‘The Day the Dragon Licks Its Flank, You’ll Find Us at Your Side’: Self-Heroization and Revolutionary Organization

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‘The Day the Dragon Licks Its Flank, You’ll Find Us at Your Side’:
Self-Heroization and Revolutionary Organization

Erik van Ree is a Research Associate at the Faculty of Humanities (European Studies) of the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In January 1919, Dan Breen and two other Irish Volunteers shot their first police officers. This is how the Irish historian and journalist, Maurice Walsh, highlights these revolutionaries’ lifestyle and state of mind:

Someone who had shot a couple of police officers in defiance of all that hesitancy and caution […] was likely to see himself as one of the elect. […] Isolated in their cocoon of self-belief, the Tipperary hard men set about creating their myth that would make themselves heroes among less bold Volunteers and inspire some to emulate them. They patented the glamour of being on the run, cycling vast distances, sleeping in houses where they were welcome and well fed […], and liberated from friends and family. The wandering was itself part of their growth as self-sufficient heroes and connected them with the stories of historic rebels who took to the mountains. […] the experience of living their myth, and publicizing it, not only created a strong sense of comradeship but made a cult of strong personalities a key feature of the whole movement. [i]

The passage from Walsh’s Bitter Freedom perfectly exemplifies the process that I will explore in this article. I will argue that people locked in extreme conditions involving life-and-death risks on a long-term basis absorb themselves in a process of ‘self-heroization’.

‘Self-heroization’ is the process through which people come to identify themselves as heroes. The process includes the adoption of a heroic ethos and of what I will call an ‘epic consciousness’. People assume that the latter mental state experiences their own lives as an epic in which they figure as protagonists and which they ‘write’ through their actions.

‘Ethos’ is close in meaning to attitude. It is a useful term here as it combines internality and expression, mentality, and the practice of a lifestyle. A group’s ethos includes ‘the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style, and mood; it is the underlying attitude toward themselves and their world that life reflects’. The ethos underscores the group’s ‘approved style of life’. [ii] The heroic ethos stresses combative qualities such as courage, persistence, and preparedness for sacrifice.

The process of self-heroization will be explored at the hand of the way modern revolutionaries, joined in organizations committed to armed struggle, experience themselves and their struggle. The process plays itself out under established revolutionary regimes too, but this article focuses only on struggling movements, not in power.

I will furthermore leave undiscussed the important question of individual psychology, i.e. of whether characteristics of the personality make some people more prone to adopt a heroic self-understanding than others.

Roger Griffin analyses the terrorist’s heroic, fanatical commitment in terms of absolute devotion to a cause and a community, and of sacralized worldviews demanding and legitimizing extreme violence. In Griffin’s view, violent devotion springs from a ‘primal human need’ for higher meaning, which is a constant in history reaching back to the earliest human communities [iii], where communities of violent devotion spring up again and again throughout human history, a deep, ingrained human need indeed is being expressed here. Though, most of the time, most of us are not fanatically devoted and are unprepared to kill on a mass scale for any cause. What interests me is what conditions trigger—not the same thing as cause!—the mechanism into action. The focus of my piece lies in showing how life conditions and practices engender and, to a point, even cause heroic self-understanding and emotions. Here, Marx’s dictum applies very well: ‘It is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’. [iv]

Revolutionary self-heroization is a complex, multidimensional process. I will explore four mechanisms. These will be distinguished analytically, but they cannot be distinguished so easily and tend rather shade into each other. First, I will argue that, cognitively, the revolutionaries’ heroic self-understanding more or less accurately reflects their practices and their violent, high-risk lifestyle. I will distinguish between heroic behavior and heroic status; while the latter crucially depends on public recognition, the former represents a more objectionable quality. The distinction allows us to characterize armed-struggle revolutionary organizations as intrinsically heroic formations.

Second, the heroic ethos emotionally endows revolutionaries with the fighting spirit they need to focus on their violent work and perform it. It brings them ‘in the mood’. Third, self-heroization functions as a coping mechanism for helping revolutionaries endure their physically and existentially challenged, uprooted lives. And fourth, revolutionaries mostly are the weaker party in the conflict with the state. In adopting an epic consciousness, fuelled by a political myth in the Sorelian, victory-promising sense, revolutionaries are vitally boosting and energizing themselves for victory.

The first section of the article explores in what sense the revolutionaries’ heroic self-understanding can be regarded as a cognitive reflection of their lifestyle. The second section focuses on ‘heroic’ warrior aristocracies discussed in archaeological and anthropological literature. The comparison with the archaic warriors will help us through the specific qualities of the modern, revolutionary heroic ethos into relief.

In the third section of the article, I show revolutionaries regard themselves and their causes as heroic, that ‘heroism’ is not merely an observer’s analytical tool, but reflects the revolutionaries’ self-understanding. Heroization reflects the ‘emic’ as much as the ‘etic’ perspective. I will explore this aspect of the matter at the hand of three case studies: the young, pre-1917 Joseph Stalin; the guerrilla leader Mao Zedong; and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Their speeches and writings of the pre-seizure-of-power periods will be used as concrete windows in the process of self-heroization.

Revolutionaries nurture the heroic ethos across the ideological spectrum. Revolutionary insurgents of all stripes share the condition of life-and-death competition with the state, in which the heroic ethos is inscribed. I focused on one, the communist tradition, to tease out in some detail the various ways in which individual revolutionary leaders within that tradition conceptualized the heroic, rather than scattering attention over all the main revolutionary traditions—communist, nationalist, fascist, Islamist, and so on, while in the process losing depth. More on this later on. I selected these three particular communists just mentioned because their writings are available to me, and because of the iconic status of the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions. The cases will highlight that the modern, as opposed to the archaic heroic ethos, has a hybrid character: knowledge-balanced individual heroism ‘embedded’ in an organized movement.

The article’s final sections will explore the discussions of self-heroization as a coping mechanism and the notion of epic consciousness.

The heroic: all in the public eye?

The first and main reason armed-struggle revolutionaries see themselves as heroes is obvious enough: put bluntly, revolutionaries regard themselves as heroes because that’s what they are. That they are fighting, killing, and sacrificing themselves for a goal far greater than themselves makes it difficult for revolutionaries to see their own lives and struggles in any other than the heroic light. I dedicate this section of the present article to showing that they are not wrong.

Originally, two heroic prototypes dominated the literature. The mythological and epic warrior heroes such as Achilles and Beowulf set out on their quests and adventures to kill an enemy—man, woman, or monster—to retrieve a treasure, sack a city, or accomplish another fighting mission difficult to accomplish for ordinary mortals. [v] Thomas Carlyle’s Great Man represented a transformative force capable of redirecting history.[vi] over time, the loosely defined heroic category expanded and became democratized to include heroes of peace (Gandhi, Mandela), soldiers and firefighters brave beyond the call of duty, great athletes, astronauts, nurses of the pandemic, and so on, shading off into the world of ‘celebrities’. [vii]

A powerful current in the scholarly literature regards heroism as something purely in the beholder’s eye, an intersubjective phenomenon or cultural construct, rather than as reflecting intrinsic, objectionable qualities. Approached from this perspective, heroes are made in and by the public eye. [viii]

Reading heroism as being acknowledged resonates with Max Weber’s discussion of charismatic authority. For Weber, people have charisma if they are regarded by others as possessing extraordinary qualities not encountered in everyday life (als ausseralltäglich […] geltende Qualität), and under which that person is regarded (gewertet) as falling in a different category from the average person. [ix] If charisma is the capacity to convince others of one’s extraordinary qualities, there is, by definition, no such thing as unrecognized charisma: for not being acknowledged proves one does not effectively possess the capacity of convincing others of one’s extraordinary character.

But is it wise to conceive heroism, too, in purely intersubjective, interactive terms? What do we make, for example, of people risking their own lives to save someone else from drowning? Is it helpful to interpret the heroic acclaim these people receive exclusively in terms of cultural and ideological preferences? Is there nothing intrinsically, objectively heroic about their behavior?

I propose to distinguish between heroic status and heroic behavior. Heroic status is ‘something that one can only have in a group, and by comparison with others. A hero cannot regard himself as a man of high status unless he is widely talked about and shown proper deference by everyone he meets’. [x] But that does not alter the obvious fact that, even if ‘the [heroic] act must be witnessed or evaluated by spectators to receive acclaim, the decision to act heroically does not necessarily […] require an audience’. [xi] Heroic status adds the dimension of recognition to heroic behavior.

