07.03.2002
Jacobinism and the Soviet Thermidor
Turning to the past, especially the France of 1789-1815, in order to understand the Russian Revolution and its subsequent degeneration, had terrifying consequences. Martyn Hudson concludes his two-part discussion
B y the early 1920s it was clear to Lenin that the bureaucratic deformations of the workers' state were related to defects inherited from a past which although "overthrown, has not yet been overcome" (VI Lenin Last letters and articles - December 23 1922 - March 2 1923 Moscow 1968, pp52-53). Lenin was concerned that the culture of the revolutionary society - its social life and forms of living and thinking - owed more to the past than the future, largely because of the speed in which the new society had been formed. The deceleration of the revolutionary process was initiating new reflections on those very forms which had been inherited from the past even within the culture of the Bolshevik Party itself. The old accusations of Jacobinism hurled at Lenin and his followers (largely by Trotsky in the past) were beginning to increase in ideological significance as it became clear that there were significant analogies to be made between the bourgeois French and the proletarian Russian revolutions. More than this - the personal motifs inherited from France were beginning to resonate once again, as party members nervously looked out for the Bonaparte round the corner and thought of themselves as Dantons and Marats. Lenin's opponents had always denounced him as a Jacobin and, although refutable in many ways before the revolution, it was becoming by the early 1920s a more suitable analogy to make. This was because of the substitution of the party for a working class which had been largely destroyed in the civil war and an understandable compulsion to safeguard the revolution in Russia through dictatorship and terror in the hope of an oncoming German revolution. But there were many other dangers than Jacobinism to think about - restoration, counterrevolution, Bonapartism, anarchy from below and so on. The rearticulation of the French revolutionary tradition within Marxism has focused largely on the concept of the Thermidor and its origins in the end of the Jacobin terror (see O Figes, B Kolonitskii Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the language and symbols of 1917 London 1999, pp30-31; also F Furet Interpreting the French Revolution Cambridge 1981, pp1-28). Accusations of Jacobinism, the acceptance of such analogies by many Marxists and the inability to decide on any common meaning to the term has led to a great deal of confusion as to the historical significance of the analogy. What Trotsky calls "the lengthy excursion into the realm of old quotations" not only helps to understand the generality of revolutionary process - its abstract lessons and so on - but also serves to obscure the particularity of each revolution (L Trotsky Permanent revolution and results and prospects New York 1965, p53). Suffice to say that an understanding of the necessities and dangers of such analogies were realised by Trotsky early in his career, but he still needed to perceive some form of identity between the earlier and the later revolution - with all of the tragic consequences which this reversion would later have (see J Bergman, 'The perils of historical analogy: Leon Trotsky and the French Revolution', in Journal of the History of Ideas Vol 18, p98). In arguing against the Stalinist notion that the laws of bourgeois revolutions were inapplicable to proletarian ones, Trotsky argues that there was much to be learned from the history and fate of the Jacobins in particular (L Trotsky The revolution betrayed: what is the Soviet Union and where is it going? New York 1998, p86). Although his conception and measure of the significance of the Jacobins would change throughout his revolutionary career, he never ceased to perceive the Russian party struggles through the lens of the fight between the Jacobin and their Girondin and Thermidorian antagonists. At the same time it was clear that the revolutions were not identical - the passage of the 19th century and the rise of the proletariat ensured that the Russian Revolution would not repeat the process of the French, primarily because its lessons were so well learned by the Bolsheviks (L Trotsky Permanent revolution and results and prospects New York 1965, p184). The dialectic between the reactionary and progressive aspects of the Jacobin legacy in the contemporary workers' revolutions was a primary focus of Trotsky's studies of the French Revolution. Trotsky dismissed the reproaches of Jacobinism on the part of the contemporary bourgeoisie, considering them an example of the bourgeois fear of contemporary revolution. Yet Trotsky argues that the very strength of Marxist thought lies in its "historical reckoning" with the Jacobin tradition (ibid p186). At the same time Marxist thought had to defend