What lessons does European and Egyptian history hold for the present generation of Egyptian revolutionaries, asks Leslie Croxford* Revolution, historian John Vincent aptly said, is not the flood: it is the ark. Historians debate Napoleon's debt to the French Revolution. What is not in dispute is that he was at least as despotic as Louis XVI. Russian revolutionaries carried on the security practices of the Tsars. The essence of the Soviet Union survives in Vladimir Putin's autocracy. The KGB flourishes under another name. Must Egypt too, after the tumult of its sudden revolution, discover that there is nothing new under the sun? Does its present amount to little more than the worst features of the past, disguised only by their greater intensity? One might well ask, given the kind of appetite that's emerging for clawing back the wealth amassed by members of the Mubarak regime. It smacks less of a new openness, more of Gamal Abdel-Nasser's confiscations and reprisals. For while individuals and institutions might be swept away and replaced; though procedures may be changed and fresh objectives avowed, the very autocracy, paternalism, nepotism and corruption could, in the worst case, continue as an ineradicable reflex in a people who, except for a few short weeks since 25 January, have never known any other way of behaving in the entire 7,000 years of their history. A horrific image of "Saturn Devouring His Son" hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid. An old man, maniacally dancing, gorges himself on what might actually be his daughter despite the title. Whatever Goya himself might have meant by the subject, it is disturbingly appropriate for the age of revolutions in which the great painter lived. Revolutions, according to Danton, devour their children. Witness Robespierre, the devourer devoured. So do counter-revolutions. Fernando VII replaced the revolt against Napoleon's occupation of Spain, with his own anti-liberal values. Yet, a century and a half later, after a terrible Civil War and period of dictatorship, Spain was to heed the warning implicit in its great painter's nightmarish image. It managed a lasting transition from General Franco's rule to a stable, pluralist state -- albeit beset by the same economic challenges as face all Western societies. Has Egypt something to learn from the Spanish experience? Of course Spain did not have a revolution properly speaking. There were no crowds like those on Tahrir Square when the plug was finally pulled from the long- insensible Franco's life-support machine. There were only those gathering to file respectfully past his open coffin in the urban Royal Palace he had never actually occupied, from fear that, like his predecessor Alfonso XIII, he might be unceremoniously forced to flee it by the crowds. Yet, so radical was the transformation in government that the difference between this and revolution is merely semantic -- not an issue when we recall our continuous misuse of the term "revolution", derived in the late 17th century from astronomy to mean not change but return to an original position. No, change, real change came to Spain and from the most unexpected quarters. It did not arise from the plazas with their statues and fountains or from the acacia-lined boulevards. That's where the Communists, Socialists, unions and students might have been expected to clash with the Falangists and Guardia Civil in their three-cornered hats dating from the time of the Napoleonic occupation. On the contrary, change came from within Franco's ruling structure, under duress since the fateful day on which the dictator's appointed successor, Admiral Carerro Blanco, getting into his car to go to work, was blown up by Basque terrorists with a bomb so powerful that the vehicle was catapulted onto a first floor verandah. It came from the king whom Franco had prepared to become a merely titular monarch, the king's tutor and a minister from Franco's cabinet. This revolution, if ever, was the ark, not the flood. Franco had a necessary, if uneasy, alliance with the monarchy. Like the church, it was a fundamental part of the conservative establishment he was pledged to safeguard. Yet, he could not get on with the legitimate heir to the throne. He was all-too-aware that Don Juan de Bourbon, with his democratic ideas, might replace him as head of state. So Franco outmaneuvered him in a meeting on his yacht in which he promised the restoration of the monarchy, yet not through Don Juan but through his son, Prince Juan Carlos. Furthermore, the dictator took charge of the prince's upbringing, not imagining that father and son remained close and planned to install democracy while giving the impression that Juan Carlos was dim and under Franco's thumb. As king, following Franco's death and his father's abdication in his favour, Juan Carlos activated the plan for democracy. He chose to do so through Adolfo Suàrez, minister for the Movimiento, the sole legal political party under Franco. Who could imagine that the dapper, youthful individual from the conservative establishment would have the independence of mind or political talent to advance the project without descent into another civil war? Only later did it emerge that when the aged Franco once asked Suàrez what he thought would come after him, he had said democracy. Suàrez, as the king's prime minister, had his political capacities tested to the uttermost. He achieved his objectives thanks, in no small measure, to the wily skill of the king's tutor Torcuato Fernàndez-Miranda. He drafted the law for political reform. As speaker of the Cortes, and he performed the remarkable feat of ensuring its ultimate approval with 425 votes in favour, only 59 against and 13 abstentions. The only time it really seemed as if the entire democratic project might fail was when Colonel Antonio Tejero instigated a military coup. Tejero entered the Cortes, his appearance as deranged as that of his countryman Salvador Dal�. But this was no surrealist joke. Firing a shot into the ceiling, the wild Tejero forced all the deputies to lie on the floor -- except Suàrez, who refused. Yet, the king, as commander in chief of the armed forces, rang all the garrison commanders, reminding them of their personal loyalty to him. The coup failed. Spain's transition to democracy was virtually a textbook success, although only a person without a trace of historical imagination could suppose that it was ever inevitable. What lessons does it have for Egypt? In answering, let's remember that although Egyptians rightly expect their revolution to institutionalise democracy, this cannot be their only objective. It must do so without witch-hunting, which would reintroduce a Nasserite atmosphere corrosive of their other goal: personal freedom. Moreover, they have to avoid provoking the army into a counter-coup destructive of either aim. Spain's transition to democracy was quite deliberately all-inclusive. It underlay the drafting of the Constitution which was approved in the referendum