In the reactions to several interviews I recently gave to different YouTube videos, I have witnessed a number of misunderstandings that need to be straightened out, with the exclusion, as one would expect, of the deliberate distortions coming from the nostalgics of the old imperial regime. Against the lies and fabrications of these nostalgics, I have nothing to say except to warn them that denial or misrepresentation of the severe shortcomings of the imperial regime does not help us lessen, let alone solve, the serious and intricate problems that today’s Ethiopia faces as a consequence of the continuous turmoils triggered by the Ethiopian revolution fifty years ago. It is one thing to bring out the disastrous effects of the revolution, quite another to absolve the imperial regime of its responsibilities in setting the ground for a revolutionary uprising.
NB. For those interested in a detailed account of the issues raised in this paper, I invite them to read two of my books: Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, University of Rochester Press, 2008; Ideology and Elite Conflicts: Autopsy of the Ethiopian Revolution, Lexington Books, 2011.

The Radicalization of the Student Movement
To begin with, two points need to be clarified when we talk about the impacts of the Ethiopian student movement on the 1974 revolution. The first point has to do with the high level of radicalization of the student body, a level such that an African scholar, Ali Mazrui, characterized the students in 1973 as “the most radical African students [he] had ever addressed.” The second issue that needs to be dealt with is the question of knowing (1) the reasons for this high level of radicalization; and (2) whether the movement is solely responsible for the eruption of the revolution and its consequences on the Ethiopian society.
As regards the first question, most existing studies assign the revolutionary direction of the student movement and its heightened degree of radicalization to objective conditions, that is, to grave socio- economic and political conditions of Ethiopia under Haile Selassie. They speak of economic stagnation, which worsened due to the lack of needed reforms, bringing with it youth unemployment and generalized increasing poverty. A climatic incident and adverse international events aggravated the popular frustration: on the one hand, famine exploded in the northern parts of the country; on the other hand, the closure of the Suez Canal after the Arab-Israeli war and OPEC’s dramatic rise of oil price in 1973 contributed to a significant soaring of the prices of goods. This heightened popular frustration operated against the background of an unfair treatment of the majority by a minority claiming noble privileges, especially regarding the land tenure system. Particularly alarming was the system of tenancy in the South because of the fear that it could fuel ethnic awareness and animosity. In addition to all the foregoing, scholars include as an important cause of discontent the imperial ban on political parties and autonomous civic organizations, the total lack of democracy, freedom of speech, etc.

When we add all these factors together, we have the characteristic of a society that is badly in need of reforms, but alas, that is also deprived of the means necessary to undertake the needed reforms. It can be described as a closed society, that is, as a society that had no other way out than to explode, that offered no other alternative than a revolutionary uprising. This is the aspect that nostalgics and those who see the student movement as a culprit for the destructive effects of the revolution overlook, namely, the lack of alternative courses. Sure enough, the old regime had proposed a reformist agenda under the premiership first of Endelkachew Makonnen and then of Mikael Imru. Not only both premierships were short-lived, but also palace intrigues to prevent reforms, the radical view of students who wanted to hear nothing other than a revolutionary denouement, and, more importantly, the breakup of the military hierarchy in the armed forces and its major consequence, to wit, the formation of the Derg and its open determination and maneuver to circumvent a civilian alternative changed all reformist attempts into an impossibility.

We do not stress it enough: the formation of a military committee composed of disgruntled junior
officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, led, to crown it all, by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the
very personification of a narcissistic personality is the single derailment behind all the calamities of the revolution. Though Haile Selassie is often praised for establishing a disciplined, well-trained, and patriotic army, it quickly rebelled against its senior officers. Of course, his policy in Eritrea and Ogaden as well as his habits of cementing divisions and constantly moving senior officers from one unit to another unit—all this to prevent a coup d’etat––have had a hand in the fast collapse of the military chain of command. Without the rebellion in the barracks, the student radicalism would not have gone beyond protest and skirmishes. Neither would it have had any significant impact if their Leninist ideology had not seduced members of the Derg, mostly for its advocacy of violent methods to seize and strengthen absolute power in the name of the interests of the working masses. All the more reason to insist on the impairments of the army is that they show, if there is still such a need, how fanciful was the expectation of those many people who were hoping for some form of military coup by senior officers to unblock the Ethiopian society.