Scholarly definitions of heroic behavior pivot around three features. Even if the scholars offering these definitions always spell this out, these features in no way depend on recognition or acclaim; Their presence or absence can be established more or less objectively. First, heroes achieve unusual, extraordinary feats beyond what most of us are able or willing to accomplish. Second, heroes do not shrink from taking very high risks and accepting extreme sacrifices, often including the risk of losing their own lives. Third and last, heroes act either in an altruistic spirit of service to others or in the name of a greater cause, but not primarily for themselves. [xii]

In this definition, armed struggle, we can classify revolutionary organizations as intrinsically heroic formations: they manifest all three distinguishing marks of a collective hero. [xiii] One, pursuing the fundamental transformation of a country’s political and/or social order is an extraordinarily ambitious goal by any standard. Two, by engaging the state in armed combat, revolutionaries are prepared to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, in pursuit of their great goals. Three, revolutionaries pursue public causes, not primarily narrow personal aims. Even if they hope to grasp dictatorial power for themselves, which they not seldom do, they pursue larger, transformative goals supposedly to be served by their dictatorship.

Classifying armed-struggle revolutionary formations as heroic in no way implies an ethically positive appreciation of what they are doing or pursuing. To be sure, heroism has an ethical, altruistic component: by definition, heroism is about sacrificing one’s private interests and a person for a greater cause. But heroism is indifferent to the greater cause for which the sacrifice is being made: sacrificing oneself for an ethically commendable or for a reprehensible cause represents equally heroic behavior. Heroism is a dimension of human behavior equally compatible with good and evil.

Warrior aristocracies

Self-heroization is not unique to modern revolutionary organizations, as warrior aristocracies studied by archaeology and anthropology amply showed. The aggressive fighters figuring in epic literature regard themselves as and assume the role of heroes; are obsessed with battle; take enormous pride in their courage, prowess, and physical strength; are given to boasting; and regard prestige, honor, and glory as the highest aims in life. [xiv]

With the epics, the heroic ethos is being ascribed to ancient warriors long after they (or those on whom their characters were modeled) lived: the epics represent romanticized dramatizations of societies existing centuries before the texts were committed to writing. [xv] Archaeologists debate possible Mycenaean, Dark Age, and Archaic Greek echoes in Homer. Icelandic epics refer to earlier Viking societies. The early second-millennium chansons de geste and similar songs refer to Charlemagne’s mounted warriors and even to events from the time of the breakdown of the Western Roman Empire. [xvi]

This type of society, which in Europe could be found in the pre-classical Greek, Celtic, Germanic, and early medieval worlds, and which some historians and archaeologists indeed refer to as ‘heroic’, [xvii] was ruled by warrior aristocracies serving as personal followings of petty warrior kings. Such societies were outgrowing tribalism; kinship no longer was all-dominating in shaping power relations. But they remained weakly institutionalized, lacked a proper state apparatus, and instead were torn apart by the intensely personal competition of individual strongmen. [xviii]

The anthropologist David Graeber characterizes ‘heroic societies’ as ‘those in which governments are weak or non-existent and society is organized instead around warrior noblemen, each with his entourage of loyal retainers and tied to the others by ever-shifting alliances and rivalries’. [xix] Anthropologists have studied ‘heroic’, i.e. individually competitive warrior societies, existing in many parts of the world, for example in Central Asia, among North Arabian Bedouins, the Yusufzai Pakhtun tribes in Pakistan, Fiji, and New Guinea. [xx]

Paul Treherne suggests that Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ helps grasp the process of emergence of the warrior ethos. [xxi] Habitus brings together a social formation’s ‘way of being’ and its ‘predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination’. [xxii] It combines ingrained lifestyles and ‘the unconscious principles of the ethos’. According to Bourdieu, people adopt a certain habitus because societies are structured in such a way as to narrow down behavioral options: given particular social structures, some lifestyles and courses of action offer better chances of success than others. People learn by experience and adopt potentially more successful behaviors as obviously appropriate. The ‘subjective aspirations’ adapt themselves to ‘objective probabilities’. Habitus is a ‘necessity made into a virtue’. [xxiii]

The archaic warrior societies’ fragmented, competitive structure narrows down behavioral options in especially dramatic ways. With effective authority divided over many (and armed) centers, they permanently fought power over, resulting in endemic warfare between the contenders. Under such conditions, adopting a peaceful lifestyle is pointless and leads to ruin. The aggressive, heroic lifestyle thus was inherent to the archaic society’s anarchic structure. Cults of courage, honor, and prowess are functional in helping warriors focus on and perform the life of struggle they cannot very well evade. [xxiv]

The revolutionary heroic habitus

The mechanism of habitus formation at work with the ancient warriors again imposes itself on modern revolutionaries. In Bourdieu’s terms, they structure the social field in competitive ways, pitting rivals for the capital of various kinds against each other. In our case, insurgents accumulate cultural and social capital, for example, military experience, the ability to form political coalitions and create ideological legitimacy, and so on, to overthrow the incumbent ‘capital owners’. With Bourdieu, competitors gain a mentality and a system of habits, a habitus adjusted to the competitive conditions they find themselves. Conversely, the heroic habitus assumed by the competitors contributes to and interacts with the continuation and deepening of the antagonistic field conditions. [xxv]

Revolutionaries find themselves in a violent confrontation with the state. Not seldom, violent revolution is provoked by a violently repressive state, with revolutionaries mimicking state violence to survive. But even when, as also frequently is the case, it is the revolutionaries that start large-scale violence, they subsequently will be subjected to reactive state violence. In all cases revolutionaries are threatened by the state.

More concretely, revolutionaries experience life-threatening conditions in at least three respects. First, a significant number of them take a direct part in an armed struggle on the battlefield or in terrorist operations. Second, revolutionaries impose a strict regime of secrecy upon themselves—konspiratsiya in the Bolshevik jargon—and live under permanent threat of arrest; they risk imprisonment, deportation, torture, and death. Third, it is common enough for revolutionary organizations to finance themselves through hold-ups, kidnappings, extortion, racketeering, and so on. Killing individual traitors is another widespread practice in revolutionary organizations. Leading a life tainted by violent crime makes revolutionaries subject to further persecution.

Violence, secrecy, and crime coalesce into an inescapable structure in Bourdieu’s sense. Revolutionaries become revolutionaries through a conscious, ideologically inspired decision to engage in an armed confrontation with the state. But once they have crossed this threshold and as long as they do not retrace their steps, they remain locked in a life of violent confrontation that demands persistence, ruthlessness, courage, and sacrifice, qualities deeply reminiscent of the archaic heroic ethos and lifestyles. These character traits, the ethos, are imposed upon the revolutionaries by the structural condition of armed conflict with the state and will be adopted by individual revolutionaries and by the organization as a collective.

Peaceful behavioral options seem unrealistic and inappropriate. A heroic ethos is an adaptation to the constraints of the situation. In modeling themselves as heroes, the revolutionaries ready themselves for the bloody work they can hardly avoid. Simply put, the heroic ethos is their fighting mode.

All the same, however, the contrast between archaic and revolutionary heroism is striking. Epic heroes and archaic warriors populate worlds of violent, personalized competition. Modern revolutionary heroes dedicate their lives to lethal conflict with the state; inescapably, violence is inscribed in their lives, too. But with the important exception of ‘lone wolves’, they do not confront their enemy individually, but collectively, in two ways. First, they rely on substantial segments of the population, i.e. on the ‘masses’, to accumulate the strength they need for overcoming the enemy. A victorious revolution depends not only on the heroic efforts of single revolutionaries but on the masses as well.

