Defeat of the German bourgeois revolution. November revolution in Germany: driving forces, periodization, character. Two phases of the revolution

There were three main stages in the German Revolution. The first, very short one, began on November 3, 1918, with an uprising of sailors in Kiel and ended a week later with the creation of a new government - the Council of People's Delegates. The second stage continued until the January battles of 1919 in Berlin. The third stage of the revolution ended in April-May 1919 with the defeat of the spring uprisings of the proletariat and the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

The revolution was, first of all, a spontaneous uprising of the masses, mortally tired of war and deprivation. No one specially prepared it, moreover, no one even expected such events. The Social Democrats, both the moderates of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the radicals of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (NSPD), acted on the spur of the moment, without a clear political goal. On the night of November 7-8, a member of the USPD K. Eisner proclaimed a socialist republic in Munich, and in Berlin the Social Democrats demanded the immediate abdication of the Kaiser. On the morning of November 9, almost all industrial enterprises in Berlin stopped working. The workers and soldiers who filled the streets flocked to the city center. The last Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, arbitrarily announced the abdication of Wilhelm II and transferred power to the SPD leader F. Ebert. Hating revolution "like a mortal sin," Ebert hoped to preserve the monarchy in order to prevent chaos and the threat of civil war.

But under the pressure of the masses, this was no longer possible. On November 9, in the afternoon, in front of the people gathered at the Reichstag building, another Social Democratic leader, F. Scheidemann, solemnly proclaimed a republic. At the same time, from the balcony of the Berlin Castle, the leader of the left-wing Spartak Union group, K. Liebknecht, announced the creation of a socialist republic.

All socialist groups, except for the extreme left, acted under the slogan of preventing a fratricidal civil war. Therefore, Ebert suggested that the USPD form a common government, which should include Liebknecht. But both Liebknecht and G. Ledebur (leader of the radical wing of the USPD) refused to do so.

On November 10, 1918, a six-person Council of People's Delegates was created, which relied on the support of the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets. It included three representatives from the SPD (F. Ebert, F. Scheidemann, O. Landsberg) and the NSDPG (G. Haase, V. Ditman, E. Barth). The new government, which owned all the power, immediately faced a number of difficult problems. First of all, Germany was threatened by the real danger of famine, chaos and disintegration into separate states.

A feature of the German revolution was that the main struggle flared up not between the right and left forces, which should be expected logically, but between the moderate left and the extreme left, who created the Communist Party of Germany on December 30, 1918 - January 1, 1919 ( KKE). The spirit of revolutionary utopianism reigned at the founding congress of the party. The German communists were frankly guided by Russian Bolshevism. And the revolution had practically no enemies at that moment, the rightists were so demoralized. Already in the evening of November 10, the new chief of staff of the army operating on the Western Front, General W. Gröner, called Ebert and offered to help the troops to fight against the Bolshevik danger. Help was readily accepted.

The Council of People's Delegates immediately began all those transformations that the people longed for. An eight-hour working day, unemployment benefits and sickness insurance were introduced, and mandatory reinstatement of demobilized front-line soldiers was guaranteed. The country proclaimed universal and equal suffrage for men and women from the age of twenty, and guaranteed all political rights and freedoms. A commission was even created for the socialization of certain branches of industry; it was headed by well-known Marxist theorists of centrist orientation K. Kautsky and R. Hilferding.

The commitment of the leaders of the SPD to democracy caused them to view the Council of People's Delegate as a temporary body of power, needed only for a period of revolutionary upheaval. The issue of power and the form of the state was to be decided by the democratically elected National Assembly. This option was supported by the leadership of the majority of Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets, which considered themselves as temporary organizations. The slogan of the Spartacists "All power to the Soviets!" did not receive support from the All-German Congress of Soviets held in Berlin on December 16-20, at which only 10 out of 489 delegates spoke in favor of transferring power to the Soviets. The congress, by its resolution, called elections to the National Assembly for January 1919. But just a few days later, the coalition of social democratic parties fell apart. In protest against the fact that Ebert called on regular front-line units to pacify the sailors of the People's Marine Division who rebelled because of non-payment of salaries, the ministers - "independents" withdrew from the Council of People's Deputies. They were replaced in the government by the right-wing Social Democrats R. Wissel and G. Noske. The euphoric mood of the November days gave way to confrontation within the socialist labor movement.

The German workers considered the creation of the Council of People's Deputies as their coming to power in Germany. However, there were no changes in the state apparatus, in the army and in the economy. The new state was based on the old foundation. It was led by the same people as under the Kaiser. So, even six months after the November Revolution, out of 470 Prussian rural districts, only one was ruled by a Social Democrat, the rest of the landrats had held their posts since the time of the empire. The lack of real improvement in the situation in the country caused general discontent. Unrest and strikes began in the Ruhr region and Upper Silesia, in Saxony and Thuringia, in Berlin, Bremen and Braunschweig. The workers demanded not only higher wages and better food supplies, but also the socialization of enterprises, the preservation of workers' councils, and even the abolition of the capitalist system.

When members of the USPD withdrew from the Council of People's Delegate, their supporters also began to leave administrative posts everywhere. But the head of the Berlin police, E. Eichhorn, refused to do this and declared that he was not subordinate to the government, but to the Berlin executive committee of the Soviets. On January 4, Eichhorn was removed from his post. The leaders of the left wing of the USPD, the Berlin revolutionary heads of enterprises and the communists, who created the Revolutionary Committee, spoke in his defense. Committee members called for the overthrow of the Ebert government and announced that they were taking power into their own hands. But this was an unfounded statement, since already on January 6 it became clear that there was no one to lead active hostilities. The masses were left without leaders. Ebert turned to the High Command for help, but it also did not have a sufficient number of reliable military formations. However, back in December 1918, at the call of General Trainer, demobilized officers began to create freikorps (volunteer corps) from front-line soldiers who had become unaccustomed to civilian life, from patriotic students; even all sorts of adventurers and vagabonds were accepted into the corps. Freikor became the main pillar of the government, which offered G. Noske to head military operations. He immediately agreed, stating that he was not afraid of responsibility, because anyway, someone "should become a bloody dog."

The fighting in Berlin began on January 10, 1919, and the troops captured part of the strongholds of the rebels. The next day, a three-thousand-strong column of Freikorians entered the capital, led by Noske himself. A completely unprepared performance was crushed. More than 100 rebels were killed, while the Freikorps lost only 13 people. Among the dead were also leaders of the KKE K. Liebknecht and R. Luxembourg. First, they were taken to the headquarters of the Guards Division, which was located in the Eden Hotel. After a brief interrogation, they were ordered to send those arrested to the Moabit prison. When they left the hotel, they were severely beaten. On the way, Liebknecht was offered, allegedly due to a breakdown of the motor, to continue on foot. A few steps later, the captain accompanying the prisoner shot Liebknecht in the back of the head. The deceased was taken to the morgue as "the corpse of an unknown person." Luxembourg was shot dead in the car. Her body, wrapped in a blanket and entangled with wire, was thrown into the Landwehr Canal and found only at the end of May. This massacre deprived the KPD of leaders. The workers were outraged by the government's tacit approval of the assassination.

Following Berlin, workers' uprisings in Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Mülheim, Düsseldorf and Halle were brutally suppressed. But on March 3, a general strike began in Berlin, which escalated into fierce street fighting two days later. Noske, on whose orders the 42,000th Freikorps entered the capital, ordered that everyone who was detained with a weapon in their hands be shot on the spot. Up to 1500 workers were killed in the clashes, the Freikorians lost 75 people. In April-May government troops defeated the workers in Braunschweig, Magdeburg, Dresden and Leipzig.

At this stage, the workers and leaders of the communists made an attempt to turn the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. On April 13, 1919, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich, headed by the communist O. Levine. The government, which consisted of members of the KKE and the USPD, nationalized the banks, introduced workers' control in production and in the distribution of products. The formation of the Red Guard began. But the adventurism of the anarchists, led by G. Landauer, who also entered the leadership of the republic, and the executions of hostages turned the population of Bavaria away from left-wing politicians. It is no coincidence that it was Bavaria that became the stronghold of the right-wing forces and the birthplace of Nazism. In early May, the Bavarian Soviet Republic fell under the blow of a 20,000-strong army sent from Prussia, and in Munich the Red Terror of the previous days was replaced by the White Terror. In April 1919, a powerful strike movement, in which more than 400,000 workers took part, engulfed the entire Ruhr. The government responded not only by imposing a state of siege, but also by a tactical maneuver. The Second All-German Congress of Soviets, which met at that time and was led by the reformists, recommended the establishment of a "Soviet system" in Germany. In fact, it was proposed to accept a slightly modified version of the agreement on labor cooperation concluded in the early days of the November Revolution (1918) between the largest industrialists and the Social Democratic trade unions. Under this agreement, the trade unions recognized the sole right to protect the interests of workers, provided for the conclusion of collective agreements, as well as arbitration of controversial issues; factory committees were created at the enterprises.

The so-called Spartacist uprising in Berlin in January 1919 marked a decisive turn in the development of the revolution. The fighting in the capital not only deepened the split of the working class, but also accelerated the formation of the Freikorps, which later became the main focus of the right-wing threat. The brutal suppression of the uprising led both to the radicalization of the mood of some of the workers, and to dissatisfaction with the course of the government, even among some of its former supporters. After the January uprising, right-wing and left-wing extremism intensifies and hopes for a peaceful social-democratic reorganization of society fade away. That parliamentary-democratic republic, which the leaders of the SPD aspired to, would receive the support of the masses only when democracy would not stop at the gates of factories and barracks, at the doors of administrative institutions and universities, but decisively break the old structures. But since this did not happen, the question is still being discussed in German historiography - was there a revolution in Germany in 1918?

