ABSTRACT
Revolutions are defined most often by their combination of extraordinary means and ends, drastic social and political transformations that occur during and in the wake of vast mobilizations of mass forces. Scholars compare such historic episodes to understand why masses take action when they do and to explain how popular forces combine with the actions and reactions of elites to produce the structural and ideological results of revolutions. The sharpness of revolutionary definitions and comparisons becomes blurred when we widen our gaze beyond the great modern revolutions. Popular forces mobilized in great numbers and often with much violence yet had little effect on social relations in various instances, especially in the centuries before 1789. Recently, we have seen the overthrow of seemingly permanent and brutal regimes in Eastern Europe by vast, though poorly organized and nonviolent, street demonstrations. In those cases, weak means appear to have produced ends of profound change.
