In my opinion, I feel as though the impact that these two leave behind is what matters the most in distinguishing them. This is because often times when they start out, they are both seeking the same purpose which is a fight for the betterment of one’s society but when the story is more glorifying and less full of horror we tend to call it a revolution. Being from a country that experienced one of the worst civil wars in history but has seen a complete shift in its society, this makes me wonder if so many people hadn’t died and also in the manner which people had killed each other….would we define what happened as a civil war or a revolution?
Revolutions
Professor Shervin Malekzadeh
Your post sort of begins to answer the question posed in my blog post as to whether the normative connotations for civil war and revolution outside of an American context. I would disagree that the concept that civil war has the implicit motivation of generating a positive change within society. Would a coup resulting in a subsequent civil war have the goal of improving society, or would the goal be a power grab by the military leaders involved in the coup?
I agree with you in the sense that “civil war” carries a much more negative connotation than a revolutionary war; however, I feel like it is actually difficult to support the claim that civil wars are literally more violent or belligerent than revolutions. Historians estimate that 10 million people died as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. Was the revolutionary ethos of the Bolsheviks enough to undermine the terrible loss of life that came as a result of the Revolution? Was the labeling of the Bolshevik Revolution as a Revolution simply the work of the Soviet propaganda machine? Perhaps it is the legacy of a war that gives a war its name, or perhaps it can be a more intentional labeling by elites.