Revolutionary Waves of the Second Half of the 20th Century: an Interplay between Geopolitics, Violence, and Legitimacy

Revolutionary waves that unite successive interrelated revolutions represent macro-political wholes, which, on the one hand, have their own patterns of dynamics; on the other hand, they are included in regional and world processes. The article presents the conceptual framework of the approach, the main hypotheses about the dynamics of the revolutionary waves in these aspects, as well as the reasons for the characteristics of several waves of the second half of the 20th century: in Africa and the Caribbean Gulf approx. 1960, in Southeast Asia, 1950-1960s, in Central Europe in the late 1980s. Waves are influenced by geopolitical tensions, ideological trends, but they themselves change geopolitics, geo-economics, geo-culture on the corresponding continent or even in the whole world. Individual revolutions in each wave and the waves themselves are characterized by very different levels of violence. Sometimes they are affected by civil and/or international wars; sometimes they are rather peaceful. Post-revolutionary regimes are recognized to varying degrees by opposing coalitions of powers as well as by global international organizations. This is always connected with positions in ideological struggle, with political and military support, as well as with the scale of homicide, and (non)justification of the admitted violence. Thus, geopolitics, violence and legitimacy of revolutionary waves constitute a single dynamic complex with regularities that are revealed on the historical data mentioned above.