Second, they confront the enemy as an organization. Modern heroes are embedded in organizations. Theirs is a world of complex, closely integrated structures with functional divisions of labor, requiring qualifications very different from those befitting the ancient hero: those of the meticulous professional organizer. Modern revolutionary heroism crystallizes as a hybrid ethos, a combination of heroic self-abnegation and the business-like qualities of the organizer. [xxvi]

Modern revolutionary heroism is structurally more complex than archaic individualism. This is strikingly reflected in the heroic perceptions and self-perceptions of individual revolutionaries. In the following sections I will highlight the various ways individually, self-proclaimed revolutionary heroes contextualized themselves within the mass and organizational fields, at the hand of three leading twentieth-century communist revolutionaries: the Georgian Bolshevik Ioseb Jughashvili, since December 1912 better known as Stalin; Mao Zedong; and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. We discover that, even within one tradition, heroism is being shaped in very different ways.

The heroic self-perceptions of the three leaders highlighted here likely were more pronounced than was common among ordinary party members, as further research must establish. Other revolutionary tendencies, for example, fascism with its Führerist cult overshadowing the party organization, surely will manifest even more different accents and combinations of individual, mass, and organization. Again, revolutionary organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, which were violent but only defensively so, while focusing on peaceful community work, will manifest yet other patterns of self-heroization.

Jughashvili-Stalin

It is now well established that Jughashvili-Stalin rose to prominence in the Bolshevik Party long before the October Revolution. In 1898, he joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP). An unusually committed activist, he served on party committees in Tiflis, Batumi, and other cities. When in 1905 the great majority of the Transcaucasian Social Democrats turned Menshevik, Jughashvili remained a Bolshevik. He moved to Baku in 1907. In 1912, he was co-opted into the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee, thus becoming one handful of Bolshevik top leaders who, instead of emigrating, remained active in Russia. [xxvii]

In the years 1898–1917, Stalin wrote many proclamations and articles. Most of his writings were no essays in abstract thought but interventions in ongoing worker struggles, and RSDWP and Bolshevik policy changes informed them. [xxviii] Roughly, before 1907 he hoped to arouse the workers to violent, armed rebellion. After the defeat of the first Russian Revolution, he warned against premature uprisings and instead stressed the importance of rebuilding the party organization.

But if changing circumstances caused Jughashvili’s attention to shift from violence to organization, his fundamental image of the working class and the party remained unchanged over the years. In a nutshell, he defined the proletariat as an army, endowed with a heroic spirit of violent struggle and sacrifice; and the party as the advanced detachment of that army, with the special mission of adding the elements of consciousness and organization to the proletariat’s heroic will.

Jughashvili cast the working class as the ‘army of the proletarians’. [xxix] The people must collectively arm themselves and ‘change into a revolutionary army’. [xxx] In defining the social class of the workers as an army, Jughasvhvili cast workers as a class of people primarily defined by their violent, combative character, emerging in and needed for the struggle against the state and the exploiters. This theme returns in his proclamations and articles, especially when he is discussing street fights and violent rebellions. In an exalted tone characteristic of him, he wrote in November-December 1901:

We congratulate you, glorious fighters, workers of the Caucasus, […] with your unprecedented courage and heroism […] You, dear comrades, seem to have been specially created for the struggle: you thirst after the struggle as afterlife itself […]; with one blow, your all-powerful right hand will cleave the highest rock rising during the struggle, and you will pass through it almost completely unharmed […]! You were made of iron, and became lions! Prisons and incarceration, meant to frighten you, mean nothing to you! [xxxi]

The all-Russian proletariat was Jughashvili’s ‘[p]owerful giant’[xxxii] and ‘powerful titan’.[xxxiii]

If Jughashvili was genuinely carried away by the workers’ heroic mentality, he also instrumentalized heroic martyrs for mobilization: the deaths of worker comrades killed by the police would have to be avenged. Jughashvili wrote in a 12 March 1902 proclamation: ‘Praise to your ghosts, continually circling above us and whispering in our ears: “Avenge our blood!” You have shown the world what people workers are and how much courage and selflessness live in the hearts of the heroes of the poor’. [xxxiv] In another proclamation issued two days earlier, he had announced a yearly commemorative meeting on the graves of workers shot by the police, swearing that ‘we will always follow your wonderful example’. [xxxv]

What role did the young Stalin assign to the party cadres, a question directly about his self-understanding? He insisted that without ‘leaders, organizers’ implanting scientific ‘Social-Democratic consciousness’ into it, the workers’ ‘heroic struggle’ would degenerate into ‘disorderly riots’. [xxxvi] The vanguard party would direct the workers in three capacities: in a military capacity, as the proletarian army’s experienced ‘advanced detachment’; leading the way as the workers’ ‘consciousness’; and as a ‘cohesive organization’. [xxxvii]

Jughashvili took the party’s military role of the workers’ ‘advanced detachment’ literally and seriously: during the revolutionary year of 1905 he set up armed detachments under Bolshevik guidance while commenting on such activities: ‘ [T] he people are the street-fighting hero, but without armed brothers to give the example they will degenerate into a crowd’. [xxxviii]

As the revolution fizzled out and the perspective of immediate armed insurrection lost all reality, the two other aspects of the party, consciousness, and organization, advanced to the top of Jughashvili’s agenda. In his August 1909 ‘The crisis of the party and our tasks’, he argued that the party’s main tasks now were restoring its committees’ severed links with the workers, educating new party leaders from among the proletariat, and improving the party’s inner organizational order and cohesion. [xxxix]

Jughashvili set a great store of knowledge and consciousness. In a 22 March 1907 obituary, he praised his deceased Bolshevik comrade, the worker Giorgi Telia, for his ‘astounding capacities, inexhaustible energy, independence, deep love for the cause, heroic inflexibility, and apostolic talent’. But most of all, he was impressed by Telia’s ‘thirst for knowledge’. Even when already mortally ill, Telia had spent his time in prison studying; he did never, as in Jughashvili’s experience with many workers, falsely invoke his proletarian identity to claim he did not need to study Marxism. [xl]

Jughashvili’s 23 March 1910 congratulatory piece for the German Social-Democratic leader August Bebel (also of proletarian descent) was in the same spirit. Bebel, a leader of strong will, like Telia, was filled with a ‘thirst for knowledge’. He always aspired ‘towards the light’ and spent his free time reading. Bebel was moreover dedicated to the party to the point of completely fusing his emotional and intellectual life with it. [xli]

Altogether, the young Stalin passionately identified himself with proletarian heroism as the party’s lifeblood. But to avoid degeneration, raw proletarian militancy and sacrifice were to be domesticated by the party. The revolutionary workers must allow their energies to become embedded in the party. The heroic element must bend to the forces of consciousness and organization.

Mao Zedong

The Hunanese Mao Zedong attended the first founding congress of the Communist Party of China in 1921. During the period of communist participation in the nationalist Guomindang, he was a prominent labor and peasant organizer. After the break with the Guomindang in 1927, he withdrew to the Jinggang Mountains, subsequently establishing a Soviet republic in Jiangxi Province. Mao became the party’s main guerrilla leader, but the party leadership looked askance at him. In 1934, Chiang Kaishek expelled the guerrilla army from the base area. The Long March took the guerrillas to Yan’an in the northwest. At the outset, other leaders than Mao were in charge. Mao became a facto party leader in 1935, but only in 1943 was he elected Party Chairman. [xlii]

From 1927 onwards, Mao was a strong proponent of the militarization of the party. Drawing lessons from the Guomindang debacle, he concluded: ‘Chiang [Kaishek] […] rose by grasping the gun; we alone did not concern ourselves with this. […] From now on, we should pay the greatest attention to military affairs. We know that political power is obtained from the barrel of the gun.’ [xliii] Mao concluded in 1928: ‘The struggle in the border area is almost purely military. The Party and the masses must both be militarized.’ [xliv] Ten years later, he repeated the lesson in the starkest of terms:

“Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create party organizations […]. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. […]. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war.”[xlv]

If the revolution grows out of the barrel of a gun and assumes the form of armed confrontation with the state, on an individual basis the heroic values of courage and sacrifice will take center stage. Mao heroized the masses as the ‘true iron bastion which no force can smash, no force whatsoever‘. [xlvi] But more insistently and explicitly than the young Stalin in his days, Mao heroized the party itself, and its leaders and members, too.

