Ethnic Federalism in a Dominant Party State: The Ethiopian Experience 1991-2000 Lovise Aalen r 2002: 2

The 1974 coup: Marxist autocracy replacing monarchical
absolutism as the centralising ideology
“Opposition and repression mutually reinforced each other until they attained
their logical conclusion in the revolution of 1974” .
This is how an Ethiopian historian ends his book about the building of the
Ethiopian modern state up to 1974. Although the events in 1974 are most
commonly described as a revolution, implying fundamental changes to the
society, the continuities from the imperial regime to the new military regime
became more apparent as the years went by after the coup.
The downfall of Haile Selassie was characterised as a “creeping coup” which
started with demonstrations and strikes among civilians and mutinies in the
armed forces and ended with the deposition of the Emperor and his regime and
the establishment of a military government (Halliday and Molyneux 1981: 84).
The main actors in the civilian rebellions were students and employees in the
modern sectors in alliance with other parts of the urban work force. Many of
the students who played a major role had returned from North-America and
Europe, where they had been in exile during the reign of Haile Selassie, and
were organised in the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) and
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP). Both organisations viewed the
problems in Ethiopia as a result of class conflicts and not as an outcome of
struggles between ethnic groups. Although parts of the military tried to topple

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the Emperor in an attempted coup in 1960, some sort of common front within
the military against the imperial rule was not achieved unitl 1974, when a
committee from all the different army units, called the Derg in Amharic, was
formed. The Derg ordered the imperial government to resign, arrested the
members of the old regime and nationalised the Emperor’s assets. Their initial
programme, Ityopia Tikdem (“Ethiopia First” in Amharic), was nationalistic
more than revolutionary (Clapham 1988: 40). It promised loyalty to the
throne, but nevertheless, the Emperor was nevertheless deposed and the
Provisional Military Administration (PMAC) consisting exclusively of members
from the Derg was created. Their next programme had a more radical tone,
pursuing a Marxist ideology, and during the following years they implemented
a range of radical policies. The most comprehensive was probably the land
reform, which made all land in the country the property of the Ethiopian
people and prohibited all kinds of tenancy, including properties in urban areas
(Pausewang 1990:45).
Mengistu Haile Mariam emerged as the undisputed leader of the Derg after
internal conflicts within the PMAC were eradicated. From 1976, a period of
violence occurred, where EPRP assassinations of members of MEISON and
supporters of the PMAC were followed by the Red Terror Campaign, where
the Derg and its supporters haunted EPRP members, imprisoning 30,000 and
killing several thousand of them
4
(Holliday and Molyneux 1981:123).
MEISON, still in alliance with the military, hoped that their co-operation
would lead to the creation of a Marxist mass party. But their dominance within
the mass organisations became too strong for Mengistu, and from 1977
MEISON was violently suppressed. Many of the MEISON members became
victims of the Red Terror that they had helped to unleash. The Derg created a
so-called mass party of their own, the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE), in
1984.
The change that took place after Mengistu had consolidated his power
should be described as a transformation rather than a revolution
5
(Harbeson
1988: 94). The regime break brought important changes to Ethiopian society,