In Germany, events took place that radically changed its political system: an authoritarian monarchy was replaced by a democratic republic. But it must be admitted that in terms of a radical break with the past and a radical change in the socio-economic conditions of the revolution as such, there was no revolution.

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1. Introduction: goal, objectives, problem ……………………………………………….3

2.1. The rise of a revolutionary situation. Historical tasks of the revolution. The beginning of the revolution. ……………………………………………………………….5

2.2. Group "Spartacus". …………………………………………………………...nine

2.3. Progress, the main stages of the November Revolution of 1918. ……………………ten

2.4. Trends in the development of the revolution. Mobilization of counter-revolutionary forces………………………………………………………………………………. 17

2.5. Results of the November Revolution. ……………………………………………23

3. Adoption of the Weimar Constitution……………………………………………….. 24

4. Conclusion. …………………………………………………………………...26

5. List of references. …………………………………………………………..27

Introduction.

The 20th century was, is and will be one of the most tragic in the long history of mankind. Two World Wars, social revolutions in various states claimed tens of millions of lives and caused destruction in industry and agriculture. Social revolutions took place in many countries of the world. The workers and peasantry achieved the greatest success in satisfying their vital needs at the beginning of our century through revolutions and through democratic elections.

The obvious impact of the Great October Socialist Revolution that took place in Russia in 1917 on world history was reflected in the revolutionary upsurge that swept Europe, and after it the whole world. The coming to power of the Bolsheviks in Russia influenced the working people of many countries, including the working people of Germany.

And so, I chose the November Revolution of the year as the topic of my essay.

The events considered and analyzed in the essay are very interesting, since it was they that gave impetus to the development of revolutionary movements of workers and peasants in the struggle for their rights, and forced the ruling circles to reconsider the methods of governing the countries of Europe, and in particular Germany. It can be said that the result, including the November Revolution, was the current working conditions of the working people and the political system in many European countries.

It was interesting for me to understand the situations that lead to events similar to those that took place in Germany in 1999 and give impulses to the development of social and political situations in the world. This, in fact, was the goal and task that I set for myself when starting to study this topic.

The problem of the struggle of workers for their social and political rights is currently relevant throughout the world, since the improvement of these processes continues even now, as evidenced by the protests of workers that take place periodically in various countries.

The rise of a revolutionary situation. Historical tasks of the revolution. The beginning of the revolution.

The revolutionary situation in Germany began to take shape already in the course of the World War. The revolutionary events in Russia, and especially the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, paid great attention to the development of the class struggle in Germany. Since the April strike of 1917. in Germany, a mass movement unfolded, which continued for years. The largest was the January strike of 1918, which engulfed more than 50 cities, about one and a half million workers took part in the struggle. In Germany, following the example of Russia, Soviets began to be created. The January strike testified to the entry of the labor movement in Germany into a new phase, to the crisis of the Burgfrieden policy. By the beginning of November 1918. revolutionary upsurge reached its highest point.

The growth of revolutionary sentiments led to an aggravation of disagreements in the ruling circles regarding the methods of “pacifying the rear” and achieving an “honorable peace”. The militant pan-German-Prussian group demanded increased political repression; The liberal-monarchist elements considered it necessary to make some concessions to the masses and try to end the war in a politico-diplomatic way. However, only after the heavy defeats of the German troops in the spring-summer offensive battles of 1918. the need for a strategic reorientation became apparent both to a large section of the German bourgeoisie and to the high command.

Since the famine did not stop, the so-called hunger riots, demonstrations against war and famine, broke out in various cities of Germany. In September, rumors about a catastrophe at the front penetrated the rear. Demonstrations began in the cities to end the war. The popular masses demanded that the rulers be held accountable for the years of disasters, the death of millions of people, for the lack of rights of the people.

The situation in the country became more and more tense.

Panic seized the bourgeoisie. The share price of military factories fell by 50%. Command and government were lost. wrote: "We are on the eve of the revolution."

The meeting of the Kaiser, the leaders of the command and the government decided to carry out a “revolution from above” in order to avoid a revolution. September 30 WilhelmII issued a decree on the so-called parliamentarization. The responsibility of the government to the Reichstag was established. On October 2, Prince Max of Baden, who was known as a liberal and pacifist, was appointed chancellor. In the Reichstag, he was supported by the Catholic Center Party, the SPD and the Progressives. Representatives of these parties entered the government, including the Social Democrats Scheidemann and Bauer. In a policy statement, the government promised to reform the suffrage in Prussia, slightly change the rules of martial law and censorship, make peace on the basis of Wilson's "14 points"1 with some reservations, which were to save Germany Alsace and Lorraine and the conquests in the East.

1 US President Wilson's "14 Points" were put forward in January 1918 in opposition to the Soviet proposals for a just democratic peace and represented the program of an imperialist, predatory peace.

Essays on the history of Germany. ,

The main task of the government was to prevent a revolution, save the monarchy and the army, and strengthen the power of the bourgeoisie and landlords. The right-wing leaders of the SPD willingly and diligently helped the bourgeoisie in this.

In October 1918 powerful demonstrations of workers forced the governments of a number of German states to democratize the electoral system. The conditions of martial law were relaxed.

Describing the situation in Germany in October 1918, he wrote: “A political crisis broke out in Germany. The panicky confusion of both the government and all the exploiting classes as a whole was revealed to the entire people. The hopelessness of the military situation and the absence of any support from the working masses for the ruling classes were immediately revealed. This crisis means either the beginning of the revolution, or, in any case, that its inevitability and proximity have now become visible to the masses with their own eyes. one

On October 4, the government of Max Baden sent a note through the Swiss government to Wilson asking for a truce "in order to avoid further shedding of blood ..."

Max Badensky hoped that Wilson would treat Germany softer than England or France. He thought of using the contradictions between them and at the same time hinted at the possibility of a joint struggle against Soviet Russia and the solution of controversial issues at its expense. To make a good impression on the Entente, the government of Max of Baden on November 5 terminated diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.

1 , Works, vol. 28, p. 82.

Essays on the history of Germany. , Kovalev I. V

Meanwhile, at the end of October, the military command decided to hold a “demonstration of force”. An order was given to the entire fleet to go to sea and attack the enemy. If the fleet had achieved victory, then Germany's position in the peace negotiations would have been strengthened. If it had been sunk, then the sailors would have died with it. It was an adventure.

Having figured out that they were being sent to their deaths, the sailors refused to obey the order. On November 3, an uprising of sailors broke out in Kiel. From that moment a revolution began in Germany.

Essays on the history of Germany. ,

Group "Spartacus".

The Spartak Group is an organization of the German left created by

in 1916

In the context of the revolution, the All-German Conference of the Spartak group, held on October 7, 1918, played an important role. The following demands were put forward at the conference: the release of all political prisoners, the immediate lifting of the state of siege, the abolition of the law “on auxiliary service”, the elimination of war loans, the alienation of all bank capital, metallurgical plants and mining, a significant reduction in the working day and the establishment of a minimum wage, the alienation of all large and medium landed property and the transfer of management of production to delegates of agricultural workers and small peasants, the complete democratization of the army, the liquidation of individual states and dynasties.

Spartak decided to continue the fight until the victory of the socialist revolution. This program played a great mobilizing role.

Essays on the history of Germany. ,

Course, the main events of the November Revolution of 1918.

So, the revolution began on November 3, 1918. armed uprising of sailors in Kiel and went through three phases: from the beginning of November until the creation of the Ebert-Haase government (November 10), the second phase endedIby the Congress of Soviets (mid-December 1918), the third - by the January uprising of 1919.1

Only the Soviets, headed by Spartacists, left-wing radicals, or left-wing independents, attempted to break the old state apparatus and limit the power of the monopolies.

The Soviets acted more vigorously at the enterprises. In many cases, they succeeded in improving the conditions of the workers, achieving higher wages, shortening the working day, and establishing control over production. Thus, the workers' council at the Leinaverke chemical enterprise acted as an authorized body of power. Several other enterprises in Central Germany followed suit. However, the revolutionary actions of these Soviets were limited to local boundaries and could not consolidate or ensure for a long time the effectiveness of the measures taken.

Thus, although the Soviets arose in Germany as organs of the masses rising to the struggle and had much in common in form with the Soviets in Russia, they did not become organs of the revolution because of the absence of a revolutionary proletarian party and the predominant influence of the reformists. This was eloquently evidenced by the composition I Congress of Soviets and its decisions. Of the 489 delegates with a decisive vote, more than half belonged to the SPD, 90 to the USPD (of which 10 were Spartacists, and K. Liebknecht and R. Luxembourg did not receive mandates). The reformist majority of the congress voted to transfer all legislative and executive power to the SNU.

Recent history. gg. Textbook N 72.M., “Higher School”, 1974

The Central Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, elected at the congress, was given only the vague right of "parliamentary supervision" and discussion of the most important laws of the government. The discussion on the main question: who should hold power - the Soviets or the National Assembly - ended with the decision to convene the National Constituent Assembly, which essentially predetermined the establishment of a bourgeois-parliamentary system in Germany.

The Congress of Soviets was a milestone in the development of the November Revolution. The correlation of class forces that had taken shape by the second half of December testified to the emerging preponderance of the counter-revolutionary forces.

