Conclusion

Various editions of the book: Revolution and Counter-Revolution.

Having updated the first (1959) edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution by the addition of the preceding pages, we wondered if the brief conclusion to the original text and to subsequent editions should be replaced or at least modified. After rereading it carefully, we are convinced there is no reason to omit it or even alter it.

We say today as we said then: In view of what is stated herein, the present-day scene is very clear for anyone who acknowledges the logic of the counter-revolutionary principles. We are in the extreme throes of a struggle between the Church and the Revolution, a struggle that would be mortal if one of the contenders were not immortal. Therefore, in concluding, it is right that we, sons of the Church and fighters in the battles of the Counter-Revolution, should filially consecrate this book to Our Lady.

Our Lady crushing the head of the devil. On top of the pulpit in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula (Brussels). Photo by Steve Collis.

It was the Immaculate Virgin who crushed the head of the Serpent, the first, the major, the eternal revolutionary, the instigator and foremost upholder of this Revolution, as of any before or after it. Mary is, therefore, the Patroness of all those who fight against the Revolution.
The universal and all-powerful mediation of the Mother of God is the counter-revolutionaries’ greatest reason for hope. And, at Fatima, she already gave them the certainty of victory when she declared that, even after an eventual surge of communism throughout the world, “finally, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!”

The three children, seers of Fátima in 1917.

We beseech the Virgin, therefore, to accept this filial homage, a tribute of love and an expression of absolute confidence in her triumph.

We would not wish to end this work without a tribute of filial devotion and unrestricted obedience to the “sweet Christ on earth,” the pillar and infallible foundation of the Truth, His Holiness Pope John XXIII.

“Ubi Ecclesia ibi Christus, ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia” (“Where the Church is, there is Christ; where Peter is, there is the Church”). It is then to the Holy Father that we direct our love, our enthusiasm, our dedication. It is with these sentiments, which have animated all the pages of Catolicismo since its foundation, that we have ventured to publish this work.

St. Peter receiving the Keys of the Church from Our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have not the slightest doubt in our heart about any of the theses that constitute this work. Nevertheless, we subject them unrestrictedly to the judgment of the Vicar of Christ and are disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it depart even slightly from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark of Salvation, and the Gate of Heaven.

Postface

After reading the previous words, the reader will necessarily wonder where the revolutionary process stands today. Is the Third Revolution still alive? Or does the collapse of the Soviet empire permit us to affirm that the Fourth Revolution is erupting in the deepest levels of the political reality of Eastern Europe, or even that it has won?

From KGB to the president of Communist Russia, Vladimir Putin. Photo by www.kremlin.ru

We must make a distinction. Today, the currents of thought that advocate the implantation of the Fourth Revolution have spread — though in different forms — throughout the world and reveal nearly everywhere a marked tendency to increase in volume.
In this sense, the Fourth Revolution is in a crescendo that is promising to those who desire it and threatening to those who oppose it. However, it would be exaggerated to say that the present order of things in the former U.S.S.R. is already totally modeled according to the Fourth Revolution and that nothing of the Third Revolution remains there.

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The Fourth Revolution, although having also a political dimension, identifies itself as a cultural revolution. In other words, it broadly encompasses all aspects of human existence. Therefore, the political clashes that may occur among the nations that once formed the U.S.S.R. could strongly condition the Fourth Revolution, yet they will hardly dominate the events, the ensemble of human acts encompassed by the cultural revolution.

Przystanek Jezus, a Woodstock festival lasting eight days in Poland, organized by the Catholic Association in Service of the New Evangelization “Community of St. Timothy from Gubin”.  Many religious, including Bishops and a Cardinal, attend this event. This is one of the the booths, supporting homosexuality. “Association for the benefit of LGBT people.” Another sign says “Campaign against homophobia”. Photo by Ralf Lotys.

But what about the public opinion of the former Soviet countries (many of them still ruled by old communists)? Has it nothing to tell us about this, since, according to Revolution and Counter-Revolution, it had such a great role in the previous revolutions?

This question cannot be answered unless other questions are answered first. Is there truly a public opinion in these countries? Can it be induced to participate in a systematic revolutionary process? If not, what are the plans of the top national and international leaders of communism for orienting this public opinion?

Russian Revolution of 1917

These questions are difficult to answer, as presently public opinion in the former Soviet world is evidently indifferent, amorphous, and immobilized by the weight of seventy years of total dictatorship. Under this tyranny, every individual feared to manifest his religious or political opinion in many circles, even to his closest relative or most intimate friend. A probable denunciation — veiled or open, true or false — could consign him to indefinite hard labor on the frozen expanses of Siberia. Nevertheless, these questions must be answered if we are to render a prognosis of the course of events in the erstwhile Soviet world.

