Political revolutions are different. Some are aimed at the power shift, the other - at changing the government, others - at changing the political regime.Any revolution is a manifestation of the popular to the existing constitutional order. It occurs when the population does not have legitimate opportunities to influence on the authorities, or consider them ineffective.
The revolution cannot always be a manifestation of democracy.It can appear when the democratic regime has already been established or, if the goal of the revolution is to establish democracy in the state. In such situations it is customary to use the term "revolutionary democracy", that is democracy established by overthrowing the previous government. But the question in these situations is whether democracy in its essence implies a similar action on the part of the population, its separate groups?
Democracy is a political regime based on the method of collective decision-making with equal impact of the participants on the outcome of the process or its significant stage. The people demand the provision of a number of rights for every member of the society. Democracy consists of some values: rule of law, political and social equality, liberty, the right to self-determination, human rights etc.But what is the hierarchy of those values? Which human rights are most significant, and in what ways should use for implement it? Is it possible to sacrifice one of the democratic principles in order to ensure fully the other? Even now, the ideal of democracy is difficult to achieve and is subject to different interpretations, so in legal science there is no a clear answer to these questions still, but in this article I will try to determine the number of revolutionary actions as one of the forms of democracy. We should turn our attention to some facts in history and modern reality.
A classic example in history of the democratic revolution is the French revolution of 1848. The task of the revolution was the establishment of civil rights and liberties. It changed the form of government and political regime.Instead of the authoritarian monarchy the democratic Republic was established and the human rights were respected. The revolutionary action can be considered like a manifestation of people's democracy. People became independent and they were ready for independent decision-making and directly revolution was the first free decision of the French democratic society. So, in this situation, a violent change of the constitutional system cannot be considered a violation of human rights.
But there are other examples of revolutions which can hardly be called a democracy. There are some established in a democratic state, where laws and the Constitution provide for the procedure of the change of power. In such cases, the revolutionary group for any reason doesn’t want to act by legal means; they are in favour of the violent change of the constitutional order. Reasons like this may be several. First, it is a too long legal procedure for the ouster of the incumbent government and the unwillingness or inability of the population to comply with it. Secondly, it is the discrepancy between the views of the revolutionary groups with the majority of the population, and it means the actual impossibility to remove government by referendum and other democratic procedures.
In such cases, one can see not only the violation of human rights in part to a large number of casualties and bring all the systems of the state are in decline. Violated political rights and freedoms of people - such actions we can’t call a revolution. It is just an armed anti-constitutional coup, seizure of power by particular groups of the population.
An example of such events is the revolution that occurred in the Ukraine in 2014. Since the end of January 2014 there were 10-12 thousand resistance fighters united in the hundreds of ideological, geographical and even ethnic lines acting in Kiev. They chose commanders by themselves. The organization the “Right sector” which was created in the fall of 2013 by the nationalist Dmitry Yarosh, started to be popular. Well-equipped fighters “Right sector” were (or claimed to be) the initiators and participants in most military actions, including fractures of the course of events on the Maidanin January - February 2014. The enemies of the existing in the Ukrainian state at the time of the political regime and the parties of revolutionary action were only fifteen thousand people with the country's population of 45 million (less than 0.03% of the total population). It is easy to guess why they can't overthrow the government by legal means. Such a revolution cannot be called democratic. It becomes the expression of opinion of certain groups of population and resulted in a huge violation of constitutional and natural rights and freedoms of almost the entire population of the country. Confirmation of these words can be civil war in Ukraine after the regime change.
So, the revolution can be attributed both to the democratic and undemocratic phenomenon – crime against a person and violation of various human rights. It all depends on the conditions in which there is a forced change of the constitutional system.
LITERATURE
Héritiers L. (FR. Louis Heritier) History of the French revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic. Translated from the German Ginzburg. SPb., typography t-VA "Delo", 1907
Hyland J. L. Democratic Theory: The Philosophical Foundations. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1995.
Musafirova O. (2014) Ukraina sejchas napominaet nichejnuju stranu / / Novaja gazeta. 19.02.2014