bourgeois revolutionary Jacobinism against its bourgeois successors and its betrayal and elimination of its own revolutionary traditions and history. In doing so the proletariat takes the bourgeois revolutions into its protection, recuperating and reconstructing their revolutionary ideals. Having learned all of the lessons about the negative political practices of the Jacobins, it both preserves and transcends those traditions: "As a sacred heritage of great passions, heroism and initiative ... its heart beats in sympathy with the speeches and acts of the Jacobin Convention" (ibid p186). Even after the elimination by the Thermidorians of the Jacobins as a political force their ideas remained as part of the worker's radical memory. Before the advent of Marxism any conception of revolution on behalf of the workers was framed within the model of thought and practice set by the Jacobins (ibid p187). As we have seen, in his notion of the refraction of historical forces through the individual, Trotsky was very aware in his studies of bourgeois revolution that the whole notion of the historical protagonist had to be reshaped by Marxist historiography. One of the key lessons of the eclipse of the Jacobins was that the power of each leader was to be seen as a consequence of the great social forces standing behind them and the nature of that individual's correspondence to such forces - particularly the social classes which supported them. The capacity to politically and ideologically prevail in the struggles of the period was a consequence of the identity or affinity between the individual and the historical force. The emerging supremacies of each major personality of the revolution was a consequence of external, objective social forces and their dialectical relationships with each other and with their individual representatives or amalgams (L Trotsky The revolution betrayed New York 1998, pp84-85). The eclipse of Robespierre and the victory of his Thermidorian antagonists was largely a result of changes in the nature of those objective forces, changes in the composition of the revolutionary classes and all of the mental and intellectual transformations within the minds of the Jacobins and the masses which were related to those wider forces. The empirically verifiable political events of the Thermidor were possible because of this dialectic - "Beneath these essentially incidental phenomena a deep organic process was taking place" (ibid p100). The events of Thermidor were enigmatic only if this deeper process remained unexamined and it is in this examination of Thermidor and the history which produced it that Trotsky's analogy between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolutions take a profound and disturbing course. Revolutionary fractricide As Isaac Deutscher has documented, it was the "abstruse" historical analogy of Thermidor which became the key to the power struggles in the aftermath of Lenin's last illness and death. It was very clear to Deutscher, following Marx, that the dead really were seizing hold of the living (I Deutscher The prophet outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940 New York 1959, p313). He moves on to analyse beautifully the predicament of the Thermidor: "Indeed, in 1917 the Bolsheviks did not dress up in such costumes and had no use for the pageantry and the symbols of earlier revolutions. In later years, however, they derived from Jacobinism all their nightmares and fears, the nightmares of the epurations and the fears of Thermidor; and they magnified these by their own actions and in their own imagination. They did so not from sheer imitativeness, but because they were struggling with similar predicaments and sought to master them differently. They consulted the gloomy experiences of the past in order to avoid their repetition. And although it is true that the Bolsheviks did not escape the horrors of fratricidal struggle in their midst, yet they did manage to avoid the whole fatal cycle through which Jacobinism had moved to its doom and through which the French Revolution was driven to its end. The fear of Thermidor that haunted the Bolsheviks was a reflex of self-defence and self-preservation. But the reflex often worked irrationally" (ibid p315). At the beginning of the power struggle between the left opposition and the bureaucracy many had begun to think about their revolution as a repetition of the French Revolution. Visions of Stalin as Robespierre and Trotsky as Danton abounded, to be replaced by Trotsky's own vision of himself as Robespierre sought out by his Thermidorian enemies. Deutscher notes, however, that it was not Robespierre that he resembled rather than that of an amalgam of Danton and Babeuf. In the struggle between these competing personal motifs that of Babeuf secured victory - hunted, defiant, struggling against the overwhelming power - not only of the state but of the process of history itself (ibid p368). It