![]() ![]() Trotsky used Thermidor both as analogy and as metaphor: he gave it both a precise and a broad scope. ![]() From this time, Trotsky would be fascinated by the uses to which the notion of Thermidor could be put. He was making a forthright public declaration that the concept of a Thermidor could be usefully applied to the understanding of post-revolutionary events in Russia. This was Trotsky speaking in his defence at the Central Control Commission in 1927. But comrade Sol’c, do you clearly understand in accordance with which chapter you are now preparing to shoot? I fear, comrade Sol’c, that you are about to shoot us in accordance with the Ustrjalov, i.e., Thermidorian chapter. ![]() I should like comrade Sol’c to think this analogy through to the end and, first of all, to give himself an answer to the following question: in accordance with which chapter is Sol’c preparing to have us shot? … When we did the shooting, we were firm in our knowledge as to the chapter. When the chapter headed like this – upwards – the French Jacobins, the Bolsheviks of that time, guillotined the Royalists and Girondists … And then there began another chapter in France, when the French Ustrialovs and semi-Ustrialovs – the Thermidorians and the Bonapartists from among the Right-wing Jacobins – began exiling and shooting the Left Jacobins – the Bolsheviks of that time. But in the Great French Revolution there were two great chapters, of which one went like this (points upwards) and the other like that (points downwards). We too had many people brought before the firing squad. During the Great French Revolution many were guillotined. ![]()
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