We are fortunate to have Mao’s poems, which provide a window onto the author’s self-understanding. Mao imagined himself and his fellow combatants as heroic warriors acting on a vast canvas, operating against the background of grand, overwhelming landscapes. Here are just two of the poems, both from 1935, given in part:

“The Red Army fears not the trials of a distant march, Makes light of ten thousand rivers and mountains./ To them, the Five Ridges meander like gentle ripples,/ And the majestic peaks of Wumeng roll by like balls of clay./ Warm are the cloud-topped cliffs lapped by the waters/ […] And when the three armies have crossed, a smile lights up each face.” [xlvii]

“Straddling the skies, above the earth,/ The vast and wild Kunlun,/ […] For a thousand autumns you have wrought good and evil,/ Who has ever passed judgment?/ But now I say to Kunlun:/ We don’t want all your height,/ We don’t want so much snow./ What if I drew my sword resting on the sky,/ And split you into three?” [xlviii]

The Long March triggered Mao into full recognition of the heroism of his party, as well as of the propagandistic value to be derived from it to mobilize new fighters for the struggle. In a 25 December 1935 speech, he characterized the Long March as.

“a manifesto, a propaganda team, a seeding machine. […] has history ever witnessed such a Long March as ours? […] we were subject to daily reconnaissance and bombing from the skies […], and on the ground to encirclement and pursuit […] by a huge force of hundreds of thousands. We met with untold difficulties and dangers along the way, yet by using each person’s two legs, we swept across a distance of over 20,000 […]. The Long March […] has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is made up of brave heroes.” [xlix]

In a speech on 1 April 1938 Mao expanded on the party’s heroism: ‘We have climbed the most difficult mountains, crossed rivers, and crossed grasslands, and we have not been afraid of having our heads chopped off. Even after the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Party members, we have continued to move forward. The dead are dead and the living step over their bloody traces to advance with bright-colored banners raised high!’ Mao concluded: ‘I am a mountain-climbist’. [l] Like Jughashvili, he was acutely aware of the propagandistic, mobilizational value of party heroism. ‘Praising these heroes and their heroic deeds’, he asserted, ‘has important significance concerning both outside propaganda and internal education’. [li]

Also, and once again like the Georgian Bolshevik, Mao insisted that heroism be balanced by other qualities such as knowledge and prudence. In a speech held in May-June 1938, he argued that ‘human power’ trumps weapons.[lii] But ‘objective possibilities’ must not be ignored: ‘Our commanders should have not only boldness’, but they must also be ‘ [s] wimming in the ocean of war […] with measured strokes’. [liii] In his 19 May 1941 speech ‘Reform our study’, Mao took issue with the ‘subjectivist attitude’, when a party cadre proceeds from sheer ‘subjective enthusiasm’ instead of forming ‘thorough study’ of the conditions the party finds itself in. [liv] They must combine revolutionary enthusiasm with ‘practicality’. [lv]

In the early forties, Mao became obsessed with the question of organization. The party provided him with an integrative principle. A resolution passed by the Politburo on 1 July 1941 included the provision that ‘all members of the Party […] must unite based on unified intention, unified action, and unified discipline, to become an organic whole’. A ‘resolute, unified, and centralized party’ cannot accept individualistic ‘heroism’.[lvi] Mao rejected ‘individual heroism (as opposed to national heroism and the heroism of the masses)’. [lvii] Proper heroism is a team effort and must not be allowed to degenerate into empty, free-floating heroics.

A few years later Mao characterized the Communist Party as

“more organized and more tightly structured and integrated than other organizations […]. If an army wants such a level of integration, it must follow orders: attention, be at ease, look left, look right, march, aim, fire. […] The forces of the Party army are no different; […] The Party is an association of outstanding elements among the people who freely and voluntarily bind themselves […] and are ready to sacrifice themselves.” [lviii]

Mao’s notion of the militarized party had paradoxical connotations: militarization on one hand requires heroic fighting qualities, giving one’s all on the battlefield, but, on the other, it is imperative precisely to keep the heroic individuals in check and contain them within party boundaries.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

The Argentinian communist Che Guevara joined Fidel Castro’s tiny army (the armed wing of the revolutionary-patriotic 26th of July Movement) training in Mexico for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s Cuban government. The struggle lasted from November 1956 to January 1959. Guevara became one of Castro’s senior commanders and, subsequently, one of revolutionary Cuba’s most prominent state leaders. In 1965, he unsuccessfully headed a Cuban military team to assist Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s revolution in Congo. His next self-imposed mission was even more unsuccessful: in 1966–67 he set up his guerrilla army in Bolivia but was captured and killed. [lix]

Heroism set the tone for Guevara even before the fight began. He wrote his ‘Song to Fidel’ in Mexico in 1956, a remarkable heroizing outburst that, referring to ‘the quest’ and ‘the dragon’, seems even to be touched by the ancient epic. Here it is, in part:

“As we set out to vanquish infamy/ Let us vow to overcome or die./ When the jungle awakens in virginal surprise/ At the sound of your initial shots,/ There, repeating the barrage,/ You’ll find us at your side./ […] And at the end of the quest,/ […] You’ll find us at your side./ The day the dragon licks its flank/ Where liberating darts have struck/ […] You’ll find us at your side.”[lx]

Guevara was even more open to the exemplary role of the heroic individual than the young Stalin and Mao, while, conversely, accentuating the organizing role of the vanguard (which he identified more closely with the revolutionary army than with the Communist Party) somewhat less than they.

But he too never doubted that to be effective, the organization must domesticate heroism. According to Guevara, the Cuban revolution aimed to create ‘a new type of human being’: ‘Individualism, as the individual action of a person alone in a social milieu, must disappear […] individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual absolutely to benefit a collectivity.’ [lxi]

In his Guerrilla Warfare, published in the US in 1961, Guevara defined the victory over Batista as ‘the triumph of heroism’. [lxii] Guerrillas must possess stoicism, austerity, physical endurance, and self-control; they should be ascetics and ‘ready to die without the least sign of doubt’. [lxiii]

Guevara was a great believer in the example’s force: ‘One of the great educational techniques is an example. Therefore, the chiefs must constantly offer the example of a pure and devoted life’. [lxiv] He offered as a role model one revolutionary martyr, Camilo Cienfuegos, the ‘stoic fighter who always made sacrifice an instrument for steeling his character and forging the morale of his troops’. Camilo combined Danton’s maxim of ‘Audacity, audacity, and more audacity’ with the ‘faculty for precise and rapid analysis of situations’, i.e. heroic devotion with intelligence and knowledge. Guevara, cast Camilo as the exemplary embedded hero:

“Camilo should not be seen as an isolated hero performing marvelous feats only on the impulse of his genius, but as a true part of the people that formed him, as it always forms its heroes, martyrs, and leaders, by selection in a rigorous struggle.” [lxv]

Guevara endowed Castro with the same mixed package of qualities, ranging from ‘audacity, strength, courage, and untiring perseverance […] and personal sacrifice’ to a ‘capacity to assimilate knowledge and experiences quickly, to understand the totality of a situation without losing sight of details’. [lxvi] This was also how Guevara liked to think of himself. In a somewhat ironic letter to his family written in mid-1965, his heroic self-understanding unmistakably shines through, next to pride himself on his deep knowledge of Marxism:

“Once again, I feel Rocinante’s bony ribs beneath my legs. Again, I begin my journey, carrying my shield. […] I’m not such a bad soldier now. […] I am much more conscious; my Marxism has been deepened and purified. […]. Many will call me an adventurer, and I am, but of a different kind—one who risks his skin to prove his convictions.” [lxvii]

In a 1960 article, Guevara referred to the threefold combination of heroism, knowledge, and organization embodied in the guerrilla army, in terms of class:

“The campesino learns to believe in his vigor. He gives the revolutionary army his capacity to suffer […]. The intellectual […] throws in his mite, molding the theoretical framework of this knowledge. The worker contributes his sense of organization, of unity. Above all these, there is the rebel army, […] leading the masses to experience it, that all men can get rid of their fear of torment. Never was the concept of interaction so clear to us.” [lxviii]

For Guevara, heroes function as an inspiring example, a ‘lighted torch’. [lxix] In a very illuminating speech held in 1963, he explained that, whereas Lenin had pointed out the need for revolutionary ‘catalysts’, Castro showed that revolution was a matter ‘of dignity, of the spirit of sacrifice […]. A good example, like a bad one, is very contagious’. The revolution must use the example of ‘the Camilos, men with self-confidence, men who sacrifice and are strong in spirit’. Guevara, importantly, attributed the victory of the Cuban Revolution to the superior bravery of the guerrilla ‘vanguard’. [lxx]

