The name of the Russian city of Kronstadt is associated with a revolt of the population of Kronstadt against the Bolchevik S in March 1921. It is about a litigation between anarchistic revolutionists and Bolsheviks, the first refusing with the party Bolshevik the capacity, and wishing that this capacity remains with the councils and room, free to determine the course of the revolution; seconds wanting the “direction of a working party”. The first regarded the revolt of Kronstadt as legitimate and the seconds present it like “middle-class woman” and being likely to lead to an invasion of the white army.

Geographical location

Kronstadt is a garrison town, on the island of Kotline, in the Golfe of Finland, to 20 km of Pétrograd of which it constitutes a advanced station of defense.

Historical context

The sailors of Kronstadt had been in the avant-garde of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. In 1917, Trotsky called these sailors “the value and the glory of revolutionary Russia”. From their revolutionary history, the inhabitants of Kronstadt were very early supporters and experts of the “capacity to the councils” (Soviet): forming since 1917 a Common free relatively independent of the central authority, they practiced the shape of Direct democracy containing assemblies or of committees joined together in the center of the fortress, enormous public space being used as popular forum being able to contain more 30  000 people.

Military situation

In November 1920, with the defeat of the general Wrangel in the Crimea, the Russian Civil war touches at its end, the forces " blanches" being then reduced to some small pockets which were gradually reduced. Many old Kronstadt returned at the naval base their origins, while with through all Russia, the constraints which the war justified become unbearable.

Economic situation

With the beginning of the year 1921, the country, already postponed in 1914, is ruined by seven years of war. In the campaigns as in the cities, burst of the popular protests against the capacity of the Communist party. In certain cities, waves of strikes burst, in particular in Petrograd, which regularly knows the famine because of war and of the destruction, and where the workmen of the principal factories put themselves in strike in February 1921. At the same time occur in the country revolt campaigns many, whose principal one is that of Tambov, whose cause is the hostility of the peasants to the requisitions operated by the communist capacity to nourish the cities and the soldiers.

Support of Kronstadt for the workmen of Petrograd

The February 26th, informed of the events of Petrograd, the crews of the ships of the Soviet Navy “Petropavlovsk” and “Sebastopol” held in urgency a meeting and is reflected agreement to send a delegation charged to get information and submit a report/ratio in connection with the situation on the continent. On their return two days later, the delegates informed their marine comrades of the strikes and the repression which the government Bolshevik exerted against it.

Claims of Kronstadt

The participants of the meeting of Petropavlovsk then approved a resolution and 15 claims

Like the workmen of Petrograd, the sailors of Kronstadt required the equality of wages, the end of the road blocks limiting freedom of circulation and the possibility for the workmen of introducing food into the city.

On the 15 claims, two required a “full liberty of action” for all the peasants and craftsmen who did not rent labor force. One of these two points relates to the “small-middle-class” (craftsmen), according to the Marxist terminology , which will be used as a basis for the charge of “revolt counter-revolutionary” by the capacity.

A meeting of mass from fifteen to sixteen thousand people was held on the place of anchor on March 1st, formalizing the resolution of Petropavlovsk. Only two civils servant Bolsheviks voted against the resolution. At this meeting, it was also decided to send another delegation to Petrograd to explain to the stoppings and the garrison of city the requests for Kronstadt, and to ask that delegates independent be sent by the workmen of Petrograd to Kronstadt to hear directly what occurred over there. This delegation of thirty members was stopped by the government Bolshevik.

In the night of 1st at March 2nd, the anarchistic sailor Iakovenko addresses to all the units of Kronstadt a message in which he writes " it is the revolutionary committee which temporarily directs " , although the meeting of the day before did not evoke this committee, which was thus not elected.

Designation of the provisional revolutionary committee

At the end of the meeting of the Soviet of Kronstadt, the assembly also decided to call with a conference of deputy for the March 2nd, supposed discussing way in which the new elections of the Soviets would be held.

This conference, made up of two delegated crews of the boat and representatives of the units of army, docks, workshops, trade unions and establishments of the Soviet (that is to say 303 deputy on the whole) taken three decisions.

