This article argues that sociologically informed studies of revolution tend to underestimate the importance of counter‐revolution and ‘reaction’ in generating radicalisation. Revolutions are inherently political. Most accounts recognise this, but emphasise the executive organs of state – such as monarch, cabinet or ministers – at the expense of the intermediary ‘technicians of power’. Revolutions, however, typically seek to refashion an entire technocracy of power, and in so doing struggle against embedded and powerful sites of reaction. Central to the dynamic of revolution is the ‘purge’ of the technocracy of power. As governing structures are not easily transformed at a stroke, revolutions may be seen as punctuating long processes of struggle. Historically, the governing apparatus has been most effectively revolutionised under conditions of military occupation. The thesis is illustrated here by a narrative of revolution in Europe from the English Civil War to the Liberation of the 1940s, with a coda on ’68.