On December 24-25, the generals, relying on "volunteer" troops, made an attempt to disarm and liquidate the people's naval division - an important stronghold of the revolutionary forces in Berlin. As a result of the intervention of the workers, this action was not successful. Moreover, under the pressure of the mass protests that swept across Germany against the sortie of the counter-revolution, the government bloc of Scheidemanns and centrists collapsed: the leaders of the independents, in an effort to maintain their influence among the masses, announced their withdrawal from the SNU.

Recent history. gg. Textbook N 72.M., “Higher School”, 1974

Results of the November Revolution.

The November Revolution was bourgeois-democratic in character. So was the Weimar constitution. Recognition of freedom of parties, speech, press, the right to work and labor protection testified to the new position that the proletariat and democracy in general began to win in public life, in world history. The undoubted achievements of the German working class were the legalization of the 8-hour working day, the right to conclude collective agreements with entrepreneurs, the introduction of unemployment benefits, and the legislative recognition of women's suffrage.

Despite the bourgeois-democratic character, the revolution of 1918. in Germany was carried out largely by proletarian means, about as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, strikes and demonstrations clearly testify.

Batyr K. History of state and law of foreign countries.

Adoption of the Weimar Constitution.

The Weimar Republic is the common name for the democratic republic that existed in Germany from the adoption of the Weimar constitution until the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933.

According to the Weimar Constitution, the division of Germany into autonomous states - lands was preserved, which was a victory for the separatist sentiments of the provincial bourgeois Junker circles and clerics1.

1 An adherent of the domination of the church in the political and cultural life of the state

Legislative power belonged to the Reichstag. In the lands, their own governments were formed, the competence of which did not include issues of foreign policy relations, colonial affairs, monetary affairs, mail, telegraph, telephone, emigration and immigration, customs. These issues were resolved only by the general imperial government. All problems related to legislation on civil and criminal law, the press, unions, meetings, the labor question, railways, etc., were also subject to consideration only by the German government. In addition to the lower house, there was also the upper (imperial council), consisting of representatives of the governments of the lands that were part of the republic.

The Weimar constitution, within the framework of bourgeois-democratic institutions, guaranteed the dominance of basic democratic principles in the country. The proclamation of universal suffrage confirmed this dominance.

The introduction in Germany of a bourgeois-democratic constitution was the greatest achievement of the revolution and an important step forward in comparison with Kaiser's Germany.

The World History. "Results of the First World War". ,

Conclusion.

Thus, during the work, several reasons and motives were found out, due to which such crisis situations occur in many countries of the world. On the example of Germany, one can say that the problems, as such, were associated with food shortages, class inequality, and loss of life. But, it does not always happen that revolutions affect the public life of people. Sometimes a revolution, in particular the November Revolution in Germany, concerns the political structure of the state in which it takes place. So, as a result of the events that took place, Germany was proclaimed a socialist republic, which undoubtedly affected the lifestyle of the inhabitants of this country.

Events of this kind are then needed to facilitate the activities of people, change their lifestyle, achieve something better, even if not by peaceful means.

The revolution in Germany showed that people are ready to achieve their goals in any way for the sake of a better life, that the state is sometimes not fair to its subjects, and the best option here would be to solve all problems peacefully so that innocent people do not suffer.

Bibliography.

1. The World History. "Results of the First World War". ,

2. Essays on the history of Germany. ,

3. Recent history. gg. Textbook H72.M., “Higher School”, 1974.

4. Recent history. Lecture course. Col. Auth. Ed. .

5. Batyr K. History of state and law of foreign countries

By 1848, a revolutionary situation had fully developed in Germany, and the explosion of the revolution became inevitable. Its main issues were: the national unification of Germany, the liberation of the peasants from feudal duties and orders, the destruction of the remnants of feudalism in the country.

With the spread of news of the overthrow of the monarchy in France, the workers, artisans and peasants of the Duchy of Baden were the first to enter the revolutionary struggle. On behalf of the crowded assembly of workers in the city of Mannheim, representatives of the Baden petty-bourgeois democracy submitted a petition to the chamber of the duchy on February 27, in which the main political demands were formulated: the arming of the people, unlimited freedom of the press, a trial by jury and the immediate convocation of an all-German parliament. In the capital of Baden, the city of Karlsruhe, deputations from the population of cities and rural areas of the entire duchy began to arrive in order to support the Mannheim demands. The political tension in Baden grew with each passing day. Duke Leopold hurried to approve the demands of the people proposed by the chamber. On March 9, the most reactionary ministers were removed from the Baden government and ministers of a moderately liberal bourgeois trend were appointed in their place.

Following Baden, the revolutionary movement embraced Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony. Under the pressure of the popular masses, local monarchs, saving their crowns, hastened to call representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie to power, who agreed with the monarchs and the nobility.

The easy and quick victory of the liberal bourgeoisie of the Western and Southwestern states was the result of the friendly and militant action of the people, especially the peasantry, who sought the abolition of feudal and semi-feudal relations in the countryside. The peasants were satisfied with minor concessions, and the revolution in the southwestern lands of Germany began to wane.

Revolution of 1848 in Prussia.

The main events of the revolution of 1848 in Germany unfolded in Prussia, where the participation of the proletariat in the revolutionary struggle was stronger than in the southwestern lands of Germany. By the time the revolutionary uprisings began in Germany, the liberal bourgeois opposition in Prussia had reached its greatest influence in its Rhineland, the most economically developed province. The "Union of Communists" also operated illegally here.

In an effort to prevent mass popular demonstrations in Cologne, the city municipality, under the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie, developed a moderate petition to the Prussian government, which met only the interests of the wealthy strata. However, on March 3, when the municipality was about to send a petition to Berlin, the streets of Cologne were crowded with a demonstration of 5,000 workers and artisans. The demonstrators, on behalf of the people, presented to the burgomaster for transfer to the commissioner of the Prussian government in the Rhine Province demands revolutionary-democratic in nature: the transfer of legislative and executive power to the people, the establishment of universal suffrage, the replacement of a standing army by the general arming of the people, the introduction of freedom of assembly, ensuring the protection of labor and satisfaction of "human needs for all".

At the time when the transfer of popular demands to the city council was taking place, detachments of soldiers and police, not without the knowledge of the municipal authorities, began to disperse the demonstrators, arresting three speakers who spoke before them, members of the Union of Communists. The Cologne demonstration on March 3 gave impetus to mass demonstrations of workers and artisans from all the major industrial centers of the Rhineland.

provinces: Aachen, Düsseldorf, Elberfeld, Koblenz.

The growing popular movement also embraced Berlin. The royal government, confident in the support of the bourgeoisie, from March 13 began to use weapons against workers' demonstrations. On March 16 alone, 20 workers were killed and 150 wounded.

The executions of workers provoked a new demonstration of workers on March 17, which was joined by many burghers. In a petition addressed to the king, the demonstrators demanded the immediate withdrawal of troops from Berlin, the creation of a people's armed militia, the abolition of censorship, and the convening of the United Landtag. By this time, Berlin had become aware of the uprising in Vienna and Metternich's flight. On March 18, the King of Prussia hastened to promulgate two decrees: on the abolition of censorship and on the convening of the United Diet on April 2. However, this did not satisfy the people, who gathered in the palace square and demanded the withdrawal of troops from Berlin. Then the royal guard was moved against him. The first skirmishes soon turned into a barricade fight. At the alarm call, the ranks of the fighters were replenished all night, armed barricade battles continued on the morning of the next day, March 19th. The heroically fighting rebels, in whose ranks there were many workers of Berlin, by the morning of March 19 held most of the capital in their hands. In some areas of the battles, disobedience of the soldiers of the royal army to officers was observed. In the middle of the day, the king ordered the troops to leave the city. In bloody barricade battles, the people won, having suffered great losses: about 400 killed and many wounded.

The barricade battles of March 18-19 in Berlin were the apogee of the 1848 revolution in Germany. The first stage of the revolution ended with the defeat of extreme reaction, led by the king. The whole country was engulfed in the flames of uprisings of workers, peasants, and the broadest sections of the working people.

In order to continue the fight against the people, the king considered it necessary to unite the efforts of the reactionaries with the liberals and agreed to a temporary compromise with them. On March 19, Friedrich Wilhelm IV gave the order to arm the burgher detachments. At the same time, in fear of the unfolding mass revolutionary movement, the king issued an appeal "To my people and the German nation", in which he hypocritically swore allegiance to the people. On March 22, the king issued a decree promising to submit to the United Diet a draft of a new, more democratic electoral law, establish freedom of the individual, associations and assembly, introduce universal arming of the people, establish the responsibility of ministers, jury trials, independence of judges, destroy the police power of the landlords and remove from nobility patrimonial jurisdiction. But these were demagogic promises.

At the same time, to the sound of royal appeals and decrees, reactionary circles were preparing for a counteroffensive against the people who had won on March 18. The liberal bourgeoisie, having received the opportunity to create its own burgher guard, headed for an agreement with the government. The burgher guards were clearly intended to suppress the uprisings of the workers.

On March 29, the king called to power the leaders of the Rhine bourgeois moderate liberals - the banker Camphausen and the manufacturer Hansemann. The Camphausen government entered into an agreement with feudal-monarchist circles. It submitted for approval by the United Diet a law convening a Prussian Constituent Assembly on the basis of two-stage elections and proved its adherence to the Hohenzollern crown by sending Prussian troops to Posen to bloodily suppress the Polish national liberation movement that had unfolded there in April.

According to Engels' definition, with the coming to power of the leaders of bourgeois liberalism in Prussia, nothing changed, except for those who held ministerial posts, since Camphausen and Hansemann were most concerned with strengthening the shattered foundations of power. It was during the period when King Friedrich Wilhelm IV cowardly maneuvered and made all sorts of promises and promises to the insurgent people that the Camphausen government played the role of a "dynasty shield" against the actions of the Berlin workers.

