Before Lenin: How the Paris Commune Foreshadowed the Communist Century

Though it only lasted a few months during the French Revolution, the Paris Commune served as an early blueprint for 20th-century communist regimes.

Passersby look at the remains of the Hotel de Ville after communists burned it during the Paris Commune of 1871. Public Domain

History doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it does contain cycles, patterns, foreshadowings, and echoes. The short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 can be seen as an echo of the extreme tendencies of the French Revolution and a foreshadowing of the militantly atheist communist states that arose in the 20th century.

Out of War

The doomed Paris Commune—one of the most radical experiments in European politics—emerged as a drama within a drama. The larger drama was the Franco-Prussian War, French Emperor Napoleon III’s ill-advised attempt to check the growing power of Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who sought to unify the various German states into one nation. Overconfident French generals told Napoleon that the newly reorganized French army was superior to the German forces—particularly because of its new breech-loading rifle and an early form of the machine gun. A sure victory over Prussia would boost Napoleon’s slumping popularity, the generals told him.

In reality, the French found themselves woefully unprepared to face the onslaught of a better-trained, rigidly organized, and numerically superior Prussian military. The war lasted less than a year, culminating in France’s humiliating defeat at the Battle of Sedan, in which Napoleon III himself was captured by the Prussians. Napoleon was forced to accept peace terms in May 1871 that were disastrous for France and marked the collapse of France’s Second Empire: France surrendered the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs—with German troops occupying France until the payment was complete. Moreover, Germany emerged from the war as a single unified state and a major player in European politics, just as Bismarck had planned.