But that "pragmatism" as you put it is exactly my point. A true ideologue would have realized the revolutionaries in Kronstadt had created a system more in line with the ideals of the revolution than what he had created and woouldn't have set the army out to destroy them. nor would he have introduced the NEP (basically a limited re-introduction of capitalism to save the faltering Soviet economy). In the end, the important thing to Lenin was Lenin -- not any ideology.