• First of all, it approved the resolution of Petropavlovsk and elected a “temporary revolutionary Committee” of five people (widened with 15 members two days later). This committee was charged to organize the defense of Kronstadt, decision based partly on the knowledge of the repression exerted by the Bolsheviks and on the rumor, which will appear thereafter without base, that the Bolsheviks had dispatched of the troops to stop the meeting. Red Kronstadt it was turned over against the government Bolshevik and, calling upon the slogan of the revolution of 1917 “whole the capacity with the Soviets” added to him, considering the political conditions of the moment, “and not to the parties”. The insurrectionists named this revolt the “third revolution”, supposed to complete the movement of the first two revolutions of 1917 affirming to institute a true republic of workers based on free elections, the mandatement imperative one by the Soviets, and of the sovereign assemblies.

• It did not proceed to the re-election of the Soviet of Kronstadt, although the mandate of the delegates expired
• It decided and carried out the arrest of all the delegates and leader Bolsheviks of Kronstadt.

At the beginning of the revolt, Kronstadt started to reorganize upwards. One proceeded to new election of trade-union committees, and the Council of the trade unions was trained. The conference of deputy meets regularly (specifically March 2nd, 4th and 11th) to discuss the subjects concerning the interests of Kronstadt and the fight against the government Bolshevik. A revolutionary daily newspaper was created: Izvestia . This last denounced “the gendarmes Bolsheviks”, their “dictatorship” and its “Capitalisme of State”.

Rejection of the government Bolshevik by Communists of Kronstadt

The communist troops present on Kronstadt gave up the Party, thus expressing their support for the revolt and his objective of “all the capacity for the councils and not for the parties. ” Approximately 300 Communists were arrested and imprisoned, while 780 Communists left the party to protest against measurements that this one took against the requests for Kronstadt and its general role in the Revolution. Until a third of the deputy elected officials to the conference of the rebels of Kronstadt of March 2nd were former Bolsheviks.

Answers of the government Bolshevik

The government Bolshevik answered on March 5th by an ultimatum, affirming that the revolt “had been undoubtedly prepared by French against-espionage” and that the resolution of Petropavlovsk was a resolution of the Socialist-Revolutionists of right-hand side and reactionaries. They added that the revolt was organized by ex-officers tsarists carried out by the General Kozlovsky (who, ironically, had been placed in the fortress as a military specialist by Trotsky). It was the only official response of the Party to all this revolt and its requests.

Repression

Vis-a-vis the revolt armed with Kronstadt, as of the beginning, the authorities refused the negotiation. Indeed, the Bolsheviks announced that they would draw the rebels “like partridges” and would take the families of the sailors as an hostage in Petrograd. Towards the end of the revolt, Trotsky refused the use of chemical weapons, but this option had been evoked in the case of a keener resistance. While on March 2nd marked the " beginning; officiel" revolt, the Bolsheviks began military operations as of the evening of March 7th.

Tests of negotiations (asked the government Bolshevik)

March 5th, is two days before the bombardment of Kronstadt starts, a group of anarchists carried out by Emma Goldman and Alexandre Berkman proposed like intermediaries to facilitate the negotiations between rebels and government (the influence of the anarchists had been particularly strong in Kronstadt between 1917 and 1921). But this gesture will be ignored by the Bolsheviks. A few years later, Victor Serge recognized that “even when the combat had started, it would have been easy to avoid all that: it was only necessary to accept the mediation offered by the anarchists (in particular Emma Goldman and Alexandre Berkman) who had contacts with the insurrectionists. For reasons of prestige and by an excess of authoritarianism, the Central committee will refuse this possibility. ”

The Soviet of Petrograd of March 6th also suggested that a delegation of members of the Party and not-associates (but members of the Soviet) Kronstadt visit. This proposal was not adopted either by the government. The rebels, reserved as for the true statute of the deputy not-associates, asked that the election of the delegation take place in the factories, in the presence of observers come from Kronstadt: this request remained unanswered, the Party fearing that independent observers did not bring back the reality of a popular revolt to Kronstadt and the untrue remarks of official propaganda about kronstadt do not expose thus, making an armed intervention much more hazardous. A delegation sent by Kronstadt to explain the requests with the Soviet of Petrograd was directly sent in the prisons of the Tcheka. The decision to attack Kronstadt had been already made: basing itself on documents of the Soviet files, the historian Israel Getzler declared: the “March 5th, if not earlier, the Soviet chiefs had decided to crush Kronstadt. Thus, in a cable with member of the Council of the work and defense of this day, Trotsky had insisted on the fact that " only the catch of Kronstadt will put a term at the political crisis in Petrograd".

