Crop failures 1845-1847 and the economic crisis that followed them had disastrous consequences for economically backward Austria: numerous bankruptcies, mass poverty, a sharp increase in food prices. The news of the revolution in France caused a violent reaction in the country. On March 3, 1848, the first demands for reforms were made in Vienna, and ten days later an armed uprising took place in the capital of the empire. A scholar of the Austrian Revolution wrote of the rebels: “Their fury that day was terrible; life seemed to have no value for them.” Its feature was Active participation students who created the "Academic Legion" to fight the old regime. Emperor Ferdinand I (1835-1848) was forced to sacrifice his chancellor, who for many personified the old order. So ingloriously ended the “era of Metternich”. On May 15, an attempt to dissolve the political committee of the rebels led to a new aggravation of the situation, as a result of which the government fled the capital.
When the authorities tried to disband the "Academic Legion", Vienna responded with a new uprising. In July, the Austrian Reichstag, elected on the basis of a new electoral law, began its work. First of all, he abolished the feudal privileges and duties that were still preserved in the countryside. However, in August, when National Guard shot down a demonstration of workers, a class split occurred among the rebels. Last Flash The Austrian revolution was associated with an attempt to send troops against the Hungarian revolutionaries, which caused great indignation. In October, a new uprising broke out in Vienna, during which "fury reached its highest limit." The authorities managed to win over the ruler of Croatia, whose troops captured the city and drowned the uprising in blood. In December 1848, Ferdinand I abdicated the throne and the 18-year-old emperor took the throne Franz Joseph(1848-1916). Soon the Reichstag was dissolved, and the country was "granted" a new constitution, which actually restored the sovereignty of the emperor.
| Franz Joseph |
Revolution of 1848-1849 in Austrian Empire called " spring peoples". Among the first national outskirts, Bohemia rose, the Czech population of which awakened the hope of restoring their ancient rights and privileges. However, already in June, the Czech national movement was defeated.
Much more serious events unfolded at this time in Hungary, which has always occupied a special position in the state of the Habsburgs. Here, unlike other areas of the empire, there existed a thousand-year state tradition and a strong "noble nation". In the 1830-1840s. the movement for the preservation of Hungarian culture intensified, Hungarian was approved as official in all provinces of the kingdom, regardless of 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.
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| Unknown author. Opening of the National Assembly of Hungary on June 5, 1848 |
Initially, the movement developed under the slogan “Long live the king! A constitutional monarchy, freedom, equality, peace and order!”. March, 3rd 1848 d. at the suggestion of the leader of the national movement L. Kossuth The Hungarian State Assembly sent a petition to the emperor for the introduction of a constitution and self-government. Soon Hungary received the right to internal self-government, and serfdom was abolished on its territory. However, the Hungarians stubbornly refused to recognize national law other peoples who, one by one, overthrew the Hungarian domination and entered into an alliance with the Vienna government. Serbian Vojvodina and Croatia separated from Hungary, a Romanian uprising broke out in Transylvania. material from the site
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| L. Kossuth |
Started in September real war between Hungary and Austria, which was supported by the Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Slovaks. Hungary lost special rights as part of the Habsburg power, the non-Hungarian provinces were separated from it. The answer was the proclamation in April 1849 d. complete independence of Hungary. With the help of Polish emigrants, the Hungarian rebels created a strong army and achieved serious success in the fight against the emperor's troops. Franz Joseph turned to Russia for help; in June, Russian troops began successful offensive, after which the fate of Hungary was decided. Kossuth fled abroad; and the Hungarian army capitulated on August 13, 1849. The Austrians hanged 13 Hungarian generals, hundreds of officers were shot.
Revolution of 1848-1849 in the Austrian Empire contributed to the emancipation of economic life and some revival of the economy. In 1850, the customs border between Austria and Hungary was liquidated, then restrictions on foreign trade. At the same time, the constitution adopted during the revolution was also cancelled.
On this page, material on the topics:
Essay on the theme of spring of peoples in austria
Report on the Spring of Nations in the Habsburg Empire
The Spring of Nations in the Habsburg Empire briefly
Spring of the Peoples 1849-1850 Revolution report
Spring of Nations 1848-1849 why such a name
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Table "Revolution of 1848-1849 in Europe" (country, causes of the revolution, main events, result).
Country: France.
Reasons: economic crisis, requirement civil rights and freedom.
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 began public works in the form of "national workshops". 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.
The reasons: low level socio-economic development, economic crisis, the demand for the unification of Germany, the elimination of feudal vestiges, 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 Polish national uprising in Poznan. June 14 Civil Guard and royal troops jointly suppressed the uprising of the Berlin workers who were trying to come up with 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.
He recalls the "gloomy seven years" of the Nikolaev era, preceding the Great Reforms of Alexander II.
A ghost haunts Europe
"Gentlemen, saddle your horses, there is a revolution in France!" - with these words, at the end of February 1848, Emperor Nicholas I stopped the ball, turning to the officers gathered on it. The overthrow of King Louis Philippe I and the proclamation of a republic in Paris were a very unpleasant surprise for St. Petersburg. Further developments confirmed the worst fears of the Russian court: by the beginning of March, unrest from France had spread to other European states.
In Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, liberal governments came to power under street pressure. In Munich and Berlin, real street fighting, and the frightened monarchs promised to convene the German parliament to draft a constitution. In mid-March, Vienna rebelled - after that, the revolutionary wave, called the "spring of peoples", quickly spread to Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Indignation, panic and horror - this is how official Petersburg's reaction to the events of February-March 1848 in Europe can be characterized. Nicholas I was seriously afraid that the European revolutionary shaft would first overwhelm the Kingdom of Poland, and then the rest of the Russian Empire.
Of course, there were no real grounds for such fears. For the third decade the country was in a half-drowsy state of the reign of Nicholas, and no unrest threatened Russia. The tsar's initial militant impulse (in order to nip the revolution in the bud, he ordered preparations for intervention in Europe) was soon replaced by concern for the security of Russia's borders and the preservation of internal stability.
