Do Revolutions Truly Deliver Freedom, or Only Replace One Power with Another?

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” — Franz Kafka. 

 "Revolution" is a powerful word. It brings forth visions of ordinary people rising against injustice, neighbors storming their local palace, and marching through the streets shouting of a new dawn. Revolutions are portrayed as victories of courage over fear, of common citizens over entrenched powers. 

However, history teaches us a more pessimistic lesson: that freedom is rarely fully achieved and power has a way of assembling itself. Revolution time and again replaces one group of elites with another; authority is not dismantled so much as reshaped.

When we think about the French Revolution starting in 1789, we remember it as a victory for liberty, equality, and fraternity. Some citizens starved while the aristocrats feasted, and the Bastille became a powerful symbol of tyranny. When it fell, the masses believed that a new era of freedom had begun. But the revolution’s ideals quickly gave way to violence and fear.

 From 1793 to 1794, the Jacobins orchestrated the Reign of Terror, executing approximately 16,000 people and imprisoning tens of thousands more. Maximilien Robespierre, once a champion of freedom, presided over the guillotining of former allies and perceived enemies alike. 

By 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup, eventually crowning himself emperor. The monarchy was gone, but the French people now lived under a new autocrat, whose military campaigns and centralized authority curtailed freedoms just as severely as before. 

The French Revolution had upended monarchs and left ordinary citizens trapped within rigid designated authority by another name. 

Russia's 1917 revolution bears a similar tale. The February Revolution dethroned Tsar Nicholas II and ended centuries of czarist reign, while the Bolshevik-led October Revolution offered "peace, bread, and land." Workers and peasants could imagine a society without social extraction, but the ideal of liberation soon faded. Lenin disbanded the elected Constituent Assembly because its majority was allied against the Bolshevik party's interests, while the Bolshevik secret police (the Cheka) began to silence dissenters like left-wing social revolutionaries. 

When Stalin came to power, the initial hope for liberation devolved into one of the harshest dictatorships in history, with millions dead due to forced collectivization, gulags, and purges. 

The czar was gone, but the Soviet commissars wielded power with an intensity equal to, if not greater than, their predecessors. A revolution that offered freedom had procured fear. 

Nepal’s more recent People’s Movements illustrate that even when revolutions dismantle centuries-old monarchies, the results can remain fragile. In 1990, widespread protests forced King Birendra to accept a constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy. Yet corruption and political instability persisted. 

In 2006, King Gyanendra dissolved parliament and seized direct rule, sparking mass protests known as Jana Andolan II.

In 2008, the monarchy was dissolved, and Nepal was declared a republic. Even with such massive restructuring, democracy brought no peace and no prosperity. A decade-long Maoist insurgency had taken more than 17,000 lives already; subsequent governments struggled with paralyzed politics and corruption from which no privilege or caste allowed escape; and poverty and inequality appeared solidified in Nepalis' consciousness, leading to a conclusion that one crisis had merely replaced another. 

Georgia's Rose Revolution of 2003 shows a very similar pattern. The thousands of Georgians who peacefully protested under President Eduard Shevardnadze had roses as a symbol of their demand for change from corruption and electoral fraud. 

The election of Mikheil Saakashvili gave Georgians all that promised reform and transparency, and for a moment, there were some improvements visible (corruption and public infrastructure decreased; closer ties to Europe appeared plausible). Again, Saakashvili's power became concentrated, and along with controlling the media, harassing opponents, and police violence, it indicated increasing authoritarianism. By 2012, Georgians had turned their backs on Saakashvili, and enthusiasm had declined. The Rose Revolution had dismantled a stagnant regime but had not ultimately advanced the notions of deeper freedom and trust in government. 

The Arab Spring of 2010–2011 further underscores this pattern on a global scale. Beginning in Tunisia with Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, the movement spread rapidly, reaching Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and beyond. Millions demanded dignity, jobs, and democracy. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule fell after 18 days of protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, but within two years, a military coup brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, whose government proved even harsher. 

Libya went into civil war following the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria became the scene of a catastrophic conflict under Bashar al-Assad that displaced millions. Tunisia, the only bright spot in its political transition, has remained weakly democratic. Revolutions in much of the Arab world have promised freedom but instead brought repression, instability, or war. Nonetheless, even beyond these examples, history is filled with revolutions that do not get rid of power but replace it.

In Eastern Europe, Romania's 1989 revolution executed Nicolae Ceaușescu but did not break the cycle of corruption and weak state institutions. 

Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 and Maidan uprising in 2014 removed leaders governed by Russia, but entrenched oligarchic structures continued.

Latin America offers similar examples: Cuba's revolution of 1959 overthrew Batista only to see Fidel Castro form a one-party state; Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution deposed the Somoza dynasty in 1979 but resulted in a civil war and the return of authoritarianism under Daniel Ortega. 

Why do revolutions frequently not bring lasting freedom? 

Many reasons. 

Institutions collapse, ushering in power vacuums that allow opportunistic leaders to come to power and take advantage of the moment. Forcing unity around a single goal of overthrowing the regime is often frayed at best once that goal is achieved. Many idealisms around equality are upended by the realities of governing, economics, and geopolitics, and leaders are faced with fiddling while Rome burns, compelling them to use coercive policy to ensure order and dignity. Human ambition and fear make it impossible to entirely relinquish power when it is achieved, which, as a whole, subverts and institutionally frays the cause of freedom. 

Revolutions have human costs that often far exceed political structures. The guillotine in France, the gulags in the Soviet Union, Nepal’s civil war, summary police executions of the mid-2000s in Georgia, and the bombings in Syria are all great examples of how much agony, suffering, and trauma ordinary people endure because of elite struggles. Lives lost, economies destroyed, and generations living in instability often diminish how useful or necessary a revolution seems. Revolutions help when oppression builds and knowledge and experience declare it untenable. Revolutions get costly quickly, and the price or costs often far exceed the gains, at least in the near term. 

Freedom is so fragile. 

Revolutions seem to do much more to consume freedoms than protectFrom Paris to Moscow, from Kathmandu to Tbilisi, from Cairo to Caracas, the historical evidence is clear: revolutions create hope but rarely provide it. They overturn rulers but not lasting liberty; one power is being exchanged for another, either more ruthless or with a more gradual approach, but power nonetheless. Kafka rings true: the dream of revolution fades away, leaving behind new bureaucracies, new elites, and very human disappointments. 

Freedom is not a product of revolution—it is created slowly through institutions, accountability, and civic culture. Revolutions may mark the culmination of important moments, but they are rarely the end of oppression; they are typically simply a different name for the rebirth of oppression, under various names, flags, and faces.