Revolution like 1789 or like 1848? The important question regarding the Russian revolution is this: I will it go as far as the complete overthrow of the tsarist government, to the point of a republic, II or will it be limited to curtailing, limiting tsarist power, a monarchist constitution? Or else.

Crop failures 1845-1847 and the subsequent economic crisis had disastrous consequences for the economically backward Austrian Empire. Numerous bankruptcies, mass poverty, a sharp rise in food prices prepared an atmosphere in which the news of the revolution in France ignited a general fire.

Ernst Wioland on the situation in Austria

"A few more years before 1848, the situation of the workers worsened, as unemployment increased." And "the number of unemployed grew exponentially every year due to the suspension of many factories, the use of new machines and the impoverishment of artisans who joined the ranks of the workers." "The appalling poverty of these factory slaves, especially in winter, was unbelievable." The unemployed in Vienna: "it is completely incomprehensible how they can endure such a life."

“The place of concentration, the nursery of the proletariat was Bohemia. Need and poverty were especially strong there. "Most of the peasants ... support their existence with potatoes." And "a huge number of job seekers bring down prices so much that it has become impossible to find sufficient income in their own country." “It was especially bad for factory workers throughout the empire, since the massive influx of Czech workers brought down prices and thus lengthened the working day.” “When a crisis came and some factories stopped, or the use of the machine made workers redundant, many died of starvation.” "The workers had no means of fighting their plight." They "were forbidden to act in defense of their interests, so that trade and industry would not suffer from high wages." “Long, uninterrupted and monotonous work caused a severe dullness among the workers. Especially among the weavers, their monotonous occupation led to dementia and mental illness.

On March 3, 1848, the first demands for reforms were made in Vienna, and soon an armed uprising began in the capital. Emperor Ferdinand I was forced to sacrifice his chancellor, and this ended the “Metternich era”. An attempt made in May 1848 to dissolve the rebel committee led to a new aggravation, as a result of which the government fled the capital, and when it tried to dissolve the "Academic Legion", which consisted of revolutionary students, Vienna responded with a new uprising.

In the summer of 1848, the Austrian Reichstag abolished feudal privileges and duties. However, soon the National Guard of Vienna shot down a demonstration of workers, which meant a class split among the rebels. The last outbreak of the Austrian revolution was caused by the decision of the authorities to send troops to suppress the uprising in Hungary.

In October, another uprising broke out in Vienna, during which "fury reached its highest limit." The government managed to win over the ruler of Croatia, whose troops drowned the uprising in blood. In December 1848, Ferdinand I abdicated and Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) took the throne. Soon the Reichstag was dissolved, and a new constitution was granted to Austria, which actually restored the full power of the emperor.

Bohemia was one of the first to rise during the beginning of the revolution of 1848-1849 in the Austrian Empire, the Czech population of which awakened the hope of restoring their ancient rights and privileges. However, already in June the Czech national movement suffered a defeat. Shortly before that, the Slavic Congress took place in Prague, organized in opposition to the German assembly in Frankfurt. The delegates demanded that the Slavs return their "old heritage - freedom" and opposed the entry of Austria into Germany. material from the site

Much more serious events unfolded at that time in Hungary, which always occupied a special position in the Habsburg state. Here, unlike other provinces of the empire, there was a thousand-year-old state tradition and a strong nobility. In the 1830-1840s. the movement for the preservation of Hungarian culture intensified, the Hungarian language was approved as an official language in all provinces of the kingdom, despite the diverse national composition. Fighting for their own identity, the Hungarians denied this right to other peoples. Such a policy most tragically affected the fate of the Hungarian revolution.

On March 3, 1848, the State Assembly of Hungary issued a demand for the introduction of a constitution. Hungary received internal self-government, serfdom was abolished on its territory. However, the Hungarians stubbornly refused to recognize the national rights of other peoples, who one by one overthrew the Hungarian domination and entered into an alliance with the Viennese government.

Hungarian War of Independence

In September, a real war began between Hungary and Austria, which was supported by the Croats, Serbs, Romanians, and Slovaks. Hungary lost its special rights as part of the Habsburg power, the provinces with non-Hungarian population were separated from it.

By the middle of the 19th century, Europe was a powder keg, ready to explode from any spark.

The industrial revolution was going on everywhere, the production of a wide variety of goods expanded enormously, the lives of millions of people changed, and the states in all countries remained the same.

At the head of the states were monarchs, surrounded by aristocratic landowners, who had police and judicial power on their estates, and where, as a rule, serfdom was preserved, and the peasants - the living property of their owners - had, as of old, to perform various obligatory duties. The already well-established bureaucratic apparatus carried out the will of this uncontrolled and irreplaceable top of the state.

The arbitrariness of the authorities at any moment could nullify the efforts of industrialists, devalue their capital invested in production, and ruin not only them, but also the masses of hired workers. Dynamic times were coming, the situation was changing quickly, and the authorities needed great competence, constant “immersion” in business affairs in order to timely solve problems that arise one after another. But the "old-style" monarchies were primarily concerned with the well-being of the large landowners-feudal lords, they were born by them, were an integral part of them - the emerging and developing industrial classes existed somewhere in the backyard of state power, and the monarchies were always ready to sacrifice their interests for the interests of aristocratic landowners.

It was necessary to create such a mechanism of power that would not depend on the unauthorized orders of the authorities, but would be subject to laws common to all, developed by parliaments elected by all interested citizens, to which executive bodies and governments would be responsible. What was needed was not "royal", but from no one except these laws, independent courts, with the ability to rely on the common sense of ordinary people (juries).

It was necessary to overthrow the old and build a new system of power, which would be based on universal recognition, enshrined in the basic law of the state.human rights.

In addition, born in Europenationalism, breaking out from the old states based on royal law, peoples in which national feelings have awakened. Now that these national desires were fully manifested, it was necessary to look for new forms of coexistence of different peoples with each other.

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In 1848-49 a powerful revolutionary wave swept through Europe. The shooter was, as always,France.

The "People's King" Louis-Philippe, over the 18 years of his reign, turned from a liberal into a patron of the landed aristocracy and the largest industrialists and merchants. His entourage is mired in scandalous scams and bribes. The demand that the right to vote in the elections of deputies to the National Assembly (Parliament), which alone could curb presumptuous conservatives, be given to all taxpayers, he invariably refused. When the country was shocked by two consecutive very lean, "hungry" years, the patience of the majority of the population snapped.

The country had a law prohibiting gatherings without government permission, but reformers devised a way to get around this ban - they began to hold crowded banquets at which, in the form of toasts, they discussed electoral reform and criticized the government. The government tried to ban one of these "banquets" in the capital, threatening its participants with severe punishments. This caused an explosion of rage among the Parisians, who immediately blocked the streets with one and a half thousand barricades. The National Guard, which the government had withdrawn to stop the riot, refused to fire on the townspeople. A huge crowd of rebels surrounded the royal palace and demanded that Louis-Philippe repeat the path of his predecessor on the throne - abdicate the throne and leave for England. Not tempting fate, the king did just that. France was declared a republic (Second Republic, February 1848).

Universal male suffrage was introduced, and state-run National Workshops opened in major cities to support the many unemployed. Craftsmen, ruined by machine factories, made simple products there, for which they received a small but guaranteed payment from the state. Soon, one hundred thousand people worked in these workshops. The products manufactured by them were not in demand on the market, and there was no money in the treasury to issue benefits on such a scale. First, the pay was lowered, and then the National Workshops were closed altogether - young workers were offered to enlist in the army, and the rest to go to the provinces for earthworks.

The uprising in Paris, which broke out in June after these decisions of the republican government, did not have a clear program - again six months later, the workers who went to the barricades demanded only the reopening of the National Workshops. Troops were brought into the capital, who, after persuading them to end the matter peacefully, began to shoot - several thousand people were killed in the suppression of the uprising in the workers' quarters of the capital.

In the general election of the President of the Republic in December 1848, Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew Louis-Napoleon won an unexpected victory, who gradually began to prepare the country to abandon the republican system and return to hereditary monarchical rule.

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Immediately after the February coup in France in March, theGermany.

The territories with a Germanic-speaking population in the center of Europe consisted of several hundred independent kingdoms, duchies, principalities, ecclesiastical possessions and free cities. The largest and most powerful among them were Prussia and Austria. The Austrian Empire, in addition to the German-speaking regions, included Hungary, as well as the Czech Republic and other Slavic lands.

It all started in the southern state of Baden, bordering France. Still unheard of in German lands, rallies of thousands demanded a change of government, freedom of the press, and trial by jury. The Duke hastened to satisfy them. Following the same mass demonstrations swept the southern and western German states - and everywhere the monarchies backed down in front of them, everywhere the conservatives in the governments were replaced by liberal-minded figures.

The mass movement of defiance also seized the capital of Prussia, Berlin. Here the authorities gave the order to the royal guard to shoot at the demonstrators, which caused a barricade war in the streets. The news of the uprising in Vienna and the escape of the hated all-powerful Minister Metternich added fuel to the fire - on the night of March 19, the rebels began to capture the city. The night battle was fierce, by morning there were already four hundred dead on the barricades, but Berlin was in the hands of the rebels.

The king actually admitted his defeat - he withdrew his troops and issued an appeal in which he promised the speedy adoption of laws on freedom of speech, assembly and unions, on the independence of judges and jury trials, and on the destruction of the police power of large landowners. After that, many rulers of other German states did not wait for such revolutionary explosions and began to actively liberalize the order in their territories.

The general demand was the unification of all German lands into a single state. By agreement with all sovereigns, elections were held for the all-German National Assembly, which in March 1849 met in Frankfurt am Main. It adopted a constitution common to all German states. The core of the constitution wasfundamental human rights . It established a hereditary monarchy in Germany, limited by parliament. The deputies elected the Prussian king as the monarch (Kaiser). However, when he found out about such an election, he was offended, declared that he was the king not by human permission, but by "God's grace" - and did not accept the all-German crown.

The refusal of the Prussian king from the title of all-German Kaisercrossed out the efforts of the Frankfurt Parliament to organize the political unification of the country, in which the Paulskirche constitution, which he developed, was to operate. In defense of this constitution, the inhabitants of a number of lands tried to come out with weapons in their hands, but the Prussian and Austrian troops decisively defeated all the rebels. After that, the "all-German" parliament was dispersed.

Monarchist reaction set in, destroying many of the initial gains of the revolution. However, the dream of unification turned out to be so strong that two decades later it came true with universal enthusiasm. And the “Fundamental Rights for the German People” formulated and fixed by the Frankfurt Parliament became the basis of the German constitutions adopted both after the First and after the Second World Wars.

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The news of the revolution in France stirred up andAustrian Empire.

A huge crowd gathered in Vienna, demanding liberal and democratic reforms, but was dispersed by volleys of troops pulled into the city.

In response, the Viennese began to smash government offices, seize arsenals with weapons and build barricades. The rebels besieged the royal palace, and the emperor surrendered - by his decree censorship was abolished, the National Guard was created from the armed crowns, and the armed students formed the Academic Legion.

At the same time, the revolutionary Committee of Public Security seized power in the rebellious Budapest. The emperor agreed to the establishment in Hungarygovernment responsible to the Hungarian parliament. Milan, Venice, Parma, Modena revolted in the Italian possessions of the Habsburgs. After fierce fighting, the Austrian army left Italy.

The government was headed by a liberal leader, the old ministers were removed, and a general amnesty was declared for participants in armed uprisings. A draft of a fairly liberal constitution was also published. The parliament elected at the same time was headed by moderate liberals. Serfdom was abolished in the countryside. The emperor "out of harm's way" moved with his entourage to Innsbruck, where revolutionary uprisings were already suppressed. There, forces began to gather around him, ready to drown the revolution in blood.

In Italy, the Austrian troops launched a counteroffensive and returned the recently lost lands to the empire. Performances in the Czech part of the empire also had to be suppressed by force - after a week of artillery shelling, Prague capitulated, mass arrests began there. [The statement of the commander of the punitive army, Field Marshal Windischgrätz is typical: "A man only begins with a baron". In the unrest that began in Prague, his wife was killed during the shooting ...]

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Meanwhile, the revolution was successfully developing in Hungary [Hungary within the Austrian Empire was at that time in the position of the Kingdom of Poland within the Russian Empire - formally a separate kingdom, united with Austria by a common monarch]. A revolutionary government was formed there and a national parliament was elected, serfdom was abolished - and the emperor was forced to recognize all these changes. But the main danger for Hungary was the movement of the peoples that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The power of the Hungarians, who were no longer controlled by the Austrians, it seemed to the national minorities - Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Romanians - a greater evil than the German government. [As soon as the Hungarians felt the first taste of independence, they immediately denied autonomy and freedom to speak their languages ​​to the peoples who were formally part of Hungary]

The Croats launched an anti-Hungarian armed uprising, which was readily supported by the Austrian authorities. Moreover, the commander of the Croatian rebel forces marching on Hungary was defiantly appointed as the imperial governor of the Kingdom of Hungary. In October, it was decided to send parts of the Vienna garrison to help him. This caused an outburst of indignation in the capital of the empire - the students dismantled the railway tracks along which the authorities intended to transfer troops, the workers of the Viennese suburbs dispersed government troops, seized the central weapons depot, caught and hanged the minister of war. The king fled to pacified Bohemia and abdicated there in favor of his son. Croatian troops turned to Vienna and tried to break into the city, but were defeated by the rebels.

The new revolutionary government of Vienna turned to the Hungarians for help, and one of the Hungarian armies, having defeated the Croatian troops, crossed the border of Austria. But Vienna was already surrounded by the 70,000-strong army of Field Marshal Windischgrätz, the recent pacifier of Prague, and the Hungarian troops failed to break through to the city, they were defeated and rolled back abroad. After fierce street fighting, Vienna capitulated. Austrian troops staged a bloody hunt in their capital for all those who took part in the uprising.

The Austrian army also launched a counteroffensive in Italy - and soon restored imperial dominance there.

From the autumn of 1848 to August 1849, Hungary resisted fiercely. The outcome of the military campaign was unclear until Russian troops entered the Hungarian plain at the request of the new emperor. The forces turned out to be too unequal - on August 13, the Hungarian army capitulated. The head of the Hungarian government, along with his generals, was shot, and many military and civilian officials of Hungary were also executed.

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The revolutionary wave in Europe subsided, and outwardly everything looked as if "Everything is back to normal.”. But it wasn't. It turned out to be impossible to return to serfdom again, to the suppression of people's personal freedoms. The democratization of the state system, liberal reforms from the abstract "spirit of the times" turned into urgent practical needs, for the sake of which people went to death with weapons. And the victorious monarchies in the coming years had to do it themselves, without waiting for a new revolutionary explosion.

At the beginning of 1848, Europe entered a turbulent period of revolutions and revolutionary uprisings that engulfed a vast territory from Paris to Budapest, from Berlin to Palermo. Different in their goals and objectives, all these events were characterized by the active participation of the broad masses of the people, who were the main driving force behind these actions and bore the brunt of the struggle.

1. The emergence of a revolutionary situation

The most important prerequisite for revolutionary uprisings in 1848 was a significant deterioration in the situation of the broad masses of the people, especially as a result of a crop failure that struck in 1845-1846. France, Ireland, a number of German states, Austria and many other European countries. In 1847, the consequences of the commercial, industrial and financial crisis, which seriously affected the economy of all Europe, were added to this. In England, by the end of 1847, nearly half of the blast furnaces had been extinguished. In the cotton industry of Lancashire in November 1847, out of 920 factories, 200 were closed, and the rest worked three or four days a week. Production in France also dropped sharply. In the first half of 1847 alone, more than 635 bankruptcies occurred in the department of the Seine. Everywhere the crisis contributed to a sharp deterioration in the condition of the working masses.

popular unrest

The pre-revolutionary years were marked by popular unrest in almost all European countries. In France, the year 1847 was marked by numerous actions of the popular masses, which took place almost everywhere, mainly in the form of food unrest: the urban and rural poor attacked grain warehouses and shops of speculators. The strike movement spread widely. The government brutally dealt with the participants in these speeches.

In England, the Chartist movement revived, mass rallies took place. A new petition prepared for submission to Parliament contained a sharp criticism of the existing social order and demanded the granting of national freedom to Ireland.