Refusal of negotiations by the Bolsheviks

For the Bolsheviks, the victory of the insurrection of Kronstadt could only lead shortly to the victory of against revolution, independently of the ideas which could be present in the head of the revolted sailors. The same day, acting as a President of the revolutionary Military council of the army and the navy of Republic (RVSR), Trostsky ordered the reform and the mobilization of VIIe Armée “to remove rising in Kronstadt, as soon as possible. ”

But so for Lénine and the Bolsheviks, the insurrection is likely to lead to the counter-revolution, it is also the sign which the country is exhausted by 8 years of war and civil war. He declares on March 8th " as long as the revolution did not burst in other countries, we will need tens of years for us to leave there. " Now that the white armies are defeats, it estimates that it is necessary to finish some with the Communism of war. March 15th, he proposes with the congress to in kind replace the requisition by a tax, leaving free the peasant sell the remainder of harvest: " it is necessary to grant the freedom of exchange under penalty of seeing the reversed Soviet capacity, since the world revolution delays. " It is the first step of NEP.

Alexandre Berkman estimated in the Russian tragedy (p. 62), that the Communist government “  did not make any concession with the proletariat, whereas at the same time these same authorities offered to be compromised with the capitalists of Europe and Amérique.  ” (through in particular the installation of NEP, associated with the Capitalism of State).

The insulation of Kronstadt

Isolated, and penalized by the authoritative political conditions and the famine, the revolt did not accept any external support. It seems that the majority of the workmen of Petrograd were hostile to the sailors who received an food intake doubles of their. The workmen of Petrograd were blocked under the terms of a martial law and thus could not large thing, and thus no action was undertaken to support Kronstadt.

Attacks of Kronstadt by the Red Army

The first attack, on March 7th, was a failure. The soldiers of the Red Army must attack on several kilometers of ice, under the shells and the grapeshot of Kronstadt. Whole bunches soldiers perish drowned in ice-cold water, bored by the shells, of the regiments panic and relax themselves. “After the Gulf had swallowed its first victims,” the historian Paul Avrich noted that “some of the red soldiers, including a body of Peterhof Kursanty, started to pass to the insurrectionists. Others refused to advance, in spite of the threats of the drain-holes to the back which had order to draw on the hesitant ones. The police chief of the northern group announced that its troops wanted to send a delegation to Kronstadt to know the requests of the insurrectionists. ” The historian Jean-Jacques Marie question this version; he allots the threat to draw on the hesitant ones in Pétritchenko, and raises that the regiments that he quotes will arrive on the spot only the following day.

The night from March 16th to 17th, “the extraordinary troika of Aleksei Nikolaev” stopped more than 100 leaders of the insurrection, of which 74 will be publicly cut down. The final attack take place 17 and, once the forces Bolsheviks entered the place finally, “  the assailing troops will take revenge for their comrades fallen into an orgy from sang.  ”. After 10 days of constant attacks, the revolt of Kronstadt finally had been crushed by the Red Army .

Continuation of repression; assessment

Repression did not finish here. Prisoners taken along to Petrograd were carried out with the length of the months which followed. “This prolonged massacre was directed or authorized by Dzerjinski. (...) The responsibility of the Central committee Bolshevik will have been simply enormous the repression which followed… unnecessarily barbarian. ”)

The losses Bolsheviks are estimated at more 10  000 dead. No reliable figure on the killed rebels, carried out by the Tcheka or off-set later in prison camps is available. After the crushing of the revolt, 4836 sailors of Kronstadt were stopped and transferred in the Crimea or in the the Caucasus. Lénine will order on April 19th that they are finally sent to the obligatory camps of work (Gulag) of the areas of Arkhangelsk, of Vologda and Mourmansk. Eight thousand sailors, soldiers and civilians will escape towards the Finland while walking on the ice. The crews of Petropavlovsk and Sébastopol fought until the last, just as the juniors by the school of mechanics, the detachment of torpedes and the unit of the communications. A statistical official statement of the special section of the extraordinary Troïka of May 1st declared that 6528 rebels were stopped, 2168 carried out (33%), 1955 condemned to the obligatory work (including 1486 for only five years), and 1272 released. The families of the rebels were off-set in Siberia, considered as “only suitable area” for them.

