Ethiopia, an Heretical Revolution?

Ethiopia: an heretical Revolution? is an in-depth account of the immense upheavals that have wracked Ethiopia since the overthrow of the Emperor in 1974. The feudal system was eradicated and a peasant revolution triumphed, albeit ephemerally, on a scale unparalleled outside China and Vietnam. This book confronts the still open question: is the Ethiopian revolution just another military coup, or is its army in reality the vanguard of a socialist revolution? Rene Lefort argues that the revolution cannot be understood in terms of its own Marxist-Leninist slogans, or even in the light of previous revolutions in the Third World. For centuries Ethiopia has been a world apart, and its revolution was in no way due to an overly delayed decolonization or an invasion by imperialist military forces. It broke out primarily because of conflicts internal to Ethiopian society, and only a grasp of this basic introversion can enable us to understand the past decade of Ethiopian history. This book provides the most detailed examination yet of the first years of the revolution. It's origins, how the Derg took over, the revolution on the land and in the towns, the worsening conflict between the Derg and the diverse peoples living in Ethiopia, the 'red terror' that wiped out a whole generation of young intellectuals on the left, and the Soviet-Cuban intervention - all are handled with a command of the facts and an insight that make this book a permanent contribution to our understanding of what may yet prove to be the most significant historical event since the liberation of Angola and Mozambique --Back cover.