More than any other factor, the student’s success in spreading and popularizing the idea of revolution and socialism has created a fertile ground for the Derg’s seizure of power, if only because it provided a legitimizing idea that disarmed the traditional classes and sources of authority and vindicated the use of political violence, any serious study of the revolution must furnish a satisfactory explanation for the radicalization of the students. For, granted that all the objective conditions enumerated by various scholars were indeed propitious for a revolutionary uprising, still without the addition of specific subjective conditions of radicalization, we fall short of explaining the heightened degree of the radicalization of students.
To this effect, various studies cite the global impact at that time of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, of
Maoism, and the Soviet and Chinese attempts to spread their respective ideologies. The studies
also include the revolutionary mood of the 60s and early 70s among Western youth and university
campuses, notably the radicalizing fallout of the American war in Vietnam. In the Western academic
world, the leftist prediction of the decline of imperialism and the spread of the global dominance of
the Marxist ideology had gained considerable momentum. Naturally, the global nature of the
revolutionary mood has influenced Ethiopian students, especially those who studied in Western universities. All those Ethiopians who had the chance to study at that time in European and American universities surely remember the powerful impact of these leftist ideas on them.

In combination with the blockage of the Ethiopian society under imperial rule, the global impact of
the revolutionary culture goes a long way to answering the question of knowing why Ethiopian students so easily and in great numbers succumbed to the Marxist-Leninist ideology and the revolutionary mood. Even so, the explanation does not fully account for the ferocity of the revolutionary commitment. For instance, it does not say why Ethiopian students, unlike other students from third-world countries who were in comparable conditions, excelled in their degree of radicalism. To elucidate the heightened commitment, we must dwell on one particular subjective factor that most scholars missed, which is the impact of Western education on the Ethiopian youth of that time.
My study of the Ethiopian student movement brings out the extent to which Western education
undermined the traditional beliefs, values, and forms of authority, including parental authority,
thereby creating a generational fracture between the Westernized youth and the rest of society. For these uprooted young students, Marxism-Leninism was not just a political theory; it was also a cultural substitute for the lost system of beliefs, especially for those associated with the traditional religious culture of Ethiopia. While African students were also equally exposed to Western education, the experience of colonialism and its denigration of the humanness of black people infused some restraint into their eagerness to fully espouse Western centrality and norms. Less so with Ethiopian youth: both the prevention of colonization and the legacy of a clogged old culture and outdated socio-economic system, to the extent that they inculcated pride mixed with the belief that Ethiopia could have reached a higher scale of civilization, had it not been held back by a reactionary the ruling class, agreed with the Marxist historical scheme of traditional societies being wiped out by revolutionary movements. Since Western education implanted an outward-looking mental makeup, the subsumption of Ethiopian society into the Marxist scheme of history, besides appearing logical, entrusted the Western-educated Ethiopian youth with the mission to harness the blocked society to the march of the dominant and winning ideology of the time.

The Derg’s Leadership of the Revolution
Thus explained, the radicalization of students gives enough elements to determine the question of
responsibility. Most studies advance the argument that the student movement is responsible for the
revolutionary direction of the social upheaval. This is so true that these studies strongly maintain
that the Derg stole the leadership from the movement by violently eliminating all its organizations
and leaders through a fascistic use of its ideology. My study, on the other hand, shows that the
question of responsibility does not have a simple answer. True, the revolutionary direction is
unthinkable with the influence of the student movement and its ideology. However, I consider the
implied thesis, namely, that students overthrew the imperial regime, highly questionable. As suggested already, without the military uprising, especially the uprising of junior and non-commissioned officers, the social and the students’ unrests would have been, sooner than later, squashed. Moreover, if despite inimical conditions, a regime change nevertheless occurred, it would not have gone beyond a classical military coup by senior officers.