was at the 12th Congress that the real struggle was to take place and it is here where the conception of Trotsky as a recurring figure in the history of revolutions becomes crucial, as Deutscher notes in a historical process well-documented at the time: "The Bolsheviks had been accustomed to look back to the great French precedent and to think in historical analogies. Occasionally, they cast round for that unpredictable character among their leaders, the potential Danton or the would-be Bonaparte, who might spring a dangerous surprise upon their revolution. Among all the leaders none seemed to have as much affinity with Danton as Trotsky; and none, it also seemed, would the mask of a Bonaparte fit as well as him" (ibid pp94-95). Rather than being conceived as the saviour or the conscience of the revolution, Trotsky's previous career and personality was deemed to be analogous with that terrible vision of the dictator Bonaparte - destroying the gains of the revolution in his arrogant search for empire whilst purporting to uphold its most human ideals. Unwilling, at this time, to accept the nonentity Stalin as a potential Bonaparte, Trotsky and others were unable to pursue any fruitful project of empirical assessment. Fearful of any attempt to brand them as in any way counterrevolutionaries or "unconscious Mensheviks", the cadre of the party turned away from the left opposition and "self-suppressed", as Deutscher would have it, any self-conceptions at odds with the ideas and tactics of the rising party bureaucracy and its own victory in identifying itself with the image of Leninist orthodoxy (ibid p96). At the same time many on the left of the party, mistrustful of Trotsky's role in the suppression of Kronstadt and unwilling to debate with the old workers' opposition, remained silent during the suppression of the new oppositional forces. The 'sans-culottes' masses to the left were either unwilling or unable to decisively come to the opposition's aid in the aftermath of the civil war, particularly in the face of a mass of people who had joined the party after Lenin's demise and become the new social basis of the bureaucracy. The ebb of the revolutionary tide in the 1920s was largely a consequence of the massive physical and intellectual changes in the composition of the working class, as well as the disintegration of hope in the revolutions of the west and the terrible failures of the revolutions in the east. Alfred Rosmer, Trotsky's friend and one of the most perceptive witnesses of the degeneration of the revolution and the eclipse of the opposition, noted in his memoirs that the campaign against Trotsky was entirely visible by the early days of 1923. His Menshevik past and the fear of him within the older generation of Bolshevik activists (engendered largely by their ambivalent attitude to the October insurrection) began to be linked to a new Bonapartist analogy directed against Trotsky. Rumours were spread within the party and across Russia that Trotsky was plotting a Bonapartist coup against the revolution. Aware of these rumours, Rosmer was as paralysed as Trotsky when it came to the active fight against such analogies (A Rosmer Lenin's Moscow London 1987, p235). The clearest indicator of the ascendancy of the Thermidorian analogy lies in the record of Trotsky's debate with Soltz. Soltz was originally chief of libraries and literary supplies for the agitational department of the central committee and was in charge of providing books and articles to Trotsky throughout the civil war period (see D Volkogonov Trotsky: the eternal revolutionary London 1996, p222). Later objecting as "the conscience of the party" to the publication of Lenin's testament, he was one of the judges at one of the most remarkable events of the period. Stalin needed the expulsion of the oppositionists before he convened the 15th Congress of the party, where they were to offer criticisms of his policies on China and other things. The presidium of the Central Control Commission called Trotsky as defendant to two charges at a special meeting on July 24 1927. These charges were firstly that he had made a factional speech at the plenum of the executive committee of the Communist International and secondly he had participated in the demonstration of farewell to the left oppositionist Smilga at the Yaroslav station. As Trotsky noted, "the most prominent place in the struggle against 'Trotskyism' was accorded to historical questions" (L Trotsky The Stalin school of falsification London 1974, px). It is in this meeting where we see the power of the Thermidorian analogy. Firstly, in a previous conversation Soltz had drawn the analogy between the French and the Russian revolutions. Trotsky reaffirms this analogy but turns it against Soltz who had argued that the declaration of the platform of the oppositions leads directly to the guillotine. Trotsky then asks Soltz which chapter of the revolution he is referring