Revolutions – all revolutions – have a cycle. A cycle that Crane Brinton described in 1965 in The Anatomy of Revolution: Ancien Regime, Time of the Moderates, Terror and Thermidor. Brinton exemplifies his cyclical theory with four revolutions: the English Revolution of the 17th century, the American Revolution and the War of Independence of 1775-1783, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Soviet Revolution of 1917.
The Portuguese revolutionary cycle in April also followed the cycle: Ancien Regime (Estado Novo, in the final phase, Marcelist version, 1968-1974); Time of the Moderates (25 April-28 September 1974), Terror (28 September 1974, worsened on 11 March 1975, until November), and Thermidor (25 November 1975).
The MFA’s military coup, with the late Spinolist blessing, lasted through the summer of 1974 and was divided with the resignation of Adelino da Palma Carlos who, faithful to the republican patriotism of the Ultimatum, the Rotunda, the Great War and 1961, did not want to be responsible for the handover of Ultramar and was replaced by the communist Vasco Gonçalves.
On September 28th, the “Time of the Moderates” ended and the Terror began; a terror of a country with soft customs. The MFA, with Gonçalves and Otelo, ordered the arrest without charge of the opponents who defended, in democracy and in accordance with the April MFA Program, a plebiscitary solution for Ultramar. And he accomplished the feat of, after six months, having twice as many political prisoners in the prisons of the then Metropolis as were there on April 24, 1974.
The drift to the left and successive provocations followed: the 28th of September ended, as Quito Hipólito Raposo said, with the “chain reaction” or “in jail”. For March 11th, an “Easter massacre” was predicted, a rumor that spread among exile circles in Madrid that the liquidation of hundreds of conservative officers was being prepared to stop the Right, which was winning the elections in the Councils of Arms. And on the same March 11th, falling for the provocation, the Spinolist sip came out, out of time and dividing and compromising the resistance. The communists would take advantage of the window of opportunity for nationalizations and the arrests of industrialists and bankers.
And popular resistance came, framed by the Catholic Church and some exile circles. The communists experienced, from Minho to the Tagus, the same treatment they were giving to those who opposed them wherever they could.
But for the PCP, whose leadership was obedient to Moscow, it was never a question of taking power in Portugal, breaking the Yalta rules, reconfirmed in Helsinki in July-August 1975. It was, rather, a question of guaranteeing a bridgehead in Lisbon until the end of Decolonization, achieved on November 11, with the independence of Angola.
From then on, there was free rein for strategic withdrawal, avoiding the civil war that Dr. Cunhal knew he would lose.
Thus, on November 25th, the PCP forces were left out. The containment of the military extreme left – which had tortured, in RALIS, several “fascists”, such as Marcelino da Mata – was the work of the Commandos, especially the companies of “call-ups”, the heroes of the day, now forgotten in the narrative that apparently glorifies the “Nine” and Costa Gomes.
I don’t miss the governments before April 25th. But I miss a Portugal that is less indifferent to its fate and that of its overseas compatriots, less quick to free itself from secular responsibilities, less corrupt, stagnant, dependent and peripheral.
Political scientist and writer. The author writes according to the old spelling