A view shows destroyed military vehicles on a street, as Communist Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in the town of Bucha in the Kyiv region, Ukraine March 1, 2022. Picture taken March 1, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko. Other photos of the war in Ukraine are here. Putin’s monstrous war continues and the photographs on display here demonstrate the justifiable cause for revulsion across the democratic world. https://www.flickr.com/photos/oireachtas/albums/72177720306179549/

Moreover, the international media continues to publicize the eventual migration of famished semi-civilized — ergo semi-barbarian — hordes to the prosperous European countries living under the regime of Western consumerism.

Starved not only of food but of ideas, what do these pitiable people understand of the free world, at once supercivilized and gangrenous? On meeting it, would they not clash with it? And what would result from this clash, both in an invaded Europe and, by extension, in the old Soviet world? A self-managing, cooperationist, structuralist-tribalist revolution¹ or an immediate world of total anarchy, of chaos and horror, which we would not hesitate to call the Fifth Revolution?

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At the moment this edition goes to press, any answer to these questions would be manifestly premature. Not that they should not be asked now, for the future is so unpredictable that it might be too late to ask them tomorrow. Indeed, of what use are books, thinkers, or remnants of civilization in a tribal world beset by the hurricanes of the disordered human passions and the deliria of structuralist-tribalist “mysticism” — what a tragic situation, in which nobody would be anything in the empire of Nothingness.

* * *

Gorbachev is still in Moscow, where he will remain, at least as long as he does not accept the highly preferential invitations quickly extended him by the prestigious universities of Harvard, Stanford, and Boston after his downfall,² or the regal hospitality offered by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, in the renowned palace of Lanzarote, on the Canary Islands,³ or the university chair to which he was invited by the famous College de France.⁴

Defeated in the East, the communist ex-leader’s only difficulty seems to be choosing among the many flattering invitations he is receiving from the West. Thus far, he has decided to write a syndicated series of articles for newspapers in the capitalist world — a world whose highest levels continue to provide him fervent and inexplicable support — and to travel to the United States amid great publicity to raise funds for the Gorbachev Foundation.

Thus, even though Gorbachev is overshadowed in his own country — and seriously questioned in the West — Western magnates endeavor in various ways to maintain the floodlights of a flattering publicity beamed on the man of perestroika, who made a point, throughout his whole political career, of showing that his reform is not communism’s contrary but its refinement.⁵

The former Soviet owned Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, officially became independent on September 6, 1991, after much protest not only from the Baltic Nation, but also from the US. TFPs in 20 countries around the world collected over 5 million signatures on behalf of Lithuania’s independence, the largest valid petition drive in history at that time, making it into The Guinness Book of Records.

As for the weak Soviet federation that was agonizing when Gorbachev was overthrown, it became a quasiphantasmal “Commonwealth of Independent States,” whose inter-member friction worries statesmen and political analysts. Several of these republics have nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them at a neighbor (or at the enemies of Islam, whose influence grows daily in the former Soviet world), causing great apprehension among those concerned for global balance.
The effects of these eventual atomic aggressions could be multiple. Principal among them could be the exodus of populations formerly contained by the Iron Curtain. Driven by the rigors of bitter winters and by the dangers of immense catastrophes, they might feel redoubled impulses to “request” the hospitality of Western Europe. and of American nations.

Leonel Brizola during his inauguration ceremony as governor of Rio Grande do Sul, 1959.

In Brazil, Lionel Brizola, Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, has already proposed (to the applause of the nation’s minister of agriculture) attracting farmers from Eastern Europe through government land-reform programs.⁶ Argentine president Carlos Menem, in contacts with the European Economic Community, has said he is willing to have his country accept many thousands of these immigrants.⁷ The head of the Colombian Foreign Office, Mrs. Nohemi Sanin, has stated that her country’s government was studying the possibility of admitting technicians from the East.⁸ This is how imminent the waves of invasion may be.

President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, with poster of Argentine Marxist guerrilla leader, Che Guevara, at the Havanna University. Cuba, 2009. Photo by Presidencia de la Nación.

And what of communism? What happened to it? Enthralled at the perspective of a long-lasting universal peace, or even an everlasting peace that would abolish the terrible specter of a global nuclear hecatomb, most of Western public opinion was gripped by the sensation that communism had died.

The West’s honeymoon with this supposed paradise of amity and peace is gradually losing its harmony, as evidenced by the above-mentioned threat of all sorts of aggressions thundering in the territories of the defunct U.S.S.R. Will the Western impression that communism has ended prove any more reliable?