Image: Georg Benedikt Wunder
The response to the imaginary threat from the West was a manifesto on March 14, 1848, in which there were such formulations: “the West of Europe is now suddenly agitated by turmoil that threatens to overthrow the legitimate authorities ... We are ready to meet Our enemies, wherever they appear ... Understand the tongues and submit: as God is with us!
In European capitals, the hysterical and aggressive tone of the tsar's manifesto caused only bewilderment, while in Russia itself it served as a signal to tighten the rules of an already overregulated inner life. The emperor was sincerely convinced that only the preservation of Russian identity, formulated in Uvarov's formula "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality", could protect his state from the revolutionary infection from the "rotting" West. The famous historian in those days prophetically remarked: "We, Russian scientists, will get it for this revolution." And indeed, in the absence of home-grown troublemakers and other "carbonari" in the country, the authorities began to zealously eradicate sedition in science, literature and journalism. Thus began the infamous "Gloomy Seven Years" - the last, most dismal period of the reign of Nicholas I.
“Now patriotism is in fashion, rejecting everything European”
First of all, censorship was sharply increased. In March 1848, the authorities drew the attention of the editors of the capital's newspapers and the censors supervising them to the "reprehensible spirit of many articles" and warned of responsibility for "every bad direction of the articles of magazines, even if it was expressed in indirect allusions." Illustrating the then social atmosphere, the historian of Russian literature and journalism Pavel Reifman in the book “From the History of Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Censorship” quotes from the diary of censor Alexander Nikitenko:
“Science turns pale and hides. Ignorance is being built into a system... Patriotism is now in vogue, rejecting everything European, not excluding science and art, and assuring that Russia is so blessed by God that it will live without science and art... People believe that all the turmoil in the West came from what is in the world of physics, chemistry, astronomy, poetry, painting.
The authorities tried in every possible way to restrict the import foreign books, universities were banned from subscribing to magazines and newspapers, and in 1849 the idea of closing all universities as potential breeding grounds for harmful and dangerous ideas was seriously discussed.
Image: DeAgostini / G. Dagli Orti
The apotheosis of the Nikolaev "gloomy seven years" is the infamous "case of the Petrashevites". The only fault of this small group of young people was that they read and discussed together the free-thinking works of Western philosophers, as well as Belinsky's famous letter to Gogol. But this was enough to sentence them all (including the future great writer Fyodor Dostoevsky) to death. Only at the very last moment, before the execution of the sentence, the convicts were announced a commutation of punishment - the whole ceremony of their public execution was a staging.
In the book of the Soviet literary critic Alexander Zapadov, “The History of Russian Journalism of the 18th–19th Centuries”, an excerpt from the memoirs of the writer Mikhail Longinov is given, which perfectly characterizes the state of Russian society during the sunset of the Nikolaev era: “Thunders struck literature and enlightenment at the end of February 1848. Journalism has become a dangerous and extremely difficult business. Every word had to be weighed, even talking about grass-sowing or horse-breeding, because in everything a person or a secret goal was assumed. The word "progress" was strictly forbidden, and "free spirit" was recognized as a crime even in the kitchen. Despondency took possession of all the writing brethren.
The defeat of the periodical press is only a link in the chain of police repressions of Nicholas I, with which he hoped to prevent the European "spring of peoples" in Russia. By 1850, censorship took over theaters. One of the first to be hit was the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, whose play "Our people - let's settle" caused displeasure of the emperor himself. He was angered by the ending, in which evil was not properly punished. The author was summoned to the trustee of the Moscow educational district and made a corresponding suggestion to him. As Reifman writes, “Ostrovsky, stunned by such a “development”, expresses gratitude through the trustee to the Minister of Education for advice, promises to take them into consideration in his future works, “if he feels himself capable of continuing the literary career he has begun.”
"Keep it all, keep it all..."
Of course, such a policy could not lead to anything worthwhile. As you know, any complex system in the process of its development inevitably experiences a crisis if it is not able to change and adequately respond to the challenges of the time. Nicholas I was an intelligent person and understood the need for change, but at the same time he was afraid to make even minimal concessions to public demands. Figuratively speaking, he tried to ventilate the room, not allowing him to open not only the window, but even the window. The emperor's hypertrophied self-confidence and aplomb, his complete detachment from reality and resting on the laurels of past successes played a bad joke on him. His desire to "freeze" Russia and oppose it to the rest of Europe led to the fact that by the beginning of the Crimean War, the country found itself in complete international isolation.
Lenin's well-known phrase about the "rottenness and impotence" of Nikolaev Russia, which manifested itself in the course of the conflict, is quite fair. Few people here now know that in Europe the Crimean War is more commonly called the Eastern War - fighting were conducted not only in the Crimean region. The Anglo-French squadron bombarded Odessa, Mariupol, Taganrog, the Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea with impunity and landed troops to capture Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Alaska was completely defenseless against the threat of the British invasion.
Image: AKG Images / East News
By the way, it was then that the idea first arose to sell it to the United States. The enemy fleet was cruising Gulf of Finland not far from Kronstadt, just thirty kilometers from Peterhof, the favorite country residence of Nicholas I - it is difficult to imagine a more visible embodiment of the inglorious and shameful finale of his reign.
The sovereign died suddenly shortly after receiving the news of the defeat of the Russian troops near Evpatoria. As you know, before his death, he bitterly told the heir: “I hand over my team to you, unfortunately, not in the order I wanted, leaving a lot of trouble and worries ... Keep everything, keep everything ... "
In terms of his character and upbringing, the new emperor Alexander II was not at all a liberal, but he understood that Russia was in desperate need of reforms. Alexander II was able to easily push back from power the retrogrades from his father's entourage - after the defeat in Crimean War potential opponents of the reforms were put to shame and demoralized.