of December 1978. The king held clandestine meetings in a country house outside Madrid with the long-barred Communists. Their leader, Santiago Carrillo, was so grateful that he became not only a staunch supporter of the new political order but also, paradoxically, highly appreciative of the monarchy. Thus, in Egypt it is important that the Muslim Brotherhood should be fully included in framing the new constitution. The Brothersy represent, in any case, a minority of the population. They do not pose the level of threat that the regime alleged in order to maintain the state of emergency that which allowed Mubarak to turn Egypt into a police autocracy for three decades. Moreover, the Sunni Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood differs markedly from the Shia Iranian regime, which regards it as conservative, badly organised, and lacking the zeal to install a specifically Islamic state. Increasingly, like Al-Qaeda from which it is actually distinct, it has been failing in recent years to put itself at the head of protest. The revolution, after all, was not the work of the Muslim Brotherhood. Spain's transition was also inclusive in using ministers from Franco's cabinet. We have mentioned Adolfo Suàrez. There were others, such as Fraga Iribarne, who, coming to fame as Franco's minister of tourism, went on after the dictator's death to become minister of the interior. This made use of the politically low- key technocrats who had increasingly formed Franco's later cabinets, though obviously not of the ideologues. It gave an impression of familiarity and continuity to assuage an often military -- if not militaristic -- old guard who, were they to react negatively, might revive the spectre of civil war. So, in Egypt too there are members of the Mubarak-era National Democratic Party who are reformers with ideas quite as innovative as any to be found in an opposition with which they have a natural affinity. For example, Hossam Badrawi, briefly party chairman before his resignation at Mubarak's last, unacceptable speech, has a far-reaching educational agenda based on the norms of Britain's Quality Assurance Agency, but which he was never enabled to implement. Even so, one must expect to hear in the still-intense atmosphere of recent events a view such as the following, offered by an intelligent Egyptian financier who protested in Tahrir Square every day: "Badrawi may be personally decent for resigning, but we don't need him. Besides, he's tainted by having been a party member". Nevertheless, the kind of benefits democratic Spain found in using the talents of some of Franco's ministers cannot be denied. Egypt might well have need of them. Yet is it feasible, even if it were desirable, to erase the past? Examples from modern history suggest not. America's refusal, after the second Gulf War, to use members of Saddam Hussein's army or the Baath Party in the nation's reconstruction is now recognised to have been disastrous. Konrad Adenauer, German chancellor, opposed De- Nazification since some member or other of every family in his country had been a member of the Nazi Party. The overwhelming majority, he said, would have failed to support a democratic party pursuing De-Nazification. It remains to be seen whether Egypt's appetite for revenge, after 30 years of autocracy, corruption and abuse of human rights, will be too keen for it to come to peace with the past. Instead of the ark preserving the country's best, might it keep afloat the old vengeful ways? In a Middle East where memories are long, it is unlikely that forgiveness will be mustered in an equivalent of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While the youth of Tahrir Square are admirable, individuals of the nationally recognised stature of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu are in short supply. But if reprisals go too far the risk is that the army, which benefited so much materially from the Mubarak regime -- and not only at its most senior level -- will resist. Besides, we should bear in mind that while it is entirely legitimate for Egypt to seek to recover stolen assets, experts have warned that this may be a long, difficult and ultimately less than satisfactory hunt. The last time it did something similar was when Sotheby's auctioned King Farouk's treasure. There was far less to show for it than was hoped for. The misappropriated billions cannot be relied on to save, out of a country of 85 million people, the 20 per cent who live in abject poverty or the fully 40 per cent who are extremely poor. This is no way to address the truly revolutionary demands of the bulk of Egyptians. For while we are thrilled by the success so far of the Facebook generation and those on Tahrir Square, their demands are the easy ones to satisfy. All it has needed is a series of specific decisions to remove the president, to agree to abrogate the constitution, lift the state of emergency and call free and fair elections. It is the rest of the story that is difficult. This is the demand for social and economic justice which everybody, with a visceral terror of the mob since the Storming of the Bastille, thought -- and perhaps still fears -- might some day provoke real revolution. When the deposed king was leaving Egypt for exile in Italy, General Naguib, leader of the 1952 officers' coup before his house arrest by Nasser, saw Farouk off on the deck of the royal yacht Al-Mahrousa. After an awkward silence Farouk said: "governing Egypt is not such an easy task". This is something Egypt's military dictators have learnt over 60 years, culminating in the bitter brooding of a stubborn autocrat eking out his dying days in the irrelevant sunshine of Sharm El-Sheikh. There is a huge historical irony here. Whether Egypt consciously seeks to retain its links with the past or not, it has done so regardless of any decision in the matter. Many, if not all, of the Facebook Generation, of the protesters on Tahrir Square, are the grandchildren of those expropriated by the first in that series of military autocrats. Nasser drove them from their villas and gardens, plunging them into that abject poverty in which they cowered by radios to find out which family would be ruined next. These grandchildren have now performed an act of historical justice for their families. These young people are agents of the past in another sense too, no less than everybody else on Tahrir Square, regardless of age and social background. The 1952 Revolution was a moment of great promise, bringing to their end an ineffectual monarchy and the colonial period. That moment was subverted by successive military regimes. Now, by ending that political sequence, the 25 January revolutionaries return the nation to that historic opportunity. They have finally ushered in, for the first time in all of Egypt's 7,000 years of history, the possibility of a free, popularly elected, Egyptian government to run the affairs of its people. * The writer is academic director at the British University in Egypt.
