To answer it properly we need to refine it as follows: was Stalins final triumph made possible by Lenin and Trotskys actions in 1921 in the party crisis of that year? The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Delivered to your inbox! I am sure that I express the intention and firm resolve of all of you when I say: at all events, the end of this Congress must find our Party stronger, more harmonious, and more sincerely united than ever before. Saint-Just, usually known for his eloquence and quick wit, seems to have shut down in the face of this unexpected counterattack, while Robespierre's attempts to regain control of the debate were shouted down. Last but not least Lenin died in early 1924. And this confounds the claims of the reformist opponents of Bolshevism, especially the Mensheviks, that the Bolshevik coup of October 1917 was in fact the start of a counter-revolution. A critical survey of the emergence of Russian working class politics and the historical role of, The red Jacobins: Thermidor and the Russian revolution in 1921. Out with the new, in with the old.All pictures from Wikimedia Creative Commons- The Thermidorian Reaction (1931) - Albert Mathiez (Translated by Catherine . For the counter-revolutionary, there is a grim satisfaction in the Thermidorian Reaction. The poor peasantry flocked to support the revolution. The Mensheviks and the SRs who had walked out of the second congress and refused to recognise its legitimacy demanded as the pre-condition for any coalition the absolute exclusion of the Bolsheviks. The final and irreversible triumph of the counter-revolution was the suppression of the Kronstadt Soviets rising in 1921, the key event of the counter-revolution for anarchists. Stalin became the General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party in 1922. But not of an authoritarian type. Prairial Uprising of Year III - World History Encyclopedia I think it would be wise to explain where this text comes from, and what the context of its original publication is. According to historian Simon Schama, the scene "was particularly gruesome, like some mad exorcism of horror." When Preobrazhenskys 1923 Opposition, which Trotsky really led, cited the democratism of pre-1921 Bolshevism Stalin retorted: What, indeed, does Preobrazhensky propose? In Russia in 1921 it was the fact that Lenin decided to switch from war communism to state capitalism and retreat on all fronts, from revolution back towards the idea of taking Russia through a capitalist stage of development. In September 1927 Stalin demonstrated a better understanding of the significance of 1921 than Trotsky. Sadly the Don Quixote of the time, tilting at the windmills of the Right, was Trotsky himself. Victor Serge expressed the point brilliantly when he wrote in an article called Centralisation and Jacobinism around this time: Centralisation. The party discussed, tendencies appeared and disappeared and opposition elements, which must not be confused with counter-revolutionists, agitated unceasingly in broad daylight during the whole civil war until 1921.14. And within less than two decades Lenins wish was granted by Stalin all criticism of the leadership of the party or state was dealt with by the gun. Communism had become a cult. Definition. The Central Committee on the eve of the October insurrection in 1917, was confronted with the demand from Lenin that it expel Zinoviev and Kamenev from the party for publicising and criticising the partys plans for insurrection. Indeed, experiments in party building in his movement (for example entryism and exitism in relation to the mass reformist parties) led to it having arguably less influence when it formed the Fourth International than it did in 1933 when it broke with the Communist (Third) International. Or to put it another way disagree with Bolshevik rule and we will wage ruthless war on you as we have now done to the Workers Opposition. Stalins control of the apparatus had evolved since the seventh congress of 1918. It was a gamble and would only succeed if the party could use it to regenerate soviet life and take it back to the glory days of 1918 and to the precepts of The State and Revolution. (Eagerly awaiting the) Thermidorian Reaction . Rather the Bolshevik Party was a key agency that helped make the working class revolution possible; the workers state was vital in the struggle to defend working class power; and Bolshevisms descent into counter-revolution marked a distinct break with, not a continuation of, its fundamental character and policies in the period 1912 to 1920. But this excuse cannot conceal the real reason for the weakness of the later struggle. As in the debates over peace in connection with Brest Litovsk, so in the ones over war during the civil war. How could their programme for reform of the state be blocked? By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data. Thermidorian Reaction - World History Encyclopedia Here, the insurrectionists wave the severed head of Jean-Bertrand Fraud in the face of the president of the National Convention. Who were the Thermidorians who came to dominate the post-Robespierre Convention? Stalin had long believed that a socialist revolution was premature in Russia (along with many other leading Bolsheviks). Despite his later regrets Lenin furnished the apparatus with the means to achieve this objective. Our efforts should