to - that chapter of Jacobin ascendancy when the enemies of the revolution were guillotined or the Thermidorian chapter when the Jacobin revolutionaries were eliminated. Here is Trotsky to Soltz: "I should like comrade Soltz to think his analogy through to the end and, first of all, to give himself an answer to the following question: In accordance with which chapter is Soltz preparing to have us shot? [commotion in the hall]. This is no jesting matter; revolution is a serious business to know whom to shoot, and in accordance with which chapter. None of us is scared by firing squads. We are all old revolutionists" (ibid pp112-113). Trotsky then accused Soltz of preparing to have them shot in accordance with the Thermidorian chapter. The presidium failed to make any decision but the bureaucracy knew how to wield its analogies. The defeat of the opposition was secured at, if not already by the time of, the 15th Congress. According to Deutscher, the idea, first set out by Marx that the dead could seize hold of the living, had gripped the masses of the party. The conjuring up of the spirits of the past by the opposition to explain their defeat had begun to terrify the party: "To whatever faction he belonged, he was terrified by the ghosts which the opposition had conjured up. This was a case of le mort saisit le vif. When the Bukharinist or the Stalinist disclaimed any affinity with the Thermidorian, he did so not with calm self-assurance, but with that resentment, born of inner uncertainty, with which Bukharin spoke at the 15th conference of the opposition's 'unforgivable chatter about Thermidor'. His fury against the opposition helped him to smother his own fears. The oppositionist saw the ghost stalking the streets of Moscow, hovering over the Kremlin, or standing among the politburo members at the top of the Lenin Mausoleum on days of national celebration and parades. The uncannily violent passions which the bookish historical reminiscence aroused sprang from the irrationality of the political climate in which the single-party state had grown up and developed" (I Deutscher The prophet outcast New York 1959, p313). At once the opposition and the bureaucracy fought against flesh and blood and the archaic apparitions of the past. The social entities conjured up by very real social forces were analogies which could lead, in the terrible crises of the 1920s, to the victory of dictatorship and the defeat of those holding to the true legacy of the October revolution. The deciphering of the messages relayed from the past was seen to be crucial yet again, and once more the analogies and spirits led the opposition astray. Trotsky's perception of Bukharin as the spirit of the Thermidorian reaction led him to underestimate the power of the enigmatic Stalin - the non-entity in a very profound sense of the term - the one who refuted the role of the alien, archaic social entity because he was overlooked by the opposition until it was too late. Rosmer perceived very clearly and very early that the rising Stalinist bureaucracy itself was analogous with Thermidor and the Bonapartist reaction. Each step forward for the Stalinists degraded the revolution, severing slowly and efficiently the gains of the revolution - "amputating" and suppressing the core of old revolutionaries, as well as the institutions and ideas they had upheld. Over a long period of time the reaction succeeded in wiping out the gains of October. Like the depositing of the remains of Marat in the Pantheon, the vocabularies and motifs of the revolution still remained as form and appearance, but were deprived of their revolutionary content. Trotsky, in his last unfinished analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism, had argued that the crucial task of the Thermidorians was to secure the ideological appearance of continuation with the ideals of the revolution. Representing the 9th Thermidor as a minor episode in the forward march of liberty, they tried to persuade the masses that only the extreme elements were to be purged rather than the whole of the Jacobin tradition. This has its parallels with the Soviet Thermidor and the slow but sure physical extermination of the old guard of the Bolsheviks. The Thermidorian method is to secure reaction without disclosing its fundamental ideological severance with the legacy of the original revolution by masking the essence of that change with the appearance of continuation (L Trotsky Stalin: an appraisal of the man and his influence London 1947, p401). In the contradiction between the new dictatorship and the older revolutionary traditions the Stalinists had recourse to the use of even older ghosts. In this sense the victory of the Stalinist Thermidor was not secured by the Marxists but by their physical and ideological extermination. So the phrases of the revolution remained in place but the reality behind them was one of full-blooded reaction. This was the "mystifying ideology" of