Class struggle in Germany in April - June 1848

In evaluating the results of the March Revolution in Prussia, the following should be borne in mind. If the French workers, after the February barricade battles of 1848 in Paris, despite the tricks and demagoguery of the Provisional Bourgeois Government, quickly outlived their illusions and faith in "universal brotherhood", then the German workers, who had not gone through the preliminary "school of distrust" in the bourgeoisie, after the March barricade battles in their mass did not allow the thought that the bourgeoisie, who had come out with them against the royal guard, on the second day after the victory, would use it for their own selfish class purposes and even soon come to an agreement with the monarchy. This belief in "universal brotherhood" led to the fact that the German working class allowed itself to be completely disarmed after the March victory, and the bourgeoisie created its own armed guards.

And yet, even before the revolution, the process of the growth of the class consciousness of the German workers, although slowly, took place simultaneously with the industrial revolution, which embraced all new regions of Germany. In the course of the revolution, such an important form of class struggle as the mass political strike was born. The strike struggle in the period from March to June 1848 covered Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and other industrial centers of Germany. In the course of the struggle, the first workers' associations and trade unions were born, most of them local.

The aggravation of the class struggle and the disengagement of the opposing forces that took place in the course of it was especially clearly revealed in the solution of the central question of the revolution - the national unification of Germany. However, the popular masses lacked the understanding that a consistent solution of this main issue is possible only under conditions of a victorious revolution on a national scale, that the revolution in individual German states will end in defeat without the support of the popular masses of other parts of Germany. In addition, the demand for the creation of a unified German state was drowned in a mass of partial local

demands and often receded into the background before the demands for the resignation of some minister hated by the people.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the initiator of the convocation of the all-German parliament was the meeting of representatives of the class assemblies of the German states, convened on March 31 and continued its work until April 3, 1848, in Frankfurt am Main, which was called the Pre-Parliament. By an overwhelming majority, the Pre-Parliament rejected the proposal of a small group of democrats to proclaim a republic in Germany and decided to hold elections for the National Assembly in agreement with the German sovereigns and the Federal Sejm, which meant a clear retreat of the liberals before the noble-monarchist counter-revolution.

The betrayal of the bourgeois liberals, who took the course of restoring the powerless Union Seim, led to a new upsurge in the struggle of the popular masses. In April 1848, the republican movement swept through all the southwestern lands of Germany. It was also observed in Saxony. The republican movement reached its greatest extent in the Duchy of Baden. However, the armed uprising that began there on April 13 was defeated, since the Republicans did not secure the support of workers and artisans, and did not have a clear program of action. They did not connect the slogan of the struggle for a republic with economic demands, primarily with the issue of seizing and distributing landed estates to the peasants, although the latter constituted the majority of the population of Baden and the success of the uprising depended on their speech. The leaders of the uprising even condemned the destruction of the landowners' castles. Finally, the Republicans of Baden did not establish any close connection with the revolutionary movement in other parts of Germany.

The Baden republican uprising coincided in time with the Polish national liberation movement and the peasant movement in Silesia and Posen. F. Engels wrote that “... since the Krakow uprising of 1846, the struggle for the independence of Poland has simultaneously been

the struggle of agrarian democracy...”20, i.e., the struggle of the peasants for land. Under such conditions, the Polish landowners preferred an agreement with the foreign oppressors of their people, which was taken advantage of by the Prussian government of Camphausen, who sent troops to pacify the Poles.

Thus, under the protection of the bourgeois-liberal Prussian government of Camphausen, military Junker circles cracked down on the democratic and national liberation movement in Prussia. How far the conciliatory policy of the Prussian bourgeois liberals has gone with reaction is shown by the activity of the Prussian Constituent Assembly, convened on May 22, 1848, in Berlin on the basis of a universal but two-stage electoral system.

The bourgeois liberals, who had a majority in the Assembly, did not reject the draft constitution, which provided for the creation of a Prussian constitutional monarchy with two chambers and an electoral system with a high property qualification. They started a fruitless discussion on individual articles of the draft constitution, clearly leaning towards an agreement with the crown.

The groveling of the bourgeois-liberal majority of the Assembly before the king aroused the indignation of the workers of Berlin, who demanded the arming of the people. On June 14, spontaneous clashes between workers and artisans with the police and burgher guards began on the streets of Berlin. By the evening of June 14, the workers approached the Berlin arsenal, where they were fired upon by the burgher guards. Two workers were killed and several injured. The indignant workers at night with a decisive onslaught broke the resistance of the police and the burghers, broke into the arsenal (the arsenal) and began to arm themselves. But the royal troops, who soon arrived at the arsenal, disarmed and pushed the workers back.

The assault on the arsenal hastened the fall of the liberal bourgeois ministry of Camphausen, which resigned on June 20; he was briefly replaced by the Hansemann government, which became a bridge to the mi-

20 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 5. S. 353.

the ministry of the Prince of Prussia. Marx and Engels wrote about this: “The aristocratic party has grown strong enough to throw its patron overboard. Herr Camphausen sowed reaction in the spirit of the big bourgeoisie, and reaped it in the spirit of the feudal party.

The main reason for the defeat of mass popular uprisings in the spring and summer of 1848 was their disunity. The first revolutionary uprisings in Southwest Germany began at the end of February, and in Berlin the decisive events unfolded in mid-March. The new April republican movement in southern Germany, as well as the Polish national liberation movement, as well as the uprisings in Saxony, took place when the Berlin uprising had already ended. Finally, the storming of the arsenal by the Berlin workers in June took place already in the conditions of a decline in revolutionary uprisings outside Berlin. This showed the great weakness of the German Revolution of 1848. There was no all-German revolutionary center in the country that could direct the struggle of the masses. Powerful popular uprisings broke up into countless private class clashes, which did not lead to decisive results. None of the many popular uprisings in Germany in 1848 ended completely victorious. Even the most successful of them - the Berlin uprising on March 18, 1848 "... ended not with the overthrow of the royal power, but with the concessions of the king who retained his power ..."22. Meanwhile, the counter-revolutionary forces, having recovered from their first defeats, found reliable support in the course of the revolution in the Prussian royal government. In the second, downward stage of the revolution, this government played the role of its executioner.

And yet, although the revolutionary movement that unfolded did not have a single all-German leading center, its successes at the initial stage were the result of the active struggle of the people

21 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 5. S. 100.

22 Lenin V. I. Poly. coll. op. T. 11. S. 227.

masses, including the peasantry. At the beginning of March 1848, peasant uprisings engulfed all the southwestern German states, from where the flames of the peasant struggle spread to the lands located east of the Rhine. F. Engels wrote that the peasants, especially those lands where "... the system of latifundia and the forced transformation of the population into landless laborers associated with it, were most developed, attacked castles, burned the already concluded acts of redemption and forced the landowners to renounce in writing any requirements of duties in the future.

In the revolution of 1848 in Germany, where the question of national unification came to the fore, the solution of the agrarian question, as one of the central questions of the bourgeois revolution, occupied an important place. The peasants fought for complete and gratuitous release from all duties. However, the Constituent Assembly in Prussia on July 11, 1848, began to discuss the bill. According to the bill, only those rights of the landowner that arose from the serfdom of the peasants and patrimonial jurisdiction were canceled without redemption; the heaviest duties, primarily corvee, were preserved and subject to redemption. "The preservation of feudal rights, their sanctioning under the guise of (illusory) redemption - such is the result of the German revolution of 1848," Marx wrote about this bill 24. However, this bill was never adopted by the Prussian Constituent Assembly; in the end, it limited itself to the fact that in October 1848 it abolished, without redemption, only the landlord's right to hunt.

The strategy and tactics of Marx and Engels in the revolution.

Activities of the Union of Communists. "Labor Brotherhood". Marx and Engels, who deeply and comprehensively studied the development of the world revolutionary process, sought to equip the working class as an active driving force of the revolution with programmatic and tactical guidelines. At the end of March 1848 Marx

23 Marx K-, Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. S. 254-255.

24 Marx K-, Engels F. Op. 2nd ed.

and Engels wrote an important document - "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany", which was the basis of the program, strategy and tactics of the members of the "Union of Communists" in the revolution of 1848 in Germany. The solution of the main task of the revolution - the elimination of the political fragmentation of the country and the formation in a revolutionary way, "from below", of a single democratic German republic - was organically combined in the "Demands" with another important task: the liberation of the peasantry from all feudal duties by abolishing large land ownership - the economic basis of the rule of the reactionary nobility .

Considering the victorious bourgeois-democratic revolution, in which the proletariat is fighting against the "enemies of its enemies," as a prologue to the proletarian revolution, Marx and Engels also outlined a number of transitional measures in the Demands: the conversion of feudal estates into state ownership and the organization of large-scale agricultural production on these lands. production, the nationalization of mines, mines, all means of transport, state employment for all workers and care for those unable to work, universal free public education and other requirements.

Marx and Engels considered it their duty to contribute practically to the implementation of the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany". To this end, at the beginning of April 1848, they arrived from Paris with a stopover in Mainz to Cologne, the center of the most developed region of Germany. Simultaneously with Marx and Engels, by decision of the Union of Communists, many members of the Union returned from exile to their homeland, to Germany. They organized new communities of the "Union" here, began to work in proletarian societies. In order to unite the forces participating in the revolution, members of the "Union of Communists" joined the ranks of petty-bourgeois-democratic organizations, which then enjoyed influence among the workers. Carrying out tactics and policies in the class interests of the proletariat, taking into account the balance of class forces that had developed in Germany in the revolution of 1848, Marx and Engels thought

and about the interests of the whole nation as a whole, the consequence of which was their entry into the Cologne Democratic Society. “When we returned to Germany in the spring of 1848,” Engels later recalled, “we joined the Democratic Party because that was the only possible way to attract the attention of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of this party, but still its wing.”25 The condition for such cooperation was the preservation of the proletarian organization and its own political line.

