05/28/2026
On this day, 28 May 1871, the Paris commune, widely considered the most significant early working class uprising for socialism, was crushed when the capitalist government massacred thousands of working class men, women, and children to regain control of city.
As an example of the brutality of the repression, historian Ernest Belfort Bax recounted the brutal killing of libertarian socialist bookbinder, Eugene Varlin, who "was seized in the Rue Lafayette and dragged to the Buttes Montmartre, his hands tied behind his back and subjected to a hail of blows, insults, and sabre-cuts, for a whole hour. Long before arriving at his destination one side of his face was a mass of blood, the eye torn from the socket. The last part of the way he was carried, unable to walk. Arrived at the Rue des Rosiers the wretches dashed his brains out with the butt ends of their muskets. Varlin was a young workman who had devoted all his leisure time to study, a clever organiser, and one of the best and most active members of the Commune."
Bax described by the following day: "The Commune was now dead. Order reigned in Paris. Smoking ruins, corpses, and desolation were all that met the eye. One sole of the Seine ran red with blood. The gutters ran blood. The roads were red with blood, as though the soil had been London clay. Clouds of flesh-flies rose from the heaps of corpses; flocks of crows hovered over the charnel house. Paris now subjugated, the assassins could organise the slaughter at their leisure."
The massacres continued until June 3, by which time between 10 and 30,000 communards had been killed
Learn more about the commune in this compilation of writings by participants: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/voices-of-the-paris-commune
Pictured: a painting of the repression by Maximilien Luce