Revolution as Martyrdom

Abstract

For all its early promise, and despite the heroism of its supporters, the Paris Commune, in the end, was a failure. But the Bolsheviks valued it precisely for that reason; the mistakes it made could be avoided in their own efforts to carry out a successful revolution. Moreover, the martyrdom the Communards achieved by fighting their principal enemy, the Versaillais, so valiantly caused the Bolsheviks to venerate them for their personal qualities, even as they recognized their political and ideological naiveté. And while cognizant that with the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 the French Revolutionary Tradition ended, the Bolsheviks considered the Commune a precursor of the proletarian revolutions they expected in the twentieth century not only in Russia but in the more economically advanced countries of Western and Central Europe.