The political experiment took place in Paris and proved fatal. It lasted 72 days (March 28 - May 28, 1871) and was drowned in blood by the government of Louis Thiers (also known by the Hellenized surname Thiersos).
The Commune grew out of the political vacuum created after France's crushing defeat in the war with Prussia (July 19, 1870 - May 10, 1871). At the beginning of 1871, the Prussians were besieging Paris and in fact on February 17 they made a triumphant march through the streets of the French capital. On the same day, moderate democrat Louis Thiers, who had opposed the Franco-Prussian War and been accused of being a traitor, won the election, following the abdication of Emperor Napoleon III.
Paris at that time stood out from the rest of France for its large working class, which militantly claimed its rights and in 1864 had won the right to strike. In 1866 Paris had 1,799,980 inhabitants, 57% of whom worked in industry.
On the night of March 17-18, in an attempt to impose his authority on a recalcitrant Paris, Thiers decided to disarm the city for fear of a labor uprising. In Montmartre and Belleville there were 227 cannons for the city's defense under the control of the radicalized National Guard. The military forces that were sent did not manage to capture them, as they were surrounded by national guards and civilians. The soldiers did not fire on the crowd, but arrested the leaders, Generals Lecont and Thomas, whom they executed by firing squad.
Thiers, who had capitulated to the Prussians, ordered the army to evacuate the city, while he himself took refuge in the fortress of Versailles to avoid capture. The National Guard, which had evolved into a revolutionary force, decided that the predetermined municipal elections would be held on March 26. All this time it was acting as a government, with the help of the Marxist workers of the First International. On March 26, 1871, the municipal elections were held in an exemplary manner, in which 50% of Parisians took part.
The Municipal Council that was elected had 92 members and was installed in the Municipal Hall on March 28. It received the name "Commune de Paris" and took over the powers of the National Guard, representing a wide ideological spectrum:democrats and radical bourgeois, socialists, independent revolutionaries, socialists, Marxists and anarchists. From its composition it is obvious that the leadership of the Commune did not have a clear ideological outline and so it failed to function effectively.
One of the leading members of the Commune was also a Greek, the lawyer Pavlos Argyriadis from Kastoria.
The political activist Louis Blanqui was elected president of the Commune, but he was arrested on March 17 by government forces. The Communards tried several times unsuccessfully to free him, taking hostages from the other side, among them the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darbois.
Despite its weaknesses, the work it accomplished was significant, particularly in the areas of labor and education. In the labor sector a Hungarian Marxist, Leon Frankel, was placed in charge, and he took a series of measures to relieve the workers and the petty bourgeoisie:collectivization of industries, arrears in trade and rents, abolition of night work in bakeries, ban on usury offices and establishment of the ten-hour daily work.
The Board of Education under Bayan proceeded to establish free education and the separation of state and church, while taking measures of a feminist nature. An honest accountant, François Jourde, was placed on the Finance Committee, who refused to "nationalize" the Bank of France, depriving the Communards of valuable money for the success of their struggle.
Very quickly, the effort of the Commune was devoted to the struggle against the government forces, which in the meantime had been significantly strengthened, after the withdrawal of the Prussians. They had 200,000 men against the 60,000 men of the Commune. The army began operations to retake Paris on April 3 by laying siege to the city. After the first military failures, the Commune hardened its stance, with the Committee of Common Salvation that it established on May Day 1871, despite the reaction of the anarchists.
On May 21, Thiers' forces entered Paris, where they met stiff resistance from the Communards.
Fierce battles were fought from street to street and from neighborhood to neighborhood. The palaces of Kerameikos, the City Hall and the Auditorium Hall were engulfed in flames. The army carried out mass massacres of civilians, and the Communards responded by executing 52 prominent Parisians, whom they were holding hostage. Among them, the archbishop of the city Georges Darbois.
The Fall
Government forces prevailed completely on May 28, 1871, after a week of fierce fighting, which went down in history as "The Bloody Week" ("La semaine sanglante"). During the clashes 30,000 - 40,000 communists were killed, while the losses for the government amounted to 1000 men. Then the military courts got to work, issuing 10,137 convictions:93 to death, 251 to forced labor and 4,586 to exile on the overseas island of New Caledonia. Thousands, moreover, of the defeated were forced to self-exile.
France lived under martial law until 1876, while an amnesty for all crimes committed during the Paris Commune was granted in 1880. Quenching in blood the revolution of the popular classes of Paris and neutralizing the monarchists, the bourgeois regime gradually stabilizes and imposes .
The French Right sees the Paris Commune as a classic example of mob rule and terrorism. The global left deifies her and considers her a sign of the maturity of the working class, which for the first time takes power.
Karl Marx proclaimed the Paris Commune as a symbol of workers' revolt against the bourgeoisie.
In his work "The Civil War in France" ("Thinker" publications) he writes:"The Paris of the workers with its Commune will always be celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. The working class has shut up its martyrs in its big heart. History has already nailed its exterminators to the stake of dishonor, from where not even all the prayers of their priests can redeem them".
But he criticizes its leaders for wasting valuable time implementing democratic procedures instead of attacking and crushing Thiers' forces. Lenin carefully studied the Paris Commune in order to formulate his theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and apply its lessons to the October Revolution.
For the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, the Paris Commune was the "pure refusal of the state" , while the opposite was the opinion of another prominent anarchist, Piotr Kropotkin, who considers it as a miniature of the state at the local level, since he did not dare to abolish its institutions.
The impact of the Paris Commune also reached Greece. All the Athenian newspapers of the time were hostile to the Commune and only the "Mellon" newspaper of the Municipality of Papathanasiou defended it. Its publisher writes on May 11, 1871:"Yes, rejoice, the defenders and witnesses of the principles if only true, reliable, people-saving freedom can be established. Your ancestors want to be suffocated in blood and fire under the hands of self-absorbed and despotic democracies, but your ancestors are destined to restore nations and peoples".
The Paris Commune was also disapproved by the Parliament, at the meeting of May 22, 1871. The deputy Lombardos said in his speech: "Greece, small and weak, but always fighting and fighting for freedom, cannot help but loudly raise the voice of her indignation against those who, in the abuse of the name of freedom, finally fought for freedom in Paris. Greece, young and weak, experienced that there is no greater warrior of freedom than disorder. If it does not ensure freedom, it is ensured by respect for the laws and the rights of everyone".