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the Butyrki prison in Moscow. "How shall one relate the grim emotions
of a revolutionist thrown into a prison of the revolution?" he wrote, try–
ing to describe his sense of disbelief. Yet his weary mind grasped the
parallel with the French Revolution when men similarly fell "from the
height of power to the gates of prison." In prison, Steinberg requested Jean
Jaures's
Socialist History
if
the French Revolution,
seeking to put order and
understanding into his thoughts.
Lenin never held the Jacobins or the Terror responsible for the down–
fall of the French Revolution. On the contrary, he believed that it was the
Thermidorean reaction, not the Terror, that had spelled the end of the
French Revolution. In Thermidor, July 1794, members of the French
National Convention had risen up and revolted against Robespierre,
shouting "Down with the tyrant!" The following day, Robespierre, Saint–
Just, and their allies were arrested and guillotined. Lenin was determined
to avoid the trap of a Thermidor. In other words, he was convinced that
compromise with moderate elements might sometimes be necessary to
avoid a counterrevolutionary movement.
In the winter of 1918, there was just such a movement for popular
democracy, the counterrevolution that Lenin had feared. The sailors at the
strategic naval base of Kronstadt, located on an island off Russia's Baltic
coast, revolted. Deeply discontented with party policy, they demanded lib–
eral concessions for workers and peasants-freedom for trade unions, the
release of political prisoners, an end to official propaganda, free elections of
Soviets, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Instead of negotiating
with the sailors, the Bolshevik government issued an ultimatum and pre–
pared for an attack. Lenin and Trotsky, according to Victor Serge, demanded
that the rebels surrender "or be shot down like rabbits." When they refused
to capitulate, units of the Red Army trekked across the ice to assault
Kronstadt and the battleships, frozen in the water. The ice cracked under the
advancing soldiers' feet; the freezing water swallowed them. For several weeks
in March both sides fought a ferocious battle, but the rebels were finally over–
powered. Some escaped to Finland; the rest were shot in Petrograd.
"This is Thermidor," declared Lenin. "But we shan't let ourselves be
guillotined. We shall make a Thernudor ourselves." Lenin's response to the
idealistic counterrevolution of Kronstadt was his own "counterrevolu–
tionary" liberal economic package. He announced that he was willing to
make a moderate swing to the right. Indeed, his "New Economic Policy"
granted peasants some control over their production, gave artisans more
freedom in their trades, and permitted some private trade and private own–
ershi p. Lenin had backtracked, endorsing a "partial restoration of
capitalism."
It
was a "retreat," he said, but "for a new attack." Political free–
dom, however, was not included in the Thermidorean bargain.