Powerful examples induce heroism in the fighters not only but also through the belief in victory. Guerrilla fighters ‘will be hounded like relentlessly pursued animals […]. Their only alternatives will be death or victory when death is a concept present a thousandfold, and victory, the myth of which only a revolutionary can dream. This is the heroism of the guerrilla fighter.’ [lxxi]

In the end, Guevara’s heroic enthusiasm reached a fever pitch. In the ‘Message to the Tricontinental’, published in April 1967 and in which he called for the creation of two, three, or more Vietnams, he wrote:

“The great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas taking root in the dispossessed masses. The galvanizing of the national spirit, the preparation for harder tasks, for resisting even more violent repressions. […] relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus”[lxxii ;

Guevara ended his appeal to the world on the following note of romantic warrior heroism: ‘Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that […] our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men may be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory’. [lxxiii]

Tracing these three communists’ concepts of revolutionary heroism, we found the young Stalin to have stressed the raw heroism of the proletarian masses; Mao, the heroic sacrifice of the Communist Party and its guerrilla army; and Guevara, the courageous example of the individual guerrilla fighter, embedded more in the army than in the party. But all three accepted the need to balance the combative, heroic ethos with a mass base and embed it in an organization.

Coping Mechanism

Next to readying the fighters and orienting them in the fight, self-heroization fulfills the additional function of a coping mechanism. Imagining themselves as heroes allows revolutionaries to cope with and persevere in what is an often bleak, dismal lifestyle.

Revolutionaries, most of all the nucleus of ‘professional revolutionaries’ forming the organization’s (mostly poorly) salaried cadre, lead uprooted, nomadic lives. I propose to call such people ‘drifters’. They lack stability and private comforts, mainly in four respects. More often than not, they have not completed their education and schooling; they are hardly ever in serious, long-term jobs; hardly ever do they live in the same place for very long, and mostly they cannot maintain stable family lives. [lxxiv]

The obvious explanations for this pattern of uprootedness are two. First, the organization demands permanent, all-around availability and mobility from its cadres. Second, state persecution makes it impossible for them to remain in one place or position, which would turn them into sitting ducks. State persecution adds the element of constant fear to revolutionaries’ unstable lives. Some revolutionary movements even impose a puritanical lifestyle upon their members when some of life’s pleasures could have been enjoyed without security risks. [lxxv]

There are compensations. Revolutionaries stage parties and celebrations, experience intense camaraderie, fall in love with each other, and may experience their lives as an adventure. [lxxvi] What also helps professional revolutionaries to persist in their hunted existences is the idea of serving a great and glorious cause: in sacrificing their private lives, they are helping the cause to victory. Moissaye Olgin highlights this psychological mechanism, which is widely in evidence, at the hand of quotes from Boris Savinkov’s novel about a Russian professional revolutionary, Andrey Bolotov, for whom ‘the only thing which gave him the power to work and live “illegally”, i.e. to work and live without a family, without a home and to expect prison or death without fear’ was the party.

“Only the deeply rooted conviction that the party was the mother of the revolution and that he, Andrey Bolotov, was the most faithful, most obedient, most valiant of its members, […] gave him the power to live the way he did. […] Andrey Bolotov never thinks of himself, never plans his own private life. Andrey Bolotov is an instrument of his party.” [lxxvii]

Revolutionaries make the unbearable bearable by identifying with a larger entity. Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff made the same point: members of high-risk social movements manage their fears through a ‘process of collective identification’. The realization of the ‘overriding collective and historical importance of the movements’ helps them accept their difficult conditions. [lxxviii]

Psychologically, however, this formula, even if powerful, is not completely satisfactory. The formula of sacrifice for the cause only confirms that the individual revolutionary is giving up something without gaining anything in return.

Self-heroization adds an essential dimension to sacrifice: in sacrificing private comforts and accepting constant fear, revolutionaries not only contribute to the cause but also to the growth of their personalities, a process Tamara Herath in her discussion of the Tamil Tigers’ cult of self-sacrifice and martyrdom refers to as ‘constructed self-esteem’. [lxxix] On a more fundamental philosophical and psychological level, Robert Jay Lifton and Ernest Becker argue human beings cope with their fear of death by adopting out-of-proportion heroic self-images. [lxxx]

Even if it doesn’t mention the word hero, the Russian professional revolutionary Sergey Nechayev’s 1869 manifesto, known as The Catechism of a Revolutionary, remains the locus classicus for this aspect of the self-heroizing ethos. The manifesto frames sacrifice for the cause as redefining the self, or, in Nechayev’s own words, of recasting the ‘attitude of the revolutionary toward himself’. According to Nechayev, the revolutionary:

“has neither his interests, affairs, feelings, attachments, nor property, nor even name. A single, exclusive interest absorbs everything in him, by a total passion—revolution. […]. Stern with himself, he must be stern with others as well. […] For him, there is only one comfort, one consolation, reward, and satisfaction—the success of the revolution.” [lxxxi]

The revolution demands heroic acceptance of a life of privation. But the individual revolutionaries’ self-abnegation not only benefits the revolution but, in the process, leads to their transformation into new, heroic, ‘one-passion’ personalities. With Nechayev any joyful, romantic element of revolutionary life is lacking. Yet, in fanatically cultivating the quality of self-abnegation, his revolutionaries, satisfyingly, sculpt themselves into an aristocracy of the superior will, setting themselves off sharply against the mass of common people following their passions where these lead them. Self-heroization carries its reward.

Epic consciousness: the energizing myth

The young Stalin, Mao, and Guevara thought of the world as an immense arena of class and national wars on an epic scale, and in which they played glorious parts. Kerry Brown and Simone van Nieuwenhuizen capture Mao’s epic consciousness: ‘For someone whose core readings from his earliest years were the great classic Chinese novels like The Water Margin or Journey to the West with their fantastic cast of characters and epic storylines, Mao seems determined to be author, star, and director of his life drama, patterned on the dramatic difficulties these tales portrayed.’ [lxxxii]

Epic consciousness is a wired state of mind overly ambitious state leaders not seldom make their own. Loren Samons suggests the classical-Greek statesman Pericles convinced the Athenians that they ‘could now create their future […]. The Athenians would become their Homer, composing an epic not of words but of action, in which they would forever figure as heroes’. [lxxxiii] According to Johann Chapoutot, Adolf Hitler was ‘possessed by visions of reliving the great ancient epics’. He lived ‘inside an imagination structured and governed by myth’. [lxxxiv] [lxxxv]

Imagining oneself as a protagonist in an ‘epic in progress’ is satisfying in a self-congratulatory sort of way. But, likely, the deeper reason so many revolutionaries come to experience their own lives in these terms is to be found, more grimly, and perhaps ironically, in the precarious situation in most of the movements, they work in finding themselves in. Briefly, the reason is compensatory.

Revolutionaries lack the certainty of victory; for all they know, they may well be enduring all the hardship for a lost cause. Most of the time revolutionaries constitute the weaker party, and the great majority of revolutionary movements have never been and will never be victorious. Revolutionaries are, then, in dire need of assurance that their commitment will be rewarded.

Sociologists recognize the function of hero identification in arousing strong emotions. [lxxxvi] In particular, heroizing myths offers the badly needed assurance of victory; they pervade the organization with confidence and with passionate emotions that boost the members’ fighting spirit, and thus actually help the promise of victory possibly come true.

