Alright,is there any single way that could be taken to save the Paris Commune-and eventually-"Commune-ized" France,in the end?
Alright,is there any single way that could be taken to save the Paris Commune-and eventually-"Commune-ized" France,in the end?
Well,does taking out few Officers can solve the problem?It wasn't small and it wasn't localized to just Paris, there were other uprisings in the large industrialized cities, the Parisians were just the most successful and longest-lived and the capital, therefore they are the most famous.
In regards to the OP the classic critique by the Left is that the commune didn't go far enough, especially in regards to immediately seizing resources within the city such as cannon, or money from the banks to buy/trade for supplies, but I'm not entirely sure that'd be enough. I think you need to both go back earlier to the very beginning of the uprising and have the communards take a bolder approach to the situation. IMHO for the commune to survive a good start would be Blanqui and his supporters to be successful in convincing the Central Committee/National Guard to chase the bourgeois national govt & army under Thiers to Versailles and destroy them instead of holing up in Paris. Successfully destroying Thiers govt, which the commune could have done at that point as Thiers had only some ~40,000 soldiers to his cause, most of them of dubious loyalty, compared to the 400,000 National Guard the commune had.
Well,does taking out few Officers can solve the problem?
An additional problem is that, since there were no forceful leaders, the commune at its highest level was ruled by committee. That in and of itself wouldn't be too big of a problem, however it was an ad-hoc mish-mash committee. One of the unresolved questions coming out of this was whom the National Guards ultimately reported to & took commands from - their own Central Committee, or the newly elected Executive Commission.
As well the commissioners weren't representatives in a parliamentary sense, but more like delegates, perhaps best akin to corporate executives, and they could and were subject to immediate recalls. This meant that as things started turning against the commune the leadership overturned quickly several times, which only made things worse for the most part.
Also, while the commissioners were theoretically the ultimate go-to on all matters militarily and legally, both in an executive and legislative sense, a lot of the actual leg work was done by very small local organizations in each quarter of the city, some of them often worked at cross-purposes as there was no clearly defined areas of responsibility or a chain of command in any real sense.
It's really hard to judge the commune due to the short amount of time it existed and the constraints it faced, you can't really compare it to any other socialist government; even at the height of the Russian Civil War the Soviets didn't face the same existential odds that the communards did from day one. With that being said though, IMHO, the commune's problem was a lack of charismatic leadership. The Soviets had Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, etc., as well as brilliant commanders like Frunze, Tukhachevsky, etc. The communards had Dabrowski... and that's about it as far as bold, decisive leaders. If the commune had had more time leadership would have naturally emerged from the ranks, but IOTL they simply didn't have that luxury.
Getting the National Guards to march on Versailles in force in late March immediately at the beginning of the uprising and decapitating the bourgeois national government instead of the half-hearted and ill-conceived attempt they made IOTL nearly two weeks later could very likely be the difference between life and death for the commune.
So..pretty much..cant happen?
If the commune had had more time leadership would have naturally emerged from the ranks, but IOTL they simply didn't have that luxury.
Getting the National Guards to march on Versailles in force in late March immediately at the beginning of the uprising and decapitating the bourgeois national government instead of the half-hearted and ill-conceived attempt they made IOTL nearly two weeks later could very likely be the difference between life and death for the commune.
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Eh, they never broke out, but at the same time they prevented the Prussians from every storming the city.
They didn't prevent the Prussians from storming the city; the Prussians never bothered to try. Why suffer needless casualties when they could get what they wanted just by waiting a little while?