In Germany, in the early spring of 1847, spontaneous uprisings of the masses took place in a number of cities. Especially serious were the unrest in the capital of Prussia - Berlin. On April 21 and 22, the starving people took to the streets, protesting against the high cost and indifference of the authorities to the needs of the people. Several shops were destroyed, glass was broken in the palace of the heir to the throne.

On the basis of the aggravation of class contradictions, the revolutionary moods of the proletariat rose. At the same time, the opposition of the petty and middle bourgeoisie was growing, and in some countries, for example, in France, also of parts of the big industrial bourgeoisie, dissatisfied with the domination of the financial aristocracy.

Aggravation of the political situation

In the summer of 1847, the opposition circles of the French bourgeoisie launched a "banquet campaign" in Paris. At banquets, speeches were made that criticized government policies. The initiative for the campaign came from a moderate liberal party, dubbed the "dynastic opposition". This party did not go further than demanding a partial electoral reform, by means of which the bourgeois liberals hoped to strengthen the shaky position of the ruling dynasty. The leader of the party, lawyer Odilon Barrot, put forward a slogan typical of moderate liberals: "Reform to avoid revolution!" However, despite the efforts of the "dynastic opposition", banquets in favor of electoral reform gradually began to take on a more radical character. At a banquet in Dijon, a prominent figure in the left wing of the bourgeois republicans, the lawyer Ledru-Rollin, made a toast: "To the Convention that saved France from the yoke of kings!"

The "crisis of the tops" was also revealed in Prussia. In the circles of the bourgeois opposition, the desire to limit the power of the king and achieve an expansion of the rights of parliament was intensified. Financial difficulties forced the Prussian government to convene in April 1847 the "United Landtag" - a meeting of representatives of all eight provincial Landtags. But when the leaders of the liberal opposition demanded the transformation of the United Diet into a parliamentary legislative institution, the king declared that he would never agree to the introduction of constitutional orders. After the Landtag refused to approve the loan proposed by the government, the King dissolved the Landtag.

The political situation also became very tense in other parts of Germany. In September 1847, a congress of representatives of the democratic wing of the bourgeois opposition in Baden met in the city of Offenburg. The congress demanded the introduction of democratic freedoms, the convening of an all-German parliament, the abolition of the privileges of the nobility, the transformation of the army, and the reform of the tax system. In October, in the city of Gegshenheim, a congress of the moderate-liberal wing of the bourgeois opposition adopted a resolution calling for an all-German parliament to unite the country under the leadership of Prussia. In Bavaria, at the beginning of February 1848, things came to open clashes between the population and the troops.

In the multinational Austrian Empire, the bourgeois opposition movement grew stronger not only in Hungary and the Slavic lands, but also in the central Austrian regions.

A national movement was rising in Italy, which set itself the task of liberating the northern part of the country from foreign domination and uniting all of Italy into a single state.

A revolutionary explosion was brewing in most European countries.

2. Revolution in France

February days in Paris

A revolutionary explosion in France took place at the beginning of 1848. On February 22, another banquet of supporters of parliamentary reform was scheduled in Paris. The authorities banned the banquet. This caused great indignation among the masses. On the morning of February 22, unrest reigned in the streets of Paris. A column of demonstrators, dominated by workers and students, moved to the Bourbon Palace singing the Marseillaise and shouting: "Long live the Reform!", "Down with Guizot!". Without making their way to the palace building, the demonstrators scattered into the neighboring streets and began to dismantle the pavement, overturn the omnibuses, and erect barricades.
Troops sent by the government dispersed the demonstrators by evening and took control of the situation. But the next morning, the armed struggle in the streets of Paris resumed. Frightened by reports that the uprising was growing and that the National Guard was demanding a change in the head of the ministry, King Louis-Philippe dismissed Guizot and appointed new ministers who were considered supporters of the reform.

Contrary to the calculations of the ruling circles, these concessions did not satisfy the popular masses of Paris. Clashes between the rebellious people and the royal troops continued. They especially intensified after the provocative execution of unarmed demonstrators on the evening of February 23. New barricades were erected in the streets. Their total number reached one and a half thousand. That night the uprising took on a more organized character. At the head of the insurgent people were members of secret revolutionary societies, mainly workers and small artisans.

On the morning of February 24, almost all the strategic points of the capital were captured by the rebels. Panic reigned in the palace. On the advice of his close associates, Louis-Philippe abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled to England. Guizot also disappeared there.

The abdication of the king did not stop the development of the revolution. Street fighting in Paris continued. The revolutionary detachments took possession of the Tuileries Palace. The royal throne was taken out into the street, installed on the Place de la Bastille and burned at the stake to the jubilant exclamations of a crowd of thousands.

Creation of the Provisional Government

The upper classes of the bourgeoisie continued to defend the monarchy. They were afraid of the very word "republic", which reminded them of the times of the Jacobin dictatorship and the revolutionary terror of 1793-1794. At the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, the bourgeois liberals tried to secure the preservation of the monarchy. These plans were thwarted by barricade fighters who broke into the meeting room. Armed workers and national guards demanded the proclamation of a republic. The Provisional Government was created. The Provisional Government included seven right-wing bourgeois republicans grouped around the influential opposition newspaper Nacional, two left-wing republicans, Ledru-Rollin and Floccon, and two petty-bourgeois socialists, the publicist Louis Blanc and the worker Albert. The lawyer Dupont (from the department of Eure), a participant in the revolution of 1830, was elected chairman of the Provisional Government. A decrepit and sick old man, he did not enjoy great influence. The actual head of government was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the famous poet and historian Lamartine, a right-wing bourgeois Republican who had come to the fore thanks to his oratorical talent and noisy speeches against the July monarchy.

In Marx's words, the Provisional Government was "a compromise between the various classes which, by joint efforts, overthrew the July Monarchy, but whose interests were hostile to each other." However, as Marx emphasized, the predominance in the government and all power went to the representatives of the bourgeoisie.

Despite the demands of the people, the government was in no hurry to proclaim a republic. On February 25, a deputation from the workers, headed by an old revolutionary, a prominent scientist (chemist) and doctor Raspail, demanded the immediate proclamation of a republic. Raspail declared that if this demand was not met within two hours, he would return at the head of a demonstration of 200,000. The threat had its effect: even before the expiration of the appointed time, a republic was officially proclaimed.

The struggle for the red banner and for the "right to work"

On the same day, disagreements arose between the bourgeois majority of the Provisional Government and the revolutionary workers of Paris on the question of the color of the state flag. The demonstrators demanded the recognition of the red flag - the banner of revolution and social change. This demand was opposed by bourgeois circles, who saw the tricolor flag as a symbol of the dominance of the bourgeois system. The provisional government decided to keep the tricolor flag, but agreed to attach a red rosette to its staff (later it was removed). The disputes over this question reflected the contradictions between different classes in their understanding of the nature and tasks of the February revolution.

Almost simultaneously, another conflict arose. The workers' deputation demanded the immediate issuance of a decree on the "right to work." The presence in Paris of a huge mass of unemployed people made this slogan extremely popular among broad sections of the working people. After much objection, the government, at the suggestion of Louis Blanc, adopted a decree stating that it was obliged to "guarantee the existence of the worker by labor" and "provide work for all citizens." This decree was purely declarative: under the capitalist system, the slogan of the "right to work" is unrealistic.

On February 28, in front of the building where the Provisional Government met, a mass demonstration of workers took place with banners on which the demands were embroidered: "Organization of Labor", "Ministry of Labor and Progress", "Destruction of the exploitation of man by man." The slogan "Organization of labor" was widely propagated in the socialist literature of previous years and meant, in essence, the desire to replace capitalist production relations with another organization of production based on socialist principles. As a result of lengthy debate, the government adopted a decision that bore the appearance of a compromise - to create a commission on the labor question, headed by Louis Blanc and Albert. For the meetings of this commission, which included delegates from workers, representatives of entrepreneurs and several prominent economists, the Luxembourg Palace was assigned. But the Luxembourg Commission did not receive any real power and no financial resources. The commission was used by the bourgeoisie only to instill illusions in the masses and, having lulled their vigilance, to buy time to strengthen their forces.

Louis Blanc played the most unseemly part in the whole undertaking. He urged the workers to wait patiently for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, which supposedly would solve all social problems. At meetings of the commission and outside of it, he propagated his plan for production workers' associations subsidized by the state. The activities of Louis Blanc fully corresponded to the plans of the bourgeoisie, which in the meantime was gathering its forces to launch an offensive against the gains of the revolution. Lenin wrote about Louis Blanc that this French socialist "imagined himself the leader of" labor democracy "or" socialist democracy ", but in fact Louis Blanc was the tail of the bourgeoisie, a toy in its hands." (V. I. Lenin, "The Great Withdrawal" , Soch., vol. 25, pp. 44-45.) Lenin, after the name of this leader of the petty-bourgeois democracy, called the tactics of conciliation and betrayal of the interests of the proletariat "Louis Blancs".

Democratic gains of the February Revolution

One of the few gains of the working class in the February revolution was the reduction of the working day. In Paris and in the provinces, the length of the working day then exceeded 11-12 hours. A decree issued on March 2, 1848, fixed the working day at 10 o'clock in Paris and 11 o'clock in the provinces. However, many employers did not comply with this decree and either forced workers to work longer hours or closed their enterprises. The decree did not satisfy the workers, who demanded a 9-hour working day.

Another achievement of the French working people was the introduction of universal suffrage (for men over 21). The abolition of the obligatory cash deposit for the press made possible the emergence of a large number of democratic newspapers.

The February Revolution secured freedom of assembly and led to the organization of many political clubs, both in Paris and in the provinces. Among the revolutionary clubs of 1848, the greatest influence was enjoyed by the "Society for the Rights of Man", in whose sections advanced groups of petty-bourgeois democrats united. Close to this organization stood the "Club of the Revolution"; its chairman was the prominent petty-bourgeois revolutionary Barbès. Of the revolutionary proletarian clubs, the "Central Republican Society" stood out in its significance, the founder and chairman of which was Blanqui. He exposed the tactics of the bourgeoisie and urged the people not to trust the Provisional Government. At the beginning of March, this club demanded the abolition of all laws against strikes, the general armament, and the immediate inclusion of all workers and unemployed in the national guard.

A special place among the democratic achievements of the February Revolution was occupied by the decree of the Provisional Government of April 27, 1848, on the abolition of Negro slavery in the French colonies.
The advanced strata of the working class and other democratic strata of the population sought the decisive democratization of the social and political system in France. But the Provisional Government opposed this. It retained almost unchanged the police and bureaucracy that existed before the February Revolution. In the army, monarchist generals remained in leading positions.

Domestic policy. Provisional Government

To combat unemployment, which could cause new revolutionary unrest, the Provisional Government organized in early March in Paris, and then in some other cities, public works called "national workshops". By May 15, there were 113 thousand people in them. The workers of the national workshops, among whom there were people of various professions, were employed mainly as diggers, laying roads and canals, planting trees, etc. By creating national workshops, their organizers, the bourgeois republicans of the right wing, hoped in this way to divert the workers from participation in revolutionary struggle.

Under pressure from the popular masses for partial concessions, the Provisional Government from the first days of its existence was secretly preparing for a decisive struggle against the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat. On the night of February 25, at the initiative of the right wing of the government, a decree was adopted on the organization of mobile (mobile) guard battalions with a total strength of more than 24 thousand people; they were recruited for the most part from politically and morally unstable lumpen-proletarian youth. "Mobils" were put in a privileged position: they wore a special uniform, received an increased salary. The command of the Mobile Guard was entrusted to reactionary officers.

The financial policy of the Provisional Government was entirely determined by the interests of the big bourgeoisie. It took measures that saved the Bank of France, which found itself in danger of bankruptcy as a result of the crisis: it established a compulsory exchange rate for the bank's tickets and gave the bank state forests as collateral. At the same time, the government placed new financial burdens on the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry. The issuance of deposits from savings banks was limited. The government retained almost all the previous taxes and, in addition, introduced an additional tax of 45 centimes on each franc of the four direct taxes levied on landowners and tenants, that is, mainly on peasants.

The plight of the working masses strengthened their desire to use the establishment of a republic to fight against the oppression of the exploiters and to improve their working and living conditions. In Paris and other cities there were workers' demonstrations, strikes, attacks on grain merchants' warehouses, usurers' houses, and tax collection offices on foodstuffs imported from the countryside.

The agrarian movement gained wide scope and took various forms. Crowds of peasants beat and drove out the foresters, cut down state forests, forced the large landowners to return the communal lands they had seized, and forced usurers to give promissory notes. Serious opposition to the authorities was caused by the levying of an additional 45 centime land tax. This tax gave rise to great discontent among the peasants. The enemies of the republic blamed the responsibility for its introduction on the workers and socialists, whom they accused of creating expensive national workshops. The counter-revolutionary elements sought by their agitation to undermine the faith of the peasants in the republican system, to turn them against the working class.

International responses to the revolution

The February Revolution met with great sympathy in progressive circles throughout Europe. Marx sent greetings to the French people on behalf of the Brussels Democratic Association. The Polish, Italian and Irish revolutionaries expressed the hope that the new French government would render active assistance to the oppressed peoples of Europe in their struggle for freedom and independence. Many French revolutionaries also dreamed of this. But the right-wing bourgeois republicans in power feared that a war with a coalition of monarchist powers would cause a further deepening of the revolution in France. The Provisional Government, therefore, tried in every way to avoid international complications.

The main enemy of the republican system, established in France after the February Revolution, was tsarism. Nicholas I was extremely hostile to the revolutionary events in France. He decided to break off diplomatic relations with her and entered into negotiations with the governments of Austria and Prussia, suggesting that they organize a joint armed uprising against France in order to restore the monarchical regime in it. These plans proved to be unrealistic. The revolutions that broke out soon in Austria, Prussia and other European states completely changed the international situation. Nicholas I allowed his ambassador N. D. Kiselyov to stay in Paris and have informal conversations with Lamartine, but hesitated to officially recognize the French Republic; this recognition took place only after the victory of reaction in France.

Elections to the Constituent Assembly

Elections to the Constituent Assembly were scheduled for April 9. The revolutionary-democratic and socialist organizations were in favor of postponing the elections in order to better prepare for them, to launch explanatory work in the countryside and thus ensure victory for the left republicans and socialists. On the contrary, the right-wing bourgeois republicans and all the enemies of democracy opposed the postponement of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, hoping that the sooner the elections were held, the greater the chances for the victory of the reactionary forces.

On March 17, the revolutionary clubs of Paris organized a massive popular demonstration under the slogan of postponing the elections to the Constituent Assembly until May 31. However, the government rejected this demand. The elections took place on 23 April. Although formally they took place on the basis of universal suffrage (for men). In fact, they were far from universal. Many individuals were arbitrarily deprived of their voice. The authorities exerted brutal pressure on democratic-minded voters, dispersed their gatherings, and destroyed election posters.

The elections brought victory to the bourgeois republicans of the right wing, who received 500 seats out of 880. Orleanist monarchists (supporters of the Orleans dynasty) and Legitimists (supporters of the Bourbons) put together about 300 candidates. An insignificant number of seats, only two, were received by the Bonapartists (supporters of the Bonaparte dynasty). Petty-bourgeois democrats and socialists won 80 seats. There were only 18 workers in the entire assembly. The outcome of the elections was influenced by the fact that a significant part of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry were deceived by anti-socialist propaganda.

In a number of industrial cities, the elections were accompanied by violent street clashes. They took on a particularly stormy character in Rouen. For two days, April 27 and 28, the insurgent workers fought fierce barricade battles with government troops here.

Reaction enhancement. May 15 demonstration

In such a tense atmosphere, the sessions of the Constituent Assembly opened on May 4. A new period began in the history of the French Revolution of 1848. The reactionary forces, having won the elections, launched an open offensive against the political freedoms and social gains of the working people gained as a result of the February Revolution.

The place of the Provisional Government was taken by the Executive Commission, in which there was no longer a single socialist. The decisive role in the Executive Commission was played by the right-wing Republicans, closely connected with the big bourgeoisie.

From the very first days of its activity, the Constituent Assembly turned against itself the democratic strata of Paris by rejecting the bill on the creation of the Ministry of Labor and Progress, passing a law restricting the right to petition, and speaking out against the revolutionary clubs.