The former generation of dignitaries and courtiers, who still remembered the Patriotic War of 1812 and grew old in Nicholas era, completely out of touch with life. They refused to understand how the world had changed during this time, that the power of the country was now determined not so much by the size of the territory and military power, how much the development of the economy and the ability to apply technological innovations ( railways, telegraph, steam engines).
In the West, the peasants were legally free and large estates did not play a prominent role; in most of the East they were still serfs and landholdings were largely concentrated in the hands of noble landowners (see chapter 10 below). In the West, the "middle class" meant bankers, merchants, capitalist entrepreneurs, people practicing the "liberal professions", and senior officials (including professors), although some of them felt they belonged to the upper strata. (high bourgeoisie) ready to compete with the landed nobility, at least in their spending. In the East, these same urban populations were largely composed of national groups other than the native population, such as Germans and Jews, and were in any case much smaller. The real equivalent of the "middle class" was the educated and/or business-minded part of the rural landlords and lower nobility, the strata that prevailed in certain regions (see. "Age of Revolution"). The central zone from Prussia in the north to north-central Italy in the south, which in in a certain sense was the core of the region of the revolution, connected the characteristics of relatively "developed" and backward regions in various ways.
The politically revolutionary zone was equally heterogeneous. Apart from France, what was being argued about was not just a matter of political and social status states, but about their very form or even existence. The Germans tried to create "Germany" - should it be unitary or federal? - from the collection of a large number of German principalities different size and character. The Italians similarly attempted to turn what the Austrian Chancellor Metternich contemptuously but aptly described as "simple geographic vision" into united Italy. Both, with the usual prejudiced vision of nationalists, included in their plans peoples who were not and often did not feel like being Germans or Italians, such as the Czechs. The Germans, the Italians, and in fact all the national movements involved in the revolution outside of France, found their stumbling block in the large multinational empire of the Habsburg dynasty, which extended to Germany and Italy, and also included Czechs, Hungarians and a significant part of the Poles, Romanians, Yugoslavs and others Slavic peoples. Some of them, or at least their political representatives, saw the Empire as a no less attractive solution to the problem than absorption into some kind of expansionist nationalism like German or Magyar. "If Austria no longer exists," Professor Palaki, the Czech representative, seems to have said so, "it is urgently necessary to invent it." Throughout the revolutionary zone, therefore, politics acted along several dimensions simultaneously.
The radicals, admittedly, had one solution: a unitary centralized democratic republic Germany, Italy, Hungary, or any country built according to the proven principles of the French Revolution on the ruins of the thrones of all kings and princes, and the hoisting of a tricolor banner, which was usually, according to the French model, the basic model of the national flag (see. "Age of Revolution"). Moderates, on the other hand, were caught in a web of complex calculations, driven mainly by fear of democracy, which they believed was adequate for social revolution. Where the masses have not yet driven away the princes, it would be unwise to inspire them, to undermine the social order, and where they have already done so, it would be desirable to remove or take them away from the streets and dismantle those barricades that were the main symbol of 1848. So the question was which of the princes, taken by surprise, but not displaced by the revolution, could agree to support a good cause. How exactly was a federal and liberal Germany or Italy to be created, according to what constitutional formula and under whose auspices? Could it include both the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria (as the "greater German" moderates believed - so as not to be confused with the radical democrats, who were by definition "Great Germans" of various stripes) or should it be "Little German", i.e. exclude Austria? The same moderates
The Habsburg Empire practiced the game of separation of the federal and multinational structure, which ceased only in 1918, after its death. Where there was revolutionary action or war, there was little time for such constitutional speculation. Where they arose, as in most of Germany, there it was in full swing. Since most of the moderate liberals there were professors and civil servants - 68% of the Frankfurt Assembly were officials, 12% belonged to the "liberal professions" - the debates of this short-lived parliament became a byword for their intellectual emptiness.
Thus the revolutions of 1848 demanded scrutiny by the state, the people and the region, for which there was no place. However, they had a lot in common, not least the fact that they arose almost simultaneously, that their destinies were intertwined and that they all had a common mood and style, a strange romantic-utopian atmosphere and similar rhetoric, for which the French invented word quarante-huitar
First, they all succeeded and failed quickly, and in most cases completely. During the first few months, all governments in the revolutionary zone were swept away or made incapacitated. Everything collapsed and retreated virtually without resistance. However, within a relatively short period, the revolution lost the initiative almost everywhere. du: in France by the end of April, in the rest of revolutionary Europe during the summer, although the movement retained some counteroffensive capability in Vienna, Hungary and Italy. The first milestone of the conservative renaissance was the April elections, in which universal suffrage, electing only a minority of monarchists, sent to Paris a large majority of conservatives, elected by the votes of a peasantry that was more politically inexperienced than reactionary, and to which quite left-minded citizens still did not knew how to handle. (In fact, around 1849, the "republican" and left-wing regions of the French countryside, familiar to students of later French politics, had already emerged, and there, for example, in Provence, the abolition of the Republic in 1851 was to be met with fierce resistance.) The second milestone was the isolation and disintegration of the revolutionary workers in Paris, who were defeated in the June uprising (see below).
AT central Europe The turning point came when the Habsburg army, given free rein by the emperor's flight in May, was able to regroup and put down the uprising of the radicals in Prague in June - not without the support of the moderate middle class, Czech and German - thus recapturing the lands of Bohemia. , the economic core of the empire, while regaining control of northern Italy shortly thereafter. Of the short and last revolution in Danubian Principalities put an end to Russian and Turkish interference.
Between the summer and the end of the year, the old regimes restored power in Germany and Austria, although this required the reconquest of the increasingly revolutionary city of Vienna by force of the army in October at the cost of over four thousand lives. After this, the king of Prussia plucked up the courage to reassert his power over the rebellious Berliners without trouble, and the rest of Germany promptly submitted, leaving the German parliament, or rather the constitutional assembly, elected in full hope. spring days, and most of the Prussian Radicals and other assemblies debate, while they await the dissolution. By winter, only two regions were still engulfed in revolution—parts of Italy and Hungary.