The proletarian organization that maintained this line was the Cologne Workers' Union, which arose on April 13, 1848 and was then led by Gottschalk, a member of the Communist League, very popular among the working environment (as a doctor, he served the proletarian quarters of Cologne). Confessing the views of "true socialists," Gottschalk attracted the attention of workers who were not sophisticated in politics with his biting, arch-revolutionary, but essentially sectarian phrase. In reality, however, Gottschalk and his comrades-in-arms opposed the participation of workers in the political struggle, and considered the participation of workers in parliamentary activity fruitless. Gottschalk opposed the participation of workers in the elections to the National Assembly, for which Marx and Engels criticized him. Gottschalk oriented the workers towards the conquest of the "domination of the working class", bypassing the struggle for bourgeois-democratic transformations. These tactics of Gottschalk, calling for the struggle for a "Workers' Republic", in fact turned into rebellion, and not into revolutionary activity: such tactics led the working class to isolation from its natural allies - the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie.

In June 1848, Gottschalk broke with the "Union of Communists", the comrade-in-arms of Marx and Engels, Josef Moll, who oriented the workers to the political struggle as the vanguard and driving force of the democratic revolution, was elected chairman of the Cologne "Workers' Union".

The conductor of the strategy, tactics and policy of the "Union of Communists" was

25 Marx K-, Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 36. S. 504.

the daily New Rhine Gazette, published from 1 June 1848 as the "organ of democracy". It reflected the interests of broad democratic circles united in societies that operated in many German cities. The Novaya Reinskaya Gazeta, led by Marx, Engels and other activists in the League of Communists, was an example of the theory of scientific communism in action. On its pages it vividly and skillfully illuminated revolutionary practice, proclaimed slogans, pointed out to the people, and above all to the proletariat, the path of decisive action. Influencing democratic societies, the newspaper at the same time tactically and politically directed the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat towards the implementation of the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany”.

One of the proletarian organizations was the Central Committee of the Berlin Workers, set up in the spring of 1848 by the compositor Stefan Born. On May 25, the committee began to publish its own newspaper, The People, which oriented the workers towards the struggle to improve their economic situation. S. Born considered it possible to achieve this goal by creating "corporations" in various industries with the participation of workers and capitalists - organizations of workers' associations operating with the support of a democratic state. Believing that such organizations could peacefully oust capitalism, Born shared the views of utopian socialists. However, reality itself prompted Born and his associates to pay some attention to the political tasks of the working class, which was reflected in the popularization of the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" by the newspaper Narod.

On the initiative of S. Born, in August 1848, a Workers' Congress was held in Berlin, at which 40 workers' organizations were represented. About 100 workers' unions soon joined the "Workers' Brotherhood" formed by the congress (on the basis of the Central Committee of the Workers of Berlin). After some time, the Central Committee of the "Workers' Brotherhood" chose the city of Leipzig as its permanent seat.

The activities of the "Workers' Brotherhood" and its leader S. Born were contradictory and largely unprincipled; Born mixed in his program the ideas of communism, petty-bourgeois socialism and economism. Nevertheless, Marx and Engels, while sharply criticizing the opportunist essence of S. Born's views, at the same time took into account his contribution to the development of the German labor movement, his role as an organizer and influential leader of the proletarian society, the importance of the "Workers' Brotherhood" in the formation and development of a nationwide solidarity of the German proletariat.

Frankfurt Parliament and its activities.

The All-German National Assembly, elected on the basis of a two-stage electoral system, opened its meetings in Frankfurt am Main on May 18, 1848. The Assembly was supposed to proclaim the sovereignty of the German people, develop an all-German constitution, and create an executive power enjoying the confidence of the people.

For the Frankfurt Assembly, such tasks proved beyond their strength. For the most part, it consisted of liberals and very moderate petty-bourgeois democrats, capable only of grandiloquent speeches. Among the 831 deputies there was only one peasant, four artisans and not a single worker. The overwhelming majority of the deputies were bourgeois and bourgeois intellectuals. The meeting was attended by 154 professors and writers, 364 lawyers, 57 merchants and middle officials. There were only 85 nobles among the deputies, but the influence of this extreme right-wing group also extended to some of the other deputies.

The first question discussed by the National Assembly was the question of the organization of a central all-German government. The debate on this issue, which dragged on until June 28, ended with the election of a temporary imperial ruler - the Austrian prince Johann, who was reputed to be a liberal. The imperial ruler was not responsible to the National Assembly. The board was carried out through the Ministers appointed by the Assembly, responsible to the Parliament. In cannon fire, bell ringing and triple

"Hurrah", proclaimed by the President of the National Assembly von Gagern in honor of the new chosen one, found expression in the joy of the bourgeoisie over, as they hoped, a peacefully ended revolution.

The left deputies protested and in an appeal to the people noted that the decision of the Assembly to coordinate the measures taken by the central government with the governments of the states made this power illusory and "completely destroyed the strength of a united free Germany." The left deputies did not dare to take any independent decisive action.

A political struggle unfolded in the country on the question of the ways of unifying Germany. The German proletariat, led by Marx and Engels, resolutely advocated the revolutionary path of unification "from below", for the creation of a united and indivisible Germany in the form of a democratic centralized republic. However, the Union of Communists was a small organization, the petty-bourgeois democrats were inconsistent in their tactics. The deputies of the democratic left group of the Frankfurt Parliament submitted a proposal for the creation of a federal republic in Germany on the model of bourgeois-republican Switzerland. This proposal was criticized by Marx and Engels.

The bourgeoisie and part of the nobility were supporters of the unification of Germany "from above" under the leadership of one of the two largest German states - Austria or Prussia. A possible path of unification under the hegemony of Austria began to be called "Great German", under the hegemony of Prussia, but without the inclusion of Austria - "Little German".

Although the Austrian Archduke Johann was temporarily appointed head of "united" Germany, the bourgeois-liberal majority of the Frankfurt Parliament clearly gravitated towards the constitutional-monarchical unification of Germany "from above", giving preference to Prussia. But “... this was done reluctantly,” Engels wrote; - the bourgeois chose Prussia as the lesser evil, because Austria did not allow them (small and medium German states. - I. G.) to their markets and because

Prussia, in comparison with Austria, nevertheless had ... to some extent a bourgeois character. The main thing was that in no German state by the beginning of the revolution did industry reach at least approximately the same level of development as in Prussia. And the more the Customs Union, created even before the revolution on the initiative of Prussia, expanded, drawing small states into this internal market, the more “... the rising bourgeoisie of these states got used to looking at Prussia as their economic, and in the future, political outpost” 27. And “if in Berlin the Hegelians philosophically substantiated the calling of Prussia to become the head of Germany ...”, then many deputies of the Frankfurt Parliament defended the same, formulating their proposals for the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia.

The activities of the Frankfurt Parliament took place in an atmosphere of growing counter-revolution. Parliament created one after another commissions on the abolition of feudal duties in the countryside, the abolition of customs duties that fettered internal trade and other obstacles to the economic development of the country; they endlessly discussed these issues, but they never made real decisions on them. The workers were worried about the recognition of their right to work by law, but such a law was not adopted by the Frankfurt Parliament.

The position of the deputies of the Frankfurt Parliament in relation to the national movements was clearly reactionary. They sanctioned the refusal of the Prussian government to grant the Poznań Poles national autonomy; moreover, the parliament declared Posen an integral part of a united Germany. The Frankfurt parliament approved the bloody suppression by Austrian troops in June 1848 of a democratic uprising in Prague, which caused deep indignation not only in German, but also in European democratic circles.

26 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. S. 437.

The height of the cowardice and indecisiveness of the deputies of the National Assembly, which was sitting in Frankfurt, when "... it pronounced a death sentence on itself and the so-called central authority (Germany. - I. G.) created by it" (Engels) 29, was the attitude of parliament to the fate of Schleswig and Holstein. These two duchies, inhabited mainly by Germans and in personal union with Denmark, broke away from Denmark as a result of an uprising from the first days of the revolution and turned to the German states for help. German democratic circles unanimously came out in support of Schleswig and Holstein. The Prussian government, taking advantage of the patriotic upsurge in the country and seeking to divert the attention of the revolutionary circles from the further development of the revolution, began a war with Denmark. The war ended with a quick victory, Schleswig and Holstein were free from Danish rule. However, England, Russia and France, not wanting to strengthen Germany, prompted Prussia to urgently sign a truce with Denmark. On August 26, 1848, a Prussian-Danish agreement was signed in the Swedish city of Malmö on the withdrawal of Prussian troops from both duchies.

The liberal bourgeois, as well as the nobles sitting in parliament, feared that the rupture of the armistice agreement would provoke an armed action by the coalition of England, Russia and France against Germany; they were also afraid of a revolutionary war of the masses, in which the reactionary regimes in the large and small German states might perish. Therefore, by a majority of votes, they approved the truce concluded in Malmö.

As soon as this act became known, early in the morning of September 18, the population of Frankfurt moved in unison towards the Cathedral of St. Paul, where Parliament met, demanding a break in the truce and threatening to disperse Parliament. The liberal majority of the parliament was consistent in its decision: it called on the Prussian and Austrian troops located in Frankfurt to disperse the people who surrounded the parliament.

29 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 5. S. 438.