In order to influence the Constituent Assembly, on May 15, revolutionary clubs organized a mass popular demonstration in Paris. The number of its participants, among which the workers predominated, reached almost 150,000. The demonstrators entered the Bourbon Palace, where the assembly was meeting. Raspail read out a petition adopted in the clubs demanding armed assistance to the Polish revolutionaries in Posen and decisive action to combat unemployment and poverty in France. Most of the deputies left the hall, which was taken over by the demonstrators. After much debate, one of the leaders of the demonstration declared the Constituent Assembly dissolved. A new government was immediately proclaimed, which included prominent revolutionary figures.

The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a mistake, premature and unprepared. The broad masses of the people did not support him. Blanqui and Raspail, correctly evaluating the events, even on the eve of the demonstration, warned against actions that would give the authorities a pretext for persecuting the revolutionaries. These fears were soon confirmed: government troops and detachments of the bourgeois national guard dispersed the unarmed demonstrators. Blanqui, Raspail, Barbes, Albert and some other prominent revolutionaries were arrested and imprisoned. The workers of Paris have lost their best leaders.

June uprising of Parisian workers

After May 15, the offensive of the counter-revolution began to intensify every day. On May 22, the Blanca and Raspail clubs were closed, and on June 7, a harsh law was issued banning street gatherings. Troops were gathering in Paris. The counter-revolutionary press furiously attacked the national workshops, claiming that their existence hindered the revival of "business life" and threatened "order" in the capital.
On June 22, the government issued an order to liquidate the national workshops; workers over 25 years old employed in them were sent to earthworks in the provinces, and unmarried workers aged 18 to 25 were subject to enlistment in the army. The workers' protests were rebuffed by the authorities. The provocative policy of the government pushed the workers to revolt. On June 23, the workers of Paris took to the barricades.

The June uprising had a pronounced proletarian character. Red banners fluttered over the barricades with calls: "Bread or lead!", "The right to work!", "Long live the social republic!" In their proclamations, the insurgent workers demanded: to dissolve the Constituent Assembly and bring its members to justice, to arrest the Executive Commission, to withdraw troops from Paris, to give the right to draft a constitution to the people themselves, to preserve the national workshops, to ensure the right to work. “If Paris is put in chains, then all of Europe will be enslaved,” declared one proclamation, emphasizing the international significance of the uprising.

For four days, June 23-26, there were fierce street battles. On one side fought 40-45 thousand workers, on the other - government troops, mobile guards and detachments of the national guard with a total strength of 250 thousand people. The actions of government forces were led by generals who had previously fought in Algeria. They have now applied their experience in suppressing the liberation movement of the Algerian people in France. At the head of all government forces was placed the Minister of War, General Cavaignac, who received dictatorial powers. The main stronghold of the uprising was the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; the barricades erected in this area reached the fourth floor of the houses and were surrounded by deep ditches. The struggle at the barricades was led for the most part by leaders of the proletarian revolutionary clubs, the communist workers Rakari, Barthélemy, the socialists Pujol, Delacolonge, and others.

At the heart of the fighting of the insurgent workers was a plan of offensive operations drawn up by a prominent revolutionary figure, chairman of the "Action Committee" in the "Society of Human Rights", a former officer Kersozy. A friend of Raspail, a fiery revolutionary who was repeatedly prosecuted, Kersozy was very popular in the democratic circles of Paris. Taking into account the experience of previous uprisings, Kersozy provided for a concentric attack on the town hall, on the Bourbon and Tuileries palaces in four columns, which were supposed to rely on the working suburbs. However, this plan failed to materialize. The rebels were unable to create a single leading center. Separate detachments were loosely connected with each other.

Despite the heroism of the workers, the uprising of the Parisian proletarians was crushed. The cruel white terror began. The victors finished off the wounded rebels. The total number of those arrested reached 25 thousand. The most active participants in the uprising were brought to a military court. 3.5 thousand people were exiled without trial to distant colonies. The working-class quarters of Paris, Lyon and other cities were disarmed.

Reasons for the defeat of the June uprising and its historical significance

One of the most important reasons for the defeat of the June uprising in 1848 was the isolation of the Parisian workers from the working class of the rest of France. An important role was played by the vacillations of the urban petty bourgeoisie and the passivity of the peasantry, deceived by counter-revolutionary propaganda.

In some provincial towns, advanced workers expressed their sympathy for the June insurgents. In Louviers and Dijon the workers organized demonstrations of solidarity with the revolutionary proletarians of Paris. In Bordeaux, a mob of workers tried to take over the prefecture building. The workers signed up for volunteer detachments to go to Paris to help the uprising. Attempts were made not to let the troops called from its environs into the capital. However, sympathetic responses to the uprising in Paris were too weak and therefore could not change the course of events.

The international counter-revolution greeted the bloody suppression of the June uprising with approval. Nicholas I sent Cavaignac congratulations on this Argument.

The progressive people of many European countries expressed their solidarity with the revolutionary workers of Paris. Herzen and other Russian revolutionary democrats experienced painfully the brutal reprisals against the participants in the June uprising.

The historical significance of the June uprising of 1848 in Paris is very great. Marx called it "the first great battle between the two classes into which modern society is disintegrating. It was a struggle for the preservation or destruction of the bourgeois system.” Lenin saw one of the most important lessons of the June uprising in that it revealed the fallacy and perniciousness of the theory and tactics of Louis Blanc and other representatives of petty-bourgeois utopian socialism, and freed the proletariat from many harmful illusions. “The execution of workers by the republican bourgeoisie in the June days of 1848 in Paris,” Lenin pointed out, “finally determines the socialist nature of one proletariat ... All the teachings about non-class socialism and non-class politics turn out to be empty nonsense.” (V.I. Lenin, The Historical Fates of the Teachings of Karl Marx, Soch., vol. 18, p. 545.)

Rampant reaction. Presidential election December 10, 1848

The defeat of the June uprising and the disarmament of the Parisian workers meant the victory of the bourgeois counter-revolution in France. On June 28, Cavaignac was approved as the "head of the executive branch of the French Republic." The dissolution of all national workshops (both in Paris and in the provinces), the closure of revolutionary clubs, the restoration of a monetary guarantee for the organs of the periodical press, the abolition of the decree on the reduction of the working day - these were the counter-revolutionary measures carried out by the Cavaignac government immediately after the defeat of the June uprising.

On November 12, the constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly was proclaimed. It completely ignored the interests and needs of the working masses and forbade workers from organizing strikes. At the head of the republic, the new constitution put the president, elected by popular vote for four years, and the legislative power was given to the Legislative Assembly, elected for three years. Suffrage did not extend to many groups of workers. The president was granted extremely broad rights: the appointment and removal of all officials and judges, command of the troops, and leadership of foreign policy. In this way, the bourgeois republicans hoped to create a strong government capable of quickly suppressing the revolutionary movement. But at the same time, giving the president so much power made conflicts between him and the Legislative Assembly inevitable.

On December 10, 1848, elections were held for the President of the Republic. Six candidates were nominated. The advanced workers nominated Raspail, who was in prison at the time, as their candidate. The candidate of the petty-bourgeois Republicans was the former Minister of the Interior, Ledru-Rollin. The bourgeois republicans supported the candidacy of the head of government, Cavaignac. But the candidate of the Bonapartists, Prince Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon I, who received an overwhelming majority of votes in the elections, turned out to be elected.

Louis Bonaparte (1808-1873) was a man of mediocre abilities, distinguished by great ambition. He had already twice tried to seize state power in France (in 1836 and 1840), but failed both times. In 1844, while in prison, he wrote the pamphlet "On the Elimination of Poverty", in which he demagogically pretended to be a "friend" of the working people. In fact, he was closely associated with big bankers, who generously paid his supporters and agents.

During the July Monarchy, the Bonapartist clique was a bunch of adventurers and did not enjoy any influence in the country. Now, after the defeat of the June uprising, the situation has changed. Democratic forces were weakened. The Bonapartists led an intensified agitation in favor of Louis Bonaparte, which had a great influence on the peasants, who hoped that he would alleviate their situation, in particular, abolish the hated 45 centime tax. The success of the Bonapartists was also helped by the halo of Napoleon I, the memory of his military victories.

On December 20, Louis Bonaparte assumed the presidency and took an oath of allegiance to the republican constitution. The next day, a new government was formed, headed by the monarchist Odilon Barrot. His first step was the expulsion of the Republicans from the state apparatus.

The rise of the democratic movement in the spring of 1849

In the winter of 1848/49, the economic situation in France did not improve: industry and agriculture were still in crisis. The position of the workers remained difficult. The offensive of big capital against the working class and the petty bourgeoisie intensified.

At the beginning of April 1849, in connection with the forthcoming elections to the Legislative Assembly, the electoral program of the bloc of petty-bourgeois democrats and socialists was published. His supporters considered themselves the successors of the Jacobins, "Mountains" 1793-1794, and called themselves "New Mountain". Their program, which was of a petty-bourgeois nature, put forward a plan for democratic reforms, demanded tax cuts, the emancipation of the oppressed peoples, but bypassed such issues as the length of the working day, the level of wages, freedom of strikes and trade unions.

On May 13, 1849, elections to the Legislative Assembly were held. Unbridled counter-revolutionary agitation and brutal administrative pressure led to the fact that most of the seats in the Legislative Assembly (about 500) were won by a bloc of monarchist parties of Orléanists, Legitimists and Bonapartists, which was then called the "party of order". The bourgeois republicans of the right wing ran 70 candidates; bloc of democrats and socialists received 180 seats.

On May 28, the Legislative Assembly began its work. From the very first days, disagreements on foreign policy issues, closely related to disagreements on domestic policy issues, were revealed within it. In the center stood the so-called Roman question. As early as April 1849, the French government undertook a military expedition to the borders of the newly emerged Roman Republic. The republican left opposed this counter-revolutionary intervention. At a meeting of the Legislative Assembly on June 11, Ledru-Rollin proposed that the president and ministers be brought to justice for gross violation of the constitution, which forbade the use of the armed forces of republican France to suppress the freedom of other peoples. The Legislative Assembly rejected Ledru-Rollin's proposal. Then the petty-bourgeois democrats decided to organize a peaceful demonstration of protest.

The demonstration took place on June 13. A column of several thousand unarmed people moved to the Bourbon Palace, where the Legislative Assembly met. But the troops stopped the procession and dispersed its participants, using weapons. Ledru-Rollin and other leaders of the petty-bourgeois democrats showed their complete incapacity for revolutionary struggle. Only at the last moment did they issue a proclamation in which they called the people to arms to defend the constitution. Handfuls of determined people (mainly workers and students) offered armed resistance to the troops, but the leaders of the demonstration fled. By evening the movement was crushed.

The events of June 13, 1849 evoked a response in the provinces as well. In most cases, the matter was limited to demonstrations, which were quickly dispersed by the troops. The events in Lyon took a more serious turn, where on June 15 an uprising of workers and artisans, led by secret societies, broke out. In the working-class suburb of Croix-Rousse, the main center of the Lyon uprising of 1834, the construction of barricades began. Numerous detachments of soldiers, supported by artillery, were moved against the rebels. The battle lasted from 11 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the evening, the rebels defended every house with a fight. 150 people were killed and wounded, 700 were taken prisoner, about 2 thousand were arrested and put on trial. The miners of Rives-de-Giers moved to the aid of the Lyon workers, but, having learned about the defeat of the uprising, returned back.

On the night of June 15, 700-800 peasants gathered in the vicinity of the city of Montlucon (Department of Allier), armed with guns, pitchforks, spades. Having received the news of the unsuccessful outcome of the demonstration in Paris, the peasants went home.

The victory won in June 1849 by the bourgeois counter-revolution over the democratic forces coincided with the improvement of the economic situation in France, with the weakening of the industrial crisis.

Coup d'état December 2, 1851 Establishment of the Second Empire

In March 1850, by-elections to the Legislative Assembly took place in Paris. Among the elected were: Deflotte, a participant in the June uprising, Vidal, the former secretary of the Luxembourg Commission, and the left-wing Republican Carnot, who, after the February revolution, held the post of Minister of Public Education. The outcome of these elections showed the growing influence of left-wing groups. There was great anxiety in the counter-revolutionary camp. On May 31, 1850, the Legislative Assembly passed a new electoral law that established a three-year residency requirement and other restrictions against workers. About 3 million people were disenfranchised.
In circles of the big bourgeoisie, disillusionment with the parliamentary system grew, and the desire to create a "firm government" that would protect the propertied classes from new revolutionary upheavals intensified. The Bonapartists, in their newspapers and pamphlets, stirred up these sentiments and intimidated the propertied classes with the prospect of a new June uprising. Strife among the various monarchist groups weakened the Legislative Assembly.

On the night of December 2, 1851, the Bonapartist conspirators led by the President carried out a coup d'etat. The troops occupied all the important strategic points in Paris. The Legislative Assembly was dissolved, politicians hostile to Bonapartism were arrested. In order to obscure the counter-revolutionary essence of the coup and deceive the democratic circles of the population, Louis Bonaparte announced the repeal of the law on May 31, 1850, which limited voting rights.
The majority of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly did not go further than a timid protest against the violence committed and, without any resistance, allowed themselves to be arrested. The Republican left organized a "resistance committee"; among its members was the famous writer Victor Hugo. On December 3 and 4, barricades were erected in the popular quarters of Paris; their defenders put up a staunch rebuff to the troops. But the number of barricade fighters, mainly workers, did not exceed 1200 people. The broad masses of the Parisian proletariat did not take an active part in the struggle against the coup. This is explained primarily by the fact that the Legislative Assembly, by its actions, turned the workers against itself, depriving them of almost all the democratic gains of the February Revolution (suffrage, freedom of the press and assembly, the right of association, etc.). In addition, the working class of Paris was disarmed during the suppression of the June uprising of 1848, weakened by mass arrests and exile.

The Bonapartists managed to quickly crush the resistance of the Republicans in Paris. To speed up the denouement and intimidate the population, artillery was used. At the same time, up to two thousand civilians were killed and wounded.

The Bonapartist coup met with serious resistance in some provincial towns and villages, especially in the south of the country. In some places, partisan detachments were formed, which entered into a struggle with government troops. These detachments consisted mainly of workers, small artisans, merchants, democratically inclined intelligentsia and part of the peasants. However, the uprisings were fragmented, did not have a common leadership, and therefore were quickly suppressed. The wealthy elite of the peasantry gave active support to the Bonapartist authorities.

The coup was followed by the establishment of a brutal police terror. The government declared 32 departments under a state of siege. 21 thousand Republicans (mostly workers and artisans) were exiled to the colonies, imprisoned, exiled from France. The independent workers' organizations that still survived by that time were disbanded, and the progressive press was strangled.

A year later, on December 2, 1852, Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself emperor under the name of Napoleon III (Napoleon II, the Bonapartists considered the never-ruling son of Napoleon I, the Duke of Reichstadt, who died in his youth).

In France, a regime of Bonapartist dictatorship was established, which was a special form of domination by the most reactionary and most aggressive sections of the big bourgeoisie. Frightened by the revolutionary activity of the working class, which was so clearly manifested in the revolutionary events of 1848, the propertied classes left the government of the country to a handful of ambitious adventurers who relied on the reactionary military, on the huge police-bureaucratic apparatus.

3. Revolution in Germany

March Revolutions of 1848

The news of the proclamation of a republic in France gave impetus to revolutionary uprisings in Germany. On February 27, mass public meetings were held in the cities of the Grand Duchy of Baden, located in the immediate vicinity of France. Petitions were submitted to the authorities demanding the abolition of feudal duties, the release of the press from all constraints, the introduction of a jury trial, the equal distribution of taxes, the appointment of a responsible ministry, the convening of an all-German parliament, the creation of a civil guard with elected commanders, etc. Under the pressure of popular demonstrations, the government satisfied part these requirements. It promised to issue a decree on a general amnesty and develop a law on the abolition of feudal duties. The events in Hesse-Darmstadt and in Württemberg developed approximately in the same way.

In Saxony, Hanover and some other German states, the pressure of the people forced the rulers to make partial concessions to the demands of the liberal-bourgeois opposition.