They were recaptured, following a more moderate revival of revolutionary action in the spring of 1849, towards the middle of that year.
After the surrender of the Hungarians and the Venetians in August 1849, the revolution died. With the exception of France alone, the power of all former rulers was restored - in some cases, as in the Habsburg Empire, with greater powers than before - and the revolutionaries went into exile. Again, with the exception of France, virtually all the institutional changes, all the political and social dreams of the spring of 1848 were soon dispelled and even destroyed. The Republic of France was given only 2.5 years of existence. There was one and only one major irreversible change: the abolition of serfdom in the Habsburg Empire*. Other than this one, though supposedly important, achievement, 1848 seems to be the only revolution in the history of modern Europe that combines the greatest promise, the widest possibilities, and the swiftest initial success with an unqualified and swift failure. In a way, this is reminiscent of another mass phenomenon of the 1840s, the Chartist movement in England. His particular goals were eventually achieved - but not by revolution or in a revolutionary context. His broader aspirations were not lost either, but the movements that were to take them and carry them forward were completely different from those of 1848. It is no coincidence that the document of that year, which had the most lasting and significant impact on world history, is "Manifesto of the Communist Party".
All revolutions had something in common, which to a large extent
Generally speaking, the abolition of serfdom and signorial rights over peasants in the rest of western and central Europe (including Prussia) took place during French Revolution and during the Napoleonic period (1789-1815), although some residual serfdom in Germany was abolished in 1848. Serfdom in Russia and Romania existed until the 1860s (see chapter 10 below).
peni explains their failure. They were, in fact or directly anticipated, the social revolutions of the working poor. So they frightened the moderate liberals to whom they had given power and prominence - and even some of the more radical politicians - at least as much as the supporters of the old regimes. Count Cavour "* of Piedmont, the future architect of a united Italy, had a hand in this a few years earlier (1846):
“If the social order is in real danger, if the great principles on which it rests are in serious danger, then the majority of staunch oppositionists, the majority of enthusiastic Republicans, should, in our opinion, be ready to join the schiren-gams of the conservative party”
Now those who made the revolution were undoubtedly the working poor. It was they who were dying on the city barricades; in Berlin there were only about 15 representatives of the educated classes, about thirty rich artisans among the three hundred victims of the March battle; in Milan there are only twelve students, officials or landowners among the 350 who died in the uprising** It was their famine that intensified the demonstrations so much that they turned into revolutions. Countryside western regions the revolution was relatively quiet, although the southwest of Germany saw much more peasant uprisings than might be remembered, but in other places the fear of an agrarian revolt was real enough to occur, although no one needed to stretch the imagination in areas such as southern Italy, where peasants everywhere spontaneously marched with flags and drumming, demanding the division of large estates. But one fear was enough to miraculously make the landowners think about it. Frightened by false rumors of a huge serf uprising led by the poet S. Petőfi (1823-1849), the Hungarian parliament - representing the bulk of the assembly of landowners - voted for the immediate abolition of serfdom on March 15, but only a few days earlier than the imperial government, which sought to isolate revolutionaries from the agrarian base, who decreed the immediate abolition of serfdom in Galicia, the abolition of forced labor and other feudal obligations in the Czech lands. There was no doubt that the "social order" was in danger.
This danger was not equally acute everywhere. Peasants could and have been bought out by conservative governments, especially where it happened that their landlords or merchants and usurers, those who exploited them, belonged to another, clearly not "revolutionary" nationality - Polish, Hungarian or German. It is unbelievable that the German middle classes, including the steadily rising businessmen of the Rhineland, were desperately concerned about any immediate prospect of proletarian communism, or even proletarian power, which had little repercussions except Cologne (where Marx established his headquarters) and Berlin, where the communist Stefan Born, a printer, organized a fairly significant labor movement.Just as the middle classes of Europe in the 1840s now thought they recognized the shape of their future social problems in the rain and smoke of Lancashire, so they thought they recognized another shape for the future behind barricades of Paris, that great predictor and exporter of revolutions. And the February Revolution was not only made by the proletariat, but was a conscious social revolution. Its goal was not just any republic, but a "democratic and social republic. Its leaders were socialists and communists. Its temporary the government actually included a real worker, mechanic, and known as Albert. For several days it was not clear whether her flag should be the tricolor or the red banner of the social uprising.
In addition, where questions of national autonomy or independence were on the agenda, the moderate opposition of the 1840s did not want and did not seriously work for the revolution, and even in national question moderates preferred negotiation and diplomacy to confrontation. They would no doubt have preferred more, but were well prepared to settle at the cost of concessions, which, it might reasonably be discussed, all, but the most stupid and presumptuous monarchs like the Tsar, sooner or later would be forced to grant, or for international changes, which, sooner or later, are likely to be adopted by the oligarchy of the "Great Powers" who have decided on such measures. Drawn into the revolution by the forces of the poor and/or following the example of Paris, they naturally tried to use an unexpectedly favorable situation to their greatest advantage. However, they were, of course, captivated by past calculations, and often, in fact, from the very beginning, were much more concerned about the threat from the left than from the old regimes. Since the appearance of the barricades in Paris, all moderate liberals (and, as Cavour noted, a fair number of radicals) have been potential conservatives. As moderate opinion more or less quickly changed or disappeared altogether, the workers, adamant among the democratic radicals, were left alone or, even more fatally, faced with an alliance of conservative and former moderate forces with the old regimes: the "party of order", as the French called it. 1848 failed because it turned out that the decisive confrontation was not between the old regimes and the united "forces of progress", but between "order" and "social revolution". Her critical confrontation was not like in Paris in February, but like in Paris in June, when workers involved in a local uprising were crushed and subjected to mass executions. Their struggle and death was brutal. About 1500 fell in street battles - almost of them on the side of the government. The ferocious hatred of the rich for the poor is characterized by the fact that about three 1 a thousand people are killed after the defeat, while another 12 THOUSAND were arrested, mostly to be deported to Algiers labor camps
The revolution, therefore, retained its momentum: only where the radicals were strong enough and connected enough with popular movement to push moderates forward, or act without them. This would seem to have happened in countries where the main problem was national liberation, a goal that required a prolonged mobilization of the masses. That is why the revolution lasted the longest in Italy and above all in Hungary.