Heroic myths inspiring revolutionaries come mainly in two types. For Georges Sorel, the function of ‘heroic myths’ [lxxxvii] comprises energizing revolutionaries and boosting their heroic commitment. The promise of certain victory is the myth’s key element: ‘men who are taking part in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. These constructions […] I propose to call myths’. Sorel refers to the syndicalist general strike and Marx’s catastrophic revolution as examples of such myths, which are essentially future-oriented. [lxxxviii] The myth endows the proletarian revolutionaries with what Sorel calls an ‘entirely epic state of mind’. [lxxxix] The certainty of victory the myth offers inspires them with courage, persistence, confidence, enthusiasm, and a sense of glory. [xc]

Strong, authentically felt belief in victory is essential to revolutionary morale. According to Eric Hoffer, revolutionaries assimilate the myth’s ‘intense passion’ [xci] to adopt theatrical ‘make-believe’, but with the important qualification that they genuinely make themselves believe. [xcii] More recent scholarship, floating the concept of ‘passionate politics’, too, argues that emotions cannot be read in only instrumental, mobilizational terms; for emotional mobilization to be effective, the aroused passions must be authentically experienced. [xciii]

The other, second type of heroic myth connects the revolutionary with the past, by offering ancient heroes as objects of identification. Harold Rosenberg argues that modern revolutionaries not seldom identify with ancient heroes to restage them—revolution as ‘dramatic mimesis’. [xciv] This, too, is self-deception rather than deception: the revolutionaries genuinely believe they are following in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors. [xcv] And the function of living and acting in a past-oriented myth is once again ‘to arouse the “needed” passion’, without which they would deprive the proletarian revolution of steam. [xcvi]

Concluding thoughts

In this article, I have distinguished four closely intertwined aspects of the self-heroizing process. One, the revolutionaries’ heroic self-identification cognitively reflects their ambitious, high-risk, and not self-serving lifestyle; in imagining themselves as heroes, they make themselves aware of what they are. Two, the heroic ethos combines a set of practices or lifestyles with a corresponding mentality; adopting this ethos allows revolutionaries emotionally to ready themselves for and focus themselves on the fight: the heroic ethos or habitus is their fighting mode.

Three, individual revolutionaries lead hunted unstable, nomadic existences. In convincing themselves of their heroic qualities, they console themselves that their privations add up to new, heroic, more glorious personalities, a process that betrays the prideful, aristocratic drive underlying revolutionary heroism. And four, collectively revolutionaries find themselves in a precarious situation: overall, they have little chance of successfully seizing power. In adopting an epic consciousness and imagining themselves to be protagonists in real-time heroic myths, they reassure and emotionally charge themselves to continue a fight that carries far from a sure outcome.

The latter two founding elements of the self-heroizing process—the nomadic, hunted existence, and the revolutionaries’ structurally weak position—are specific to the revolutionary condition. But configurations, or to remain in Bourdieu’s terminology, fields of violent competition condemning its participants to a combative lifestyle are historically fairly common. The archaic warriors’ world of competing for armed centers, and the life-and-death conflict between modern revolutionary organizations and the state, are just two cases in point.

Configurations like these feature (1) violent competition, from which (2) the competitors cannot easily opt-out, and (3) which is not kept in check by any third, overarching center to contain the conflicts. [xcvii] I propose to call social configurations of this type ‘violent structures’. Violent structures are made up of two or more competitors, in our case the revolutionaries and the state, locked in armed confrontation. Other violent structures are, for example, warring clans and tribes; armies at war (fighting other armies); and mafia ‘families’ and neighborhood gangs, both of which face each other and the state.

On a hypothetical note, I would suggest that it is a universal feature of violent structures to trigger self-heroizing processes. The violent structure is a transhistorical phenomenon. To be sure, its form depends on the societal configurations of the day: the individualistic ethos of the archaic warrior differed substantially from the organized, embedded type featured by the revolutionaries of Weberian modernity, in which the hero is expected not to put up his or her show but to bend to the organization—somewhat like what we expect of team-sport players. The heroic spirit of warring clans, armies at war, mafia families, and neighborhood gangs will be different again. But across widely different societies and times, violent structures would be a sufficient condition for triggering processes of self-heroization.

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[i] Maurice Walsh, Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World, 1918–1923 (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), pp. 78–79.

[ii] Clifford Geertz, ‘Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols’, The Antioch Review, 17:4 (1957), pp. 421–424.

[iii] Roger Griffin, Terrorist’s Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), pp. 19–20.

[iv] Karl Marx, ‘Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie’ [1859], Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol. 13 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961), p. 9.

[v] For some important studies of the mythological/epic hero see: C.M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London, Melbourne, Toronto: MacMillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966); Lord Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama (Westport: Greenwoord Press, 1975); W.T.H. Jackson, The Hero and the King: An Epic Theme (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Dean A. Miller, The Epic Hero (Baltimore, London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000), especially chapters 1 and 3; Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Third Edition (Novato: New World Library, 2008); Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Expanded and Updated Version (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2015).

[vi] David R. Sorensen and Brent E. Kinser (eds) Thomas Carlyle. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2013). See for another Great Man interpretation of heroism: Sidney Hook, The Hero in History: A Study in Limitation and Possibility (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). For the hero as a transformative force see also: J. Huizinga, Im Schatten von morgen: Eine Diagnose des kulturellen Leidens unsrer Zeit (Bern, Leipzig: Gotthelf-Verlag, 1935); Moses Hadas, Morton Smith, Heroes and Gods. Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 180–183; James D. Wilson, The Romantic Heroic Ideal (Baton Rouge, London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 189–190; Karina Momm, Der Begriff des Helden in Thomas Carlyles ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History’ (Dissertation Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i. Br., 1986).

[vii] For works stressing the diversity of hero types and listing them, see for example: Jenni Calder, Heroes: From Byron to Guevara (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977); Miller, Epic Hero, chapter 1; M. Gregory Kendrick, The Heroic Ideal: Western Archetypes from the Greeks to the Present (Jefferson, London: McFarland & Co, 2010).

[viii] See for example: Orrin E. Klapp, ‘Heroes, Villains and Fools, as Agents of Social Control’, American Sociological Review, 19:1 (1954), p. 59; Dietmar Neutatz and Reinhard Nachtigal, ‘Feldherren und Soldaten: Russische Konzeptionen des Kriegshelden im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 63:4 (2015), p. 531; Ralf von den Hoff et al., ‘Das Heroische in der neueren kulturhistorischen Forschung: ein kritischer Bericht’, published 28 July 2015 [https://www.hsozkult.de/lietarurereview/id/forschungsberichte-2216], p. 4 [accessed 23 August 2021]; Ralf von den Hoff et al., ‘Helden – Heroisierungen – Heroismen: Transformationen und Konjunkturen von der Antike bis Zur Moderne. Konzeptionelle Ausgangspunkte des Sonderforschungsbereichs 948’, http://www.sfb948.uni-freiburg.de/e-journal/ausgaben/012013/helden.heroes.heros.2013-01-03, pp. 8–9 [accessed 16 February 2016]; Kristian Frisk, ‘What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism’, Sociology, 53:1 (2019), pp. 88, 95–96.

[ix] Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Fünfte, revidierte Auflage (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1985), p. 140.

[x] Hans van Wees, Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Homer and History (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1992), p. 155. On heroic status see also: Klapp, ‘Heroes’, p. 57; Jennifer Lois, Heroic Efforts: The Emotional Culture of Search and Rescue Volunteers (New York, London: New York University Press, 2003), pp. 64–65; Herfried Münkler, ‘Heroische und postheroische Gesellschaften’, Merkur, 61:7–8 (2007), pp. 742, 747–748; Frisk, ‘What makes a hero?’, p. 95.

[xi] Zeno E. Franco, Kathy Blau, and Philip G. Zimbardo, ‘Heroism: A Conceptual Analysis and Differentiation Between Heroic Action and Altruism’, Review of General Psychology, 15:2 (2011), p. 103. Emphasis in original.

