Thermidor: The Revolution Betrayed in Trotsky, Orwell and Serge

In the history of the twentieth century, the two decades from 1917 to 1937 represented a high point of leftwing revolutionary upheaval. Beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its abortive European sequels, the ferment spread across the globe as leftwing parties of different kinds – from communists to anarchists – organised general strikes, violent uprisings and short-lived republics.1 But for all their diversity of ideological ends and practical means, there was one thing these revolutionary outbreaks had in common: failure. All were either crushed directly or failed of their promise through the actions of existing governments, political rivals, external enemies or internal ‘traitors’. It was the spectre of betrayal that particularly exercised the imagination of the left and inspired a large outpouring of political self-analysis,2 as well as a strong literary response from an international group of novelists. The American modernist John Dos Passos, best known for Manhattan Transfer and the U.S.A. trilogy, concluded his 1939 novelistic meditation on the fortunes of the American left, Adventures of a Young Man, with the Stalinist ‘betrayal’ of the Spanish revolution of 1936. The German modernist Alexander Döblin, author of the Weimar city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, dedicated what he considered to be his most important multi-volume work of historical fiction, November 1918: A German Revolution (1939-1950), to the German revolution ‘betrayed’ by the Social Democrats (the second volume was titled A People Betrayed).3 The star French political novelist, André Malraux, laid much of the blame for Chiang Kai-shek’s bloody suppression of the Shanghai communist insurrection of 1927 at the door of the Communist International in his most famous novel, La Condition Humaine (1933).4 And a range of Russian, Ukrainian and eastern-central European novelists, most famously Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon (1940), grappled with the perceived betrayal of the Russian Revolution from almost its first year onwards.5 No faction on the left in the interwar period, from Stalinists to Trotskyists to Social Democrats, escaped the accusation, but what did it mean to say that a revolution had been ‘betrayed’? Betrayal is the breaking of an assumed loyalty, an affront to a pre-existing trust: it presupposes a belief in the ideal of solidarity against external foes. Only someone who should be on the same side can betray: former comrades, leaders or party organisations that are perceived – by the self-designated victims of treachery and guardians of the original flame – to have let down, sold out or actively suppressed the shared aims of the revolution. As George Orwell said of Koestler: ‘He is writing about darkness, but it is darkness at what ought to be noon. Part of the time he feels that things might have turned out differently. The notion that so-and-so has “betrayed”, that things have only gone wrong because of individual wickedness, is ever-present in leftwing thought’.6 The writing of betrayal is thus the particular preserve of revolutionaries themselves and those who identify in some capacity with the revolutionary movement and its primary goals, and as such is qualitatively different from the depiction of revolution by non-believers and outsiders, by all those who are not architects of, willing participants in or at least sympathisers with the initial cause. No monarchist or nationalist would have accused Stalin of betraying the communist revolutions in Russia and China in the 1920s or Ebert and Noske of betraying the German one in 1919. Betrayal is always in the eye of the beholder. We can therefore best study the literary construction of leftwing betrayal in the writing of revolutionary sympathisers or militants such as the two authors at the centre of this article: George Orwell and Victor Serge. Orwell was a vocal supporter of revolution as a means of social transformation in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and even after recanting his faith in the viability of an English revolution, he remained a defender of the original socialist vision against the depredations of Stalinism. He wrote some of the most famous English-language works on the theme of ‘revolution betrayed’: Animal Farm (1945) and Homage to Catalonia (1938), about the Russian and Spanish revolutions respectively. Orwell’s acquaintance Victor Serge,7 a Francophone revolutionary of Russian origin, was much more comprehensive in his coverage, producing novelistic and documentary accounts of all the key revolutionary ‘betrayals’ of the interwar period: Russian, Spanish, German and Chinese. Neither fame nor breadth, however, mean that Orwell’s and Serge’s texts are typical literary expressions of the discourse of leftwing betrayal. Their work was the product of a unique literary-political conjuncture in the 1930s and 40s when the dissident left’s dominant framework for interpreting failure came from the realm of Trotskyist thought.8 Serge, not coincidentally, was the French translator of Leon Trotsky’s seminal piece of politico-economic analysis, The Revolution Betrayed,9 and a long-time critical admirer of the Bolshevik leader himself. Orwell’s relation