Chapter 28 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 6 Revolution 5

5 Elsewhere in revolutionary Europe, disaffected petty gentry and intellectuals made the problem much worse as they became the core of the radical faction there.Because the masses are peasants, and peasants are often of a different nationality from the landowners and townspeople.Landlords and townspeople were Slavs and Romanians in Hungary, Ukrainians in eastern Poland, and Slavs in parts of Austria.And the poorest and most inefficient landowners, that is, those least able to relinquish their status gains, were often the most radical nationalists.It is admitted that the question of peasant support for the revolution was not as immediate as it should have been, but it was no less intense when the bulk of the peasantry remained ignorant and politically passive.By the 1840s, even this passivity was no longer taken for granted. The serf uprising in Galicia in 1846 was the largest peasant uprising since the French Revolution in 1789.

Even a highly controversial issue like this is somewhat rhetorical.From an economic point of view, the modernization of backward areas like Eastern Europe must rely on agricultural reforms, at least the abolition of the serfdom that still persisted in the Austrian, Russian, and Turkish empires.Politically, once the peasantry became active, the revolutionaries undoubtedly had to do something to meet their demands, at least in countries where the revolutionaries were fighting foreign rulers.For if they do not draw the peasants to their side, the counter-revolutionaries will draw them.The legitimate kings, emperors, and churches always had the tactical advantage, and the traditional peasants trusted them more than the landowners, and were still prepared in principle to obtain justice from them.The monarchs were ready to turn the peasants against the squires if need be: the Bourbons in Naples in 1799 did not hesitate to turn the peasants against the Jacobins of Naples. In 1848, Lombard peasants shouted "Long live Radetzky" and "Death to the Landlord" to the Austrian general who crushed a nationalist uprising.The question before the radicals in the undeveloped countries was not whether to unite with the peasants, but whether they could succeed in winning it.

Radicals in these countries are thus divided into two groups: the democrats and the extreme left.The former (represented in Poland by the Polish Democratic Society, in Hungary by the followers of Kossuth, in Italy by the Mazzinians) recognized the need to draw the peasantry to the revolutionary cause and the necessity At that time they could abolish serfdom and grant land titles to small farmers, but they hoped to maintain a peaceful coexistence between nobles who voluntarily gave up their feudal rights (not without compensation) and domestic peasants.But in areas where peasant revolts had not yet reached stormy proportions, or where the fear of being exploited by the princes had not been great (as in many parts of Italy), the democrats had never presented themselves with a concrete agrarian program or any social programme, They are more inclined to advocate the universality of political democracy and national liberation.

The extreme left openly sees the revolutionary struggle as a mass struggle against both foreign and domestic rulers.They were more skeptical than the national and social revolutionaries of the period in this book were about the aristocrats and weak middle classes who had vested interests in imperial rule and their ability to lead the new state towards independence and modernization.Their own programs were thus strongly influenced by the emerging socialism of the West, although unlike most pre-Marxist "utopian" socialists, they were both social critics and political revolutionaries.For example, the short-lived Krakau Republic in 1846 abolished all peasant obligations and promised the urban poor a "national factory".The most advanced elements of the Carbonari in southern Italy also adopted the Babeuf-Blanquist platform.Possibly the exception is Poland, where the extreme left is relatively weak, and after the failure of the movement to mobilize the peasants they were so eager to absorb, the movement is mainly composed of schoolchildren, university students, down-and-out intellectuals of noble or commoner origin, and some idealists , its influence is further weakened. (However, in a few areas of smallholders, tenants, or subtenants, such as Romagna or southwestern Germany, Mazzini-type radicalism managed to organize popular support to a considerable extent after 1848.)

Consequently, radicals in the underdeveloped regions of Europe never effectively addressed their problems, partly because their supporters were unwilling to make adequate or timely concessions to the peasantry, and partly because the peasantry was politically immature.In Italy, the revolution of 1848 was actually carried out in a situation that the passive rural population did not quite understand.In Poland (where the 1846 uprising quickly developed into a peasant uprising against the Polish gentry, encouraged by the Austrian government), there was no revolution at all in 1848, except in the generalized Poznania region.Even in the most advanced revolutionary countries such as Hungary, the limitations of agrarian reforms led by the aristocracy made it impossible to fully mobilize the peasantry for national liberation wars.And in much of Eastern Europe, Slavic peasants, dressed in the uniform of the imperial army, were powerful suppressors of German and Hungarian revolutionaries.