After the revolt had been destroyed, the government Bolshevik reorganized the fortress. Whereas he had subdued the revolt in the name of the “capacity with the Soviets”, the military commander lately appointed for Kronstadt abolishes the local Soviet completely and reorganized the fortress “  with the assistance of a troika révolutionnaire  ” (i.e. a committee of three especially designated men). The newspaper of Kronstadt was famous “  Krasnyi Kronshtadt  ” (Red Kronstadt) and declared in its leading article that “  the devices fondamentaux  ” of Kronstadt were brought back to the “  dictatorship of the prolétariat  ” whereas their “  phases initiales  ” had been simply made of “  restrictions on the political Freedom, of terror, centralism, military discipline and direction of all of the means and the resources towards the creation of an offensive and defensive equipment of État.  ”. The winners started to eliminate all traces from the revolt, the place of anchor becoming “  Place révolutionnaire  ” and the rebellious battleships Petropavlovsk and Sébastopol being renamed Marat and Commune of Paris, respectively.

Kronstadt and Trotsky

Trotsky was attacked for its role in repression with Kronstadt, but will defend oneself some in an article. According to him, the revolutionary leaders of all tendencies which had carried out the rising of 1917, and which had made the revolutionary reputation of the city, had been sent to the four corners of Russia for the needs for the Revolution, and " the sailors who had remained in Cronstadt “in peace” until the beginning of 1921 without finding employment on any the faces of the civil war, were in general considerably below the mean level of the Red Army, and contained a strong percentage of completely demoralized elements which carried elegant baggy pants and were capped like souteneurs." These troops demoralized by the famine, would have taken along the population behind them, calumniating the party Bolshevik in order to access exclude the Bolsheviks from the Soviets armed then to restore a middle-class state. In this version of the facts, Trotsky would thus have chooses a bloody battle rather than to see to extend “the enemy” in North from the country and to risk even more damage. According to him, the interest of the Russian middle-class was to make enter the “allied” armies and white to take again the capacity from where it had been driven out 4 years earlier by the Revolution.

Kronstadt and the emigration

According to the analysis of Lénine and Trotsky, the repression of the revolt of Kronstadt was necessary because there did not exist third way between the Bolsheviks and the white armies. Whatever the feelings of the revolted sailors, it seems that this analysis was shared by the Russian monarchists mediums. Prince Lvov thus received a telegram indicating " Congratulations, the Soviets fell. " ; the newspaper Junior by Miloukiv, Poslednie Novosti writes that the insurrection of Kronstadt has " aroused an lively interest in the financial and stock exchange circles French. " Tseidler, representative of the Red Cross in Helsinki writes that " although they are regarded as Socialists, the insurrectionists recognize the private property. "

The monarchists mediums will try to come materially helps some with the insurrectionists. The National center, which was in 1919 to constitute a white government in the event of victory of the white general Ioudenitch, seeks to gather funds to support the insurrectionists. Victor Tchernov, leader democratic of the Revolutionary Socialists, addresses its " fraternal greetings " and " proposes; to come in person to place my forces and my authority at the service of the revolution of people. " March 9th at the evening, a delegation arrives at Kronstadt to bring a aid humanitarian, made up of the baron Vilken, old ordering of Sébastopol (causing the anger of the former sailors of this building), the Iavit general, colonel Bounakov, representative of large prince Nicolas Nicolaievitch Romanov, Saliari, the chief of the intelligence service of the State Finnish major, Guerman, member of a clandestine monarchical organization, etc the revolutionary committee accepts their assistance, but will receive only 13 quintals of corn. Funds are collected by the Union of the tradesmen and the industrialists.