In Italy, the moderates, united around the anti-Austrian king of Piedmont and supported, after the uprising in Milan, by small principalities with significant mental potential, began to fight against the oppressor, constantly looking back at the republicans and supporters of the social revolution standing behind them. Thanks to the military weakness of the Italian states, the vacillation of Piedmont, and perhaps most of all because of their refusal to appeal to the French (who would, it is thought, have strengthened the Republican cause), they were severely defeated by the regrouped Austrian army at Custozza in July. (It should be noted that the great republican G. Mazzini, with his constant instinct for political uselessness, opposed the appeal to the French). The defeat discredited the moderates and placed the leadership of the cause of national liberation in the hands of the radicals, who gained power in some of the Italian states during the autumn, finally effectively establishing the Roman Republic in early 1849, giving Mazzini ample opportunity for rhetoric. (Venice, under the prudent lawyer Daniel Manin, had already become an independent republic, experienced no trouble until it was inevitably reconquered by the Austrians - even later than the Hungarians had been defeated - at the end of August 1849.) The radicals did not represent a military rival for Austria; when they forced Piedmont to declare war on her in 1849, the Austrians easily won a victory at Novara in March. In addition, more determined to expel Austria and unite Italy, they generally shared the moderates' fear of social revolution. Even Mazzini, with all his zeal of a comman man, preferred to limit his interests to spiritual affairs, could not stand socialism and opposed any encroachment on private property. After his initial failure The Italian Revolution therefore lived, as it were, by inertia. Ironically, among those who crushed it were the armies of the now-non-revolutionary France that captured Rome in early June. The Roman expedition was an attempt to establish French diplomatic influence in the peninsula to the detriment of Austria. She also had the added benefit of being popular with Catholics, on whose support the post-revolutionary regime relied.
Unlike Italy, Hungary was already a more or less unified political entity ("Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen"), with a functioning constitution, a significant degree of autonomy, and in fact, with most of the elements of a sovereign state, excluding independence. Its weakness was that the Magyar aristocracy, who controlled this vast and predominantly agrarian area, controlled not only the Magyar peasantry of the large plain, but also the population, 60% of which, apparently, consisted of Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Romanians and Ukrainians. not to mention a significant German minority. These peasant peoples were not insensitive to the revolution that freed the serfs, but were irritated by the refusal of most of the Budapest radicals to make any concessions to their national difference from the Magyars, since their political representatives were extremely hostile to the brutal policy of Magyarization and the unification of the previously autonomous in some way frontier regions with a centralized and unitary Hungarian state. Vienna Court, following the usual imperial principle of "divide and rule", offered to help them. It was to be the Croatian army under the command of Baron Jelacic, a friend of Guy, a pioneer of Yugoslav nationalism, who led the attack on revolutionary Vienna and revolutionary Hungary.
However, within the real territory of Hungary, the revolution retained the mass support of the (Magyar) people both nationally and nationally. social reasons. The peasants believed that it was not the emperor who gave them freedom, but the revolutionary Hungarian parliament. It was the only part of Europe in which the defeat of the revolution was accompanied by something like partisan movement in the countryside, the famous robber Sandor Rocha supported him for a number of years. When the revolution broke out, Parliament, made up of an upper house of compromising or moderate magnates and a lower house dominated by radical rural landowners and lawyers, simply had to replace the protests with action. He readily did so under the guidance of the able jurist, journalist and orator Lajos Kossuth* (1802-1894), who was to become the world-famous revolutionary figure of 1848. For practical purposes, Hungary, under a moderately radical coalition government reluctantly recognized by Vienna, was an autonomous reformed state, at least until the Habsburgs were able to reconquer it. After the Battle of Custozzi, they thought they should, by repealing the Hungarian reform laws of March and invading the country, present the Hungarians with the choice of capitulation or radicalization. Therefore, under the leadership of Kossuth, Hungary burned its ships, deposing the emperor (though not formally proclaiming a republic) in April 1849. Popular support and commander-in-chief György allowed the Hungarians to do much more than defend against the Austrian army. They were only defeated when Vienna, in desperation, turned to last weapon reactions, Russian troops. It was decisive factor. August 13 remnants Hungarian army capitulated - not to the Austrian, but to the Russian commander. Alone among the revolutions of 1848, the Hungarian revolution did not fall or even look like it had fallen due to internal weakness and conflict, but was defeated through military intervention. It is, of course, true that her chances of avoiding such interference after the widespread collapse were nil.
Was there any alternative to this general
A large mass of radicalized petty bourgeois, disaffected artisans, shopkeepers, etc., and even agronomists whose representatives and leaders were intellectuals, especially the young and ultra-revolutionary, formed a significant revolutionary force, although it can hardly be called a political alternative. In general, they stood on the democratic left. The German Left demanded new elections because their radicalism had shown itself strongly in many areas in late 1848 and early 1849, although it was then in short supply in the form of big cities, which were reconquered by the reaction. In France, the radical democrats received 2 million votes in 1849 against 3 million for the monarchists and 800,000 for the moderates. The intelligentsia provided them with activists, although it was probably only in Vienna that the “Academic Legion” of students formed shock combat groups. To call 1848 an "intellectual revolution" is a misconception. They were no more noticeable in it than in most other revolutions, which occur for the most part in a relatively backward countries, in which most of the middle strata consists of people related to learning and mastering the written word: graduates of various educational institutions, journalists, teachers, officials. But it is certain that the intellectuals were visible; poets - Petofi in Hungary, Herwig and Freiligrath in Germany (he was on the board of the editors of Marx Neue Rheinische Zeitung), Victor Hugo and the successively moderate Lamartine in France; academicians (mostly on the side of the moderates), in large numbers in Germany ; physicians like C. G. Jacobi (1804-1851) in Prussia, Adolf Fischhof (1816-1893) in Austria; scientists such as F. W. Raspail (1794-1878) in France; and great multitude journalists and publicists, of whom at that time Kossuth was the most famous, and Marx was to prove the greatest significance.