“Baltic Chain”: event that took place on August 23, 1989 in the three Baltic countries (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia) – then still Soviet Socialist Republics – when about two million people joined hands to form a human chain more than 600 km long crossing the three Baltic republics and passing by the three capitals (Vilnius, Tallinn and Riga, respectively). This unique demonstration was organized to draw the attention of world public opinion to the common fate that had befallen the three republics. In fact, its date coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the secret agreement known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, by which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, leading to the occupation of the three states by the Soviets. The Soviet rulers only admitted the existence of that pact one week prior to the Baltic Chain. The protest was peaceful.

At first, the voices that questioned the authenticity of communism’s demise were few, isolated, and poorly documented.
Nevertheless, little by little, shadows began to appear on the horizon. It was noted that in countries of central Europe, the Balkans, or the former U.S.S.R. some of the new holders of power had been important figures in the local communist party. The move toward privatization in all these countries, with the exception of the old East Germany, is generally more apparent than real, proceeding at a snail’s pace that reveals the lack of an entirely defined direction.

Soviet tank in Budapest, Hungary in 1956.

So, did communism die in these countries? Or did it simply enter into a complicated metamorphosis? The doubts in this matter are growing just as the last echoes of the universal rejoicing at the supposed collapse of communism are discreetly fading away.

The Western communist parties had withered in the sight of all at the crash of the first cave-ins of the U.S.S.R.

Vladimir Putin held a working meeting with Kamchatka Territory Governor Vladimir Solodov. The head of the region briefed Putin about his performance in the past five years. Photo by Kremlin.ru.

But already today several of them are reorganizing under new names. Is the change of names a resurrection? A metamorphosis? I am inclined to opt for the second hypothesis. As for certainties, only the future can give them.

This updating of the general scene in face of which the world is taking a position seemed indispensable for any attempt to impart a little light and order to a horizon in whose quadrants chaos is predominating. And what is the spontaneous path of chaos if not the unintelligible worsening of itself?

* * *

“ex voto” painting, 1781: Madonna von Einsiedeln

Amid this chaos, only one thing will not fail, namely, the prayer transcribed a little earlier and which is in my heart and on my lips, just as it is in the heart of all who see and think as I do:
Unto thee I lift up my eyes, unto thee, who dwellest in the heavens. See how the eyes of servants are fixed on the hands of their masters, the eyes of a handmaid on the hand of her mistress! So our eyes are fixed on Our Lady and Mother, waiting for Her to have mercy on us.

Miraculous image of Our Lady of the Miracolo in the Church of San Andrea delle Fratte in Rome

Behold the affirmation of the unvarying confidence of the Catholic soul, which kneels but remains firm amid the general convulsion — firm with all the firmness of those who, in the storm, and with a strength of soul even greater than it, continue to affirm from the bottom of their heart: “Credo in Unam, Sanctam, Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam” that is, “I believe in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, against which, as promised to Saint Peter, the gates of hell will never prevail.”

The “pacifist” Soviet effort was directed mainly at the two great pillars of resistance to communism: in the temporal sphere, the United States, and in the spiritual sphere, the Catholic Church.
Moscow’s propaganda against the United States employed useful innocents (whose innocence was at times contestable but certainly always useful). They would spread an atmosphere of sentimental and pacifistic optimism that surreptitiously led Americans to forget past experience and hope for a definitive reconciliation with the smiling Soviet leaders of the post-Stalinist era. Available as an e-book! Click for your free download.

END

^{1. See Part III, Chapter 2, Commentary “Perestroika and Glasnost: Dismantling the Third Revolution or Metamorphosing Communism?”
2.  Cf. Folha de S. Paulo, December 21, 1991.
3.  Cf. O Estado de S. Paulo, January 11, 1992.
4.  Cf. Le Figaro, March 12, 1992.
5.  See Part III, Chapter 2, Commentary — “Perestroika and Glasnost: Dismantling the Third Revolution or Metamorphosing Communism?”
6.  Cf. Jornal do Tarde, Sao Paulo, December 27,1991.
7.  Cf. Ambiro Finonciero, Buenos Aires, February 19, 1992.
8.  Cf. El Tiempo, Bogota, February 22, 1992}

Revolution
and
Counter-Revolution

As we mentioned in the Foreword, the publication of Revolution and Counter
Revolution had an immediate and profound impact. Ecclesiastical personages like
those already quoted, as well as theologians, professors, and conservative leaders from
around the world, acclaimed the author’s analysis of and solution to the contemporary
crisis. More than thirty years after its first edition, the essay’s repercussion continues to
grow, especially among youth. Three testimonies regarding Revolution and Counter
Revolution are herein transcribed exempli gratia. —Ed.

Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites
in the Allocutions of Pius XII

Other Works

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Conclusion. Pgs. 167 – 211.