Stormy unrest occurred in Bavaria. On March 3, petitions were submitted to King Ludwig I demanding political freedoms. On March 4, the workers, artisans and students of Munich seized the arsenal and armed themselves with weapons found there. On the night of March 21, Ludwig I abdicated in favor of his son Maximilian and fled from his possessions.
The revolutionary movement also captured Prussia. It began with the Rhineland. On March 3, a mass demonstration of the workers of Cologne, in the preparation of which the local community of the Communist League participated, submitted a petition to the city council, which demanded universal suffrage, the destruction of the standing army, the universal arming of the people, "the protection of labor and the provision of human needs for all", the education of children in public check. The demonstrators were dispersed by the troops.
On March 6, gatherings and demonstrations began in Berlin; on March 13, they turned into street skirmishes with the troops. On March 18, the crowds of people surrounding the royal palace were attacked by troops, which caused a storm of indignation among the masses. The streets of Berlin were covered with barricades, fierce battles began. After the troops were unable to suppress the popular movement, the government had to withdraw them from Berlin and make some concessions: a general amnesty was announced and the organization of the civil guard was allowed. On March 29, a liberal government was created, headed by representatives of the big bourgeoisie for the first time in the history of Prussia, and not by landowners-nobles. The most prominent role in the new government was played by the manufacturer Camphausen and the banker Hansemann.

Once in power, the German bourgeois liberals made it their task to prevent the further development and deepening of the revolution, to preserve the monarchy, and to prevent the complete democratization of the social and political system in Germany.

The liberal bourgeoisie entered into an agreement with the monarchy and the nobility. In order to fight together against the popular movements, the liberal ministers kept the old apparatus of power without serious changes.

Peasant performances

Almost simultaneously with the revolutionary events in the cities, revolutionary uprisings of the peasants began. They were most widespread in southern and southwestern Germany.

Prussia was also affected by the movement. The peasants, armed with scythes, pitchforks and axes, expelled the foresters and elders, cut down the master's forests, attacked the noble castles, demanded the issuance of feudal documents and immediately burned them at the stake; landowners or their managers were forced to sign obligations waiving all feudal rights. In some places, the peasants burned the landowners' castles and offices. The houses of large moneylenders and speculators were also attacked.

In contrast to France at the end of the 18th century, where the anti-feudal uprisings of the peasantry received support from the revolutionary bourgeoisie, in Germany in 1848 the bourgeoisie sought agreements with the nobility against popular movements. The cowardice and indecisiveness of the German bourgeoisie was partly due to its weakness, but still more due to its connection with the feudal class and its complete dependence on the authorities. On the other hand, the German peasantry of this period was already different from the French peasantry of the late eighteenth century. In the German countryside by the middle of the XIX century. class differentiation had already gone far, a layer of prosperous peasantry emerged, many peasants managed to free themselves from feudal duties even before 1848. To this was added the influence of active counter-revolutionary propaganda, which was carried out among the peasantry by the landowners and people close to them. As a result of all this, the peasant movement in Germany in 1848 did not acquire such a wide scope as in France in 1789-1794.

The rise of the labor and democratic movement in Prussia. Uprising in Baden

The new political situation that developed in Prussia after the revolution favored the rise of the working-class and democratic movement. Numerous democratic newspapers and leaflets began to be published in Berlin. The newspapers Lokomotiv and Friend of the People were especially widespread. The editor of The Friend of the People was the student Schleffel; militant revolutionary temperament and deep devotion to the interests of the working people won him popularity in democratic circles.

A number of democratic clubs arose in Berlin and in many other cities, and workers' organizations were formed. On March 30, the "People's Union" was formed, which, according to its charter, united "all classes of society, but mainly poor workers." "People's Union" published a newspaper in which the following tasks were put forward: genuine representation of the people, arming them, political and moral education. At the same time, the "Central Workers' Club" arose, among the organizers of which were members of the Union of Communists, shoemaker Getzel and compositor Stefan Born. In April, the People's Union and the Central Workers' Club merged into a single organization, the Workers' Brotherhood.

On April 13, in Cologne, at the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist League, under the leadership of Dr. Gottschalk, the Workers' Union was founded with its own publication. A prominent position in this union was occupied by members of the League of Communists Joseph Moll, Karl Schapper and others. In Koenigsberg, a "Workers' Union" was also formed, which separated from the local "Democratic Club".

In mid-April, republican groups in Baden, led by the petty-bourgeois democrats Hecker and Struve, raised an armed uprising to overthrow the Grand Duke of Baden, and then other monarchs of Germany. However, after a few days the rebels were defeated by government troops. The defeat of the uprising was facilitated by the weakness of the republican groups and the tactical mistakes of the rebels, who scattered their forces and did not win support from the peasantry.

Poles uprising in Poznań

The March Revolution in Prussia served as an impetus for the rise of the national liberation movement in Poznan, a Polish region that was part of the Prussian kingdom. A National Committee was formed in Poznań, in which the big landowners played the leading role. A deputation sent to Berlin put forward demands for the organization of the Polish corps and the appointment of Poles to administrative and other positions in Poznań. The Prussian government agreed to accept these demands. Later, a demand was also put forward for the recognition of the Polish language as the official language in Poznań.

The popular masses of Posen rose up to fight for independence from Prussia. By the beginning of April, the Polish insurgent detachments already numbered 15-20 thousand people. They consisted mainly of peasants, but the commanders were predominantly from the nobility. The general leadership belonged to the prominent Polish revolutionary Mieroslavsky.

The Prussian government categorically rejected the demand for independence from Posen. Government troops flooded the area. During the outbreak of hostilities, the Polish peasants fought exceptionally bravely. Despite the lack of weapons (many units were armed only with scythes), they won several victories. However, the huge superiority in forces allowed the Prussian troops to prevail: the uprising was crushed, and by May 9 the armed struggle had ceased. The Prussian authorities brutally dealt with the participants in the uprising. In the failure of the uprising, the capitulatory position of some of the Dole officers, who insisted on an agreement with the Prussian authorities, played a large role. These sentiments reflected the fear of the Polish landlords, who were afraid that the peasants would demand not only the elimination of Prussian oppression, but also the abolition of the feudal privileges of the Polish gentry.

Prussian reaction goes on the offensive

In early May 1848, elections were held for the Prussian National Assembly. The system of two-stage elections facilitated the victory of reaction. A significant part of the deputies consisted of extreme monarchists, but the majority of the assembly were moderate bourgeois liberals.

The National Assembly opened on 22 May. The political situation at that moment worsened again, since the day before the draft of the Prussian constitution was published, which granted voting rights only to large owners. This caused great indignation in the democratic circles of Berlin. A copy of the text of the constitution was defiantly burned by a group of indignant citizens.

The broad masses demanded an improvement in their position. On May 30, a spontaneous demonstration took place in Berlin, in which several thousand workers took part. In connection with rumors about the preparation of a counter-revolutionary coup, the workers demanded weapons. On June 14, a bloody battle broke out between the workers and small artisans, on the one hand, and detachments of the police and the bourgeois civil guard, on the other. A huge crowd of workers seized the arsenal and took away the weapons stored there. However, the protests of the working people were spontaneous, unorganized and did not develop into a revolution.

The king and his entourage used the fear caused among the big bourgeoisie by these events to increase the size of the Berlin garrison and to change the government. Now that the enemies of the revolution were everywhere preparing for an open offensive against the democratic forces, the counter-revolutionary circles no longer needed liberal cover. The role of Camphausen - that "shield before the dynasty", as he called himself - was played. On June 20, he was forced to resign. An official close to the king, von Auerswald, became the head of the new government. Hansemann remained in his post as finance minister, but at the same time several open reactionaries were included in the new cabinet.
The transition from the Camphausen cabinet to the Auerswald cabinet meant a shift to the right in the policy of the ruling circles of Prussia, the transition of reaction to the offensive.
Activities of Marx and Engels in the Revolution of 1848

The beginning of the revolution of 1848 found Marx and Engels in Brussels. Local republican groups began to prepare for an armed uprising to overthrow the monarchy in Belgium. Members of the Brussels community of the Union of Communists took an active part in this preparation. On the night of March 4, the police arrested Marx and his wife; the next day they were expelled from Belgium. A few hours before Marx's arrest, the Brussels District Committee of the Communist League, to which the London Central Committee had transferred its powers, decided, in view of rampant police repression in Belgium, to transfer the seat of the Central Committee to Paris.

On March 5, Marx arrived in Paris. A new Central Committee of the League of Communists was set up there, chaired by Marx; Schapper became secretary of the committee; among the members of the committee was Engels, who soon also arrived in Paris. At the end of March, the leaflet "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" compiled by Marx and Engels was published. The transformation of Germany into a single, indivisible republic, the introduction of universal suffrage (for men over the age of 21), the liquidation of the old army and the general arming of the people, free legal proceedings, the abolition of all feudal duties without redemption, the nationalization of the lands of the sovereign princes and all landowners' estates, all mines , mines, railways, canals, the creation of large farms on nationalized lands, the foundation of a single state bank, the organization of national workshops for the unemployed, providing for the disabled, the separation of church and state, universal and free public education - these were the most important points of this program. (Marx and F. Engels, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany.) Its implementation would lead to a consistently democratic solution of the objective tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany. Marx and Engels calculated that this would create fertile ground for the transition to the socialist revolution, for the further struggle for the complete victory of the proletariat.

The tactical line of Marx and Engels in the revolution of 1848 was to fight for the unification of all democratic forces in Germany. For the practical realization of this goal, Marx joined the Cologne Democratic Society, where the communists worked together with representatives of the left wing of the bourgeois democrats.

During April and May 1848, the Central Committee of the League of Communists, whose seat after Marx moved there (April 11) became Cologne - the center of the industrial Rhine Province, did a lot of work to establish contact with local communities and create a number of new ones. Representatives of the Central Committee were sent to various cities in Germany. From their reports it became clear that the communities of the Union are extremely small. Marx and his associates came to the conclusion that, under the existing conditions, it was impossible to transform the League of Communists into a mass proletarian party. It was decided that the propaganda of communist ideas and the dissemination of Union directives would be carried out mainly through the press and that the members of the Union, along with participation in workers' organizations, should participate in the general democratic movement, forming its left wing.

Marx strongly condemned the adventurous attempt by a group of German émigrés, led by the poet Herweg, to organize a military campaign from France to Germany in order to start a revolution there. Speaking against this idea, Marx argued that it could only compromise the German emigrants; he advised them to return one by one to their homeland to take part in the revolutionary struggle there. Nevertheless, Herweg did not abandon his enterprise. On April 24, his detachment crossed the Rhine, but on the 27th it was defeated and dispersed in a clash with troops.

From June 1, 1848, a large daily political newspaper called the Neue Rheinische Gazeta began to appear in Cologne. Marx was its chief editor. In the subtitle of the newspaper's name were the words: "The Organ of Democracy", in fact, the newspaper was a platform for the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat. This was evidenced by the articles of Marx and Engels on the Chartist movement in England, and especially by their passionate militant statements in defense of the June uprising of the Paris workers. After the publication of these articles, many of the bourgeois shareholders of the paper, whom they had at first been able to enlist to participate in its publication, departed from it.

The New Rhine Gazette castigated the open counter-revolutionaries and the treacherous behavior of the bourgeois liberals, criticized the inconsistency and indecisiveness of the petty-bourgeois democrats, and defended the vital interests of the German people. Broadly covering the course of the revolution in France, Germany and Austria, the newspaper also paid much attention to the labor movement and the revolutionary struggle of the popular masses in other countries, to the national movements of the Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Czech and other peoples.

In the field of foreign policy, Marx and Engels put forward the slogan of a revolutionary war against tsarist Russia, which was then the main stronghold of the European counter-revolution. They pointed out that the defeat of tsarism in this war would lead to the upsurge of the revolution in Germany and Austria, to the overthrow of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg dynasties.

Within the labor movement in Germany, Marx and Engels fought on two fronts: on the one hand, against Born, who relied on a peaceful development of events, on the other, against Gottschalk, who believed that Germany could go over to a communist republic, bypassing the intermediate, bourgeois-democratic stage. revolution, and urging the workers not to take part in the elections to the all-German assembly. The struggle against Gottschalk's semi-anarchist tactics ended in his losing his former influence among the Cologne workers. In October 1848, Marx was elected chairman of the Cologne Workers' Union. Marx played a leading role in the "Cologne Democratic Society", as well as in the "Rhine Regional Committee of Democrats", created at the end of June 1848.

The struggle for the unification of Germany. Frankfurt Parliament

The most important task of the German bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848 was the political unification of Germany. Most of the German bourgeoisie sought the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. This path provided for the exclusion from Germany of the possession of the Habsburg monarchy, therefore its supporters were called "Little Germans". The second way to unify Germany envisaged the unification of all the territories of the German Confederation in a single German state headed by Austria. Some groups of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, especially in the south of the country, sought to turn Germany into a federal republic, like Switzerland, with a weak central government and the preservation of a significant share of independence for small states.
The advanced layers of the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and the radical intelligentsia fought for the creation of a united, democratic German Republic. The solution of the question of the ways of the unification of Germany depended on the correlation of class forces and on the course of the class struggle in the country.

On May 18, 1848, meetings of the all-German National Assembly, elected to resolve the issue of the country's unification, opened in Frankfurt am Main. The majority of the deputies of this first all-German parliament were representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia, supporters of a constitutional monarchy; representatives of workers and artisans were not there at all. Among the deputies there was only one communist - Wilhelm Wolf, a member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists, elected in Silesia, where he was very popular.

Archduke Johann of Austria was elected provisional ruler of Germany. This member of the Habsburg dynasty gained a reputation as a liberal, in fact greatly exaggerated. The imperial ruler appointed the ministers of the central German government and sent ambassadors to the capitals of foreign states. However, the Frankfurt government and the Frankfurt parliament did not have real power and did not have any authority either in Germany or abroad. Parliament refused to decide on the abolition of feudal duties. On the national question, the Frankfurt parliament took an openly chauvinist position: it spoke in favor of the forcible assimilation of the Slavic peoples and opposed the liberation movement of the Italian people.

The liberal-bourgeois majority of the Frankfurt Parliament earned the distrust of democratic circles by their endless and fruitless verbiage, anti-popular and chauvinist decisions.

Revolutionary battles in Germany in the autumn of 1848

In the autumn of 1848, decisive battles broke out in Germany between the forces of the revolution and the counter-revolution. One of the major events of this period was the popular uprising in Frankfurt am Main, which broke out in connection with the question of Schleswig and Holstein. After the March Revolution, the democratic strata of the population of southern Schleswig (mostly German) and Holstein rebelled against Danish domination, formed a Provisional Government and rose in armed struggle to include these two duchies in a united Germany. Volunteer detachments from Germany, as well as German allied troops, arrived to help the rebels. The Danes were defeated, and German troops entered Jutland. However, soon, at the request of England, Russia and Sweden, they were withdrawn. On August 26, Prussia concluded an armistice with Denmark (in Malmö). His conditions were very difficult for Schleswig and Holstein. The provisional government of these regions was dissolved, the management of the duchies was entrusted to a commission, four members of which (out of five) were appointed by the Prussian and Danish kings. The Schleswig-Holstein National Assembly protested against the terms of the armistice, but the Frankfurt Parliament approved them.

The decision of the parliament caused outrage in Germany. On September 18, a popular uprising broke out in Frankfurt am Main. It was attended by workers, apprentices, small artisans and merchants, as well as peasants from the surrounding villages. The construction and defense of the barricades was led by members of the Frankfurt Workers' Union. After a fierce struggle, the troops crushed the uprising.

The Frankfurt uprising found a sympathetic response in a number of cities and villages in Germany. On September 22, relying on the armed detachments of the Baden democrats, their leader Struve proclaimed the German Republic in the city of Lorrach; a Provisional Government was immediately elected, which included Struve, Blind and some other petty-bourgeois democrats of Baden. The provisional government adopted resolutions on the abolition of feudal duties and redemption payments, the cessation of paying taxes, the introduction of a progressive income tax, and the transfer of land holdings of counter-revolutionary landowners, the clergy and the state into the hands of peasant communities. Government troops sent against the Baden Republicans crushed the uprising.

The armistice with Denmark caused protests in other parts of Germany as well. Thus, on September 17, a crowded people's assembly, convened near Cologne on the initiative of the New Rhine Gazette and the leadership of the Cologne Workers' Union, with the participation of delegates from a number of Rhine cities, appealed to the Frankfurt parliament and the Prussian National Assembly with a strong protest against the armistice in Malmö.

The victory of the counter-revolution in Prussia

Despite the political moderation of the Prussian National Assembly, its liberal-bourgeois majority, under the pressure of petitions from the peasantry, adopted some agrarian laws, in particular on the abolition of the landowners' right to hunt on peasant land. These laws, as well as the discussion of the question of the final elimination of the feudal order in the countryside, aroused the displeasure of the nobles. It was possible to prevent the offensive of the counter-revolution only by relying on the masses of the people. However, the moderate bourgeois liberals, the deputies of the assembly, were incapable of taking this step.