Quotations

“The delegates of X° Congrès to the face of Cronstadt included/understood in particular Centralists democratic and members of the working Opposition. The same juniors by the Red Army, who had voted with enthusiasm, during the previous weeks, the inflexible resolutions of Mrs. Kollontaï were now the keenest combatants against revolted. During the insurrection, Loutovinov was in Berlin; he declared that he entirely approved the military measurements decided in Moscow and added as an explanation that the liquidation of the revolt took a certain time because the Soviet government " sought to save the population of Cronstadt". ” (Leonard Bertram Schapiro, Bolsheviks and Opposition)

“How the insurrection of Cronstadt can be at the same time so expensive in the middle of the anarchists, the mencheviks and the liberal counter-revolutionaries? The answer is simple: all these groups may find it beneficial to discredit single running revolutionary which never disavowed its flag, which was never compromised with the enemy, and who is the only one to represent the future. This is why there is among the delayed indicters of my " crime" of Cronstadt so much of former revolutionists, or former half-revolutionists, people who consider it necessary to divert the attention of the abjections of the III° Internationale or the treason of the Spanish anarchists. The Stalinist ones cannot join the countryside around Cronstadt openly yet, but undoubtedly they rub the hands of satisfaction. As many blows directed against the " trotskysme" , against the revolutionary Marxism, the International IV°!

Demoralization on the basis of of the famine and speculation had in a general way terribly increased towards the end of the civil war. What one called the mechotchnitchestvo (the small black-market) had been of the nature of a social plague which threatened to strangle the revolution. And, in Cronstadt particularly, garrison which was idle and lived on its past, demoralization had reached very important proportions.

The revolution has its laws. We formulated these " for a long time; lessons of Octobre" , which has an importance not only Russian, but also international. Nobody tried to propose others " leçons". The Spanish revolution confirms by negative the " lessons of Octobre". But severe criticisms are keep silent or are concealed. The government of " Face populaire" strangle the socialist revolution and shoots the revolutionists: the anarchists take part in this government and, when they are driven out, they continue to support the torturers. And their lawyers and allied foreign occupy themselves during this time to defend… the rebellion of Cronstadt against the wild Bolsheviks. Wretched comedy! ”

Leon Trotsky, '' Œuvres - Much of din around Cronstadt '', 1938.

“The trotskystes consider certainly that is to show middle-class sentimentalism to allow the sailors calumniated to be expressed and to defend themselves. This design of the relationship with a political adversary, this hateful Jesuitism, made more to destroy the labor movement as a whole that none the “crowned” tactics of the Bolchevism.

So that the reader can rightly decide whom, of the indicters of Cronstadt, or the sailors who expressed themselves clearly at the time, I reproduce here the radio message sent to the workmen of the whole world on March 6th, 1921: “Our cause is right: we are in favor of the capacity of the Soviets, not of the parties. We are for the free election of representatives of the hard-working masses. The Soviets fantoches handled by the Communist party were always deaf with our needs and our claims; we received only one answer: the grapeshot. Comrades! Not only they mislead you, but they deliberately disguise the truth and way more méprisable defames us. In Cronstadt, all the capacity is exclusively between the hands of the sailors, soldiers and workmen revolutionary - not between those of the counter-revolutionaries directed by certain Kozlovsky, like the radio of Moscow mensongèrement tries to make you believe it. Do not delay, comrades! Join us, contact us; ask so that your delegates be able to come to visit us in Cronstadt. Only your delegates will be able to tell you the truth and to denounce abominable calumnies on the bread offered by the Finns and the assistance proposed by the Agreement. Live the proletariat and the revolutionary farming community! Live the capacity of the freely elected Soviets! ” The egotism of Leon Trotsky, that his friends and partisans know well, was always remarkable. Since persecutions of its mortal enemy equipped it with a kind of Magic wand, its sufficiency reached alarming proportions. it continues to want to be presented in the form of an Almighty, to believe that all its acts and its judgments were maturely weighed, and to cover anathemas those which are enough insane to suggest that the large god Leon Trotsky has to him also feet of clay. He makes fun of the documentary evidences left by the sailors of Cronstadt and of the testimony of those which were sufficiently close to the rebellious city to see and hear what occurred during the horrible seat. He calls them “false labels”. That does not prevent it therefore from ensuring its readers that its explanation of the revolt of Cronstadt can be “corroborated and illustrated by many facts and documents”. Intelligent people are likely to wonder why Leon Trotsky does not have the decency to even present these “false labels” so that they are able to forge themselves an opinion. Even the middle-class courts guarantee to marked the right to present evidence to defend oneself. But it is not the case of Leon Trotsky, spokesperson of only one and single truth. ” Trotsky protests too much Emma Goldman

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