The sailors
at the Kronstadt naval base had long been a source of radical dissent.
Mutinies had taken place during the 1905 Revolution
and played an important role in persuading Nicholas
II to issue his
October Manifesto.
The Kronstadt
sailors were also active in the overthrow of Nicholas
II in the February
Revolution. A large number of the sailors were Bolsheviks
and during the October Revolution they
took control of the cruiser, Aurora,
and sailed it up the River Neva and opened fire on the Winter Palace.
By 1921
the Kronstadt sailors had become disillusioned with the Bolshevik
government. They were angry about the lack of democracy and the policy
of War Communism. On 28th February, 1921,
the crew of the battleship, Petropavlovsk,
passed a resolution calling for a return of full political freedoms.
Vladimir
Lenin denounced the Kronstadt Uprising as a plot instigated by
the White Army and their European supporters.
On 6th March, Leon Trotsky announced
that he was going to order the Red Army to
attack the Kronstadt sailors. However, it was not until the 17th March
that government forces were able to take control of Kronstadt. An
estimated 8,000 people (sailors and civilians) left Kronstadt and
went to live in Finland.
Official
figures suggest that 527 people were killed and 4,127 were wounded.
Historians who have studied the uprising believe that the total number
of casualties was much higher than this. According to Victor
Serge over 500 sailors at Kronstadt were executed for their part
in the rebellion.
(1)
Morgan Philips Price, Manchester
Guardian (17th July, 1917)
In a large
house in the main street I found the headquarters of the Kronstadt
Soviet. With some little misgiving I passed by the sentries and asked
to see the President. I was taken into a room, where I saw a young
man with a red badge on his coat looking through some papers, who
appeared to be a student. He had long hair and dreamy eyes, with a
far-off look of an idealist. This was the elected President of the
Kronstadt Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors Soviet.
"Be
seated," he said. "I suppose you have come down here from
Petrograd to see if all the stories about our terror are true. You
will probably have observed that there is nothing extraordinary going
on here; we are simply putting this place into order after the tyranny
and chaos of the late Tsarist regime. The workmen, soldiers and sailors
here find that they can do this job better by themselves than by leaving
it to people who call themselves democrats, but are really friends
of the old regime. That is why we have declared the Kronstadt Soviet
the supreme authority in the island."
"The
soldiers and sailors were treated on this island like dogs. They were
worked from early morning till late at night. They were not allowed
any recreations for fear that they would associate for political purposes.
Nowhere could you study the slavery system of capitalist imperialism
better than here. For the smallest misdemeanor a man was put in chains,
and if he was found with a Socialist pamphlet in his possession he
was shot."
I was taken
to a prison on the south side of the island, where were kept the former
military police, gendarmes, police spies and provocateurs of fallen
Tsarism. The quarters were very bad, and many of the cells had no
windows at all.
I met a
Major-General, formerly in command of the fortress artillery of Kronstadt.
He stood in his shirt-sleeves - no medalled tunic decorated his breast
any more. His red-striped trousers of Prussian blue bore signs of
three months' wear in confinement. Sheepishly he looked at me, as
if uncertain whether it was dignified for him to tell his troubles
to a stray foreigner.
"I
wish they would bring some indictment against us," he said at
length, "for to sit here for three months and not to know what
our fate is to be is rather hard." "And I sat here, not
three months, but three years," broke in the sailor guard who
was taking us round, "and I didn't know what was going to happen
to me, although my only offence was that I had been distributing a
pamphlet on the life of Karl Marx."
I pointed
out to the sailor that the prison accommodation was unfit for a human
being. He answered, "Well, I sat here all that time because of
these gentlemen, and I think that if they had known they were going
to sit here they would have made better prisons!"
(2)
Resolution of political demands passed by the crew of the Petropavlovsk
on 8th February, 1921.
(1) Immediate
new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express
the wishes of the workers and the peasants. The new elections should
be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.
(2) Freedom
of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists,
and the Left Socialist parties.
(3) The
right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organizations.
(4) The
organization, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of
non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and
the Petrograd District.
(5) The
liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and
for all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging
to workers and peasant organizations.
(6) The
election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained
in prisons and concentration camps.
(7) The
abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political
party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or
receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political
sections, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources
from the State.
(8) The
immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns
and countryside.
(9) The
equalization of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous
or unhealthy jobs.
(10) The
abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The
abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards
are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views
of the workers.
(11) The
granting of the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and
of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves
and do not employ hired labour.
(12) We
request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate
themselves with this resolution.
(3)
Moscow Radio broadcast (3rd March, 1921)
Just like
other White Guard insurrections, the mutiny of General Kozlovsky and
the crew of the battleship Petropavlovsk has been organised by Entente
spies. The French counter espionage is mixed up in the whole affair.
History is repeating itself. The Socialist Revolutionaries, who have
their headquarters in Paris, are preparing the ground for an insurrection
against the Soviet power.
(4)
Kronstadt Provisionary Revolutionary Committee (4th March, 1921)
Comrade
workers, red soldiers and sailors. We stand for the power of the Soviets
and not that of the parties. We are for free representation of all
who toil. Comrades, you are being misled. At Kronstadt all power is
in the hands of the revolutionary sailors, of red soldiers and of
workers. It is not in the hands of White Guards, allegedly headed
by a General Kozlovsky, as Moscow Radio tells you.
