Today in 1871, Republican French soldiers enter Paris and start the brutal suppression of the “Commune of Paris. “
The Commune was a radical Marxist-influenced government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871 and attempted a nationwide revolution. Following the collapse of the 2nd French Empire as consequence of the French Emperor’s surrender at the Battle of Sedan and the following victory by the German coalition in the Franco-Prussian War, the Third French Republic was declared.
Left-wing activists in France were worried that the royalist majority in the new government would reinstitute the monarchy. Fearing a counter-revolution, the Republic disbanded the National Guard of Paris (comprised mostly of workers) and remove cannons from the city. A popular resistance to this move resulted in elections citywide. A revolutionary majority was elected as result, the majority would be referred to as the Communards.
The Paris Commune wanted to control a nationwide revolution, much like Jacobin revolutionaries did in the 1790s. In other French cities, communes were suppressed quickly and on May 21st, soldiers entered through an undefended section of Paris. Within a week, brutal fighting left nearly 17,000 men, women and children dead throughout Paris. In the aftermath of the Commune, the republican government took harsh repressive action: about 38,000 people were arrested and more than 7,000 were deported from the country.
As severe as these repressions were, many in Europe then and now, viewed the Paris Commune as a proto-communist government. Many at the time knew Marx was the intellectual behind the movement leading to the commune’s creation; during its short existence he was hounded by reporters for his thoughts on the events in France. Karl Marx went as far as declaring the commune as an example of the worker’s revolution and publishing two manifestos praising it. In possibly staving off a communist revolution, France may have saved herself, but in doing so led Marxist revolutionaries across Europe to accept violent revolution as the only means to secure power.
[Online References]
https://www.britannica.com/event/Commune-of-Paris-1871http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-john-merriman-20141207-story.htmlhttp://www.slp.org/pdf/marx/paris_com.pdf Authored by CS
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