As individuals, such people could play a decisive role; as members of separate social strata or as representatives of the petty radical bourgeoisie, they could not do this. The radicalism of the "little people", which found its expression in the demand for a "democratic state structure, constitutional or republican, providing them and their allies, the peasants, as well as the democratic local government with a majority that would give them control over municipal property and over a number of functions now performed by bureaucrats "'*, was genuine enough, although even the world crisis, with on the one hand, threatening the traditional way of life of craftsmen and the like, and temporary economic depression, on the other hand, gave it a special bitterness. The radicalism of the intelligentsia was less profound. It was based largely on (as it proved to be temporary) the inability of the new bourgeois society until 1848 to secure enough posts of a certain status for the educated, whom it produced in unprecedented numbers and whose rewards were far less than their ambitions. What happened to all those radical students of 1848 in the prosperous 1850s and 1860s? They established such a familiar pattern of life, and indeed accepted on European continent, by virtue of which bourgeois boys had to "go crazy" politically and sexually in their youth before they "settle down". And I have
ELSE many opportunities to “settle down”, especially such as the absence of the old nobility and the turning to business of the business bourgeoisie, increasing opportunities for those whose professions were primarily scholastic. In 1842, 10% of the professors of the French lyceums were still of "noble" origin, but by 1877 there were none. In 1868 in France there were graduates of the second stage (bacheliers) hardly more than in the 1830s, but many of them more was able to enter banking, commerce, become successful journalists, and after 1870 - professional politicians "*
Moreover, when faced with the Red Revolution, even fairly democratically minded radicals tended to become rhetorical, torn between their sincere sympathy for "the people" and their attachment to property and money. Unlike the liberal bourgeoisie, they did not change their position. They just wobbled, though never too far to the right.
As for the working poor, they lacked the organization, maturity, leadership, perhaps most of all in the historical environment, to provide a political alternative. Strong enough to make the prospect of social revolution realistic and threatening, it was too weak to do more than scare its enemies. Her forces were disproportionately effective in how concentrated they were in the hungry masses in the politically most sensitive places, more so and especially in the capital cities. This masked some significant weaknesses: firstly, their numerical deficit - they were not always the majority even in cities, which themselves usually included only a moderate minority of the population - and secondly, their political and ideological immaturity. The most politically conscious and active layers among them consisted of pre-industrial artisans (to use the term in modern sense words for traveling salesmen, artisans, skilled manual workers in non-mechanized workshops, etc.). Rooted in social revolutionary, even socialist and communist ideologies in Jacobin-sans-culottes France, their aims were for the most part much more modest in Germany, as the communist printer Stefan Born discovered in Berlin. The poor and unskilled in the cities and outside of England, the mining and industrial proletariat as a whole hardly had any developed political ideology until then. B industrial zone northern France even republicanism made scarcely any progress before the very end of the Second Republic. In 1848, Lille and Roubaix were exclusively occupied with their own economic problems and directed their revolts not against kings and the bourgeoisie, but even against more starving Belgian immigrant workers.
Where the urban plebeians, or even more rarely the new proletarians, have been influenced by Jacobin, socialist or democratic-republican ideology - as in Vienna - by student activists, they have become a political force, at least as rebels. (Their participation in the elections was still insignificant and unpredictable, in contrast to the impoverished rural laborers, who, as in Saxony or England, were extremely radical). Paradoxically, outside of Paris, in Jacobin France, this was a rare occurrence, given that in Germany, Marx's Communist League provided the elements of a national network for the far left. Outside this circle of influence, the working poor were politically insignificant.
Of course, we must not underestimate the potential of even such a young and immature force as the "proletariat" of 1848, still hardly aware of itself as a class. In one sense, its revolutionary potential was indeed greater than it should have been later. The inflexible generation of poverty and crisis before 1848 was not inclined to believe that capitalism could, and still less should, create decent living conditions for it, or even that it would survive at all. The short lifespan and weakness of the working class, still formed from the mass of the working poor, independent craftsmen and small traders, prevented only their economic demands from being put forward. Political requirements, without which no revolution, even in the purest sense, social, is made, were included among others. The goal, popular in 1848, of a "democratic and social republic", was both social and political. The experience of the working class introduced into it, at least in France, the new institutional elements based on trade union activities and joint action tactics have not yet created any new and powerful elements, such as the Soviets in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, organization, ideology and leadership were, unfortunately, underdeveloped. Even the most elementary form, the trade union, was limited to a few hundred members, at most a few thousand members. Quite often, even societies of skilled pioneers of the trade union movement first appeared only during the revolution - printers in Germany, manufacturers and sellers of hats in France. Organized socialists and communists were even smaller in number: their number did not exceed a few dozen, at best a few hundred people. So far, only 1848 was the first revolution in which socialists, or more likely communists - for the period before 1848, socialism was basically an apolitical movement to create cooperative utopias - came to the fore from the very beginning. It was the year not only of Kossuth, A. Ledru-Rollin* (1807-1874) and Mazzini, but also of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Louis Blanc (1811-1882)' and L. O. Blanqui*” (1805- 1881) (a stern rebel who only appears when a short time revolution, he was released from prison), Bakunin and even Proudhon. But what did socialism mean to its supporters other than as a name for a conscious working class with its own aspirations for a society with a different form? social structure and based on the overthrow of capitalism? Even his enemy was not clearly identified. There was a lot of talk about the "working class" or even about the "proletariat", but during the revolution itself nothing was said about "capitalism".