On October 13, 1848, unrest broke out in Berlin among workers employed in public works in connection with the threat of their dismissal. On October 16, police and civilian militias fired on a demonstration of workers. In response to this, barricades began to appear in the city. Workers, artisans, students armed themselves. The bourgeois civil guard participated together with the troops in the suppression of this uprising.

The victory of the counter-revolution in France and Austria inspired the Prussian reactionaries. On November 2, a new government was formed, which included representatives of the feudal nobility and the highest bureaucracy, headed by ardent reactionaries General Count Brandenburg (the king's uncle) and Baron Manteuffel. On November 9-10, troops occupied Berlin. The Civil Guard allowed itself to be disarmed without any resistance. Groups of workers who had gathered near the building where the National Assembly met were ready to fight the troops, but the liberal deputies did not want to take advantage of the militant mood of the working people.

All left-wing newspapers were closed, democratic organizations banned. On November 9, the government announced the transfer of the National Assembly from Berlin to its suburb of Brandenburg. This meant, in essence, the liquidation of the assembly. On November 15, on the eve of its closure, the meeting adopted an appeal to the German people with an appeal to stop paying taxes, but did not dare to call on the people to armed struggle.

The advanced sections of the working class and petty-bourgeois democrats came out against the counter-revolutionary coup in Berlin. The District Committee of the Saxon Democrats, the General Peasants' Union of Silesia, and many other democratic organizations sharply protested against the actions of the Brandenburg-Manteuffel cabinet.

The democratic organizations of the Rhineland put up particularly resolute resistance to the coup d'état. On November 18, the "Democratic Regional Committee of the Rhine" issued a proclamation drawn up by Marx, declaring that one should not confine oneself to passive resistance and that the decision of the National Assembly on non-payment of taxes could be carried out only if the people offered armed resistance to the government. The New Rhine Gazette began to appear with the slogan: "No more taxes!" The "District Committee" called on all democratic organizations to organize mass popular meetings, create detachments of the people's militia and security committees, and resist the attempts of forcible collection of taxes by the authorities.

The treacherous behavior of the big bourgeoisie, which, together with the landlord circles, actively supported the government, made it easier for the authorities to crack down on the democratic groups that had risen to fight against the counter-revolutionary coup.

The disengagement in the democratic camp

The beginning of 1849 was marked in Germany by an intensification of the class struggle and an intensification of the process of disengagement in the democratic camp between its moderate and revolutionary wing.

The consistently revolutionary position of the Neue Rheinische Gazeta, its militant internationalism, and its resolute struggle against reaction—all this evoked sharp attacks from the reactionary and moderate-liberal press organs, and threats and repressions from the authorities. On September 26, the publication of the newspaper was suspended (it resumed on October 12). In February 1849, the Prussian government held two trials against Marx, Engels and the publisher of the newspaper Korf, as well as against the Rhine Regional Committee of Democrats, but the jury acquitted the accused.

In April 1849, in view of the growing hostility of the bourgeois democrats to the labor movement, Marx severed organizational ties with them and resigned from the "Constituency Committee of Democrats". Relying on the strengthened movement of the proletariat, Marx and his comrades-in-arms set about preparing the convocation of an all-German congress of workers' organizations with the aim of creating a mass workers' party.

Imperial Constitution of 1849

On March 28, 1849, after a long debate, the Frankfurt parliament adopted the constitution of a unified German state. It provided for the creation of the German Empire, which was to include Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, Baden and other German states, as well as Austria; they all retained their internal independence, their governments, parliaments and courts. However, the most important functions of general imperial significance (foreign policy, command of the armed forces, customs policy, etc.) were transferred to the central government headed by the emperor; Legislative power was vested in a bicameral Reichstag.

The constitution proclaimed a number of bourgeois-democratic freedoms: the equality of all citizens before the law, freedom of speech, press, conscience, inviolability of the person, free and secular primary education, etc. At the same time, the constitution declared church property inviolable, and proposed the question of the most important feudal duties be decided by agreement between the landlords and peasants.

For all its moderation, the imperial constitution had a progressive significance, since it set the task of eliminating the political fragmentation of the country and was a step towards turning Germany into a bourgeois monarchy. That is why the ruling circles of Prussia and other large German states, where the reactionary groups of the nobility and bureaucracy were in power, refused to recognize this constitution. The Frankfurt constitution proved to be a stillborn brainchild. The fact that it was recognized by 29 small and medium-sized states was of little importance.

In April 1849, a deputation from the Frankfurt parliament arrived in Berlin to offer the German imperial crown to the Prussian king. Frederick William IV categorically refused to accept her.

May Uprisings 1849

In May 1849, the masses of the people rose to defend the imperial constitution, but these actions, unlike the March uprisings of 1848, were locally limited. They covered only part of Germany - industrially advanced Saxony and the Rhineland, as well as Baden and the Bavarian Palatinate, where anti-Prussian sentiment was especially strong.

On May 3, at the call of the democratic clubs, the masses of Dresden began to build barricades. On May 4, the Saxon king fled the capital. Power passed into the hands of the Provisional Government, which included the leader of the left wing of the bourgeois democrats, the lawyer Tschirner, and the moderate liberals Geibner and Todt. The provisional government did not act decisively enough. This was taken advantage of by the enemies of the revolution, who managed to pull numerous troops to Dresden and secure an advantage over the rebels. The bourgeois guard betrayed the people's movement. For four days, detachments of workers and artisans steadfastly repulsed the onslaught of the Saxon and Prussian troops. The military leadership of the rebels was carried out by Stefan Born, leader of the Berlin "Brotherhood of Workers"; Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin took an active part in the struggle. On May 9, the uprising in Saxony was crushed.

On May 9, an uprising broke out in Elberfeld (Rhine Province). The troops that arrived to suppress it were driven back. In the evening of the same day, the workers of Düsseldorf took up arms. Having built barricades, they held out until the morning of the next day. In Solingen, the insurgent workers seized the arsenal. In Iserlohn, the workers created an armed detachment of nearly 3,000 men and covered the entire town with barricades.

However, the cowardice of the bourgeois liberals, who were more frightened by the revolutionary activity of the workers than by the approach of the Prussian troops, soon nullified the initial successes of the revolutionary movement in the Rhineland.

This cowardice was clearly manifested during the events in Elberfeld. On May 11, Engels arrived there at the head of a detachment of 500 Solingen workers to take part in the armed struggle. Engels demanded the disarmament of the bourgeois guard, the distribution of the confiscated weapons among the workers, and the imposition of forced loans on the big capitalists. The Security Committee, which consisted of representatives of the moderate wing of the bourgeois democrats, refused to comply with these demands, although they could significantly strengthen the position of the insurgent city. A few days later, Engels was asked to leave Elberfeld on the pretext that his presence was causing concern among bourgeois circles. Engels was forced to leave.

The tactical mistakes of the insurgent Rhine democrats, who did not take care to establish close ties between the individual cities, hastened the defeat of the uprisings. The fact that the majority of the peasantry remained aloof from the revolutionary struggle also had negative consequences.

In the Palatinate, the movement in defense of the imperial constitution began in the first days of May. Soldiers from local garrisons joined the movement. On May 17, the Provisional Government was elected in Kaiserslautern. It proclaimed the separation of the Palatinate from Bavaria, but acted very indecisively and did not take serious measures to combat the counter-revolution.

The revolutionary movement in these days also spread to Baden. On May 12, an uprising of soldiers broke out in the Rastadt fortress. Soldiers' uprisings also took place in other cities. On May 13, an uprising began in Karlsruhe. Grand Duke Leopold fled the city. Power in Baden passed into the hands of opposition politicians who formed a Provisional Government headed by the moderate bourgeois liberal Brentano. The entire old bureaucratic apparatus remained intact. The demand of democratic circles for the abolition of the remaining feudal duties was not carried out. The republic was not officially proclaimed. The counter-revolutionary elements acted with complete impunity. “Mr. Brentano,” Engels later wrote, “betrayed the Baden uprising from the first minute...” (F. Engels, The German Campaign for an Imperial Constitution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 7, p. 141.)

Soon the Prussian troops crossed the Rhine and began to advance deep into Baden. On June 29-30, the last battle took place near the walls of Rastadt, in which 13,000 Badenians staunchly resisted 60,000 Prussians. On July 11-12, the remnants of the defeated Baden-Palatinate army crossed the Swiss border. The last to leave was a volunteer detachment, consisting mainly of workers under the command of a retired officer, a member of the Communist League, August Willich. Engels was in this detachment as Willich's adjutant. He took an active part in reconnaissance and battles and, according to eyewitnesses, showed great personal courage. In articles he later published (under the general title "The German Campaign for an Imperial Constitution"), Engels described in detail the events of these weeks, condemning the actions of the petty-bourgeois leaders, whose tactics were one of the main reasons for the defeat of the uprising.

The garrison of the Rastadt fortress - the last center of resistance of the Baden revolutionaries - fought courageously, surrounded by Prussian troops, until July 23. The Prussian military brutally dealt with the defenders of Rastadt.

The armed uprising in the Palatinate and in Baden was the last decisive battle between the forces of the revolution and the forces of the counter-revolution in Germany in 1849.

The authorities in Cologne took advantage of the suppression of the uprisings in the Rhineland to close down the New Rhenish Gazette. On May 19, 1849, the last (301st) issue of the newspaper was published, all printed in red ink. Saying goodbye to the Cologne workers, Marx wrote on behalf of the newspaper staff that "their last word will always and everywhere be: the liberation of the working class!" , ed. 2, p. 564.)

On June 16, 1849, the Frankfurt parliament, which had moved shortly before to Stuttgart, was dispersed by the troops. This meant the final victory of the counter-revolution in Germany.

4. Revolution in the Austrian Empire

Revolution in Vienna

News of revolutionary events in Italy, France, and southern Germany hastened the outbreak of revolution in the Austrian Empire.

On March 13, 1848, the opening day of the meetings of the Lower Austrian Landtag, the square in front of its building in Vienna was filled with people. The crowd, which consisted mainly of workers, artisans and students, welcomed the speeches of the leaders of the liberal opposition and demanded the immediate resignation of Metternich. Workers moved from the suburbs to the center; skirmishes broke out with the police and troops. Soon barricades appeared on the streets of Vienna. "Down with Metternich!" - such was the cry of the insurgent people. To stop further developments, the emperor on March 14 resigned Metternich. The once almighty chancellor fled abroad in disguise. The government was forced to allow the arming of the students who created the Academic Legion.

Partial concessions from the government did not satisfy the working people. Workers burned down police stations and outposts where taxes were levied on foodstuffs imported into the city, smashed grocery stores; in some places, cars were damaged and broken.

On the morning of March 15, the government published a notice convening class meetings in the regions of Austria. This message caused strong discontent in Vienna. The masses surrounded the imperial palace demanding a constitution. The threat of a new uprising forced the government to publish a decree calling for a Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution.

Two days later a new government was formed. Almost all of its members were from the nobility, and some of them were members of the Metternich regime.
On April 23, the draft of a new constitution was published, and on May 11, the electoral law. The supreme power remained in the hands of the emperor: he had the right to reject the laws adopted by the Reichstag; he also had all the executive power and command of the armed forces.

The Reichstag consisted of two chambers: part of the upper chamber was appointed by the emperor, the other part and the entire lower chamber were elected on the basis of a two-stage system. The circle of voters was limited by a high property qualification and the residence qualification (in order to obtain the right to vote, it was necessary to live in a given place for a long time). Laborers, day laborers, domestic servants, the disabled, and persons living on public charitable means did not enjoy either active or passive suffrage.

These anti-democratic actions of the government caused great discontent among the general population of the Austrian capital. On behalf of the democratic elements, the student committee presented a petition demanding a reduction in the property requirement for elections to the chambers. The democratization of the electoral system was also demanded by the Central Political Committee of the National Guard, created in the first days of the revolution.

The government decided to break the resistance of the democratic forces: on May 14, a decree appeared on the dissolution of the Political Committee of the National Guard. In response to this, on May 15, a demonstration of many thousands went to the imperial palace. Barricades were erected in the streets. The soldiers fraternized with the people. The government made concessions, refused to dissolve the National Guard Committee and issued a decree on the introduction of a unicameral Reichstag, which meant a step towards the democratization of the political system. Two days later, the emperor and his court, frightened by the events of May 15, fled from Vienna to Innsbruck, the main city of Tyrol, where troops loyal to the dynasty were located.
On May 18, an attempt was made in Vienna to raise a new uprising with the aim of overthrowing the monarchy, proclaiming a republic and creating a provisional government. However, the majority of the population of Vienna, which had not yet outlived its monarchical illusions, did not support the Republicans.

At the end of May, in connection with the government's intention to dissolve the Academic Legion, serious unrest broke out again in Vienna; many barricades were erected in the streets. The government had to make concessions and cancel the decree on the dissolution of the Academic Legion.

Beginning of the revolution in Hungary

Following Vienna, the revolutionary movement engulfed Hungary, where, along with class contradictions, national contradictions also escalated. On March 15, a revolution began in Budapest, which soon spread to other parts of the country.

An active role in the revolution was played by the revolutionary poet Sandor Petofi, who led the most radical elements of the population of Budapest. The "National Song" created by Petofi contained a fiery call for a revolutionary struggle for the independence of Hungary, for the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy.

In early April, the first independent government of Hungary was formed, headed by the moderate liberal Count Battiani. Among the members of this government was Kossuth. Under pressure from the peasant masses, the Hungarian Diet abolished corvée and some other feudal duties, but not free of charge, but for a ransom. The half-hearted solution of the agrarian question did not satisfy the peasants. Democratic circles sought the complete abolition of the semi-serf system in the countryside, the allocation of land to the peasants, and the abolition (or at least limitation) of large-scale landlord and church property. Such demands were put forward in the "Workers' Newspaper" by the outstanding revolutionary writer Mihail Tancic, imprisoned by the government for his publicistic activities and released by the insurgent people. Petofi demanded the same. The peasants armed themselves, refused to fulfill their feudal obligations, seized the landowners' lands and forests.

Revolutionary struggle in Transylvania

Acute national contradictions were also reflected in the course of the revolutionary struggle in Transylvania, which was then part of Hungary. The Romanians, who made up the majority of the population of this region, were mostly peasants, subjected to the oppression of the Hungarian and Romanian landlords, as well as the Austrian authorities. Under the influence of events in Austria and Hungary, the Transylvanian peasants opposed the oppression of the landlords.
The progressive circles of the Romanian bourgeois intelligentsia of Transylvania greeted the revolution in Hungary with sympathy. They drew up a petition in which they demanded a union between Transylvania and Hungary, but at the same time the recognition of the Romanian language as the official language in Transylvania; the petition also put forward a demand for the abolition of serfdom.

However, counter-revolutionary elements were also strong in Transylvania. Relying on the Austrian troops, they brutally suppressed the uprisings of the peasants. At the same time, the policy of the Hungarian government, hostile to the Romanians, was used by agents of the Austrian government to push the Romanians to revolt against Hungary. The Romanian revolutionary democrats, led by Nicolae Balcescu and Avram Iancu, sought to unite the Romanians and Hungarians for a joint struggle against the common enemy of both peoples - the Habsburg monarchy. But only in the very last days of its existence did the Hungarian revolutionary government agree to satisfy the national demands of other peoples and to reach an agreement with the Romanians.

Revolution in the Czech Republic. June Uprising in Prague

Revolutionary demonstrations in the Czech Republic began on March 11, 1848. On this day, a mass popular assembly in Prague demanded the introduction for the Czech Republic, Moravia and Silesia of a single legislative Sejm with the participation of representatives from the townspeople and peasants, the abolition of feudal duties, the equation of the Czech language with German, freedom of conscience, speech, seals, etc. The Austrian government complied with some of these demands.

Soon the stalemate in the Czech Republic began to escalate due to disagreements between the Germans and the Czechs. The German democrats acted in solidarity with the Czech radicals. But among the German big bourgeoisie in Prague, chauvinistic, anti-Slavic sentiments intensified, the desire to consolidate the subordinate position of the Czechs grew, including the Czech Republic in the united German Empire. The Czech bourgeoisie and the Czech nobility, in opposition to this project, put forward a plan to turn the Austrian Empire into a union of autonomous regions.