be more united and harmonious than ever before; there should not be the slightest trace of factionalism whatever its manifestations in the past. Trotsky is excused of blame for his failure to take the fight to Stalin from 1924 on. Only with the victory of fascism in Germany in 1933 and the refusal of the Russian Communist Party or any section of the Communist International to recognise that Stalins policy was to blame for Hitlers triumph, did Trotsky argue that the political counter-revolution was complete and the need for a new party and new revolution were now on the agenda. In the historiography of the French Revolution, the Thermidorian Reaction ( French: Raction thermidorienne or Convention thermidorienne, "Thermidorian Convention") is the common term for the period between the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor II, or 27 July 1794, and the inauguration of the French Directory on 2 November 1795. Once the crisis ends comes what Brinton calls the Thermidorian Reaction. Trotskys position meant that his struggle was always hamstrung. Who were the Thermidorians? 19. Everything else is deception and pure demagogy. Ibid, p174 27th July (9th Thermidor) Click the card to flip . 9. Ransome says: . The party had to become the instrument to overcome that backwardness. Elections every year reduced stability with a high turnover of deputies. Regardless of that reaction from within, other, broader forms of a counter-narrative may sprout up. The political counter-revolution took place inside the Bolshevik Party. Directed especially by the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre and Louis Antoine Saint-Just, the Terror had seen the suspension of many civil liberties, legitimized by the foreign coalition assembled to conquer revolutionary France and by internal rebellions in the south and in the Vendee. The Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution, Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder 1977, p113 By July 1921, with NEP well underway, Lenin was explicit about this. Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1928-29) p264 In March 1921 it was Lenin, the architect in chief of the October Revolution, who introduced the fateful resolution destroying meaningful democracy in the Bolshevik Party, the resolution on party unity. In 1935 he publicly revised his position and accepted that Thermidor was not external (social) counter-revolution. . 18. He proposes nothing more nor less than a reversion to Party life on the lines of 1917-18. The secretaries all bowed before one man the general secretary, Stalin who was in his all powerful position courtesy of the decisions of the tenth congress. Thermidorian Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com This position changed under pressure from the working class, but throughout the negotiations the reformists demanded the exclusion of Lenin and Trotsky from any socialist coalition government. It is eminently reasonable, then, to expect all parties represented within the Soviet to comprise such a coalition government, especially as the Bolsheviks had a clear majority within the second congress. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. While the recognition of Stalin as the key agent in the counter-revolution is a welcome revision by Trotsky, his change of line in 1935 leaves too many questions unanswered. . We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. In the long term this posed a danger to the revolution, but in the short term, Trotsky believed, it meant that the centre would and could be allies of the left against the right. Lenin, who had tied the fate of the Russian Revolution to the success of the international revolution, was now determined to maintain the rule of the Bolshevik Party to maintain its state power. 1: Normal This is the person or group in power before the revolution takes place. Following a coup in 1799 (the 18 Brumaire 9 November) the Directory was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte who established first a Consulate (a Triumvirate) and later the Empire, with himself as the Emperor. Palmers observation on 1794 France that in its vivid sense of a new world coming, its eschatology, the Revolution became a kind of religion. The current purge is driven by a very modern combination of historic grievances, activism, progressive ideology and woke corporatism turbo-charged by the modern political accelerant which is social media, undergirded by some of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet. The Thermidorian Reaction was an event in revolutionary France, and is so named because it began in the month of Thermidor on the Revolutionary Calendar (July 19 - August 17) of the year II (1794). As Rabinowitch recounts of one crucial Central Committee meeting: Lenin was prepared to go to the limit to keep the Left Communists in the fold. The promise of future reaction was Lenins threats to oppositionists in the party who chose to oppose the party line. Indeed it was even conducted semi-publicly. The role of the CPS and CGS was taken over by committees of the Convention to limit their power. As he put it in his 1935 essay: We need only review accurately the gist of the controversies of 1926-27 for the correctness of the position of the Bolshevik Leninists [the Trotskyists] to emerge in all its obviousness in the light of subsequent developments. Later