This state of things stresses the need to first explain the military uprising itself and, most importantly,
the creation of the Derg and the fact that it completely overtook senior officers. As hinted earlier, the
military uprising in general can be explained by dissatisfaction over conditions of life and the imperial government’s refusal to contemplate a different resolution than the solution to crush military
insurgents in Eritrea, Ogaden, and other parts of the country. The other reason for the formation of
the Derg is based on a previous lesson, which is that the establishment of an elected committee
appeared as the best way to avoid an internal military fight, as it happened in 1960 with the open war
between the imperial bodyguard and the army. Moreover, senior officers, in addition to being
perceived as too loyal to the imperial regime, were accused of corruption and of being indifferent to
the well-being of their units. Add to all this Haile Selassie’s deliberate policy, as mentioned above,
of placing together generals with mutual hostilities as well as moving them constantly from one
military position to another and even to civilian posts, and you have all these ingredients that made
senior officers incapable of having a firm grip on the units they were commanding. Their situation
was such that, whatever rebellious intent they had, they were unable to materialize it.

Once the circumstances for the rise of the Derg are explained, there remains the question of why the
Derg easily and quickly moved from a nationalist slogan, Ethiopia Tikdem, to socialism and Marxism-Leninism. The presence in the Derg of young officers who were exposed to student protest while they
were in colleges or high schools and the impact of the rebellious mood of ordinary Ethiopians should
be taken into consideration. The familiarity of military coups and the slogan of socialism among African countries at that time should also be counted. However, the seriousness with which the Derg pursued and implemented the idea of Leninist socialism, the state of appalling violence it unleashed to pursue its revolutionary commitments, and the determination to have exclusive and absolute control of state power demand that the explanation goes beyond circumstances.
Why, then, did the Derg quickly go from the mere slogan of socialism to the determination to
implement in earnest a socialist program? Why did it become enamored with the ideology? The one
reason often cited is that members of the Derg wanted to hijack the student leadership of the social
protest. They knew that they could not hope to stay in power without some form of autonomous
legitimacy, and this meant usurping the leadership of the social uprising from the student movement. And since the ideology mandated the exercise of dictatorial power, the overriding reason behind the Derg’s exchange of its nationalist ideology of Ethiopia Tikdem for the radical and radicalizing ideology of Marxism-Leninism is its positioning for absolute power. As alluded to above, what seduced most members of the Derg in the Marxist-Leninism idea of socialism is that it is premised on the necessity of retaining an undivided absolute power in the name of the interests of the working masses. From the adoption of a convenient tool to achieve a political goal to assuming a vocational entitlement, the road is direct and inevitable. To kill, imprison, and displace so many people as well as to put the country upside down by shattering all that has been respected for generations and passed on, one needs to believe that one has been called for such a mission. What was at first a utilitarian justification easily grows into a vocation, especially when a narcissistic personality like Mengistu Haile Mariam assumes the iron-fisted leadership of the Derg.

To conclude, any attempt to evaluate the Ethiopian revolution in terms of good or bad results and
isolate the culprit is a wrong-headed undertaking. In the same way as, whether one likes it or not, the
sun rises and sets, it is futile to approach the revolution with a moralistic or any other type of
appraisal without first clarifying the true nature of the situation back then. Those who evaluate the revolution positively and those who find nothing but negative fallouts think that they have sound and convincing arguments in favor of their position. Yet, before engaging in some assessment, they should ask themselves the question of whether Ethiopia had a choice between revolution and evolutionary change. Stated otherwise, understanding should precede any form of assessment.
The truth is that all the avenues leading to evolutionary change were blocked one by one by all
participants: the nobility, the army, the monarchy, and the students. In addition, foreign interventions, notably the Somali invasion, convinced members of the Derg that a foreign sponsor and protector could come to the rescue only if Ethiopia allied with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Outside the Soviet assistance, it is impossible to defend the integrity of the country, much less to ensure the victory of the revolutionary path. In short, the revolutionary denouement was the outcome of the blockage of the reformist paths by all the competing actors. As a result, the range of choices was so narrowed, in fact to the very one that suited the wishes and the competencies of lower ranks of army men, that, in the end, only the thin road of the scorched-earth policy of total revolutionary changes remained