In April, a National Committee was set up to prepare the future Czech constitution; it consisted mainly of representatives of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. On April 19, a split occurred in the National Committee. The German members of the committee withdrew from it and formed a separate Constitutional Union. From that moment on, the National Committee became a purely Czech national body.

On June 2, 1848, a congress of representatives from all the Slavic regions of the Austrian Empire opened in Prague, which was attended by 340 delegates (mostly Czechs). The Czech politician Palacký presided. Among the congress delegates was M. A. Bakunin. The congress was divided into three sections: Czech-Slovak, Polish-Ukrainian and South Slavic. The leading role at the congress belonged to the Czech bourgeois liberals, who stood for the preservation of the multinational Austrian Empire and its transformation into a federation of peoples with equal rights. This position of the majority of the congress delegates was objectively directed against the interests of the revolutionary movement in Europe, since the Habsburg monarchy was one of the main strongholds of the counter-revolution. At the same time, the hopes that the Austrian Empire, which was dominated by the landowning aristocracy and the reactionary bureaucracy, could turn into an equal union of peoples, were clearly utopian.
On June 12, an uprising broke out in Prague, excluding the possibility of further work of the Slavic Congress.

The armed uprising in Prague was caused by the provocative behavior of the new commander of the troops, Prince Windischgrätz, who, in order to intimidate the people, held numerous military exercises and parades in the city. A peaceful demonstration on 12 June demanding the removal of Windischgrätz was fired on by troops. Then the people rose to fight. Along with the Czech democrats, German democrats also took part in the uprising. Detachments of peasants from the surrounding villages tried to support the Prague revolutionaries, but could not get through to the city. On June 17, the uprising in Prague was brutally crushed.

Liberation movement of other Slavic peoples

The upsurge of the liberation movement in the spring of 1848 was also evident in other Slavic regions of Austria. On April 26 an uprising of Polish bourgeois democrats took place in Krakow; it was suppressed on the same day by Austrian troops.

On May 2, meetings of the “Russkaya Head Rada”, elected by the Ukrainian population of Galicia, opened in Lviv. This organization sought the equalization of the Orthodox Church in rights with the Catholic, the introduction of the Ukrainian language in schools, the publication of books and newspapers in the Ukrainian language. The Russkaya Golovna Rada did not put forward any political demands. The Polish nobility and the Polish bourgeoisie of the region opposed the Ukrainian liberation movement. The Austrian authorities in every possible way fomented national strife and contradictions between Poles and Ukrainians, making minor concessions to the latter.

In Bukovina, the main content of the revolutionary struggle in 1848 was the anti-feudal movement of the peasantry. One of the prominent leaders of this movement was the Ukrainian peasant Lukyan Kobylitsa, who maintained ties with the Polish democrats, Austrian radicals and Hungarian revolutionaries. Bukovinian peasants seized landlords' lands and forests, refused to pay taxes. The government sent punitive detachments to Bukovina, who brutally cracked down on the rebellious peasants.

The masses of the Transcarpathian Ukraine also rose to fight. Under the influence of news about the events in Budapest in March 1848, revolutionary actions took place in Uzhgorod, Mukachevo and other cities of Transcarpathian Ukraine. In towns and villages, local self-government bodies arose and detachments of the national guard were created. The Hungarian landlords, who owned large land holdings in Transcarpathian Ukraine, were hostile to the Ukrainian national movement, as well as to the anti-feudal actions of the local peasantry, which sought the abolition of all payments made to the nobility and clergy, and the transfer of landlord lands to peasant communities.

The Hungarian revolutionary government came out against the demands of the peasantry of Transcarpathian Ukraine and against the national movement of Transcarpathian Ukrainians, who sought the creation of schools teaching in their native language and the publication of Ukrainian national literature. In April 1849, one of the main leaders of the national movement in Transcarpathia, a teacher, publicist and poet Alexander Dukhnovich was arrested and imprisoned. The Austrian government, playing on the contradictions between the Hungarians and Ukrainians, approved the project of autonomy for Transcarpathian Ukraine and its unification with the Ukrainian part of Galicia. However, this project remained unfulfilled.

In the spring of 1848, the national struggle of the Serbian population of southern Hungary (Vojvodina) intensified. The Serbian communities of Hungary began to file petitions demanding the introduction of the Serbian language in local government and courts and the equalization of the Orthodox Church in rights with the Catholic. On May 13, the Assembly, representing the Serbian communities of southern Hungary, gathered in Karlovtsy. The assembly elected a patriarch, a voivode and a main committee (“Main Election”), proclaimed the union of Vojvodina with Croatia within the framework of the Austrian Empire. The population armed itself, created volunteer detachments, joined the ranks of the national militia.

The Hungarian landlords, who owned vast lands in Vojvodina, were extremely hostile to both the Serbian national movement and the anti-feudal uprisings of the peasantry in Vojvodina. They succeeded in issuing an imperial decree declaring illegal the convocation of the Assembly and the election of the patriarch. The Hungarian troops who arrived on the territory of Vojvodina carried out a brutal massacre against the Serbian rebels.

The situation in Croatia was very tense. Under the influence of peasant uprisings in April 1848, some feudal duties were abolished here. The population sought independence from Hungary, but the Hungarian government rejected these demands. Croatian landlords, led by the Austrian governor (ban) Baron Jelachich, did their best to aggravate the already tense relations that had developed between the Hungarians and the Croats. The economic and political backwardness of Croatia made this task easier. The anti-feudal uprisings of the Croatian peasants were suppressed by the detachments of Elachich. Later, Jelacic led the Serbo-Croatian army, which, on the orders of the Austrian emperor, marched against revolutionary Hungary.

In Slovakia, the peasantry was subjected to cruel exploitation by both Hungarian and Slovak landowners. The right, bourgeois-landowner wing of the Slovak national movement, led by the publicist Štúr and pastor Gurban, was limited by the demands of the national autonomy of Slovakia, the introduction of the native language in schools and administrative institutions, freedom of speech and the press. The revolutionary-democratic wing went further in their demands. Led by the Czech worker Meling, the Slovak miners sought an alliance with the democratic camp of the Hungarian national revolutionary movement. The Hungarian government refused to meet even moderate demands for Slovak autonomy within Hungary and to recognize Slovak as an official language. This led to the fact that some deputies of the Slovak National Assembly went over to the side of the Austrian government and formed the Slovak Legion, which then took part in the struggle against the revolution in Hungary. But many peasants and workers in Slovakia took the side of the Hungarian revolution.

On July 22, meetings of the Reichstag opened in Vienna. It was dominated by representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia; an insignificant part of the deputies represented the nobility; almost a quarter of the total number of deputies were peasant representatives. Along with the Austrians, there were Czechs, Poles, Italians, Ukrainians and representatives of other nationalities of the Austrian Empire in the Reichstag. The left wing of the Reichstag was headed by popular politicians - Professor Fuster of the University of Vienna, democratic publicist Violan, student Kudlich, and others.

A lot of controversy was caused by the question of language. In the end, German was recognized as the dominant language, but at the same time it was decided that before each vote, if at least 10 deputies so demand, the proposal put to the vote would be translated into Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian and Czech.

On August 12, the imperial court returned to Vienna, which served as a signal for the counter-revolutionary forces to go on the offensive. On August 19, the Minister of Labor issued an order to reduce the wages of workers engaged in public works. The protests of the workers were not taken into account. The authorities clearly provoked the people to protest. On August 21 and 23, workers organized demonstrations in the city center. Detachments of the Civil Guard opened fire on unarmed demonstrators and dispersed them. In different parts of the city, skirmishes broke out between the workers, who raised the red flag, and the armed bourgeois.

One of the most important tasks facing the Austrian revolution of 1848 was the abolition of serfdom and all its remnants. On September 7, the Reichstag passed a law abolishing without ransom only the personal duties of the peasants. Corvee and dues were abolished on the basis of a ransom, which was set at 20 times the cost of annual peasant payments. Two-thirds of the ransom had to be paid by the peasants, and one-third fell on the state, that is, on the broad strata of taxpayers. As a result of such a reform, only the wealthiest part of the peasantry was able to free itself from duties, paying huge sums of money to the landowners for this. The reform did not completely resolve the agrarian question in Austria, although it contributed to the further penetration of capitalist relations into agriculture.

6 October uprising in Vienna

By the autumn of 1848 the Austrian reaction had decided that the moment had come for an open campaign against revolutionary Hungary. On October 3, an imperial decree was published dissolving the Hungarian Diet. Even earlier, in mid-September, the Austrian troops under the command of Jelachich invaded Hungary, but, having been defeated, retreated to the Austrian border. On October 5, parts of the Vienna garrison received an order to go to the aid of the Jelachich army. These actions of the government caused outrage among the general population of Vienna. On October 6, a popular uprising broke out in the city. The next day, the imperial court fled to Olomouc (Moravia) and began preparations for an attack on Vienna to suppress a popular uprising.
The October 6 uprising was the biggest event of the 1848 revolution in Austria. The decisive role in it was played by workers, artisans, and students. However, the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie and the radical intelligentsia, who led the uprising, did not show the necessary decisiveness and failed to create a single authority. The peasantry, frightened by counter-revolutionary propaganda, took a wait-and-see attitude. The Viennese revolutionaries received some help from the provincial cities of Graz and Linz, who sent small detachments to Vienna.

Active participation in the defense of revolutionary Vienna was taken by the fighters of the Academic Legion, detachments of the national guard and battalions of the mobile guard, created mainly from workers and apprentices. Volunteer detachments played a significant role in the defense of Vienna. The general leadership of the armed forces of Vienna was entrusted to the officer of the National Guard, journalist and playwright Messenghauser. Great energy was shown in the defense of Vienna by the Polish revolutionary Jozef Bem, a participant in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831.

The general command of the counter-revolutionary forces that launched an offensive against the capital was exercised by Field Marshal Prince Windischgrätz. The bulk of his troops were the army of Jelačić, which was dominated by Croats and Serbs. Stirring up national strife, the Austrian counter-revolutionaries set the southern Slavs against both Vienna and the Hungarians. The Hungarian revolutionary government hesitated for a long time until it decided to help the Vienna democrats. Only on October 28 did the Hungarian troops move to the aid of revolutionary Vienna, but the Austrian troops defeated them and drove them back.

On November 1, after stubborn resistance, the imperial troops crushed the uprising in Vienna. Mass arrests were made. The soldiers broke into houses, robbed and beat civilians, did not spare either women or children. Several leaders of the movement - Messenghauser, Becher, Jellinek - were executed. The deputy of the Frankfurt parliament, Robert Blum, who participated in the battles, was also executed. The victory of the counter-revolution led to the creation of a new Austrian government headed by the reactionary Prince Schwarzenberg. Representatives of the feudal aristocracy and court nobility united in this ministry with leaders of the big bourgeoisie, who finally went over to the counter-revolutionary camp. The Reichstag was transferred from Vienna to the small provincial town of Kromeriz (Kremzier), and in early March 1849 it was dissolved.

On March 4, 1849, the government issued a decree introducing a new constitution. It established a bicameral system, high property and age qualifications for voters, granted the emperor not only all executive power, but also the right to veto decisions of legislative bodies, and, between their sessions, issue decrees that received the force of law. The constitution ensured political dominance for the bloc of Austrian big landowners and the Austrian big bourgeoisie. The constitution was strictly neutralist. The power of the Habsburg dynasty was preserved over all the peoples of the empire. The constitution on March 4 was not put into effect, and later completely canceled.

The course of the war in Hungary. The intervention of tsarism and the defeat of the Hungarian revolution

After the victory of the counter-revolution in Vienna, Hungary became the main seat of the revolution in the Austrian Empire and throughout Central Europe. The invasion of Austrian troops into the territory of Hungary caused an upsurge of patriotism in the Hungarian people. Power passed to the Committee for the Defense of the Motherland, headed by Kossuth. Duke Esterhazy, Count Szechenyi and some other representatives of the Hungarian landowning aristocracy fled to Vienna, betraying their homeland. Count Zitz and Count Zichy, exposed in connection with the Austrian command, were executed. The masses of the people of Hungary rose up to fight against the Austrian troops. In the areas occupied by the enemy, armed detachments of peasants were created, which provided serious assistance to the Hungarian revolutionary army. On September 29, the Hungarians won the first victory over the Austrian troops, on October 7 - the second.

The fall of revolutionary Vienna sharply worsened the military situation in Hungary. On January 5, 1849, the Austrian army entered Budapest. The government and parliament of revolutionary Hungary moved to Debrecen. On April 14, 1849, the National Assembly in Debrecen proclaimed the independence of Hungary. Kossuth was elected ruler of Hungary. In the course of hostilities, a turning point occurred.
The Hungarian revolutionary troops, among which there were Polish and Slovak volunteer detachments, began to successfully push the Austrians. On April 19, Hungarian troops attacked the Austrian army at the Battle of Nagyszarló. On April 26, the fortress was liberated by Komar. The Hungarian army was approaching the border of Austria. On May 2, Hungarian troops occupied the Buda fortress.

At that moment, at the request of the Austrian emperor, the government of tsarist Russia came to the aid of the counter-revolution. In May 1849, an army of 100,000 under the command of Field Marshal Prince Paskevich entered Hungary, and another Russian army of 40,000 entered Transylvania. The advanced circles of the Russian public sharply condemned the action of tsarism against revolutionary Hungary. Chernyshevsky in his diary of 1849 called himself a "friend of the Hungarians" and expressed the hope that the tsarist troops would be defeated, that it would give impetus to an uprising against autocracy and serfdom in Russia. Among the officers and soldiers of Paskevich's army there were also people who sympathized with the liberation struggle of the Hungarian people. There were even cases of soldiers going over to the side of the Hungarians.

The arrival of the tsarist troops radically changed the balance of the fighting forces. The tsarist army in Hungary numbered about 140 thousand soldiers, the Austrian army - 127 thousand people, they were opposed by the Hungarian troops numbering about 170 thousand people. The decisive battles between the Hungarian army and the main forces of the Russian and Austrian troops took place on July 7 and 11 at Komarom. The Hungarians were defeated; after that, the Austrians again occupied Budapest.

The Hungarian revolutionary government moved to the city of Szeged. Military setbacks intensified disagreements among the commanders of the Hungarian army, as well as between the head of the Kossuth government, Commander-in-Chief Gergely. Kossuth suspected Gergey and his supporters-officers of treasonous plans, but did not dare to openly expose them to the troops. Kossuth's vacillations weakened the position of the Hungarian revolutionary government. On August 10, Gergei, who at that time was already conducting secret negotiations with the command of the royal troops, achieved the transfer of dictatorial powers to him. Convinced that the case was lost, Kossuth left Hungary and went to Turkey.

On August 13, 1849, the Hungarian army, betrayed by Gergei, to whom the tsarist government promised pardon and rewards, capitulated at Vilagos. Hostilities in Hungary continued for some time. At the end of September, the Komarom fortress surrendered and the remaining centers of resistance stopped fighting.

The Austrian government brutally cracked down on the participants in the Hungarian revolution. On October 6, 1849, 13 generals of the Hungarian revolutionary army and the first prime minister of Hungary, Count Battiani, were executed. In total, several hundred people were executed, more than 10 thousand people were imprisoned.

5. Revolution in Italy

The beginning of the revolution

In Italy, the revolutionary movement of 1848 began with a popular uprising on the island of Sicily. The class contradictions in Sicily were especially acute: the landless peasantry and workers in the sulfur mines were cruelly exploited by the large landowners and capitalists. In the 40s, under the influence of repeated crop failures and an industrial crisis, the situation of the working masses of Sicily became completely unbearable. At the same time, the desire of the bourgeois-noble circles for the autonomy of the island and even for its separation from the Kingdom of Naples intensified.

On January 12, 1848, a popular uprising broke out in Palermo, the main city of Sicily. Peasants arrived to help the rebellious townspeople. The city was covered with barricades. The Neapolitan troops were defeated and left Palermo on January 26.

The next day, a massive demonstration took place in Naples demanding a constitution. The king dismissed the reactionary ministers and handed over power to the leaders of the moderate-liberal bourgeoisie. Soon a constitution was proclaimed in Naples.

In Sicily, a Provisional Government was formed, which included representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie and the liberal nobility. The whole island, with the exception of the fortress of Messina, where the Neapolitan troops settled, recognized the authority of the Provisional Government.