which Jack Conrad has written. Like the republican motifs still present within the Napoleonic empire, the ideological forms persevered into the Stalinist reaction, but they were deformed and monstrous. In order to secure and consolidate its rule the bureaucracy managed to secure the ideological legitimacy of Lenin and October - legitimating its terror and dictatorship by recourse to the tenets of the Marxism it was betraying. Rosmer noted that the symbolic notations which allowed Stalin to be conceived as the incarnation of October would make it even more necessary for that mask to be removed and for Stalin to be perceived as he truly was - the totalitarian butcher of the people (A Rosmer Lenin's Moscow London 1987, p255). The transformations within the organic social forces of the Soviet Union were the dialectical supersession of the traditions of the 'old Bolsheviks' - the intricate struggles within the party led to the dominance of the Stalinist faction and the forces behind it. The result of these struggles was that the old died and a new societal form was born, itself a recomposition of past, ancient social forms. The elimination of the left opposition was the consequence of a dialectic transforming the innumerable quantity of minor events into a qualitatively different form of society than that originally initiated by the October revolution. For all the attempts of the Stalinist bureaucracy to secure their relationship to the legacy of Lenin it is clear that there was a severance between the ideals of Marxism and the Soviet reaction. The perpetuated inherited forms were vacuous, shapeless tools of mystification, vice and murder. Victory of the epigones The dialectics of the Thermidorian counterrevolution in the Soviet Union were complex. Maintaining the vocabulary of the revolution and also the pretence that the economic and political conquests of the revolution were secure, this slow revolution against the revolution had both local and epochal consequences. The enigmatic victory of the Stalinist bureaucracy, its social composition and its long-term impact on the course of other revolutions had to be understood. This renunciation of the revolutionary tradition of the Bolsheviks by the rising Stalinist bureaucracy was clear to the left opposition by the late 1920s. Yet in exile and in prison Trotsky and his followers persisted in trying to understand the political and ideological manoeuvres which had led to their defeat and the victory of the epigones through the lens of the past and a consideration of the significance of key protagonists like Stalin. The key question they asked was, in the light of the histories of revolution, Marxism and the social condition of the Soviet Union, what was Stalin and what mysterious social forces were being refracted through him? Trotsky soon realised that the victory of the epigones was the culmination of a process of epigenesis - the creation of phenomena through the differentiation, metamorphoses and elaboration of original forms. The epigenesis of Stalinism derived from an interpretation and metamorphosis of the legacy of Lenin and October. Whilst, in so many ways, qualitatively different from a truly Marxist tradition, it remained an elaboration of that body of thought and practice. This is why, for Trotsky and the left opposition, its epigone status had to be uncovered and its parody of Marxism exposed. Isaac Deutscher in his reworking of Trotsky's analysis was one of the few who tried to uncover the real epochal significance of Stalinism by examining the nature of epigenesis. Whilst Stalin markedly stands in a qualitatively different relationship to Marxism than Trotsky, Deutscher argues that Stalin should be perceived quite differently, in his historic role, from other totalitarian despots. By considering Stalin to be an epigone of Napoleon Deutscher makes clear analogies between the achievements of the great bourgeois dictator and the Soviet tyrant. Even if Stalin's localised significance was negative, in epochal and continental terms it is largely progressive. The merging of conquest and revolution in Bonapartism and Stalinism plays a progressive role in the elimination of their respective anciens régimes in ways in which a purer and more human type of revolutionary social order could not possibly have achieved. This dialectic of regressive and progressive social forms is present within the processes of both Stalinism and Bonapartism and because of this the Soviet legacy after the victory of the Thermidorians is not one of absolute sterility (see I Deutscher Stalin: a political biography London 1961, p555). The analogy is made to stretch further through an identification of Stalin with Cromwell and Robespierre as well, Stalin becoming an amalgam and recomposition of the whole process of epochal revolution. Stalin is Cromwell as the embodiment of the continuation of revolution through all of its progressive and regressive