(5)
Leon Trotsky, message sent to by radio
to the Kronstadt sailors (6th March, 1921)
I order
all those who have raised a hand against the Socialist Fatherland,
immediately to lay down their weapons. Those who resist will be disarmed
and put at the disposal of the Soviet Command. The arrested commissars
and other representatives of the Government must be freed immediately.
Only those who surrender unconditionally will be able to count on
the clemency of the Soviet Republic.
(6)
Report on the 561 Infantry Regiment that was used against the Kronstadt
sailors (March, 1921)
At the
beginning of the operation the second battalion had refused to march.
With much difficulty and thanks to the presence of communists, it
was persuaded to venture on the ice. As soon as it reached the first
south battery, a company of the 2nd battalion surrendered. The officers
had to return alone.
(7)
Leon Trotsky in a speech to the Second
Congress of the Communist Youth International (14th July, 1921)
Two or
three days more and the Baltic Sea would have been ice-free and the
war vessels of the foreign imperialists could have entered the ports
of Kronstadt and Petrograd. Had we then been compelled to surrender
Petrograd, it would have opened the road to Moscow, for there are
virtually no defensive points between Petrograd and Moscow.
(8)
Alexander Berkman, diary entries while
living in Russia (March, 1921)
7th March, 1921: Distant rumbling reaches my ears as I cross the
Nevsky. It sounds again, stronger and nearer, as if rolling toward
me. All at once I realize the artillery is being fired. It is 6 p.m.
Kronstadt has been attacked! My heart is numb with despair; something
has died within me.
17th March,
1921: Kronstadt has fallen today. Thousands of sailors and workers
lie dead in its streets. Summary execution of prisoners and hostages
continues.
30th September,
1921: One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror and despotism
have crushed the life born in October. Dictatorship is trampling the
masses under the foot. The revolution is dead; its spirit cries in
the wilderness. The Bolshevik myth must be destroyed. I have decided
to leave Russia.
(9)
Victor Serge, along with Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman,
had attempted to mediate between the Kronstadt sailors and the Soviet
government. His account of the uprising appeared in his book Memoirs
of a Revolutionary.
The final
assault was unleashed by Tukhacevsky on 17 March, and culminated in
a daring victory over the impediment of the ice. Lacking any qualified
officers, the Kronstadt sailors did not know how to employ their artillery;
there was, it is true, a former officer named Kozlovsky among them,
but he did little and exercised no authority. Some of te rebels managed
to reach Finland. Others put up a furious resistance, fort to fort
and street to street; they stood and were shot crying, "Long
live the world revolution! Hundreds of prisoners were taken away to
Petrograd and handed to the Cheka; months later they were still being
shot in small batches, a senseless and criminal agony. Those defeated
sailors belonged body and soul to the Revolution; they had voiced
the suffering and the will of the Russian people. This protracted
massacre was either supervised or permitted by Dzerzhinsky.
(10)
In March, 1937, Leon Trotsky, wrote an
article, Amoralism and Kronstadt , where he replied to charges
made by Wendelin Thomas, that Bolshevism and Stalinism were closely
linked. Thomas used the example of how Trotsky and Vladimir
Lenin, dealt with opponents such as the Mensheviks,
the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Kronstadt
Rebellion.
Your evaluation
of te Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 is basically incorrect. The best,
most sacrificing sailors were completely withdrawn from Kronstadt
and played an important role at the fronts and in the local Soviets
throughout the country. What remained was the grey mass with big pretensions,
but without political education and unprepared for revolutionary sacrifice.
The country was starving. The Kronstadters demanded privileges. The
uprising was dictated by a desire to get privileged food rations.
No less
erroneous is your estimate of Makhno. In himself he was a mixture
of fanatic and adventurer. He became the concentration of the very
tendencies which brought about the Kronstadt Uprising. Makhno created
a cavalry of peasants who supplied their own horses. They were not
downtrodden village poor whom the October Revolution first awakened,
but the strong and well-fed peasants who were afraid of losing what
they had.
The anarchist
ideas of Makhno (the ignoring of the State, non-recognition of the
central power) corresponded to the spirit of the kulak cavalry as
nothing else could. I should add that the hatred of the city and the
city worker on the part of the followers of Makhno was complemented
by the militant anti-Semitism.
(11)
Leon Trotsky,
The Kronstadt Rebellion (July, 1938)
The truth
of the matter is that I personally did not participate in the least
in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, nor in the repressions
following the suppression. In my eyes this very fact is of no political
significance. I was a member of the government, I considered the quelling
of the rebellion necessary and therefore bear responsibility for the
suppression.
Concerning
the repressions, as far as I remember, Dzerzhinsky had personal charge
of them and Dzerhinsky could not tolerate anyone's interference with
his functions (and property so). Whether there were any needless victims
I do not know. On this score I trust Dzerzhinsky more than his belated
critics. Victor Serge's conclusions on this score - from third hand
- have no value in my eyes. But I am ready to recognize that civil
war is no school of humanism. Idealists and pacifists always accused
the revolution of "excesses". But the main point is that
"excesses" flow from the very nature of the revolution which
in itself is but an "excess" of history.
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