What you should know about popular revolts?

If the left-wingers tend to deny reality of coups and conspiracies, right-wingers tend to deny reality of the popular revolts - as an actual & independent factor in politics

So, let me give a few introductory remarks:

First. Popular revolts exist. Not everything can be explained through the court conspiracies, or the foreign intrigues. Sometimes, the commonfolk rebels - without much preparation or instigation from any kind of the puppeteers, foreign or domestic.

Second. Unless combined with the internal division, or fight in the elites, with some kind of the elite conspiracy, or with the foreign intrusion, they have little chance for success. It would not be an exaggeration to say popular revolts almost always fail.

Third. The great delusion about the popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when these conditions exacerbate.

Nothing can be further from truth. Like yes, oppression and misery can produce very serious grudge and serious grievances. But, contrary to the popular opinion, revolts do not happen when misery and oppression exacerbate.

Revolts happen when things finally turn to the better

This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really bad, the masses were too suppressed, too frightened, too depressed to ever raise the voice. They might have beared the grudges, but they beared them in silence

When the things turn to the better, that is when the population rises, to take revenge for all the past grievances, and all the past scare. Which, of course, presents a huge challenge for all the well-intentioned reformers of bad systems. An idealistic reformer may think people will be grateful for you for easing their lot. In reality, however, they are far more likely to tear you into pieces.

Hence, the observation:

Regimes overthrown by the revolutions almost always tend to be better than their predecessors

Explaining why a wise and far-sighted ruler knows better than to relieve the burden of the commonfolk. Or, if he does, he sees it as a highly dangerous act, presenting a potential point of failure of the whole system. Once you start easing the old oppression, you destabilise it all. People get excited, their expectations rise much faster than whatever is the pace of reforms. More importantly, once you decrease the oppression, any forms of oppression (including the ones they used to bear in silence) will seem as absolutely unbearable.

Easing the oppression, you are inviting the oppressed populace into rebellion.

Let me show this on the one specific example

Stalin’s concentration camps

Revolts in Gulag

Myth: Revolts happen when things turn to worse

Reality: Revolts happen when things turn to better

Stalin’s concentration camps give us a great illustration of this rule.