And indeed, what were the political prospects of even the socialist working class? Karl Marx himself did not believe that the proletarian revolution was on the agenda. Even in France, "the Parisian proletariat was not yet in a position to rise above the bourgeois republic except in ideas in imagination.""His immediate, recognized needs did not lead him to the desire to achieve the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this task was beyond his strength." The most that could be achieved was a bourgeois republic which would reveal the real nature of the future struggle - the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - and in turn would unite the remnants of the middle strata of the population with the workers "as their position became more unbearable and their antagonism to bourgeoisie became sharper"'* In the first case, it would be a democratic republic, in the second - a transition from an incomplete bourgeois to a proletarian-people's revolution, and ultimately, a proletarian dictatorship or, in the words of Blanca, which reflected the temporary closeness of the two great revolutionaries immediately after the revolution of 1848, the "permanent revolution". But, unlike Lenin in 1917, Marx did not think of replacing the bourgeois revolution with a proletarian revolution until the defeat of 1848; and in the extent to which he formulated a perspective comparable to Lenin's (including "support for the revolution by the new edition of peasant war”, as Engels put it), he did not follow it for long. In western and central Europe there should not have been a second edition of 1848. The working class, he soon recognized, would have to follow a different path.
Thus the revolution of 1848 rose and broke like a great wave, leaving little behind it but peace and promise. They "should have been" bourgeois revolutions, but the bourgeoisie moved away from them. They could reinforce each other under French leadership, preventing or delaying the restoration of the old rulers and keeping the Russian tsar at bay. But the French bourgeoisie preferred social stability at home to rewards and the danger of once again being 1a grande nation (great nation), and, for similar reasons, the moderate leaders of the revolution hesitated to call for French intervention. No other social force was powerful enough to give them consistency and stimulus, except in special occasions fight for national independence against the politically dominant power, and even that failed because the national movements were isolated and in any case too weak to resist military force old authorities. Great and prominent figures 1848, which had played their roles of heroes on the stage of Europe for several months, disappeared forever - with the exception of Garibaldi, who was to know an even more glorious moment in his life twelve years later. Kossuth and Mazzini lived out their long lives in exile, making little direct contribution to the victory of autonomy and unification in their countries, though they earned a firm place in their national pantheons. Ledru-Rollin and Raspail never again experienced another moment of prominence as the Second Republic, and the eloquent professors of the Frankfurt Parliament returned to their sciences and audiences. Of the fiery exiles of the 1850s who hatched great plans and set up rival governments in exile in the fog of London, nothing has survived but the writings of the most isolated and atypical Marx and Engels.
Yet 1848 was not just a short historical episode without consequences. If the changes he achieved were neither what the revolutionaries expected, nor even easily identifiable within the boundaries political regimes, laws and institutions, they were nonetheless profound. It marked the end, at least in Western Europe, of the academies, of monarchies that believed that their peoples (other than the discontented middle classes) accepted, even welcomed, the rule of God-given dynasties over hierarchically divided societies, sanctioned by traditional religion, belief in patriarchal rights and duties of social and economic leaders. Thus the poet Grillparzer, himself by no means a revolutionary, wrote ironically, perhaps about Metternich:
The well-known Don Quixote lies here, forgetting about fame.
He was boastful and vain,
Everything was done in reverse.
Sacredly believing in his lies, fools in years known, from simple and honest people - now he lives with her in paradise "*
Henceforth, the forces of conservatism, privilege and wealth had to defend themselves in other ways. Even the obscure and ignorant peasants of Southern Italy in the great spring of 1848 surrendered to the victorious absolutism, just as they had done 50 years earlier. When they went to seize land, they rarely voiced the hostility of the "constitution".
The defenders of the social order had to study the politics of the people.
This was the major innovation brought about by the revolutions of 1848. Even the most over-reactionary Prussian Junkers discovered during this year that they needed a newspaper capable of influencing "public opinion" - a concept in itself associated with liberalism and incompatible with traditional hierarchy. The most intelligent of the Prussian arch-reactionaries of 1848, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), was later to demonstrate his clear understanding of the nature of the politics of bourgeois society and his skill in carrying out its methods. However, the most significant political innovations of this kind took place in France.
There, the defeat of the June uprising of the working class gave rise to a powerful "party of order" capable of defeating the social revolution, but not gaining much support from the masses or even from many conservatives, who, by their defense of "order", did not want to find themselves in the camp of the moderate republicanism that was now in power. The people were still too ready to fight to permit the restriction of elections: until 1850 there was not a significant part of the "vile majority" - that is, about a third in France, about V, in radical Paris - excluded from the vote. But if in 1848 the French did not choose a moderate candidate for the new President of the Republic, they also did not choose a radical. (There was no monarchist candidate.) The winner, with an overwhelming majority - 5.5 out of 7.4 million voted - was Louis Napoleon, the great emperor's nephew. Although he turned out to be a remarkably astute politician, when he arrived in France at the end of September, Louis Napoleon seemed to have nothing but a prestigious name and financial support devoted English mistress. He clearly wasn't social revolutionary, but he was also not a conservative; in fact, his patrons benefited somewhat from his youthful interest in Saint-Simonism (see below) and supposed sympathy for the poor. But basically he won because the peasants voted unanimously for him under the slogan: "Enough of taxes, down with the rich, down with the Republic, long live the emperor"; in other words, as Marx noted, against the republic of the rich, the working people voted for him, because in their eyes he meant "the overthrow of Cavaignac" [who suppressed June uprising], the elimination of bourgeois republicanism, the abolition of the June victory "*"*; petty bourgeoisie - because he did not seem to be a supporter of the big bourgeoisie.