phases. Like Robespierre he is the builder of a new Jacobin party. Like Napoleon he has transformed the world through the conquest of his half-revolutionary, half-imperial militaristic forces. For Deutscher the progressive aspects of the legacy will remain as much as those of Cromwell, Robespierre and Napoleon (ibid pp569-570). Stalin, for Deutscher, is a monstrous but ultimately beneficent amalgam of Asiatic despotism and European Marxism (I Deutscher The unfinished revolution: Russia 1917-1967 Oxford 1969, p34). Unwittingly Deutscher himself is being snared by inappropriate analogies as history would subsequently display. Deutscher was unable to conceive of the end of the societies engendered by the epigones of Lenin, just as Trotsky was without the benefit of hindsight when he was observing the Stalinist bureaucracy in the 1930s. Whilst Trotsky was closer than Deutscher to the struggles within the Russian party, the epochal significance of Stalinism was less clear to him than the localised terror through which he and the left opposition had experienced their most tragic moments. What was clear to both Trotsky and Deutscher was those very imitative aspects of Stalin - that he was in so many ways a recomposition of antique and anachronistic forms, as well as the template for the emergence of other epigones: petty Stalins constructed in the image of the dictator and comprehending themselves as his repetition in the same manner as Stalin recomposed a Lenin amalgamated with the spirits of the tyrants of the past. Each bureaucratic epigone signalled the fate of any critical reaction to the Thermidorians. Trotsky argued that the central task of the opposition was to defend the ideological tradition of the October revolution by restoring a pristine history from underneath the weight of the slanders of the bureaucracy. Uncovering the genuine history of October meant deciphering the enigma of the genesis of Stalinism, especially in the light of the "theological ingenuities" of the Stalinists which were stifling creative Marxist thought and the whole notion of a classical Marxism (L Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution Vol 3, London1967, p352). The first task of the opposition had to be, then, the displacement of Stalin and the bureaucracy from their perceived and self-conceived position as the inheritors of the legacy of Lenin and October (V Serge Memoirs of a revolutionary London 1984, ppxv-xvi). The supremacy of the Stalinist faction had been aided not only by analogies between Trotsky and Napoleon, but also by Trotsky's non-Bolshevik past. This crucial problem had to be overcome by Trotsky in his ideological struggle with the Stalinists but, of course, at this time Lenin's last testament was unknown except to a few members of the party. Trotsky had to stress his affinity and identity with the Leninist project by dismantling the repetitions of Lenin on behalf of the epigones and making a virtue out of his late arrival at Lenin's side. Trotsky does this by arguing that his conversion to Leninism was surer than the epigones like Stalin who were simply imitators of their master and would become the unwitting tools of the social forces of Thermidor (L Trotsky My life: an attempt at an autobiography London 1975, p169). The epigones advance their project of reaction and counterrevolution by destroying the remnants of the old guard of the Bolsheviks. The pioneers were destroyed by those standing behind them in the 'second line' of the revolutionary offensive and who could only advance themselves by destroying those in front. Able, within the bureaucracy to identify their cause with that of the ailing Lenin, the epigones began to dismantle the real gains of the revolution. Far from the bureaucratic apparatus dying away in the process of revolution, the bureaucrats consolidated their position. The falsification of the past and the historical elimination of the first generation from the history books itself transformed the ruling stratum's system of values - degenerated and morally bankrupt, the parasitic ruling stratum's perpetuation became an end in itself. As the defence of the ruling stratum rested upon its identification with Lenin, each bureaucratic epigone had to be easily identified with the "imposing pseudonym" of their fictionalised Lenin. This was made all the easier in the later 1920s by the acknowledgement on behalf of the epigones of the absolute infallibility of Lenin and the extension of this fiction to themselves by association (L Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution Vol 3, London1967, pp326-327). By this tactic Trotsky's pre-Bolshevik critiques of Lenin (not least the old accusations of Lenin's Jacobinism) were used to discredit the opposition and buttress the power of the epigones. In this process of ideological struggle the past of the epigones was fictionalised and transformed and any conception of the truth of the history of the party