The Communist Manifesto the Prussian police. At their trial in Cologne 18 months later in late 1852 they were sentenced to 3–6 years' imprisonment. For Engels, the revolution was "forced into the background by the reaction that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated 'by law' in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852". After the defeat of the 1848 revolutions the "Manifesto" fell into obscurity, where it remained throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Hobsbawm says that by November 1850 the "Manifesto" "had become sufficiently scarce for Marx to think it worth reprinting
The Communist Manifesto were Spanish editions in Latin America. This uneven geographical spread in the "Manifesto"s popularity reflected the development of socialist movements in a particular region as well as the popularity of Marxist variety of socialism there. There was not always a strong correlation between a social-democratic party's strength and the "Manifesto"s popularity in that country. For instance, the German SPD printed only a few thousand copies of the "Communist Manifesto" every year, but a few hundred thousand copies of the "Erfurt Programme". Further, the mass-based social-democratic parties of the Second International did not require their rank and file to be well-versed