The Frankfurt popular uprising and the massacre committed by the Prussian troops against the rebels at the call of parliament testified that in September the German liberal bourgeoisie, like the republican bourgeoisie in France in June 1848, made a sharp turn to the right and finally turned into an open enemy of the revolution.

The onset of the counter-revolution.

After the defeat of the Frankfurt popular uprising in Germany, an unstoppable offensive of reaction began. Prussia was one of the largest German states, and the success of the revolution in her would mean, to a large extent, the success of the revolution in the whole of Germany. The enemies of the revolution understood this. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was impatiently waiting for the results of the uprising that began on October 6 in Vienna. As soon as it became known in Berlin that the Habsburg Monarchy had drowned the uprising in blood (the number of victims reached 5 thousand), immediately, on November 2, the reactionary government of the Duke of Brandenburg was formed, and the ardent reactionary O. Manteuffel was appointed to the post of Minister of the Interior. On November 8, 1848, Manteuffel issued a decree on the transfer of the Prussian Constituent Assembly to the provincial city of Brandenburg, away from the Berlin working masses who followed the activities of the assembly. A state of siege was introduced in Berlin.

The bourgeois-liberal majority of the Prussian National Assembly expelled from Berlin meekly obeyed the king's decree, apparently calling on the people to "passive resistance" in the form of refusing to pay taxes. By the tactics of "passive resistance" the bourgeois liberals tried to prevent a new rise of the revolutionary wave. However, workers, artisans, students began to arm themselves without permission, preparing for an uprising. The Central Committee of the Workers' Brotherhood recommended that the local committees take the lead in the action of the workers. In Erfurt on November 23 and 24 armed clashes between workers and police and troops took place. Spontaneous actions of workers also took place in other German cities. The village was also restless. The Neue Rheinische Gazette then wrote: "It only takes the call of the National Assembly for the ferment to turn into open struggle." But the Constituent Assembly continued to be inactive, which prompted the Prussian government to further counter-revolutionary offensive. On December 5, by decree of the king, the Prussian National Assembly was dissolved; On December 6, 1848, a new constitution "granted" by the king was promulgated, popularly called Manteuffel's.

Not daring to abolish the freedoms immediately won by the March Revolution - the press, unions, meetings, etc., the Manteuffel constitution gave the king the right to cancel at his discretion any legislative acts adopted by the Landtag. Step by step, the counter-revolution advanced: on May 30, 1849, a new three-class electoral system was introduced in the Prussian Landtag, which was subsequently consolidated by a new constitution adopted in 1850 (instead of the “granted” one on December 6, 1848). Under the new law, all voters were divided into three classes in accordance with the amount of taxes they paid; each class accounted for the same part (one third) of the entire amount of the taxation of the country. The first class consisted of a small number of the largest taxpayers; the second class included average taxpayers - there were many more of them, but the total amount of tax they paid was also equal to one third of the tax; finally, the third class included all the other, much more numerous, taxpayers. Each of these classes elected an equal number of electors, who in turn elected the deputies of the lower (second) chamber of the Landtag by open voting. This electoral system was based on the property qualification. Thus, for example, in 1849 there were 3 voters of the second class and 18 voters of the third class for one first-class voter.

In Prussia, as in a number of other German states, there existed, besides

In addition, the upper (first) chamber of the Landtag is the chamber of gentlemen. It consisted of representatives of the highest landed aristocracy, who, as in the Middle Ages, often sat in the House of Lords by right of inheritance. This chamber also included representatives from the higher clergy and large money magnates.

Last fights.

The suppression of the revolution in Prussia made the Prussian Junker government not only the executioner of revolutionary actions in other German states, but also the strangler of the popular movement for the national unity of the country.

The Frankfurt parliamentarians, having dealt with the Frankfurt popular uprising in September 1848 with the help of Prussian troops, pretended not to notice the rapid growth of reaction in Prussia, and continued to discuss the endless drafts of an all-German constitution. On March 28, 1849, the Frankfurt parliament finally solemnly approved a constitution declaring Germany a constitutional empire with a hereditary monarch at its head and a bicameral Reichstag, the lower house of which was elected for three years. The constitution declared the introduction of democratic freedoms: inviolability of the individual, freedom of association, assembly, speech, press. The constitution provided for the abolition of noble class privileges, as well as the abolition of the remaining feudal duties (personal duties - free of charge, while duties related to land were subject to redemption). At the same time, the constitution retained all the German states with the dynasties that reigned in them, but provided for some limitation of the rights of monarchs.

The federation of kingdoms and principalities, tailored in this way, with a tendency towards the “Little Germanic” version of the unification of Germany, did not satisfy not only the monarchs of the southwestern German states, but also the Prussian king Frederick William IV. He was not averse to entrusting himself with the crown of the emperor, offered to him by the Frankfurt Assembly, but he was repelled by the thought of receiving it from the hands of an organ created by the revolution (albeit one that had lost the remnants of revolutionary spirit).

Although the imperial constitution, rejected by the king of Prussia, the monarchs and governments of Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, did not meet the revolutionary aspirations of the German people, under those conditions it “... was still the most liberal constitution in all of Germany. Its greatest shortcoming was, noted Engels, that it was just a piece of paper, having no power behind it to put its provisions into practice. These speeches were led by the same Republicans who had previously opposed the very principle of constitutional monarchy. Such was the sad logic of the development of the German Revolution of 1848-1849.

The working people of Dresden were the first to speak. The Russian revolutionary M.A. Bakunin also took part in the street battles that began on May 4. Once again, the inconsistency in the timing of speeches had a detrimental effect. On May 9, Prussian troops brutally crushed the Dresden uprising, and on May 10 and 11, the flames of popular uprisings engulfed Elberfeld, Barmen, Düsseldorf and other centers of the Rhine Province. Only three days later the working people of the Palatinate and Baden entered the struggle, where 20,000 soldiers went over to the side of the insurgent people. The reactionary governments in Baden and the Palatinate were overthrown. And at this decisive time, as elsewhere in the course of the revolution, the Prussian troops came to the aid of the reaction.

On June 12, the army of the Prussian Crown Prince Wilhelm invaded Baden and the Palatinate and began punitive actions. The fighting was hard-fought; The atrocities of the counter-revolution pushed many petty-bourgeois democrats into the camp of the insurgents—precisely those who, until recently in the Frankfurt Parliament, stood for "order." It was they who basically led the armed struggle in Baden for an imperial constitution, although the main fighting force of the insurgents was the workers. But

30 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 8. S. 96.

the indecisiveness and vacillation of the petty-bourgeois democrats, and especially their pernicious defensive tactics, led the rebels to defeat. The bloody Baden battles continued for more than a month. And again, the 60,000-strong Prussian army did its dirty deed. On June 21, in an unequal battle at Waghusel, the rebels were defeated, having suffered heavy casualties. The surviving rebels, retreating with battles, went to Switzerland. For another month, the rebels, besieged in the fortress of Rastatt, heroically resisted.

What did the Frankfurt parliamentarians do when there were stubborn battles in defense of their offspring - the imperial constitution? They continued to make endless speeches in the Cathedral of St. Paul, drafted appeals to the people, but they did not lift a finger, so that if not to stand at the head of the insurgent people, then at least give them all possible support. Instead, the "worthy gentlemen" of the Frankfurt Parliament "...reached the point where, with their opposition, they downright strangled all the insurrectionary movements that were being prepared" (Engels) 31.

The same causes that had caused the failure of the earlier revolutionary battles—the cowardice and betrayal of the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the indecisiveness of the petty-bourgeois democrats and the weakness of the proletariat, on the other—led to the defeat of the revolution in the last, Baden, battles against reaction in 1849.

The fate of the Frankfurt Parliament - the "talking room" - was a foregone conclusion. In the days of the highest rise of the popular movement in defense of the imperial constitution, in June 1849, the parliament moved its meetings to the capital of Württemberg - Stuttgart, and on June 18 the Württemberg government dispersed it.

Theoretical generalization of the experience of the revolution of 1848-1849.

The offensive of the counter-revolution in Germany in the spring of 1849 could not but affect the position of Marx and Engels as direct participants in the revolution. F. Engels, who participated in the battles, together with the surviving Baden

31 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 8. S. 101.

revolutionaries after the defeat at Wagheizel retreated to Switzerland. In the midst of the battles for the imperial constitution, on May 16, the Prussian government issued an order for the expulsion of Marx from Prussia. The further legal activities of the Communists in Germany and the publication of the New Rhine Gazette were put to an end. May 19

In 1849, the last issue of the newspaper was published, typed in red ink. Later, F. Engels wrote: “We were forced to surrender our fortress, but we retreated with weapons and equipment, with music, with the banner of the last red number fluttering ...”32. Marx and his family went to Paris, and at the end of August 1849 to London, where F. Engels also arrived in the fall. The main attention of Marx and Engels during this period was directed to the theoretical generalization of the experience of the revolutionary battles of 1848-1849. in France and Germany, for the further development of the tactics of the proletariat, for the struggle for the creation of an independent party of the working class, independent of the petty-bourgeois democrats. To this end, Marx and Engels established close contact with the revolutionary leaders of the proletarian movement, seeking to rally them around the Central Committee of the "Union of Communists", reorganizing and strengthening it.

Marx and Engels considered the most important means of strengthening the proletarian party to be the creation of a printed organ that would be a continuation of the New Rhine Gazette. Such an organ was the journal New Rhine Newspaper. Politico-Economic Review”, which began to appear in January 1850. Marx and Engels paid special attention to the analysis of the experience of the German Revolution of 1848-1849. His theoretical generalization was given in an "extremely interesting and instructive"33 document, the March 1850 "Appeal" of the Central Committee to the "Union of Communists". The "appeal" was secretly distributed among the members of the "Union of Communists" both in exile and in Germany itself.