or October was meaningless or irrelevant. As the analogies between Stalin and the spirits of the past became clearer and the Thermidorian reaction became a reality, the bureaucrats themselves turned into the image of their leader. As Trotsky makes clear, "In Stalin each one easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality" (L Trotsky The revolution betrayed New York 1998, p250). The motifs present within Stalin's personality become composed within the minds of others and this leads to a further degeneration of the revolutionary spirit of the masses. Maxim Gorky himself, in his construction of a socialist realist literature, was one of the originators of this whole conception of the leader in his romanticisation of the relationship between the masses and the leadership of the party. He maintained that the organic folklore of the Russian masses had raised Lenin to the status of a new Prometheus. The invented myths of the people were constituting new visions of leadership and these very myths were not fictions, but the extraction from 'reality' of a central idea of a personality or a situation and the embodiment of it in imagery. This extraction from reality would then be supplemented by the desired and the possible thus gaining a romantic symbol of revolution (M Gorky, 'Soviet literature', in HG Scott (ed) Soviet writers congress 1934: the debate on socialist realism and modernism London 1977, pp43-44). The ludicrous conception of the revolutionary romanticisation of the leadership and their lesser epigones was a central part of the rule of Stalin and at the end of the day the truths of the opposition were annihilated in the physical and ideological tyranny of the terror. The social forces of Thermidor which had invested the epigones with its power masked its status by the very elevation of its chosen protagonists. With the inability to refute the lies and slanders within the Soviet Union, the cult of Stalin became unassailable. This was due not least to the inaction of the 'vacillating masses' and their inability to defend October and the opposition, largely because of the ideological penetration of the bureaucracy into their very souls. The fiction of Stalin's history of October and the revolution is well documented, but in his conclusion to the work he says something which is all too true. Stalin retained his invincibility as a bureaucrat because he understood the nature of the masses, as well as the social and ideological origins of the bureaucracy itself. He recounts the myth of Antaeus, son of Gaea, goddess of the earth - a hero stronger than any other, invincible, undefeated. Antaeus vanquishes all because when he was in danger of losing a fight he would touch the earth, the mother who had given birth and raised him, and this would give him strength. But his enemies were aware of this and one day Hercules lifted Antaeus from the earth, suspended and throttled him. Stalin claims that his Bolsheviks are strong because of their relationship to the masses which had given birth to them. They are invincible because of this (J Stalin History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - short course Moscow 1939, pp362-363). It is clear that the bureaucracy were parasites upon the masses, yet it is also true that the multiplication of the 'little Stalins' and the permeation of an epigone culture into the degenerated revolution would not be halted by the desperate calls of an exiled and imprisoned opposition. The social forces of the Thermidor were too powerful. Many capitulated to Stalin and were later murdered. Others, though recognising the corruption and murderous nature of the bureaucracy, remained silent. Unable to perceive that the forces of the historical process were against them, some stayed to fight within the party but were expelled and murdered. Outside of the Soviet Union the remnants of the opposition ceaselessly tried to uncover the truth and in doing so lost their last emotional attachment to their once-cherished workers' state that had so relentlessly sought their destruction. Their phase of the revolution was over. The perpetuation of the appearances of a continuation with October went hand in hand with a radical schism in essence between the legacy of the Bolsheviks and the supremacy of the bureaucracy. The opposition's recourse to the past in order to understand their revolution had had terrifying consequences. Since they had not fully understood the nature of their revolution, the search for repetitions, analogies and identities with the earlier bourgeois revolutions led them astray. Because of their universalist and humanist sense of revolution Trotsky and the opposition were outmanoeuvred by the practical, empirical Stalin - truly the only one to appreciate that the truth of a historical moment resides fundamentally in concrete experience. * Part one: Trotsky and the Thermidorian chapter
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