There are broad similarities between the processes that occur in revolutions, even when their class nature is different. The comparison between the Russian Revolution and the Great French Revolution of 1789-94 can shed light on some of the fundamental processes within certain limits. This applies to the use of terms like ‘Thermidor’, which refers to the episode on 27 July (9th Thermidor, in the old revolutionary calendar) 1794, when the right wing of the revolutionary Jacobins combined with the opportunist Centre (the ‘Swamp’) to overthrow Robespierre, thus beginning the slide towards political reaction which ended in Napoleon’s Bonapartist dictatorship. It signified the end of the period of revolutionary ascent and the beginning of a downturn. This is reflected in the fact that, whereas in the period of ascent (from 1789-94) the Terror was directed almost entirely against the enemies of the revolution and those who wanted to compromise with reaction, after Thermidor, it was directed against the revolutionary wing.
By extension, Thermidor can be taken to signify a point in the revolution where a certain weariness and exhaustion sets in, reflected in a retreat which paves the way for open reaction. In France, this occurred when a section of the ‘Mountain’ (the revolutionary wing of the National Convention) became tired of the Terror and the storm and stress of revolution in general. The split in the ‘Mountain’ led to the Thermidorian reaction. In the same way, the origins of the Stalinist reaction in Russia can be traced to a vague mood among the Soviet officials and petty bourgeois after the end of the civil war that it was time to call a halt to revolutionary innovations and set about ‘re-establishing order’. This mood of reaction was summed up in the theory of socialism in one country. Of course, like every historical analogy, the use of the term Thermidor was only an approximation, and as such had a conditional character. Trotsky in his 1929 articles explained his position as follows:
I am referring here primarily to the question of Thermidor, and by this very reason, to the question of the class nature of the Soviet state. The formula of Thermidor is of course a conditional formula, like every historical analogy…Thermidor signalises the first victorious stage of the counter-revolution, that is, the direct transfer of power from the hands of one class into the hands of another, whereby this transfer, although necessarily accompanied by civil war, is nevertheless masked politically by the fact that the struggle occurs between the factions of a party that was yesterday united… It indicates the direct transfer of power into the hands of a different class, after which the revolutionary class cannot regain power again except through an armed uprising. The latter requires, in turn, a new revolutionary situation, the inception of which depends upon a whole complex of domestic and international causes. (Trotsky, Writings 1929, pp. 278-9.)
Some years later, in an article entitled The Workers’ State and the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism, Trotsky re-evaluated this position on Thermidor. He explained that the analogy of Thermidor had been open to misinterpretation. The ultra-left group of the late Vladimir Smirnov, the Democratic Centralism group, in opposition to the Left Opposition, had stated in 1926 that the proletariat had already lost power and that capitalism had been restored in Russia. For Trotsky, this was totally false and was burying the revolution while it was still alive. Without historical analogies, we cannot learn from history. But we must also understand their limits, their similarities and their differences. Such was the case with Thermidor.
Thermidor in 1794 produced a shift of power from certain groups in the Convention to other groups, from one section of the victorious ‘people’ to other strata. Was Thermidor counter-revolutionary? The answer to this question depends upon how wide a significance we attach, in a given case, to the concept of ‘counter-revolution.’ The social overturn of 1789 to 1793 was bourgeois in character. In essence it reduced itself to the replacement of fixed feudal property by ‘free’ bourgeois property. The counter-revolution, corresponding to this revolution, would have had to attain the re-establishment of feudal property. But Thermidor did not even make an attempt in this direction. Robespierre sought his support among the artisans – the Directory among the middle bourgeoisie. Bonaparte allied himself with the banks. All these shifts – which had, of course, not only a political but a social significance – occurred, however, on the basis of the new bourgeois society and state.
Of the very same import was the Eighteenth Brumaire of Bonaparte [this was the new date for 9th November 1799, when Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and created a military dictatorship], the next important stage on the road of reaction. In both instances, it was a question of restoring neither the old forms of property, or the power of former ruling estates; but of dividing the gains of the new social regime among the different sections of the victorious ‘Third Estate.’ The bourgeoisie appropriated more and more property and power (either directly and immediately, or through special agents like Bonaparte), but made no attempt whatever against the social conquests of the revolution; on the contrary, it solicitously sought to strengthen, organise and stabilise them. Napoleon guarded bourgeois property, including that of the peasant, against the ‘rabble’ and the claims of the expropriated proprietors. Feudal Europe hated Napoleon as the living embodiment of the revolution, and it was correct according to its standards. (Trotsky, Writings 1934-35, pp. 168-9, my emphasis.)
What we are dealing with here are a series of political counter-revolutions on the same bourgeois property relations. Using this analogy by comparison, Trotsky reveals the character and dynamics of Stalinism, not as a new class system of exploitation, but as a social parasitism on the workers’ state. A political counter-revolution had taken place on the basis of nationalised property forms. The working class had lost political power, but the counter-revolution had not restored the bourgeoisie. The Stalinist bureaucracy itself had usurped political power. It was a product of social contradictions emerging from a workers’ state isolated in chronically backward conditions.
The political counter-revolution carried out by the bureaucracy completely liquidated the regime of workers’ Soviet democracy, but did not destroy the new property relations established by the October Revolution. Raising itself above the workers, the bureaucracy sought to regulate these internal contradictions in its own interests. It based itself on the nationalised, planned economy and played a relatively progressive role in developing the productive forces, although, in the words of Trotsky, at three times the cost of capitalism, with tremendous waste, corruption and mismanagement. Far from eradicating these social contradictions, the bureaucracy accumulated new ones. In the end, it raised itself above the proletariat and established a regime of bureaucratic absolutism, where the working class was politically expropriated, without rights or a say in the running of society.