"THAT STRANGE SPRING WHEN REVOLT SPRANG OUT OF THE GROUND" BEGAN WHEN THE GOVERNMENT LOST CONTROL OF THE ARMY AND FLED TO VERSAILLES, AND "THE PARIS COMMUNE"* STEPPED INTO THE BREACH
*The name harks back to the popular government that saved the French Revolution against all odds.
So began the civil war between "Versaillais" and "Communards"...
...that...
- Preserved the republic by reassuring the privileged.
- Eliminated the Parisian City Hall until 1977.
- Ended resistance to capitalism for a generation.
- Immeasurably deepened social antagonism.
- Led to the sinister monument that looms over the city, the church of the Sacré Cœur.
# # #
The mainstream tries to ignore (et seq.) that civil war
but its memory continues...
Painting of Louise Michel, the emblematic heroine of La Commune, at union headquarters in the blue-collar part of the 18th
Le Cri du peuple, story by Jean Vautrin, illustration by Jacques Tardi (Castermann), 2021
Graphic novel
Commemoration of the 150th anniversary on the site where Communards fought their last battle
Bloody Week (2021)
 |
| Historians against the Commune (2024) |
Challenges to the current watering-down
Those authors are outside the university circuit:
Michèle Audin is a mathematician,
Emmanuel Brandely a high-school teacher.
Discussion at a progressive bookstore on May 23 (2024), a date chosen to call up Bloody Week (May 22-28, 1871) in a neighborhood where desperate fighting took place.
# # #
The time has come
"to consider the human beings that were these cadavers
with respect, to not let them disappear again —
which means looking at who they were
and what they did."
-- Michèle Audin, Bloody Week, p.9