to Trotskyism was much more ambivalent,10 but when both writers explored betrayal, they chose to do so in what was, for contemporaries, an immediately recognisable Trotskyist form – via the lens of what Trotsky himself called ‘Thermidor’. Before embarking on a detailed reading of Orwell’s and Serge’s texts, therefore, we must pause to trace the history of this concept from its origins in the first French Revolution to its flowering in interwar leftwing polemics. The notion of betrayal was not born in the twentieth century. It had precursors in the revolutions of the nineteenth century, and its roots went back ultimately to what one could call the original sin of the revolutionary gospel: the French Thermidorian Reaction of 1794 (so named because the coup that inaugurated it took place on the ninth day of the month of ‘Thermidor’, Year II of the French Revolution by the new republican calendar). The Thermidorian Reaction began with the arrest and execution of Robespierre and other leading Jacobins by more conservative members of the National Convention. It continued with the rolling back of many of the economic and cultural policies of the most radical phase of the revolution, including government control of prices and wages and enforced dechristianisation, and it was accompanied by an economic crisis, a White Terror directed against Jacobins and the suppression of their social and political base, including the original Paris Commune. The following year, the Thermidorian Convention gave place to the Directory, a regime marked by corruption, by the definitive resurgence of the haute bourgeoisie (as against the urban working-class sans-culottes) and by a growing bureaucracy, all of which ultimately paved the way for the coup of Eighteenth Brumaire 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte assumed the role of Consul. Throughout the nineteenth century, the French Revolution, in all its phases up to and including the Bonapartist dictatorship, served as the indispensable point of reference for revolutionaries of all stripes, from Marxists to anarchists. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it continued to perform this function in the early twentieth century, and for no one more than for the Bolsheviks – the self-styled Russian Jacobins – whose discourse at all levels, before and for several decades after assuming power, was steeped in allusions to this originating event. As Jay Bergman, Robert Daniels, David Law and Eduard Mark make clear, the concept of Thermidor – as both a general ‘metaphor’ and specific historical ‘analogy’ (see Law) – was absolutely central to the early conceptualisation of the Soviet regime’s evolution.11 This was the case not just for the Bolsheviks themselves, but also for their enemies: the Western conservatives and Social Democrats such as Karl Kautsky, and the Russian anti-Bolshevik liberals and socialists.12 From the early 1920s, liberals and Mensheviks in the émigré press insisted that the October Revolution was heading the way of Thermidor and that the chances were high that it would issue in a capitalist and nationalist restoration. The revolutionary regime would destroy itself from within, in other words, rather than be defeated from without. In their eyes, Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), which partially restored capitalist market relations, was a clear example of the triumph of bourgeois Thermidorian tendencies that would ultimately lead to the fall of the original Bolshevik rulers, perhaps to be replaced by a Bonapartist dictatorship; and as part of their analysis, they also pointed up the growing levels of corruption. Concern about the dangers of corruption and the effects of ‘right-wing’ economic policy were the main route by which Thermidor entered the Bolsheviks’ own debates in the 1920s, in conjunction with increasing alarm about the growth of the bureaucracy. According to Bergman, from the middle of the decade onwards, the ‘issue of a Soviet Thermidor […] became a defining one’ in Soviet politics, as different factions accused each other of advocating Thermidorian reaction.13 And no one contributed more to cementing the notion in general discourse than Leon Trotsky, who continued to wield the accusation as a weapon from abroad long after Stalin put an end to the debate within the Soviet Union itself. To begin with, as leader of the Left Opposition faction within the Party, Trotsky was most concerned about the Thermidorian threat posed by the NEP bourgeoisie and the kulaks (rich peasants) as well as the right-wing elements within the Party, the bureaucracy and the army that supported these classes – in other words, he was concerned about the possibility of capitalist restoration. But by the 1930s, defeated by Stalin and exiled from a country that had embarked on large-scale industrialisation and collectivisation, he recalibrated his model to focus exclusively on the government bureaucracy as the main driver of Thermidorian counter-revolution, with Stalin as Bonaparte (and Trotsky himself, by implication, as Robespierre). By sending Robespierre and his confederates to the guillotine, the Thermidorians eliminated from the earth ‘the most revolutionary force of their time […] The Jacobin Clubs, the crucibles of revolution, became the nurseries of future