The events in Sicily and in Naples had a great influence on the political struggle in other parts of Italy. Under pressure from the people in the Kingdom of Sardinia and in Tuscany, decrees were issued in March 1848 on the introduction of a constitution. Pope Pius IX had to agree to the introduction of the constitution. True, he did this somewhat later than other Italian sovereigns - only on March 15th. For the first time in the history of the papal state, a council of ministers arose there, which also included persons who did not belong to the clergy. However, the constitution of the Papal States, as well as the constitutions of Naples, Piedmont, Tuscany, was of a very moderate character.

On March 17, as soon as news of the revolution in Vienna arrived, a struggle began against the Austrians in Venice. On March 22, the workers and sailors of the Venetian arsenal got up. On the same day, the restoration of the independent Republic of Venice was proclaimed. Daniel Manin, a prominent Italian bourgeois revolutionary, lawyer and publicist, became the President of the Republic.
On March 18, an armed uprising broke out in the main city of Lombardy - Milan, which immediately assumed a wide scope. The decisive role in the uprising was played by workers, small artisans, small merchants, as well as peasants from the surrounding villages. For five days stubborn battles went on in the city between the insurgent people and the Austrian troops. On March 22, the Austrian troops, commanded by Field Marshal Radetzky, left Milan. Power in Milan passed into the hands of the Provisional Government, composed of moderate bourgeois liberals. The victorious uprising in Milan was the signal for uprisings in all cities and towns of Lombardy.

National Liberation War against Austrian domination

The revolution of 1848 in Italy was directed not only against the feudal-absolutist order, but also against Austrian rule. Under pressure from the masses and progressive layers of the bourgeoisie and the nobility, the king of Piedmont (Sardinian kingdom) Charles Albert on March 23, 1848 declared war on Austria. Almost simultaneously, the governments of other Italian states were forced to declare their readiness to oppose Austria. A patriotic upsurge seized the population of Italy. Battalions of the National Guard and detachments of volunteers moved into Lombardy. Among these detachments, the detachment of volunteers under the command of Garibaldi, who, at the first news of the outbreak of the revolution, returned to his homeland from exile, was distinguished by particular bravery.

But the anti-Austrian bloc that had formed by the end of March in Italy was very fragile: it was undermined by the sharp contradictions that existed between the governments of the Italian states. The treacherous tactics of the Sardinian government had a particularly detrimental effect. It delayed the deployment of hostilities in Lombardy, did not want to help Republican Venice.

The transition of the counter-revolution to the offensive. Coup in Naples

Pope Pius IX dealt the first blow to the Italian national liberation movement. The Catholic clergy of Austria threatened him with a church schism, and therefore he avoided a break with the Habsburg monarchy in every possible way. On April 29, Pius IX published an "Appeal" in which he stated that he did not intend to go to war with Austria. This statement caused great indignation in Rome. Democratic clubs demanded the creation of a Provisional Government and deprivation of the pope of secular power. In the end, the pope had to agree to the creation of a new government that was in favor of the war. It included moderate liberals. The government announced that Roman troops would be sent to support the troops of other Italian states, but refused to officially declare war on Austria.

Events in Naples took on a stormy character. On May 15, at the opening of the Neapolitan parliament, a conflict arose between the king, who demanded an oath of allegiance to the moderate liberal constitution from the chamber, and radical deputies who sought to further democratize the electoral system. By order of the authorities, troops entered the city. In response, the people began to build barricades. The troops went on the offensive and crushed the uprising by evening. The city was declared under martial law. The bloody terror began; drunken crowds of tramps (lazzaroni) broke into houses, robbed and killed the inhabitants, committed all kinds of violence. The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved. The Neapolitan corps sent to Lombardy was ordered to return immediately.

The course of hostilities in northern Italy in the summer of 1848.

In Lombardy, a broad popular movement was unfolding, which had as its goal liberation from the Austrian oppression. Hoping to receive military assistance from the Sardinian king, Lombardy announced its merger with Piedmont. Following Lombardy, Parma and Modena, as well as some Venetian provinces, recognized the power of the Sardinian king.

Meanwhile, having received reinforcements, the Austrian troops launched an offensive. Military operations went on with varying success. On May 28, near Mantua, the Austrians defeated the Piedmontese troops. On May 30, the 20,000-strong corps of Piedmontese troops repulsed the onslaught of the Austrians. The fortress of Peschiera surrendered to the Piedmontese. But soon the Italians suffered new serious setbacks. On June 11, the Austrians, almost without resistance, took Vicenza, and three days later - Padua. In the decisive battle of July 23-25 ​​at Custozza, the Piedmontese troops were defeated and retreated.

The inhabitants of Milan, under the leadership of a committee created by the Republicans, were preparing for defense, building barricades. However, Piedmont did not provide any assistance to the Milanese. On August 6, the Austrian army under the command of Radetzky entered Milan, treacherously abandoned by the troops of Charles Albert.

The first stage of the national liberation war in Italy ended in the defeat of the Italians. An armistice was concluded between Austria and Sardinia, the reaction used this defeat to go on the offensive against the progressive forces. At the end of August 1848, a large Neapolitan army was sent to Sicily. For five days the furious bombardment of Messina did not stop. The city was reduced to ruins. Since that time, the nickname "King Bomb" has taken root for the Neapolitan king Ferdinand II.

New upsurge of the revolution. Proclamation of the Republic in Rome

In the autumn of 1848 a new revolutionary upsurge began in some parts of Italy. On November 15, a popular uprising broke out in Rome. The Minister of the Interior, Count Rossi, was assassinated. A few days later, the pope fled to the Neapolitan fortress of Gaeta. In January 1849, elections were held for the Roman Constituent Assembly, which gave an overwhelming majority of seats to moderate liberals; Radical Democrats won a significant number of seats.
The Constituent Assembly, which opened on February 5, 1849, decided to abolish the secular power of the pope and on February 9 proclaimed a republican system in Rome. In March, a triumvirate became the head of the government of the Roman Republic, which included Mazzini, Armellini and Saffi.

The government of the Roman Republic carried out a number of progressive bourgeois-democratic reforms, including the nationalization and sale of all movable and immovable property of monastic orders, whose possessions formed the economic basis of papal rule. Instead of ecclesiastical courts, civil courts were created, and import customs duties were reduced in the interests of merchants and industrialists. However, the authorities rejected the requests of workers, day laborers, farm laborers, small employees to increase their wages. A decree was issued for a progressive tax on the income of large capitalists and spiritual corporations, but this order was sabotaged by financial dealers.

The government abolished such vestiges of feudalism as the system of majorat, abolished the tax on grinding. But the expectations of the peasants that the new government would transfer the landlords' lands into their ownership did not come true, and the purchase of nationalized church lands was beyond their power. Because of its half-hearted policy on the agrarian issue, the Mazzini government failed to attract broad sections of the peasantry to actively support the republican regime. In some areas, the peasants, deceived by the counter-revolutionary propaganda of wealthy tenants and papal agents, opposed the republic.

The Roman republican government did not take decisive action against the big bourgeoisie, which refused to pay taxes and frustrated the economic activities of the government. It did not find the strength to stop the subversive activities of the counter-revolutionaries and the intrigues of the clergy. All this weakened the republic.

Revolutionary struggle in Tuscany

In Tuscany, a new upsurge in the revolutionary struggle came at the beginning of 1849. On January 31, Grand Duke Leopold II, frightened by mass popular demonstrations in Florence, left the capital of Tuscany. On February 8, at a crowded assembly in Florence, the deposition of the Grand Duke was proclaimed. The Provisional Government, created on the same day, included prominent bourgeois liberals - the writer Gverazzi and Professor Montanelli.

The democratic circles of Tuscany warmly responded to the proposal of the Roman Republicans to merge the two Italian states, create a single Constituent Assembly of Central Italy and convene an all-Italian Constituent Assembly. But moderate liberals opposed the merger with Rome. The Tuscan Constituent Assembly, which opened its meetings at the end of March, postponed both the proclamation of the republic and the merger of Tuscany with Rome.

Resumption of war between the Kingdom of Sardinia and Austria in 1849

On March 12, 1849, the government of the Sardinian kingdom, under pressure from the democratic circles of the population, denounced the armistice agreement with Austria and resumed the war. However, the government of Charles Albert did not want to give the war a national character. It did not turn to the republicans of Tuscany, Venice and Rome for help, did not attempt to raise an uprising against the Austrians in Lombardy.

On March 20, the 75,000-strong Austrian army went on the offensive. The treacherous behavior of one of the Piedmontese generals allowed the Austrian troops to cross the Ticino River almost without resistance. After that, the Piedmontese troops, who had already entered Lombardy, were ordered to turn back. On March 23, at the Battle of Novara, the Austrians inflicted a crushing defeat on the troops of Charles Albert. Fearful of the consequences of a catastrophic defeat, the king promptly abdicated in favor of his son and fled to Portugal. On March 26, the new king Victor Emmanuel II signed a truce with the Austrian command.

In a number of places, the masses nevertheless continued to offer courageous resistance to the enemy. On April 1, after a fierce battle for many days, the Austrians captured Brescia. During the capture of the city, wild cruelties were committed: soldiers hanged, pierced with bayonets, burned alive civilians, including women and children.

In Genoa, the news of the capitulation of the Piedmontese army caused a popular uprising. A Provisional Government was created, which began preparations for the resumption of the war with Austria. However, the intrigues of counter-revolutionary elements made it easier for the royal troops to defeat the rebellious Genoese.

On August 6, 1849, the Kingdom of Sardinia signed a peace treaty with Austria, pledging to pay her an indemnity.

Defeat of the revolution in other parts of Italy

The victory of the Austrian troops in Lombardy was reflected in the situation in other parts of Italy, primarily in Tuscany. Monarchist conspirators conducted active propaganda here among the wealthy sections of the peasantry. On April 11, a counter-revolutionary coup took place in Florence, supported by armed peasants who burst into the city. A few days later, Austrian troops invaded Tuscany. Grand Duke Leopold returned with them.
The unsuccessful outcome of the second stage of the national liberation war in Italy was also reflected in the situation in Sicily. On March 29, 1849, hostilities resumed on the island. The Neapolitan troops twice outnumbered the army of Sicily. Already in early April, she suffered a series of serious setbacks. The government and parliament, dominated by representatives of the moderately liberal bourgeoisie and the liberal strata of the nobility, decided to stop the struggle. The authorities left Palermo. The popular masses, under the leadership of a group of revolutionary democrats, courageously defended the city for several days. However, the forces were unequal. On May 11, 1849, the royal troops captured Palermo.

The decisive role in suppressing the revolution in Rome and restoring the secular power of the pope was played by the intervention of four Catholic states - France, Austria, Spain and Naples.

At the end of April 1849, a corps of French troops under the command of General Oudinot, who landed in Italy, approached the gates of Rome; however, the invaders were driven back with heavy losses. This success inspired the defenders of Rome, among whom stood out the detachment of Garibaldi, who occupied the most responsible and dangerous positions. In early May, a detachment of Garibaldians opposed the Neapolitan troops approaching Rome, defeated them and forced them to hastily retreat. The detachments of Garibaldi entered the Neapolitan territory, where they were met by the population as liberators.

However, in other areas, hostilities were unsuccessful for the Roman Republic. Austrian troops broke the resistance of the inhabitants of Bologna. Somewhat later, the Ancona fortress fell, which heroically resisted the Austrian invaders for 27 days.

In mid-May, French diplomat Ferdinand Lesseps arrived in Rome. Peace negotiations began between France and the Roman Republic. These negotiations were started by the government of Louis Bonaparte only in order to deceive public opinion and buy time. Under the guise of negotiations, Oudinot's corps received more and more reinforcements from France. Having accumulated significant forces, the French troops launched a full-scale offensive along the entire front. The Roman Republicans put up exceptionally staunch resistance to the enemy onslaught, but in the end the French troops broke through the line of defense and on July 1, 1849. entered Rome. The Roman Republic ceased to exist.

After the fall of the Roman Republic, there was only one stronghold of the struggle for the freedom and independence of Italy - Venice. The unequal struggle of this city with the Austrian troops, blocking it from the sea and from land, lasted for 11 months. At the end of the war with Piedmont, the Austrian government demanded the surrender of Venice. This demand was rejected. A patriotic upsurge seized the masses of Venice. Attacks made by the Austrians in early June were repulsed. Then the Austrians began a furious bombardment of the city. This was joined by famine caused by a lack of food supplies. Epidemics of typhus and cholera broke out in the city, claiming a lot of victims. And yet Venice, without receiving any support, continued to fight to the last extremity. Only on August 22, 1849, she capitulated.

The last center of the revolution of 1848-1849. was suppressed in Italy. The Italian people did not succeed either in freeing themselves from foreign oppression, or in abolishing the reactionary monarchical order and feudal survivals, or in creating a single national state. Only in the Kingdom of Sardinia did the constitutional regime survive, which provided the big bourgeoisie with certain political rights.

6. England in 1848-1849

New Rise of Chartism

After a temporary decline, the activities of the Chartists in 1847 revived again. Agitation for the "People's Charter" resumed at Chartist meetings, and the activity of the workers grew. Since 1848, under the influence of a deepening economic crisis and revolutionary events in continental Europe, the Chartist movement gained new momentum. Huge masses of the people participated in rallies and demonstrations that took place in various parts of the country. In Glasgow, a demonstration of the unemployed put forward the slogan "Bread or revolution!" In Manchester, an attempt by the police to disperse the workers led to a bloody clash; Troops were called in to help the police. Clashes between workers and the police also took place in London and in a number of other cities. On April 4, 1848, the National Chartist Convention met in London. The new, third in a row, petition presented to Parliament put forward the previous demands of the people's charter. Justifying this program, the petition stated that labor is the only source of all wealth, that the working people have a preferential right to the fruits of their labor, and that the people are the only source of power. On April 10, the Convention appointed a mass demonstration in London, which was supposed to accompany the Chartist delegation with a petition to the Houses of Parliament.

The government was greatly alarmed by the new upsurge in Chartist activity. It banned public meetings and declared the Chartist Convention illegal. Significant military forces were being drawn into London; a record of volunteers from representatives of the propertied classes was held. Expecting a popular uprising, the government put the Duke of Wellington, the most important military figure in England, at the head of the armed forces.

Demonstration April 10, 1848


Sunday, April 10, at the call of the Convention, tens of thousands of London workers took to the streets. Despite the prohibitions of the authorities, a huge crowd of people gathered in Kennington Square. Convinced that it was impossible to prevent the rally, the authorities told the leaders of the Chartists that they agreed to hold it, but would not allow the procession to the parliament building. O "Connor, who still enjoyed great influence among the masses, began to persuade the audience to go home and leave the whole matter to him. The petition, under which there were several million signatures, was delivered in a hired carriage to Parliament. The latter postponed its consideration, and then refused altogether consider it under the pretext that the number of signatures was supposedly much less than the Chartists claimed.
The failure on April 10 had serious consequences. The Chartist movement began to decline. At the same time, the departure of the petty bourgeoisie from Chartism was completed. The National Assembly, convened to replace the Chartist Convention, which met from May 1, 1848, debated a memorandum to the Queen on the plight of the workers at length and fruitlessly. The advanced detachments of the working class were left without leadership. The government severely suppressed the scattered revolutionary uprisings that took place in 1848-1849. in some cities in England. Mass arrests and judicial repressions began. The most important factor contributing to the decline of the mass movement was the improvement in the economic situation in England that began in the spring of 1848.

In subsequent years, Chartism lost its former mass character, although it continued to exert a great influence on the political life of England until the mid-1950s.

Historical Significance of Chartism

The Chartists failed to achieve their immediate goals - the transfer of political power into the hands of the proletariat. The main reasons for the failure were that the proletariat was not yet prepared for this, while English capitalism was still in the process of growth and had by no means exhausted all the possibilities of its development. The defeat of the revolutions of 1848-1849 also contributed to the decline of Chartism. in the countries of continental Europe, which, together with the failure of the Chartist uprisings of those years, temporarily weakened the faith of the workers of England in revolutionary methods of struggle. In addition, many militant elements of the Chartist organizations emigrated to the United States, and some, remaining in England, departed from the charter movement.

And yet Chartism played a major role in the history of not only the English, but also the international labor movement. Lenin, referring to Chartism, wrote: “... England gave the world the first broad, really mass, politically shaped, proletarian-revolutionary movement ...” (V. I. Lenin, The Third International and its Place in History, Soch. 29, p. 282). The forms of struggle and the methods put forward by the masses in this struggle were a valuable contribution to the international working-class movement.

