rostow, Visiting Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Moderator

Matthew Evangelista, President White Professor of History and Political Science, Department of Government, Cornell University

Presented by the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, with co-sponsorship from the Institute of European Studies at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, Cornell University.

About the Series

The new Einaudi Center Critical Conversations Series brings together world-class regional, historical, and comparative experts to promote deeper understanding of global current events and emerging crises on the world stage. The stakes for our shared future have never been higher—so please join us for these critical conversations.

Register here