functionaries of Napoleon. We should learn from the French Revolution. But is it really necessary to repeat it?’15 Lenin […] was spared only by death from the repressions of the bureaucracy; failing the opportunity to put him in prison, the him up in a The of the has The Jacobins have been out by the and Bolsheviks have been by Thermidor thus served as a key in Trotsky’s of the and future of the Soviet regime – a regime the new itself at the of the ideological they were of all and itself with its capitalist enemies The of Trotsky’s could work well as a of the of Orwell’s Animal Orwell’s one by all the main of Trotsky’s The Revolution from the of the economic policy to his of to the of Trotsky’s of the growing the of and the of the party and their the a in the are more than of the who to the best in and the of with in the and Trotsky the of the with their the for the for for the for the a at through the for the He all this to ‘the Soviet which has and from control to a bureaucracy and has to the the of and a of the of Animal It is not for that in his to Orwell on of to Animal called the of […] was not the of – in its most general a right-wing originating from within a leftwing revolution – was by Trotsky’s political and by literary of Trotskyism in the 1930s and It writers with a model of internal betrayal, just as the of the Paris of had the most recognisable of external To what Orwell was one of those writers is to is no that Orwell had Trotsky’s The Revolution and the only of the in his in relation to in the 1940s, his reading in the year before his death did Mark historical novel The was one of the most of the anti-Bolshevik émigré of the Soviet Thermidor with an almost in French revolutionary But or not Orwell was with the range of the in there is no that he the of Soviet with its in Thermidorian the back of his Orwell’s first to this must have in 1937 his time with the in – with a party whose leader had been Trotsky’s and whose was Trotskyist in Trotsky himself, did not the Orwell much of Homage to Catalonia and such as the Spanish to to his that the Soviet Union has in a The leftwing of Homage to several key Trotskyist works of history in 1937 – Victor Serge’s From Lenin to Stalin and history of the Revolution – the of which Orwell perceived as the same of as his own Orwell’s by Trotskyists and Trotsky himself the end of in the from a leftwing point of and the betrayal of the revolution in In the 1940s, Orwell was with and through it the of the New many of were just out of the Trotskyist and key of the In the translator of the Ukrainian of Animal Farm it necessary to Orwell that its were not but members of the Bolshevik […] of who ‘the of the October but turned against Stalin is the and of the Russian Revolution, which he has not in ‘betrayed’ but has on that were in it from the itself […] an to than the Trotskyist that Stalin is a who has the Revolution to his own and that things would have been different Lenin had or Trotsky had remained in there is no strong for that the main of would have been before the of a were as Orwell put it in a to the of when to the Animal the case of there is the that they for in the up to about and have to that a took place about that the was from the of the Bolshevik to call Animal Farm a is not – the Trotsky in the – from the the same of tendencies as Napoleon and in the of the and that Orwell to the (as he in the to in whose suppression Trotsky a leading the belief that all the was the only in the and by – a belief shared by Trotsky, who in the even one by the […] Soviet and the […] – is by Animal to be The of Stalin is a necessary of the The bureaucracy has of an a first not an of of the leader which so the literary of the is in the of the of a which at in of its […] Stalin is the of the bureaucracy. is the of his political […] The Stalin a a and and of no control is a of of a new not before in the of the is and has […] We be that he […] is the in which the to itself to the function is to as a point for and which are more an individual than an He he was that the of was at an a long time there had been he had to by some there was and even revolutionary in the of himself and his had been with to up the on could be from the Their and in the was to at and in with their is the of to and in to had such or is the of a […] can the in the of the Soviet […] The of a revolution is Trotsky was ‘the policy of as to ‘the policy of which of Trotsky’s own of and bureaucracy were not ‘the of […] in its Orwell’s Napoleon his to the Western the of – the of the revolution – been Orwell’s of Trotsky’s famous his to the Trotskyist of his about Trotsky’s historical Trotsky did not to the of which the for Orwell’s nor of the the same year, but the of had been long before and there was new in the vision by Animal Farm that Trotsky had not in his on revolutionary betrayal in the The of Animal Farm is The – the – on as the from their capitalist with these a of The external in other words, but the internal Thermidorian is Trotsky, for his had in The Revolution that even the Soviet of capitalist and transformation new – the – the would to form a new party to the Bonapartist in the of a second revolution. But there is no of that in Animal In the possibility is but left It would Orwell’s and acquaintance Victor Serge, to the