[xii] For hero definitions from the very extensive sociological and psychological literature, pertaining to different sectors of society, see for example: Klapp, ‘Heroes’, p. 57; Ryszard Świerczewski, ‘The Athlete – the Country’s Representative as a Hero’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 13:3 (1978), pp. 89–100; Dough McAdam, ‘Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer’, American Journal of Sociology, 92:1 (1986), pp. 64–90; David S. Adams, ‘Ronald Reagan’s “Revival”: Voluntarism as a Theme in Reagan’s Civil Religion’, Sociological Analysis, 48:1 (1987), pp. 17–29; Kristen Renwick Monroe, ‘John Donne’s People: Explaining Differences Between Rational Actors and Altruists Through Cognitive Frameworks’, Journal of Politics, 53:2 (1991): pp. 394–433; Mike Featherstone, ‘The Heroic Life and Everyday Life’, Theory, Culture & Society, 9 (1992), pp. 159–182; Jeffrey W. Riemer, ‘Durkheim’s “Heroic Suicide” in Military Combat’, Armed Forces & Society, 25:1 (1998), pp. 103–120; Sharon Toffey Shepela et al., ‘Courageous Resistance: A Special Case of Altruism’, Theory & Psychology, 9:6 (1999), pp. 787–805; Samuel P. Oliner, ‘Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People. Faces of Heroism and Altruism’ in Stephen G. Post et al. (eds) Altruism & Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, & Religion in Dialogue (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 123; Lois, Heroic Efforts, introduction; Ted M. Butryn and Matthew A. Masucci, ‘It’s Not about the Book: A Cyborg Counternarrative of Lance Armstrong’, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 27:2 (2003), pp. 137–138; Dario Llinares, ‘Idealized Heroes of “Retrotopia”: History, Identity and the Postmodern in Apollo 13’, The Sociological Review, 57:1 (2009), pp. 164–177; Franco/Blau/Zimbardo, ‘Heroism’; Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals, Heroes: What They Do & Why We Need Them (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chapter 2; Elaine L. Kinsella, Timothy D. Ritchie, and Eric R. Igou, ‘Zeroing in on Heroes: A Prototype Analysis of Hero Features’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108:1 (2015), pp. 114–115; Frisk, ‘What Makes a Hero?’. Werner Sombart defines heroism as a ‘Gesinnung’, which can be translated as state of mind or ethos: Händler und Helden: Patriotische Gesinnungen (München, Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1915), p. 5.

[xiii] Ken Jowitt argues that the Leninist party serves as a collective ‘organizational hero’, but that Führerist parties such as the NSDAP do not, as only the leader is endowed with heroic features: New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 1–7.

[xiv] For the epic protagonists’ heroic self-understanding: H. Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), chapter 15; M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (London etc.: Penguin, 1979), chapters 2 and 5; Aaron Gurevich, Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, edited by Jana Howlett (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), pp. 122–176; Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), chapter 10.

[xv] See van Wees, Status Warriors, p. 153; Kurt A. Raaflaub, ‘Epic and history’ in John Miles Foley (ed.) A Companion to Ancient Epic (Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 68–70.

[xvi] See van Wees, Status Warriors, p. 153; Kurt A. Raaflaub, ‘Epic and history’ in John Miles Foley (ed.) A Companion to Ancient Epic (Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 68–70.

[xvii] For example C.M. Bowra, ‘The Meaning of a Heroic Age’ in C.M. Bowra (ed.) In General and Particular (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), pp. 63–84; Chadwick, Heroic Age; van Wees, Status Warriors, pp. 153–165; Macintyre, After Virtue, chapter 10; Lynette Mitchell, The Heroic Rulers of Archaic and Classical Greece (London, etc.: Bloomsbury, 2013). See also Miller, Epic Hero, pp. 37–42.

[xviii] For accounts of pre-classical Greek, Celtic, Germanic and early medieval warrior societies: Bowra, ‘The Meaning’; Chadwick, Heroic Age, chapters 15–17; Finley, World of Odysseus, chapter 4; Jackson, Hero and King, chapter 1; Gurevich, Historical Anthropology, pp. 177–189; van Wees, Status Warriors, chapter 2; Paul Treherne, ‘The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-Identity in Bronze-Age Europe’, Journal of European Archeology, 3:1 (1995), pp. 105–144; Dean Hammer, ‘The Politics of the “Iliad”’, The Classical Journal, 94:1 (1998), pp. 1–30; Kurt Raaflaub, ‘Archaic and Classical Greece’ in Kurt Raaflaub, Nathan Rosenstein (eds) War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (Cambridge M., London: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 129; Barber, Knight and Chivalry, chapters 1 and 3; Herwig Wolfram, Die Germanen: Übererarbeitete Auflage (München: C.H. Beck, 2009), chapters 1 and 2; Rodney Castleden, Mycenaeans (London, New York: Routledge, 2009), chapters 2, 3 and 10; Karl-Heinz Göttert, Die Ritter (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2011); Mitchell, Heroic Rulers; Jean Manco, Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestral Story (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015), chapters 1 and 6; Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (n.p.: Allen Lane, 2020), especially chapters 2, 6, 10–11.

[xix] David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House, 2012), p. 117.

[xx] See Michael E. Meeker, Literature and Violence in North Arabia (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael E. Meeker, ‘The Twilight of a South Asian Heroic Age: A Rereading of Barth’s Study of Swat’, Man, 15:4 (1980), pp. 682–701; Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985); Nancy Christine Lutkehaus, ‘Hierarchy and “Heroic Society”: Manam Variations in Sepik Social Structure’, Oceania, 60:3 (1990), pp. 179–197; Nancy Christine Lutkehaus, ‘Hierarchy and “Heroic Society”: Manam Variations in Sepik Social Structure’, Oceania, 60:3 (1990), pp. 179–197; Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), introduction, prologue. For a discussion of anthropology and the hero see also: Miller, Epic Hero, pp. 53–58.

[xxi] Treherne, ‘Warrior’s Beauty’, pp. 115–116.

[xxii] Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 214. Italics in original.

[xxiii] Id., p. 77. Italics in original.

[xxiv] For heroism as a habitus in Bourdieu’s sense see also: Sonderforschungsbereich 948, ‘Heroismus’ in Ronald G. Asch, Achim Aurnhammer, Georg Feitscher, Anna Schreurs-Morét (eds) Compendium heroicum (Freiburg: Universität Freiburg, 2019) [Freiburg 01.02.2019. doi:10.6094/heroicum/hsmd1.0]. Van Wees (Status Warriors) argues that status rivalry is cause not effect of endemic conflict in archaic warrior societies.

[xxv] For fields, capital and habitus: Pierre Bourdieu, Outline; Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge M: Harvard University Press, 1984); Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’ in J. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York etc.: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 241–258.

[xxvi] The hybrid character of the modern revolutionary ethos is reflected in studies arguing that successful revolutionary organizations combine solid organizational work and inspired action, or, alternatively, that they house two, realistic and idealistic types of revolutionaries. See for example: Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (np.p.: Mentor Book, n.y) [1951], pp. 119–135; Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution. Revised and Expanded Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), chapter 4; Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge M.: Harvard University Press, 1965); Jack A., Goldstone, ‘Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory’, American Review of Political Science, 4 (2001), p. 157; Jack A. Goldstone, Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 34–35.

[xxvii] See Ronald Suny’s excellent biography of Stalin pre-October Revolution: Stalin: Passage to Revolution (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020).

[xxviii] Stalin’s pre-October 1917 writings were published in the first three volumes of his Sochineniia (Works), published in Moscow in 1946. Unfortunately, all Transcaucasian Social-Democratic/Bolshevik proclamations and many articles were unsigned. The researchers of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (and Stalin himself) decided which anonymous publications to include in the Sochineniia. Starting in 2013 Russian Stalinists began publishing new, more complete Stalin Trudy (Works), including anonymous proclamations and articles the IMEL researchers back in 1946 had regarded as Stalin’s but had not included in the Sochineniia. The first volume of the Trudy has an extensive archive-based section highlighting the considerations of the IMEL researchers: I.V. Stalin, Trudy, vol. 1, 1894–1904 (Moscow: Prometei info, 2013), pp. 273–545. [Hereafter: Stalin, vol..] But without independent, academic exploration of the IMEL archives to establish what the young Stalin may or may not have written, today’s Stalin researchers remain dependent on the biased IMEL work.

[xxix] ‘Klass proletariev i partiia proletariev’ [1 January 1905], Stalin, vol. 2, p. 3.

[xxx] ‘Ko vsem rabochim’ [19 October 1905], Stalin, vol.2, p. 122.

[xxxi] ‘Rabochee dvizhenie na Kavkaze v 1899–1901 gg.’, Stalin, vol. 1, p. 82.

[xxxii] ‘Grazhdane! Moguchii velikan – vserossiiskii proletariat … ’ [November 1905], Stalin, vol. 2, p. 127.

[xxxiii] ‘Tiflis, 20-go noiabria 1905 goda’ [20 November 1905], Stalin, vol. 2, p. 135.

[xxxiv] ‘Khvala vam, ubitye za pravdu … ’, Stalin, vol. 1, p. 126.

[xxxv] ‘Deviatoe marta’, Stalin, vol. 1, p. 124.