that night, Billaud-Varenne and Lazare Carnot, another CPS member and opponent of Robespierre's, saw Saint-Just working on a speech of his own in the Committee offices. But the Red Jacobins the representatives of the legacy of October 1917 and the struggle to build a commune type state and an economy run by the workers rather than the party the Workers Opposition and the Democratic Centralists did exist. The faction fell to the Thermidorians because there was no one left to support it. After this, at some point in the early evening, the deputies were freed and took refuge in the Htel de Ville, while the various urban sections were mobilized to provide a small army that would march on and suppress the Convention. French thermidorien, from Thermidor + -ien -ian. I assert that here Trotsky is uttering a plain untruth. Good short account of how the foundations of Stalinist terror were laid by the policies of Lenin and, Originally published in 1940 in two parts, this is the (partly eyewitness) account of the Leninist terror inflicted upon Russia during the, Paul Avrich's article from 1984 about G.T. Thermidor in France was a single event the arrest of the Jacobin leaders including Robespierre and St Just on 27 July 1794 (Ninth Thermidor in the revolutionary calendar) followed by their execution on 28 July. The right has its roots in the new property owners, chiefly the peasant proprietors. The right was for further concessions to the kulak. We have already more than once called attention to the fact that the victorious bourgeois counter-revolution must take the form of fascism of Bonapartism, but absolutely cannot take the form of bourgeois democracy . In the south, especially in Provence and the Rhne valley, the frontier between private feuds and political reaction blurred as law and order broke down. And we unanimously agreed to cite the resolution of the Tenth Congress, where Vladimir Ilyich personally defined both factions and groupings and explained the political danger they entail . It was why, at the end of the 13th congress in 1924 Stalin comments, following his victory over the opposition, that the attitude towards those now coming back to the party from the ranks of the opposition should be an exceptionally comradely one. Thermidor involved the final elimination of those internal party checks and opened the door for Stalins rise to power. The new party was to lead such a revolution and put socialism back on the agenda by utilising the social conquests of the October Revolution to reform the Soviet economy from top to bottom. Thermidorian Reaction & the End of the Revolution | Kinnu Its legacy is the memory of Stalins salt mines and gulags, his famines and bread queues, his secret police and his murderous tyranny. He accused the Democratic Centralist Opposition which by the mid-1920s favoured a new party of ultra-leftism with regard to Stalin. The Thermidorian Reaction was a coup d'tat during the French Revolution resulting in a Thermidorian regime characterized by the violent elimination of its perceived opponents. Robespierre's jaw had been bandaged that morning, but the executioner tore it away at the last moment, producing painful screams from Robespierre before the blade silenced him. So, although Trotskys revised understanding of Thermidor is neat and, in some aspects, correct, it leaves unanswered the cardinal question of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution: how was Stalin able to accomplish Thermidor in 1924? The storming of the Bastille is still honored in France as a national holiday. Interested in supporting our work? It culminated in the dissolution of the revolutionary parliament, the Convention, in 1795 and its replacement by the undemocratic Directory. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. White Terror | French history | Britannica And in the debate over the peace they were able to put their own position forward to the working class. Both came into existence in this period to fight the growing trend towards bureaucratisation and centralisation and to fight the Bolshevik leadership Lenin and Trotsky included who seemed to favour this trend. Stalin was the gravedigger of the Russian Revolution, as conscious agent of the bureaucratic elite that stole power and bloodily repressed opposition. Specifically Thermidor comprised: the formal decisions of the 10th Communist Party Congress banning factions in the party; the suppression of the Kronstadt rising and the excuses given for that suppression; the massive expansion of the central apparatus of the party and its elevation to a position of absolute control on all party matters and increasingly many government ones too; and, on the back of this bureaucratisation, the demonising and destruction through a system of expulsion and internal exile, of the left Bolsheviks, the Workers Opposition and the Democratic Centralists in 1921 and then in 1923 through the direct intervention of the GPU, the secret police, into party political disputes with the police attack on Miasnikovs Workers Group. Local government too was utterly tied to the rule of the local party organisations across the whole country. Thermidorian Reaction | Bartleby In 1928 an open split took place in the bureaucracy. Only Saint-Just declined to flee or attempt suicide, merely rising to greet the Convention troops.
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