Trotskyist for a new October in Victor Serge, did not by Trotskyist at second He was a who out as an in Western but to in after in the Soviet He for the – he was in the of revolution – and he was to Trotsky, the Left Opposition faction and its He did time in internal Soviet in the 1930s with a group of Trotskyists he in his fiction, and after by Stalin to to Western he continued to with the exiled Trotsky, who in The Revolution As this but he also gave its Thermidorian a form in his own novel in the dedicated the the leaders and other Trotskyists who were and by the Soviet in wrote at much about the Stalinist suppression of the (the party with which Orwell had in novel, the The of it was in in the that he the theme of revolutionary betrayal in its clear on the Thermidorians or point said by and their own and one on the French Revolution, by it would such that would – – the were at in on And and Left the and the that we were and that all of the who to were betraying the a about that a the to himself in allusions in because the of are in a to of We in those that can be in the and of the Bolsheviks of the 1920s and side the other of betrayal and counter-revolution, but because this is a by a Left about other Left the Trotskyist is Trotsky is by the and exiled who themselves to the of Trotskyist across the Trotsky’s the and of and directly on his Stalin is the and a a revolution born of a and left on its own by the of the the betrayal of the German and revolutions of the 1920s to of in Russia which to a as a with French revolutionary they in a way of Trotsky’s own we or of historical have to do with But the their of […] do say of a in […] this the of the against the Thermidorian bureaucracy, of different of are a not just of this novel but of Serge’s other and This is the 1930s and 1940s, he wrote from the point of of the original revolutionary that had as he put it in the to Year of the Russian Revolution, in of and by the The with in the not end up in a but is from to the to other dissident Bolsheviks who their back and and the are the of those who the Ukrainian of Animal the and of these – former revolutionaries by the regime they to – Serge’s novel one long meditation on the notion of Revolution is a which is no its It is down, The original ideal of the revolution is but its transformation is at the of the in the first the the of Karl the door by a that not to or be through this door and of in Karl in the in the form of a that directly We have a of of in Animal whose the in the of his of and whose had he (as Trotsky said of the would have been that of and Trotsky himself. Serge’s the of the initial revolutionary but of its through of and and and the to who the of the new gone through the of and who have thus on the of The on are either to to the ideal and to the corruption from within or to from Trotsky himself the former in the 1920s and the in the of Serge’s the first All their at in the that and we are members of the same the only of the The leading it to We are in to it in of […] We are the faction to because we are the only faction to the whose they have and the and least of the – to have part in the Revolution – is the only one who through the he to be a than they to famous from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Bonaparte he to up the of the and to in the and of a no his has been Lenin in his only are the who no have either or the we must It is with that we must the but a different This is also the with which Trotsky ends The Revolution that a new out a new revolution against the And Serge’s novel ends with from and at a the for are He is as a construction and the novel with a what of the they the of or they a different before Russia to be with a in a long time from that of which so as not to its end up of by a of lead so of […] We were in to the they be in to their […] as in a they are in the of A that out of ‘the of rather than the of a new is a who in several of Serge’s In The of in he against the of in that Trotsky could have himself in of his or in the on the one day in its he in the novel, than the and be of early in the In the of Serge’s before he was and in such just just a thing revolutionary betrayal But by the time his death in a of by the has and his vision to that of the who had his on the of a that be but that was to all the In The of much time this country before to of and the it has He that it is to force it the of the can it or it always or it The of we should gave its to the first month of the in the French revolutionary that also Serge, revolutionary betrayal, In his on Arthur Koestler – the same one he the famous revolutions are but they are not all the same – Orwell revolutionary Trotskyism with the of the He was no to this of himself, and in in in the Orwell chose the of a working-class to the possibility of social future to the […] or it would would The were could not it when at that in the In the end their would from the of the as in Serge, or from the and of Orwell’s of one day A revolutionary the of both Orwell and in these but not in the same way as their in the of revolutionary the whose they would have to from the of a revolution – a new on an that only in the of Trotsky’s Thermidorian is a of and at the of is the and of Russian of and author of of and and the of and and on leftwing and