[xxxvi] ‘Rabochee dvizhenie na Kavkaze v 1899–1901 gg.’, Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 85–86.

[xxxvii] ‘Klass proletariev i partiia proletariev’, Stalin, vol. 2, pp. 3–4.

[xxxviii] ‘Sovremennyi moment i ob’’ edinital’nyi s’’ezd Rabochei partii’, [1906, later than 8 May], Stalin, vol. 3, p. 19.

[xxxix] ‘Partiinyi krizis i nashi zadachi’, Stalin, vol. 4, pp. 351–360.

[xl] ‘Pamiati tov. G. Teliia’, Stalin, vol. 4, pp. 36–39.

[xli] ‘Avgust Bebel’, vozhd’ germanskikh rabochikh’, Stalin, vol. 4, pp. 405–407.

[xlii] For Mao’s life pre-1949: Alexander V. Pantsov, Steven I. Levine, Mao: The Real Story (New York etc.: Simon & Schuster, 2012), parts 1 and 2.

[xliii] ‘Remarks on the report of the representative of the International at the August 7 [1927] emergency conference’: Stuart R. Schram and Nancy J. Hodes (eds) Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912–1949, vol. 3, From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927–December 1930 (Armonk, London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 30–31 [hereafter: Mao, vol …].

[xliv] ‘Report of the Jinggangshan Front Committee to the Central Committee’ [25 November 1928]: Mao, vol. 3, p. 92.

[xlv] ‘Problems of war and strategy’ [6 November 1938]: Mao, vol.6, pp. 551–552.

[xlvi] ‘Conclusions regarding the report of the Central Executive Committee’ [27 January 1934]: Mao, vol. 4, p. 719.

[xlvii] ‘The Long March’ [October 1935]: Mao, vol.5, pp. 27–28.

[xlviii] ‘Kunlun’ [October 1935]: Mao, vol. 5, pp. 29–30.

[xlix] ‘On tactics against Japanese imperialism’: Mao, vol. 5, p. 92.

[l] ‘Speech at the opening ceremony for the second session of the Northern Shaanxi Public School’: Mao, vol. 6, p. 277.

[li] ‘Collecting information about the deeds of national heroes in the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, and disseminating propaganda about them’ [18 March 1939]: Mao, vol.7, p. 56.

[lii] ‘On protracted war’: Mao, vol. 6, p. 347.

[liii] Id., p. 356.

[liv] Mao, vol. 7, p. 750.

[lv] Id., p. 752.

[lvi] ‘Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on strengthening the party spirit’: Mao, vol. 7, p. 766.

[lvii] ‘The main points of propaganda of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee’ [26 January 1942]: Mao, vol. 8, p. 10.

[lviii] ‘Oral political report at the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party’ [24 April 1945]: Mao, vol. 8, pp. 851–852.

[lix] For Guevara’s life see Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (London: Bantam Books, 1997); Jorge G. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

[lx] John Gerassi (ed.) Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara (London: Panther Books, 1969), p. 55.

[lxi] ‘On revolutionary medicine’ [19 August 1960], Gerassi, Venceremos!, pp. 173–175

[lxii] Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 13.

[lxiii] Id., pp. 45–50. Quotation p. 49

[lxiv] Id., p. 67.

[lxv] Id., pp. 5–6.

[lxvi] ‘Cuba – exception or vanguard?’ [9 April 1961], Gerassi, Venceremos!, p. 197.

[lxvii] Gerassi, Venceremos!, p. 568.

[lxviii] ‘We are practical revolutionaries’ [8 October 1960], Gerassi, Venceremos!, p. 190.

[lxix] ‘On being a communist youth’ [20 October 1962], Gerassi, Venceremos!, p. 311.

[lxx] ‘On party militancy’ [24 March 1963], Gerassi, Venceremos!, pp. 347–352.

[lxxi] ‘Guerrilla warfare: a method’ [September 1963], Gerassi, Venceremos!, p. 388.

[lxxii] Gerassi,Venceremos!, p. 581.

[lxxiii] Id., pp. 583–584

[lxxiv] For studies highlighting these ‘drifting’ revolutionary lifestyles: Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, International Communism and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity and Suspicion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Elizabeth McGuire, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Tim Harper, Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire (n.p.: Allen Lane, 2020); Brigitte Studer, Reisende der Weltevolution: Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021).

[lxxv] For this see Bruce Mazlish, The Revolutionary Ascetic: Evolution of a Political Type (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

[lxxvi] I thank Claudia Verhoeven for pointing my attention to this side of the matter. For the lighter elements of revolutionary lives and revolution as ‘adventure’ see: Claudia Verhoeven, ‘Adventures in Terrorism: Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinsky and the Literary Lives of the Russian Revolutionary Community (1860s–80s)’ in Jason Coy et al. (eds) Kinship, Community, and Self: Essays in Honor of David Warren Sabean (Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), pp. 157–169.

[lxxvii] Moissaye J. Olgin, The Soul of the Russian Revolution (New York: Henry Holt, 1917), pp. 321–322. Emphasis in original. I thank Lars Lih for pointing my attention to Olgin’s book.

[lxxviii] Jeff Goodwin, Steven Pfaff, ‘Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the US and East German Civil Rights Movements’ in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (eds) Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 293. For essentially the same thought: Hoffer, True Believer, pp. 62–63.

[lxxix] Tamara Herath, Women in Terrorism: Case of the LTTE (Los Angeles etc.: Sage, 2012), p. 150.

[lxxx] Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1968); Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, London: The Free Press, 1973). See also Roger Griffin, ‘The Role of Heroic Doubling in Ideologically Motivated State and Terroirist violence’, International Review of Psychiatry, 29:4 (2017), pp. 355–361; Also: Roger Griffin, ‘Shattering Crystals: The Role of “Dream Time” in Extreme Right-Wing Political Violence’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 15:1 (2003): pp. 57–94.

[lxxxi] Full text in Philip Pomper, Sergei Nechaev (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979), pp. 90–94. Quotation pp. 90–91.

[lxxxii] Kerry Brown, Simone van Nieuwenhuizen, China and the New Maoists (London: Zed Books, 2016), p. 157.

[lxxxiii] Loren J. Samons, Pericles and the Conquest of History: A Political Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 207.

[lxxxiv] Johann Chapoutot, Greeks, Romans, Germans. How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), p. 397.

[lxxxv] This term was suggested to me by Simon Admiraal.

[lxxxvi] See for example Klapp, ‘Heroes’, pp. 61–62; Orrin E. Klapp, Symbolic Leaders: Public Drama and Public Men (Chicago: Aldine, 1964), p. 43; Lois, Heroic Efforts; Neutatz/Nachtigal, ‘Feldherren’, p. 531; Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals, ‘Hero Worship: The Elevation of the Human Spirit’, Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour, 46:2 (2016), p. 190. See also Randall Collins on ‘emotional energy’: ‘Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention’ in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (eds) Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 27–44; and Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).

[lxxxvii] Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (New York, London: Collier-MacMillan, 1972), p. 49.

[lxxxviii] Id., pp. 41–42.

[lxxxix] Id., p. 248.

[xc] See for example: Ibid., pp. 52, 167, 248.

[xci] Hoffer, True Believer, p. 79.

[xcii] Id., p. 65.

[xciii] See James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 108–115, 127–129; Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, ‘The Return of the Repressed: The Fall and Rise of Emotions in Social Movement Theory’, Mobilization. An International Journal, 5:1 (2000), pp. 65–83; Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, ‘Introduction: Why Emotions Matter’ in Jeff Goodwin, Jeff, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (eds) Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 1–24; Mabel Berezin, ‘Emotions and Political Identity: Mobilizing Affection for the Polity’ in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (eds) Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 83–98; Deborah B. Gould, ‘Passionate Political Processes: Bringing Emotions Back into the Study of Social Movements’ in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper (eds) Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion (Lanham etc.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 135–175; See for the role of emotions in social movements also: Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 109–114.

[xciv] Harold Rosenberg, ‘The Resurrected Romans’, The Kenyon Review, 10:4 (1948), p. 602.

[xcv] Id., p. 603.

[xcvi] Id., p. 613.

[xcvii] Compare Charles Tilly on revolution as fragmentation and re-establishment of unified sovereignty: From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1978), chapter 7.

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