Chartism left a big mark on the political life of England. The English bourgeoisie, frightened by the Chartist movement, found itself compelled to make concessions to the demands of the working people and carry out certain reforms. All the reforming activity of the English bourgeoisie in the following decades was caused to a large extent by the fear of the revival of Chartism.

Chartism also had a great influence on the cultural life of England, on English literature and poetry. Under his direct influence, the great realist writer Dickens created a number of works. A great contribution to English and world democratic poetry was the poems and poems of Ernest Jones, a prominent member of the Chartist movement, imbued with the pathos of the revolutionary struggle.

National Liberation Movement in Ireland in 1848

The 1930s and especially the 1940s were marked by a further deterioration in the position of the Irish peasantry. Ireland's agriculture was undergoing a transformation during these decades; as livestock products became more favorable on the English market than corn, Ireland began to intensively develop cattle breeding, in connection with which landowners began to expel small farmers on a large scale and create large pastoral farms. Huge masses of peasants were left without land. In 1845-1846. the country suffered a crop failure: the planting of potatoes, the staple food of the common people of Ireland, perished. In six years (1846-1851), more than a million people died of starvation in Ireland.

All this strengthened the revolutionary mood of the Irish peasantry. At the same time, the size of the working class, which is mainly employed in the processing of raw materials and in transport, increased somewhat. Made the first steps of the labor movement in Ireland.

Under the influence of the popular masses, a new alignment of forces was outlined in the Irish national liberation movement. The Repeal Association, formed in 1840 to fight for the abolition of the union of 1801, continued to be limited to agitation for Irish autonomy while maintaining the power of the English crown. But at the beginning of 1847, the "Irish Confederation" was founded, which announced a break with the old tactics of legal forms of struggle. A left wing appeared within the confederation under the leadership of the talented journalist John Mitchell, who put forward the slogan of armed struggle for the secession of Ireland from England and the formation of an independent Republic of Ireland. Expressing the aspirations of the democratic intelligentsia and the young working class of Ireland, Mitchel urged the population not to pay taxes to the British government and not to pay rent to the landlords. The spokesman for the interests of the Irish peasants was another figure in the Irish Confederation, the worker James Lalor, the son of a peasant. Lalor put forward the slogan of the nationalization of land in Ireland.

The revolution in France and in other countries of the European continent contributed to the revival of the Irish liberation movement. The left wing of the confederation began preparations for an uprising.

In May 1848, the British authorities arrested and exiled Mitchel, thus decapitating the movement. In July, the leadership of the confederation, after long hesitation, finally announced the beginning of the uprising, but with its indecisive and contradictory orders only disorganized it. The uprising broke out into several small, isolated skirmishes with the police and troops. Through severe repression, the English government maintained its hold on Ireland.

7. Revolutionary and national liberation movement in the Danubian Principalities

Revolutionary events in Moldova

The revolution in France and other states of Western Europe hastened the explosion of the revolutionary movement in the Danubian principalities, whose masses were under the double oppression of the local boyars and the Turkish authorities. March 1848. a group of representatives of the oppositional boyars and the liberal bourgeoisie of Moldova, who were burdened by the despotic regime of the ruler Mikhail Sturdza, submitted a petition demanding an end to administrative and police arbitrariness, the abolition of internal customs duties and the implementation of progressive reforms. In the interests of the boyars, the authors of the petition also demanded the expansion of the rights of the boyars' council. The petition completely bypassed the interests of the working masses, in particular the peasantry, enslaved by feudal duties and state taxes. Part of the demands contained in the petition was accepted by the ruler, after which the main core of the boyar-bourgeois opposition, satisfied with the concessions received, withdrew from the movement. The government dealt with the rest of these groups in the most severe way. The strictest censorship was introduced in the principality.

It was more difficult to cope with the rising wave of peasant discontent. Fearing its further development in Moldova and the spread of its influence on the peasantry of Bessarabia, the government of tsarist Russia in June 1848 introduced a 12,000-strong corps into the territory of Moldova. The intervention of tsarist Russia contributed to the defeat of the revolutionary movement in Moldova.

Revolution in Wallachia

In Wallachia, the liberation movement grew into a revolution and led, although for a short time, to the transfer of power from the hands of the feudal nobility to the hands of representatives of the opposition boyars and the bourgeoisie. A major role in the events of 1848 in Wallachia was played by the secret society "Justice and Brotherhood", which sought the elimination of feudal privileges, the formation of a national Wallachian army, the liberation of the country from Turkish rule and the creation of an independent Romanian state. The soul of this organization was the revolutionary publicist Nicolai Balcescu, the most prominent bourgeois-democratic figure of that time.

On June 21, 1848, members of the “Justice and Brotherhood” society organized a crowded public meeting in the village of Izlaz, in which local peasants, as well as soldiers and officers of the troops stationed there, took part. The assembly adopted a proclamation that put forward a number of bourgeois-democratic demands: the independence of Wallachia, freedom of the press, the formation of a national guard, the convening of a Constituent Assembly to draw up a constitution, etc. their liberation from feudal oppression on the terms of compensation to the landlords. Nothing was said about the allocation of land to the peasants.

The Izlaz proclamation served as an impetus for revolutionary actions in various parts of the country. On June 23, on the streets of Bucharest, thousands of people moved towards the palace of the ruler George Bibescu, shouting "Long live the constitution!" The gospodar agreed to accept the conditions put forward in the Izlaz proclamation and formed a Provisional Government, which consisted mostly of moderate bourgeois liberals. Balcescu also joined the government. Two days later, the ruler, frightened by the assassination attempt on him, as well as the disobedience of some of the officers and soldiers, abdicated and fled abroad.

The provisional government carried out some progressive reforms. But the main question - agrarian - it left unresolved. Meanwhile, the successful outcome of the revolution depended primarily on its support by the masses of the peasantry. The unresolved agrarian question caused spontaneous peasant uprisings. The peasants almost everywhere refused to fulfill their feudal duties, felled the landowners' forests, mowed hay on the boyars' lands, drove their cattle to the landlords' meadows and fields. The agrarian movement continued until the end of 1848, accompanied by armed clashes with the police and troops.

The Provisional Government did nothing to solve such an important task as achieving the national independence of Wallachia.

Encouraged by the half-hearted policy of the Provisional Government, the counter-revolutionary circles of the boyars soon raised their heads. On July 1, counter-revolutionary officers at the head of an armed detachment broke into the palace where the government was sitting and arrested some of its members. In response to this sortie of the counter-revolution, crowds of people surrounded the palace, fought the rebels and secured the release of the arrested members of the government. Ten days later, a new attempt at a counter-revolutionary coup was made in Bucharest, but the action of the masses of the people again frustrated the plans of the reaction.

Convinced that it was impossible to restore the old regime in Wallachia with the help of the forces of internal reaction alone, the Sultan's government sent its troops to the principality.

In early October, a strong Turkish army entered Bucharest. The resistance offered by the revolutionary townspeople was brutally crushed. Under an agreement between Russia and Turkey, a number of regions of the country were occupied by the tsarist troops.

8. The results and significance of the revolutions of 1848-1849.

Revolutionary events of 1848-1849 represent one of the most important stages in the development of the class struggle in Europe in the 19th century.

Along with the common task for many European countries - the destruction of the feudal-absolutist orders that hindered the development of capitalism - the revolutionary movement of 1848-1849. in some countries it also had its own special goals. The revolution proceeded in different ways, depending on the peculiarity of the situation, on historical conditions and on the correlation of class forces. In France, where feudalism and absolutism were put an end to even during the revolution of 1789-1794, the objective task of the revolution of 1848-1849 was to was the overthrow of the exclusive rule of the financial aristocracy and the establishment of the rule of the bourgeois class as a whole. In Germany, the central task of the revolution of 1848-1849. was the elimination of political fragmentation, the creation of state unity. In Italy, the same task was supplemented by the task of liberating the northern part of the country from Austrian rule. In Austria, the revolution of 1848-1849. Gyla must put an end to the reactionary regime of the Habsburg monarchy and liberate the oppressed peoples from national enslavement.

A big place in the revolutionary struggle of 1848-1849. occupied by the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples.
Everywhere the popular masses played a decisive role in the events. According to their objective tasks, these revolutions were bourgeois. The active participation of the popular masses in them gave the revolutions of 1848-1849 a boost. more or less bourgeois-democratic character.

The main feature of the events of 1848-1849. there was an active participation in them of the working class, which in most countries was the main driving force of the revolution. In 1848, for the first time in the history of revolutions, the working class came forward with its own political and economic demands, for the first time on such a vast scale, it showed itself as a special class, fundamentally hostile not only to the feudal, but also to the bourgeois order. The leading role of the working class was especially clearly manifested in France.

Among the reasons for the defeat of the revolutions of 1848-1849. the most important was the betrayal of the liberal bourgeoisie, which joined the revolution only in order to use the popular movement for its own narrow class goals. In the course of the class struggle, the moderate bourgeois liberals, frightened by the revolutionary activity of the working class, entered into an agreement with the monarchist government, with the reactionary military, with all the forces of the old regime, and betrayed the people.

This was the case in France, where the big bourgeoisie supported a clique of Bonapartist adventurers in order to maintain their class rule. In Prussia, the bourgeois liberals humbly submitted to the military and the nobility. This was also the case in other German states. Moderate liberals betrayed the cause of the Italian bourgeois revolution by refusing to fight by revolutionary methods for the liberation of the country from Austrian oppression.

The exposure of the treacherous essence of bourgeois liberalism was the most important lesson of the revolutions of 1848-1849.

On the other hand, in the revolutions and revolutionary movements of 1848-1849. the petty-bourgeois democrats suffered bankruptcy, their limitations and inability to rally the exploited masses around themselves for a more or less long period were revealed. By their inconsistency and half-heartedness, in particular in solving the agrarian-peasant question, they contributed to the defeat of the revolutionary movements. The dual nature of the petty bourgeoisie showed itself in the inconsistency and half-heartedness of the petty-bourgeois democrats.

Along with petty-bourgeois democracy, the ideology of petty-bourgeois socialism also went bankrupt. By their propaganda for the reconciliation of the antagonistic classes, by their tactics of conciliation with the bourgeois liberals, Louis Blanc and other reformist socialists played into the hands of reaction. They made it easier for the enemies of the working people to deceive the masses of the people by covering up class contradictions with phrases about "freedom, equality and fraternity." Revolutionary events of 1848-1849 exposed the groundlessness of petty-bourgeois social theories. “The revolution of 1848,” wrote Lenin, “delivers a mortal blow to all these noisy, motley, noisy forms of pre-Marxist socialism.” (V. I. Lenin, Historical fate of the teachings of Karl Marx, Soch., vol. 18, p. 545.)

The only social theory that has withstood the historical test of the tumultuous events of 1848-1849 was Marxism. Only the proletarian revolutionaries Marx, Engels and their comrades-in-arms, united in the League of Communists, waged a consistent revolutionary struggle for a truly democratic solution of the objective tasks of these revolutions.

One of the most important reasons for the defeat of the revolutions and revolutionary movements of 1848-1849. was that the forces of international reaction provided substantial support to the internal counter-revolution. An important role was also played by the fact that the economic crisis of 1847-1848, which hastened the onset of the revolution, then weakened and by the beginning of the 50s was replaced by an economic upsurge.

Revolutionary movements of 1848-1849 were not crowned with final victory in any country of Western Europe, and nowhere did they completely solve the objective tasks that then confronted these countries. Nevertheless, the revolutionary battles of 1848 were not in vain. They undermined feudal relations and survivals in a number of countries, contributed to the establishment and further development of capitalism, the growth of the consciousness and organization of the proletariat, put on the order of the day many long overdue historical tasks, in particular the national unification of Italy and the national unification of Germany.

The insufficient maturity of the working class, its semi-artisan composition in a number of European countries, due to the incompleteness of the industrial revolution, then made it difficult for the transition of hegemony into the hands of the working class and for the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the interests of the broad masses of the people.

Of great importance for the subsequent development of the working-class and socialist movement was the struggle of the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie, for a "social republic", which culminated in France in such a major event of that era as the June uprising of the Paris workers.

The experience of the revolutionary struggle of 1848-1849. enriched the ideological and political arsenal of the proletariat—the great teachings of Marx and Engels. The study of this experience allowed the founders of Marxism to formulate a number of new theoretical propositions and tactical conclusions.

On the experience of the revolutions of 1848-1849. Marx and Engels further developed the doctrine of the struggle of the proletariat and the conditions for its victory. In particular, Marxism was enriched by the brilliant conclusion that it was necessary to break down the bourgeois state machine. Emphasizing the enormous historical significance of the events of 1848-1849. in the development of Marxism, V. I. Lenin wrote: “In the activities of Marx and Engels themselves, the period of their participation in the mass revolutionary struggle of 1848-1849 stands out as a central point. They proceed from this point in determining the fate of the working-class movement and democracy in various countries. They always return to this point in order to determine the inner nature of different classes and their tendencies in the clearest and purest form. From the point of view of the then revolutionary era, they always evaluate later, smaller, political formations, organizations, political tasks and political conflicts.

On the experience of the revolutions of 1848-1849. V. I. Lenin also repeatedly appealed when developing the tactics of the working class and the Communist Party in Russia during the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905-1907. and in February 1917

Table "Revolution of 1848-1849 in Europe" (country, causes of the revolution, main events, result).

Country: France.

Reasons: economic crisis, demand for civil rights and freedoms.

Main events: February 22, 1848, became the reason for the start of an armed uprising in Paris. Two days later, Louis-Philippe abdicated, and the Republicans formed a Provisional Government, which for the first time in history included socialists. The Provisional Government issued a decree on the "right to work", the organization of public works in the form of "national workshops" began. June 23-26, 1848 - uprising in Paris. On December 10, 1848, presidential elections were held. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected head of the French Republic.

Result: universal suffrage, the election of Napoleon III and the establishment of a second empire.

Country: Germany.

Reasons: low level of socio-economic development, economic crisis, the demand for the unification of Germany, the elimination of feudal remnants, the establishment of civil rights and freedoms.

Main events: On March 3, 1848, unrest began in Rhenish Prussia, and soon they reached Berlin. The uprising in the capital forced the king to convene the National Assembly, create a liberal government and a civil guard. Following the industrial centers, peasant uprisings began in Silesia and the Polish national uprising in Poznań. On June 14, the civil guard and the royal troops jointly suppressed the uprising of the Berlin workers who were trying to make independent demands. This marked a turning point in the course of the Prussian revolution, which ended at the end of 1848 with the dissolution of the Civil Guard and the National Assembly.

Result: the adoption of a constitution in a number of German states, the creation of an all-German parliament.

Country: Italy.

Reasons: the rise of the revolutionary movement, the demand for the overthrow of the Austrian oppression, the establishment of civil rights and freedoms, the elimination of feudal remnants, then the unification of Italy.

Main events: In January 1848, an uprising began in Palermo. After the defeat of the Neapolitan troops in Sicily, unrest swept the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and soon the rebels achieved the introduction of constitutional government in both parts of the kingdom.

March 17 - uprising in Venice, then - in Milan. After five days of fighting, the Austrians were expelled from the capital of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and Venice proclaimed itself an independent republic. Spring 1848 -Milan surrendered. February 1849 - Proclamation of the Roman Republic. August 22, 1849 - Venice has fallen.

Result: complete defeat of the revolution.

Country: Austrian Empire.

Reasons: economic crisis, mass poverty, unemployment, a sharp increase in food prices, the demand for national independence of the peoples of the empire, the elimination of feudal remnants, the establishment of civil rights and freedoms.

Main events:

March 1848 an armed uprising began in Vienna. An attempt in May 1848 to dissolve the rebel committee led to a new aggravation, as a result of which the government fled the capital, and when it tried to dissolve the "Academic Legion", which consisted of revolutionary students, Vienna responded with a new uprising. In the summer of 1848, the Austrian Reichstag abolished feudal privileges and duties. However, soon the National Guard of Vienna shot down a demonstration of workers, which meant a class split among the rebels. In December 1848, Ferdinand I abdicated and Emperor Franz Joseph took the throne.

On March 3, 1848, the State Assembly of Hungary issued a demand for the introduction of a constitution. Hungary received internal self-government, serfdom was abolished on its territory.

Result: the defeat of the revolution, the adoption of the "Open Constitution", a military dictatorship.