The Revolution That Failed

Chapter 13 describes the lessons Marx and Engels, as well as contemporaneous Russian revolutionaries such as Herzen, Kropotkin, and Bakunin, drew from the failure of the Revolution of 1848 in France. Among the Bolsheviks, some ascribed it exclusively to the treachery of the bourgeoisie, which aligned with the proletariat when the revolution began in February, only to betray it in the June Days, using military force to end whatever political power the proletariat still possessed. Ignored after 1917 in the Bolshevik fêtes and other commemorations intended to mythologize the October Revolution, the 1848 Revolution was especially disheartening because, unlike earlier French revolutions, in which the proletariat was either non-existent or too small to have any appreciable effect, in 1848 it actually held power, however briefly. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks considered the Revolution of 1848 in France worthy of inclusion in the country’s revolutionary tradition.