In this "Appeal" Marx and Engels,

32 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. S. 22.

33 See: Lenin V.I. Poli. coll. op. T. 10. S. 233.

based on the experience of the revolutionary struggle in Germany in 1848-1849, they put forward the thesis about the need for organizational isolation of the proletariat from the petty-bourgeois democrats. The primary task of the "Union of Communists", pointed out Marx and Engels, is the creation in Germany of a secret and legal organization of the workers' party, the transformation of each secret community of the "Union" into the center of open workers' unions, in which the positions and interests "of the workers would be discussed independently of bourgeois influences. But Marx and Engels, alien to all sectarianism, explained that the proletarian party must, together with the petty-bourgeois democrats, fight against reaction, enter into temporary alliances with them.

The idea of ​​uninterrupted revolution formulated by Marx and Engels in the Appeal is of enduring theoretical and practical significance. While the petty-bourgeois democrats, wrote Marx and Engels, strive to end the revolution as soon as possible, limiting its scope to the conquest of bourgeois-democratic reforms, the proletarian party strives to "... make the revolution uninterrupted until all more or less classes will not be eliminated from domination until the proletariat has won state power...”. “For us, it is not about changing private property,” Marx and Engels concluded, “but about its destruction, not about obscuring class contradictions, but about the destruction of classes, not about improving existing society, but about founding a new society”34. Developing this idea, F. Engels in his work "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany" 35, devoted to the events of 1848-1849, came to the most important theoretical conclusion about the uprising as an art and revealed the conditions necessary for its victory. Pointing to the betrayal of the liberal bourgeoisie and the political bankruptcy of the petty-bourgeois democrats, Engels formulated the main idea of ​​his book: the need for the leading role of the working class in the struggle for the

34 Marx K-, Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 7. S. 261.

35 See: Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 8. S. 3-113.

establishment of a democratic republic in Germany.

In the new historical conditions, in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, V. I. Lenin developed the teachings of K-Marx about continuous revolution, discovering the pattern of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the proletarian one, and based on the experience of the struggle of the working class of Russia and other countries, he developed a new theory socialist revolution.

Results of the German Revolution of 1848-1849. and its historical significance.

German Revolution 1848-1849 was an unfinished bourgeois-democratic revolution in which the bourgeois-democratic revolution stopped halfway, "... without breaking the monarchy and reaction..."36. Unlike the French Revolution of the 18th century. The German Revolution of 1848 developed in a downward direction. She did not solve the main, historical tasks that confronted her: a united Germany was not created; the old monarchical order was preserved in the country only in a slightly modified form, the feudal duties that remained in the countryside were not abolished. The main reasons for the defeat of the German Revolution were: with a huge number of local uprisings, the absence of a single center of struggle; the treacherous tactics of the liberal bourgeoisie, their betrayal of the revolutionary people; the indecisiveness and vacillation of the petty-bourgeois democrats, their rejection of a radical solution of the agrarian question; insufficient organization and weak consciousness of the proletariat, which prevented it from rising to the role of leader of the revolution; the suppression of the national liberation movement, which undermined the scope of the revolution; strength in the country of monarchical traditions.

But although the revolution of 1848 in Germany was incomplete and stopped halfway, it was not fruitless. The Junker-bureaucratic government, which was established after the revolution in Prussia, "... was forced to ... rule in constitutional forms ..." 37. This meant, wrote

36 Lenin V. I. Poly. coll. op. T. 11. S. 226.

37 Mapks K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. S. 439.

Engels that "... the revolution of 1848 gave the state an external constitutional form, in which the bourgeoisie had the opportunity to dominate also politically and expand this domination", although "... it was still far from real political power"38. The Prussian constitution "granted" on December 5, 1848, however sparse, reflected some of the gains of the revolution, in particular universal suffrage, freedom of the press, and the legality of political struggle. Even truncated after its revision in 1849 and 1850, the constitution nevertheless meant a step forward in the political structure of Prussia. The revolution forced the ruling classes to carry out some, albeit very limited, transformations in the socio-economic field. On the whole, the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848 accelerated the development of Germany along the capitalist path.

The German Revolution of 1848-1849, despite its defeat, was also an important milestone in the formation of the social and political formation of the German proletariat on the way of its transformation from a "class in itself" into a "class for itself". In this sense, the revolution played the true role of the locomotive of history. “In all cases, the real combat forces of the insurgents consisted of urban workers who were the first to take up arms and fight the troops,” 39 wrote F. Engels. This was evidence of the class insight of the German workers and their transition to mass violent actions against the monarchy. In the course of the revolution, the first, albeit local, professional organizations were born in the major industrial centers of the country; various political unions of workers were also active. At the high cost of defeat in class battles, the German proletariat acquired rich political experience.

Historiography of the Revolution of 1848 in Germany.

Fundamentals of scientific study of re-

38 Marx K-, Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 21. S. 468.

39 Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 8. S. 103.

revolutions were laid down in the works of K. Marx and F. Engels during the revolution itself and immediately after it. In the series of articles "The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution" (Marx, 1848) and "The Revolution and the Counter-Revolution in Germany" (Engels, 1851-1852), they gave the first Marxist exposition of the history of the German revolution, which remains a model for the scientific analysis of this problem. A prominent figure in the German labor movement, historian and Marxist philosopher F. Mehring in the second volume of his "History of German Social Democracy" (1897), from the standpoint of Marxism, showed in detail and convincingly the revolutionary role of the German proletariat and its political vanguard - the "Union of Communists" in the events 1848-1849

V. I. Lenin showed keen interest in the problems of the German revolution, and in numerous works, especially during the period of the first Russian revolution, he gave a deep analysis of the content and nature of the revolution of 1848 in Germany, the role that various social classes played in it.

Bourgeois historical science turned to a serious study of the revolution in Germany only from the end of the 19th century, after half a century of hushing up or unconditional condemnation of the events of the "mad" 1848. But at the end of the century, prominent German bourgeois historians, feeling the aggravation of social contradictions in authoritarian Kaiser Germany, put forward the task of in-depth study of the place, significance and lessons of the revolution. However, the partial “rehabilitation” of the revolution undertaken by the liberal scholars E. Brandenburg, G. Oncken and others then spread only to moderate liberals, and especially to the Frankfurt National Assembly as the first experience of parliamentarism in Germany.

After the First World War, during the period of the Weimar Republic, interest in the liberal and parliamentary traditions of German history increased significantly. The desire to connect them with the bourgeois republic and present it as their successor determined the main idea of ​​the most fundamental work of bourgeois historiography to date - two

the voluminous "History of the German Revolution" by F. Valentin, published in 1930-1931. The author recognized the revolution as the most important event in German history and believed that its defeat was a national misfortune for the further development of Germany, which led to its Prussianization and a heavy defeat in the war of 1914-1918.

In modern bourgeois-reformist historiography of the FRG, the revolution as a whole is interpreted primarily as the struggle of the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility and the state fragmentation of the country, while highlighting the parliamentary history of the revolution and the activities of bourgeois politicians. West German historians (W. Konze and his school; R. Koselleck, who wrote Prussia between Reform and Revolution, 1967; M. Botzenhart, W. Boldt, and others) drew on considerable new factual material. With all their private differences, they are unanimous in the main thing: in their desire to prove the superiority of the reformist way over the revolutionary one and (which is new) not only to condemn, but to try to "integrate" the revolutionary-democratic forces into the bourgeois-parliamentary tradition. To this end, the persistent idea is promoted that the revolutionary democratic movement, whose role can no longer be denied, aspired only to achieve formal democracy and political freedoms. But then the question arises: why did the bourgeoisie refuse to lead the mass revolutionary movement and prefer to conclude an alliance with the feudal-monarchist reaction? The historians of the FRG, answering it, in contradiction with the first interpretation, explain and justify the political course of the bourgeoisie by the threat from the proletariat and radical democrats, who allegedly pushed it to the right with their excessive and uncompromising demands for the radicalization of the revolution, which did not meet the class interests of the bourgeoisie.

Much attention is paid to the study of the revolution in the historiography of the GDR. In the works of G. Becker, H. Bleiber, R. Weber, K. Oberman, G. Shilfert, W. Schmidt and many others, based on the introduction of a large number of new sources into scientific circulation, fundamentally important questions were raised about the role and position of various social classes in revolution. As a result of a broad discussion, it was established that at all stages of the revolution its hegemon was in fact the bourgeoisie, which did not fulfill its historical duty - to resolutely lead the struggle of all truly democratic forces against reaction - and thereby betrayed the revolution. The historians of the GDR have shown that the bourgeoisie had a real opportunity to prevent the victory of the counter-revolution in Prussia and throughout Germany, and therefore it is on them that the historical responsibility for the defeat of the revolution lies. On the basis of extensive documentary material, the scientists of the GDR substantiated the conclusion that the peasantry, and especially the agricultural proletariat, took a wider and more active part in the struggle than previously believed. New data are also presented that prove the important role of the working class and confirm the conclusion that during the revolution the process of its formation into an independent political force, freeing itself from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence, accelerated. The main results of numerous studies by historians of the GDR are summarized in the two-volume work The Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1848/49 in Germany (1972-1973).

Soviet historians also made a significant contribution to the study of the revolution. In the works of S. B. Kahn, a general picture of the revolution and the state of the German proletariat on the eve of it is given. E. A. Stepanova and S. Z. Leviova showed the struggle for a united democratic Germany in the period 1848-1849. In their works, in the works of S. M. Gurevich, M. I. Mikhailov, the participation of K. Marx and F. Engels in revolutionary events, the important role played in them by the Union of Communists and the New Reinskaya Gazeta are studied. .

