Just Finished Reading: The Terrible Year – The Paris Commune, 1871 by Alistair Horne (FP: 1971)

Taking a step back from hard-core political theory I thought I’d fill in a bit of background with a few political history books (more to follow of course). As I’m concentrating on European history this seemed a good place to kind of start. I’d come across the famous 1871 Paris Commune a few times during my previous reading but, except for the fact that it happened and ended badly I knew little else until I turned the last page of this slim (142 page) volume.

Starting with the French defeat at the Battle of Sedan in 1870 at the hands of the seemingly unstoppable Prussian army the author inexorably draws together the events and the personalities that led to this short lived flower of revolutionary potential. With France in chaos as the Prussian army advanced on Paris and the government seemingly vacillating between doing nothing and capitulating a small number of left-wing men and women took matters into their own hands and declared the incumbent politicians invalid. As forces gathered to support both sides in the seemingly inevitable violent confrontation the majority of the sitting government escaped to near-by Versailles. Left in charge of a city practically surrounded by Prussian troops and with an often shambolic and unrecognised political body in command the city was determined to hold out even if the rest of the country had apparently capitulated. So began the long, and sometimes quite bizarre, Siege of Paris. After many months of trying, and failing, to subdue the last major pocket of resistance the Prussians finally settled with the government they did recognise and happily left France in turmoil whilst taking ownership of two provinces. It was then time for Frenchmen and women to fight their fellow Frenchmen as the right-wing government sought to crush the rebels in its midst.

The details of the retaking of Paris are truly harrowing. Little quarter was asked or given. Whole districts of the city where destroyed by cannon shell and fire. Thousands of men, women and children died in the battle and in the preceding siege due to starvation, disease, suicide and the inevitable in-fighting. Worse was to come with wholesale executions of the ring-leaders and basically anyone who got in the way of the authorities. Even those countries afraid that such political revolt could happen in their country where appalled at the level of violence used to end any chance or any hope that such an affront to bourgeois sensibilities could ever happen again. So ended the short-lived experiment in early Communist society.

This is definitely a subject I need to learn more about. It was a fascinating if rather naïve attempt to produce a new way of living. It failed for many reasons and not only because it was eventually crushed by the forces on the right. I did find it interesting to speculate what might have happened if such an experiment had indeed succeeded. I think we would be living in a very different world today. A recommended introduction to the subject.