The election of Louis Napoleon showed that even the democracy of universal suffrage, that institution associated with revolution, was similar to the defense of social order. Even the vast majority of the dissatisfied were not inclined to choose rulers who aspired to "the overthrow of society." The broader lessons of this kind of activity were not immediately learned; as for Louis Napoleon, he himself soon abolished the Republic and declared himself Emperor, though never forgetting the political advantages of the well-organized universal suffrage which he reintroduced. He was to be the first modern head of state to govern not merely by force of arms, but by a certain sort of demagoguery and public relations, which are much easier to operate from the top of the state than from anywhere else. His experience demonstrated not only that the "social order" could present itself as a force capable of appealing to supporters of the "left", but also that in any country or century in which citizens were ready to take part in politics, he must do it. The revolutions of 1848 made it clear that the middle classes, liberalism, political democracy, nationalism, even the working class, were henceforth permanent features of the political landscape. The defeat of revolutions might temporarily remove them from view, but when they reappeared they would determine the actions of even those statesmen who had the least sympathy for them.
1848 ("Spring of the Nations") - several uprisings in different parts of Europe against monarchical rule. Some revolutionaries were guided by republican ideas, but many more by economic causes. The revolution began with the overthrow of Louis Philippe and then spread to Italy, the Austrian Empire and Germany. The Frankfurt parliament for a short time of its existence put forward the idea of political unification of Germany. One of the revolutions failed to consolidate its success, most of them were brutally suppressed after a few months.
1848 was marked by a pandemic awakening of national consciousness in different countries. European peoples rebelled against the regime of autocracy established in 1815. It is no coincidence that these events went down in history as the Spring of Nations. The Power of Awakening Passed from Country to Country chain reaction, starting in Italy and France, the revolution spread to Germany, and in March 1848 broke out in the capital of the Austrian Empire, Vienna.
This loud wave also reached Ukraine in the form of the National Liberation Movement. The impetus was the proclamation by Emperor Franz I of the constitution, which provided for the granting of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and the convocation of parliament to citizens.
Western Ukraine responded with a loud call of the heart, actively fighting for its nationality, history, and culture. How many times rotten, trampled, subjugated Ukraine fought for its freedom with the blood of its devoted children! When the Austrian authorities realized that the outbreak had reached a critical point and that these golden lands with working people could slip out of their paws, the government, in an effort to prevent the participation of the peasantry in the revolution, went to the abolition of the serf system. This was already a small victory, although the order did not apply to Bukovina and he was able to call on people to fight, to further defend their rights and freedom. And in August 1848, under the pressure of peasant unrest, the law extended to the land. According to the decision of the parliament, the peasants were obliged to pay the landowners for their release two-thirds of the redemption payments, and the state paid the rest. In Transcarpathia, during the revolution of 1848, corvee was also formally abolished, but in reality it existed for another 5 years.
The Ukrainians realized that the imperial power had weakened and, of course, remembered culture. This is how the first printed Ukrainian-language newspaper Zorya Halytska appeared in Lviv.
The Galician Poles were the first to feel the taste of democracy, which appeared as a desired miracle, and took advantage of it by organizing their hearth in Lvov - the Central Rada of Nations, which proclaimed its goal to revive the ideas of the Great Principality of Lithuania, a kind of Lithuanian-Russian-Polish Commonwealth and the equality of cultural rights of the Poles and Ukrainian. Could this become reality? As we see, leafing through the pages of history, no. It just so happened that those who dominated the weak cannot recognize their significance and equality - most Poles continued to assert that Galician Ukrainian had nothing to do with the Ukrainian Dnieper region, that they were only a branch of the Polish people, and the Ukrainian language was a dialect of Polish. Undoubtedly, they were right in what.
A country that had been under the rule of another for so many years, the laws that forbade Ukrainians from being had an effect, and Polonization could not be avoided. The answer to the actions of the Poles was the creation by the Ukrainian intelligentsia on May 2, 1848 in Lvov of the Main Russian Rada, which should defend the interests of the Ukrainian population of Galicia. The program of the council substantiated the belonging of the Ukrainian population of Galicia to a single Ukrainian people that called for a national awakening, vigorous activity to improve their position within the Austrian Empire.
There was no unity in the council on the question of the future of Galicia. A small part sought to create a Slavic federation, some dreamed of an independent Ukrainian state with a center in Kyiv. But the bulk, out of fear of the unknown, focused on the minimum - the division of Galicia into Western (for the Poles) and Eastern (which would belong to the Rusyns, as they continued to call themselves).
The main Russian council led not only the political, but also the cultural and educational movement in Galicia. She was the initiator of the creation of the "Dawn of Galicia", and in 1848 she was able to approve the creation of the "Galician-Russian matitsa", which should be in charge of organizing the publication of textbooks in the Ukrainian language. Later, at the end of the year, under pressure from the national forces, the Department of Ukrainian Language and Literature was opened at Lviv University, headed by Yakov Golovatsky.
Along with the Russian Council, the Central Council of the Peoples also acted, which in its actions relied on the Polish population of Galicia and the Ukrainian elite was Polonized, which, through the privileges granted to it, did not want to separate from the layers Polish population. She formed her own organization, the Russian Cathedral, which became the so-called opposition, which defended the idea of Poland's independence.
It's all over, as always. Since none of the parties wanted to concede, the national confrontation in the region escalated and threatened to develop into an armed struggle between representatives of the Ukrainian and Polish peoples. It became especially threatening when the pro-Polish forces began to create their own guards, and the pro-Ukrainian - units of archers.
The confrontation was beneficial to the Austrian authorities to maintain dominance over the lands. And although in early June the Slavic Congress was held in Prague, which decided on the equality of all nationalities and religions and the creation of a common Ukrainian-Polish guard, but under the influence of the aggravation of revolutionary events, it ceased to exist. The dispute between nationalities could not find a solution to the problem, since neither side wanted to give in: the Poles still considered themselves superior to the Ukrainians, and the latter, in turn, did not recognize this.