The crisis of German imperialism, which worsened during the World War, brought the German working class to the brink of the necessity of completing the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution: to destroy militarism, to purge the state apparatus, to expropriate the property of junkers and war criminals, to overthrow the monarchical system and create a united German republic.

“In this struggle,” as indicated in the theses of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, published in 1958 on the 40th anniversary of the November Revolution, “it was about the working class gaining experience, creating a communist party and establishing an alliance with the working peasantry in order to move on to the proletarian revolution, which was objectively on the agenda.

The masses of the people spontaneously rushed to fight for the realization of these goals, and the ruling classes did not have sufficient forces to suppress the revolution.

The revolution that broke out in November 1918 overthrew the Kaiser monarchy. The working class acted as the main driving force in this revolution. The Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets, formed in a number of German centers, enjoyed the support of the broad masses. The revolution was extremely favored by the established international situation. Soviet Russia fought successfully against foreign intervention and internal counter-revolution. Many countries of Europe were embraced by a revolutionary upsurge. A proletarian revolution was brewing in Hungary.

However, despite the fact that the social and economic prerequisites for a socialist revolution were created in Germany even before the war, the November Revolution was delayed at the bourgeois-democratic stage. This stemmed primarily from the weakness of the German working class, its political inexperience, its lack of unity, and its inability to lead the broad masses of the people. The German Soviets, which arose under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution, had opportunist leadership and were captive to parliamentary illusions. The political immaturity of the many millions of soldiers, revolutionary in relation to militarism, war and open representatives of imperialism, but unstable and vacillating in relation to socialism, also had an effect.

All this allowed the opportunist leaders to confuse the people, undermine the forces of the revolution and lend support to the counter-revolution. A truly revolutionary proletarian party capable of leading the struggle for a socialist revolution did not exist in Germany at that time. The Spartacists could not complete this task, especially since it was the decisive one! during the revolutionary crisis they were not yet organized as a party.

As a result, the working class of Germany was unable to realize the great historical opportunity that opened up before it in. November 1918. The leading forces of the German bourgeoisie and the Entente,” wrote Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, forty years later, “learned their lessons from the October Revolution and did everything to split the working class, using German social democracy, stop the development of the revolution and crush the vanguard of the working class.

The November Revolution did not accomplish its historical task. Due to the opportunist opposition of the Social Democratic Party, even the bourgeois-democratic revolution was not carried through to the end.

The largest since the Peasants' War of the 16th century. the mass revolutionary movement in Germany only led to the fact that a bourgeois-democratic revolution took place, carried out to a certain extent by proletarian means and methods. Its course confirmed the most important tenet of Leninism, which is that the socialist revolution can only be victorious under the leadership of a new type of Marxist-Leninist proletarian party.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary struggle of the German working class during the November Revolution was not in vain. It provided the people of Germany with significant achievements of a bourgeois-democratic nature: the monarchy was overthrown, the Kaiser, 22 kings, dukes and princes were deposed, the 8-hour working day was fixed by law, universal suffrage, including for women, the right to unite in unions, freedom words and meetings, etc.

At the same time, the German proletariat acquired a great deal of political experience. After the November Revolution, a new stage in the struggle of the German working class for its interests began.

Speaking about the causes of the November Revolution in Germany in 1918, one cannot fail to recall some of the achievements of Soviet historiography. Although modern researchers tend to deny the achievements of Soviet historiography, speaking of ideological falsifications. However, do not go to extremes. Be that as it may, Lenin knew about revolutions. And quite rightly formulated the concept of a revolutionary situation. A revolutionary situation is a situation of serious crisis. This crisis manifests itself in the following: 1) a crisis of supreme power - a situation where the government can no longer effectively manage the "old way", the authority of the government, people's trust is falling, 2) a crisis of the lower classes - extremely difficult living conditions for ordinary people, 3) increased activity wt.
All this was in Germany and largely due to the results of the First World War. The government was torn apart by contradictions, its authority was steadily declining, even US President W. Wilson urged Wilhelm II to change the form of government. Due to military defeats, the militarization of enterprises in the country, unbearable living conditions have developed for the common people.
In addition, there had long been forces in the country (those same “active masses”) capable of raising the revolution, namely the labor movement led by the German Social Democrats.
We must also not forget about the situation in the world in general. A revolutionary wave literally rolled across Europe with unstoppable force, the victory of the revolution in Russia also had a certain impact.
Thus, we can single out the main causes of the revolution: 1) political, social and economic crises due to military defeats in the First World War, 2) the presence of revolutionary forces in the country (German Social Democrats, the labor movement), 3) influence from outside (revolutionary moods Europe, the victory of the revolution in Russia).

The course of the revolution

By the end of World War I, Germany was mired in strikes and labor strikes. Thus, for example, at the end of January 1918 the workers of Berlin went on strike. They demanded an end to the war, the lifting of the state of siege, freedom of speech and the press, a shorter working day, social reforms, the elimination of the militarization of enterprises, the release of political prisoners, and the radical democratization of all state institutions in Germany.
The immediate cause for the revolution was the order of the command of the navy to attack English ships on the high seas. The German sailors, tired of the war, knew that the defeat of Germany was already inevitable, and therefore did not want to die just like that.
Not wanting to follow the order, the sailors in Kiel raised an uprising. Kiel is Germany's largest naval base. The sailors of Kiel were supported by local workers and soldiers. Soon a soldiers' council was created, which seized power in Kiel (November 4, 1918).
The Kiel Soldiers' Council demanded the same as the striking workers, and also spoke out in defense of the rights of military personnel.
The very next day, an article was published in the Schleswig-Holstein people's newspaper, which said that the revolution was marching through the country, and soon the events of Kiel would cover the whole country, and therefore the entire people of Germany should join the soldiers' council.
The newspaper was not mistaken in anything: red flags rose over Kiel and the revolution swept across the country. The Social Democrat G. Noske became chairman of the council. So the SPD was drawn into the revolutionary events.
In a few days, uprisings unfolded in all corners of Germany, local monarchies were overthrown. By November 9, only Berlin was not under the rule of the revolutionaries. The rebels were also supported by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
The left-wing group of the NSDPG, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, was preparing an uprising in Berlin for November 11. According to the memoirs of W. Pieck, the Spartacists wanted to turn Germany into a socialist republic.
In Gotha, an all-German Spartacus conference was held, where their program of demands was adopted. In this program, they attacked the junkers (landlords) and the bourgeoisie in every possible way, demanded the same as the workers' and soldiers' councils, a reduction in the working day, a minimum wage, the abolition of individual German states and dynasties, etc.
But for the SPD, as its member F. Ebert stated, the problem of "monarchy or republic" is of a theoretical nature. In fact, a parliamentary monarchy would suit the Social Democracy as well.
At this time, or rather on November 9, the monarchy had already been overthrown. But Spartacus continued to call on the people to continue the revolutionary struggle. Spartacus demanded power for the Soviets, opposed the "opportunist" Scheidemann.
Meanwhile, the Social Democrat Scheidemann made a speech to the people at the Reichstag on November 9th. In his speech, Scheidemann called on people to calmness, order, and the end of the struggle, since the monarch had been overthrown, which means that the revolution had won.
Germany was Sovietized, but the experience of Russia was not repeated in it. German councils were different in social composition, functions, and political overtones. There were workers', peasants', soldiers', sailors', teachers', medical, bureaucratic and legal councils.
The Soviets in Germany were not a form of proletarian dictatorship. Basically, the Soviets were under the authority of the SPD. Somewhere the councils took power into their own hands, but basically they established control over already existing bodies.
The new government was headed by the Social Democrat F. Ebert. Scheidemann also became part of this government. Ebert and his associates feared Bolshevization and civil war in Germany. On the contrary, they believed in the power of parliamentary action and reform.
So Germany in November 1918 was proclaimed a republic. On November 10, the Council of People's Deputies (SNU) was created - a coalition of the SPD and the USPD.
Already on November 12, the SNU program was adopted. It proclaimed socialist tasks, the right to assemble, the abolition of censorship, complete freedom of speech, amnesty for political prisoners, protection of labor, protection of the individual and his property (!), Universal secret suffrage.
In addition to the SNU, an Executive Committee was created. Thus ended the anti-monarchist stage of the revolution.
To stabilize the situation in the country, Ebert entered into an alliance with General Groener. It was an alliance of the new republic with the old army. In his memoirs, Groener wrote that the army was ready to submit if the government did not allow the spread of Bolshevism.
Further, the SNU, as a provisional government, began to pursue its domestic policy. In general, the SNU acted very carefully, looking for a compromise in everything.
Finally, as a result of long discussions, in 1919 the soviets were replaced by the National Assembly. Thus ended the November Revolution in Germany.

The nature of the revolution

The question of the nature of the November revolution in Germany in 1918 is very controversial. There were many options. Some said that this was a proletarian revolution, others - bourgeois, others - socialist.
Since the 1960s the point of view was fixed that the events of 1918-1919. in Germany they represent a bourgeois-democratic revolution with socialist tendencies.
This point of view is fully justified. After all, the struggle was mainly for democratization in a broad sense, there were socialist tendencies, but they were not decisive and no one destroyed capitalism.
In German non-Marxist literature, the November Revolution was considered even an accidental event.
Modern authors tend to believe that the November Revolution in Germany in 1918 is "people's democratic" in nature (Glushkov's term A.E.).