Despre starea socială a muncitorilor plugari în Principatele Române în deosebite timpuri ("On the Social Status of the Ploughmen of the Romanian Principalities at Various Times") argues for a land reform, aimed at dispossessing the boyars of large plots of land (that would in turn be awarded to landless peasants); it was used as reference by Karl Marx in his succinct analysis of the events, a fact which was to earn Bălcescu credentials in Communist Romania. Wallachian Revolution In 1848, after taking part in the uprising in France, Bălcescu returned to Bucharest in order to take part in the 11 June revolution. He was, for just two days, both Minister and Secretary of State of the provisional government put in place by the revolutionaries. His advocacy of universal suffrage and land reform was not shared by many revolutionaries, and his group came into conflict with the traditional figures of authoritythe Orthodox Metropolitan Neofit II, although head of the revolutionary government, opposed the reforms and ultimately conspired against the Revolution itself. Bălcescu was arrested on 13 September that year by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire who had put an end to the Revolution; his relationship with the Ottomans was complicated by the fact that the radicals' strict opposition to Imperial Russia had made them reliable for the Portethe Ottomans later allowed all participants in the events to take refuge in Istanbul, and thus avoid contact with the Russian troops sent over to assist the Ottoman presence. Bălcescu initially made his way to Transylvania, but was expelled by Habsburg authorities, who considered him a threat and an agitator of Romanian sentiment in that region. In Istanbul and Transylvania In early 1849, Bălcescu was in Istanbul when the Hungarian revolutionary armies under Józef Bem mounted a successful offensive against Habsburg forces and their Transylvanian Romanian allies. The Hungarian government of Lajos Kossuth then entered a debilitating war with Avram Iancu's Romanian guerrilla force, and the former members of the Wallachian government were approached by the Polish revolutionaries in exile, such as Henryk Dembiński, to mediate a peace between the two sides (in the hope that this was to ensure a stronger resistance to Russia, and counting on the Wallachian resentment towards the Saint Petersburg government). Bălcescu left for Debrecen in May, and met with Kossuth to register the latter's offer to Iancu. Marxist-inspired historiography has celebrated this as an agreement; in fact,