Mutiny of the Potemkine battleship

The Mutinerie of the battleship Potemkine is a revolt of sailors which bursts the June 27th 1905 on board armoured '' Potemkine '' and which falls under the context of the Révolution of 1905 in Russia. Regarded thereafter as one of the harbingers of the Revolution of 1917, it is the inspiration of the film the Battleship Potemkine of Sergueï Eisenstein.

Events

In 1905, the Central committee of the Social democrat Organization of the Fleet of the Black Sea undertook preparations for a simultaneous general rising on the whole of the ships of the fleet, planned for the autumn 1905. Whereas the Potemkine was in cruising off the Tendra island for firing practices, a mutiny éclatat, in a spontaneous and premature way compared to the plans of the revolutionists.

The revolt was started by the second of the battleship, which would have threatened of reprisals part of the crew which refused to eat rotting meat: it would have made mass the mutineers on the front bridge, covered with a cover, marine fusiliers holding them out of cheek. The crew would have concluded from it that one prepared to pass the mutineers by the weapons, and would have interposed, begging the fusiliers not to draw. It is the version which is presented in the battleship Potemkine ; what is in fact really passed remains not very clear, and was blurred by the legend propagated by film of Eisenstein. It is certain that the discipline of the navy was severe and the moral one low following the humiliating defeats of the Guerre Russo-Japanese woman.

The revolt burst and the mutineers killed a certain number of their officers, including the commander, Evgeny Golikov, the second in command, Ippolit Giliarovsky, and the doctor who had certified the meat suitable for consumption. The surviving officers were shut down. A sailor, Grigori Vakoulenchouk, were killed during the combat. The crew organized itself in a Commission led by Afanasi Matouchenko. The crew of the destroyer n°267, preserves Potemkine , joined to the mutineers.

In the evening, the mutiné battleship returned in Odessa while raising the red Drapeau. Odessa was already under the blow of a general strike and sporadic riots, that the arrival of the battleship poked. The representatives of the “commission of contact” of the social democrat parts did not manage to convince the crew of the battleship to unload armed detachments and to help the workmen to get weapons and to fight. Such an amount of the workmen whom the sailors were divided.

June 16th, the funeral of Vakoulenchouk, the sailor killed at the time of the mutiny, transformed themselves into demonstration with political character. The cavalry with foot shot at the demonstrators massed on the staircase Richelieu , which connects the downtown area to the port; this scene forms one of the strongest images of the film the battleship Potemkine . In reprisals, the Potemkine fired two shells on the district from the city where was the district-general of the forces tsarists, killing a civilian and causing little damage.

The imperial army sent reinforcements to Odessa to repress the revolt, and the government sent two squadrons of the Fleet of the North Sea with an aim of taking again or of running the Potemkine . They gathered in broad Tendra island on June 17th. The Potemkine , flanked destroyer n°267, held head with the fleet, sailing with full right vapor towards the center of the formation; the “quiet battle” finishes in victory for the mutineers: the crews of the two squadrons refused to open fire, and one of the battleships, the Georgiy Pobedonosets , joined even the insurrectionists. The squadrons turned over to Sébastopol, while the three rebellious ships moved towards Odessa.

The Central committee of the Russian Social democrat Party tried to support the rebellion of the Potemkine . However, when Mikhail Vasiliev-Youzine arrived at Odessa at the request of Lénine, the battleship had already left the port and the Georgiy Pobedonosets had gone to the authorities.

At the evening of June 18th, the battleship, always flanked destroyer n°267, rejoined Constanţa, in Romania, to remake coal and vivres. June 20th, the Commission of the ship sent solemn appeals “with everyone civilized” and “all the European powers”, and proclaimed the resolution of the crew to fight the mode tsarist. The prohibited Rumanian government that the battleship was supplied, and the battleship moved towards Théodosia, where the assistance was also refused to them, on June 22nd. The 25, the Potemkine turned over to Constanţa and went to the Romanian authorities. Some of the sailors turned over to Russia in 1905, where they were stopped and judged. The essence of the crew returned to Russia after the Révolution of February 1917.

Epilog

The Romanian authorities returned the battleship to the Russian government, which renamed it Пантелеймон (“Saint-Pantéleimon”). In April 1917, it was famous in Potemkine ( КнязьПотемкинТаврический , Kniaz Potemkin Tavricheskii), then in Борецзасвободу (Borets za Svobodu, “Combatant of Freedom”) in May. In April 1919, the Interventionistes made it jump in Sébastopol. After the civil war, it was reinflated, then dismantled, the damage being irrevocable.

Lénine wrote that the mutiny of the Potemkine had an crucial importance, in this which it was the first attempt to create the embryo of a revolutionary army, particularly whereas a good part of the army tsarist lined up at the sides of the revolutionists. Lénine called the Potemkine the “unconquered territory of the Revolution”. The mutiny had a strong influence on the process of coring of the army and the Russian fleet by the Revolutionists.

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