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Paris Commune
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The Paris Commune was the biggest and last popular revolution in western Europe - ending the cycle of revolutions that started in 1789. The Parisians, reeling from defeat in the Franco-Prussian War set up their own revolutionary administration. Government troops eventually retook the city and took a terrible revenge: thousands died in the bloodbath that followed. The short-lived Commune and its repression cast a long shadow. It exposed deep divisions in French society and became a potent inspiration for the radical left. This stirring new study written with great zest, and a vivid sense of time and place lets the reader experience these tumultuous events at first hand and provides a comprehensive synthesis of recent research in both French and English.
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The Paris Commune is a touchstone in the history of democracy. On March 26, 1871, still defiant after enduring five months of a Prussian siege, and refusing to accept the terms of the surrender negotiated by the French national government, the citizens of Paris voted for self-government. They formed a new municipal council - the Commune - comprising delegates from various backgrounds, including substantial numbers of manual workers and representatives of the labor movement as well as members of the middle class.
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The Paris Commune was born as a result of the revolutionary crisis which has festered inside of Parise since the first French Revolution of 1789. It created by several groups of French radicals whose organizations had grown in the years following the first revolution. The Commune itself was created following the outrages of the Franco-Prussian War, after which the defeated population of Paris was living under less than ideal conditions, and tensions were high between the more moderate government forces, under the command of General Trochu, and the radical ÔRedsÕ. These tensions culminated on February 24 of 1871 when several battalions of the National Guard, comprised primarily of members of the proletariat and supporters of the Reds, marched on their own artillery parks and captured over two hundred cannons. Under the command of a governing body calling itself the Comit Centrale de la Garde Nationale, these units, which accounted for some two hundred and thirty of two hundred and sixty commanders in the National Guard, defected from the regular army.
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The Paris Commune taught the world some significant lessons. In the first place, it demonstrated that to take power is not sufficient, that, especially in an agrarian country, the real fight occurs after the workers have attained power, when they are trying to establish a new world. In the second place, it made it plain to the workers that insurrection is indeed an art, that amateurs first must graduate into professionals, and that revolutionists must wait until their number has increased from a small handful to a decisive size throughout the country before another attempt could be made. In the third place, the Commune outlined in deep grooves the inevitable channels that proletarian revolts would have to take. It furnished indelible lessons to the Russian Bolsheviks who later carried forward the whole line of the Paris Commune on an even more magnificent scale. Finally, it taught the world that no great war can exist without its aftermath of proletarian revolt.
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On March 26 the Paris Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed. The Central Committee of the National Guard, which up to then had carried on the government, handed in its resignation to the National Guard, after it had first decreed the abolition of the scandalous Paris "Morality Police". On March 30 the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and declared that the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. It remitted all payments of rent for dwelling houses from October 1870 until April, the amounts already paid to be reckoned to a future rental period, and stopped all sales of article pledged in the municipal pawnshops. On the same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because "the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic".
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The Paris Commune, functioning between March 18 to May 28 of 1871, was spawned by the Franco-Prussian war. Germany's victory created discontent among the Parisian workers who were already unhappy over growing economic inequality and food shortages. A truce between France and Germany created further anger among workers who now were technically under German rule as a result of the armistice reached between Germany and France. This Armistice resulted in the Prussian army sending food to Paris and withdrawing troops to the east side of the city. Once a war indemnity (compensation for damages done) was paid, the troops would be withdrawn out of the east of the city and no Prussian troops would occupy Paris.
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Paris Commune