Kronstadt Rebellion at the Beginning

Kronstadt Rebellion

At the beginning of 1921 all of Russia was on the brink of catastrophe. This was mostly due to the hungry years of World War I. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet had been at the forefront of the revolutionaries. Socialist parties enjoyed great influence. The revolutionary sailor was one of the iconic figures of this troubled time. Baltic Fleet sailors took part in meetings and demonstrations in turbulent Petersburg; all the leftist agitators were in contact with them and the naval ships that entered the Neva River in October of 1917 played a major role in the Bolsheviks' successful takeover (Edelman, 2006).

The Kronstadt rebellion was an unsuccessful mutiny of Soviet sailors against the government of the early Russian SFSR. It proved to be the last major rebellion against Bolshevik rule (Kronstadt rebellion, 2009). The rebellion took place in March, 1921. Kronstadt was a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. It served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet and to guard the approaches to the city of St. Petersburg. This city during the first world war was re-named Petrograd, then later named Leningrad, and is now St. Petersburg again (1921: The Kronstadt rebellion, 2006).

The Kronstadt sailors had been in the forefront of the revolutionary events of 1905 and 1917. Trotsky once referred to them as the pride and glory of the Russian Revolution. The population of Kronstadt had been early supporters and practitioners of soviet power, forming a free commune in 1917 which was relatively independent of the authorities. In the centre of the fortress an enormous public square served as a popular forum which held as many as 30,000 people. The Russian Civil War ended in Western Russia in November 1920 with the defeat of General Wrangel in the Crimea. Peasant uprisings were happening against the Communist Party policy of grain requisitioning. In urban areas, a wave of spontaneous strikes occurred and in late February a near general strike broke out in Petrograd (1921: The Kronstadt rebellion, 2006).

In February of 1921, in response to the events in Petrograd, the crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting and agreed to send a delegation to the city to investigate and report back on the ongoing strike movement. When they returned two days later, the delegates informed their fellow sailors of the strikes and the government repression directed against them. Those present at this meeting on the Petropavlovsk then approved a resolution which raised 15 demands which included free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organization to workers, peasants, anarchists and left-socialists. Just like the Petrograd workers, the Kronstadt sailors also demanded the equalization of wages and the end of roadblock detachments restricting travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city (1921: The Kronstadt rebellion, 2006).

A mass meeting consisting of fifteen to sixteen thousand people was held in Anchor Square on March 1st. During this meeting the Petropavlovsk resolution was passed after the fact-finding delegation had made its report. There were only two Bolshevik officials that voted against the resolution. During this meeting it was decided to send another delegation to Petrograd to explain to the strikers and the city garrison of the demands of Kronstadt and to request that non-partisan delegates be sent by the Petrograd workers to Kronstadt to learn first-hand what was happening there. This delegation of thirty members was arrested by the Bolshevik government (1921: The Kronstadt rebellion, 2006).

Another meeting was called for March 2nd; this was the Conference of Delegates. This conference was made up of two delegates from the ship's crews, army units, the docks, workshops, trade unions and Soviet institutions. The 303 delegates at this meeting endorsed the Petropavlovsk resolution and elected a five-person Provisional Revolutionary Committee. This committee was charged with organizing the defense of Kronstadt, a move decided upon because of the threats of the Bolshevik officials there and the groundless rumor that the Bolsheviks had dispatched forces to attack the meeting. The Red Kronstadt had turned against the Communist government (1921: The Kronstadt rebellion, 2006).

The Bolshevik authorities responded to the resolutions by beginning to remove from the city the food and ammunition supplies. The sailors prevented the attempt, closed the entrances to the city, and arrested some of the more hostile commissars. Kalinin was allowed to return to Petrograd. But no sooner did the Petrograd authorities learn of the Kronstadt resolutions, than they initiated a campaign of lies and libel. Despite the fact that Zinoviev kept in constant telephonic communication with the presiding officer of the Kronstadt Soviet, and was assured by the latter that all was quiet in Kronstadt and that the sailors were busy only with preparations for the re-elections, the Petrograd radio station was kept hard at work sending messages to the world announcing a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and a white-guard uprising in Kronstadt. At the same time Zinoviev, Kalinin and their aides succeeded in persuading the Petrograd Soviet to pass a resolution which was an ultimatum to Kronstadt to surrender immediately, on pain of complete annihilation in case of refusal (Berkman, 2008).

The rebellion was cut off and received no external support. The Petrograd workers were under martial law and thus could offer little support to Kronstadt. After 10 days of continuous attacks the Kronstadt revolt was crushed by the Red Army, numbering some 50,000 troops under command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky. On March 17, the Bolshevik forces entered the city of Kronstadt after having suffered over 10,000 fatalities. Historians estimate that thousands of rebels were executed in the days following the revolt, and a like number were sent to Siberian labor camps. There were a large number of more fortunate rebels that managed to escape to Finland. Even though Red Army units ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, the general dissatisfaction with Bolshevik rule could not have been more forcefully expressed. Against this background of discontent, Lenin, who also concluded that world revolution was not imminent, proceeded in the spring of 1921 to replace War Communism with his New Economic Policy (Kronstadt rebellion, 2009).

It is important to remember what was at stake at Kronstadt. At least 91% of the Petropavlovsk sailors, and 75% of the Baltic fleet, had been recruited before October 1917 Russian Revolution. There is no evidence that counter revolutionaries ever controlled Kronstadt. The real threat of Kronstadt was a political one. The Communists believed that socialism must come from above by way of the revolutionary party using the State. They had no idea of the workers control from below. Their ideas led directly to the creation of a one party State and new class system known as State capitalism (18 March 1921 -- 18 March 2001: The Kronstadt Uprising, 2001).

The Communists failed to realize that the State is an authoritarian structure that concentrates power in the hands of small elite. It cannot create socialism it can only result in a new group of bosses and rulers. Their idea of revolutionary leadership was authoritarian and destructive to the workers democracy. According to Trotsky socialism involved authoritarian leadership that was a centralized distribution of the labor force. He put down those who put the right of workers to elect their own representatives above the Party, thus challenging the right of the Party to affirm its dictatorship, even when the dictatorship came into conflict with the passing moods of the workers democracy (18 March 1921 -- 18 March 2001: The Kronstadt Uprising, 2001).

The Kronstadt revolt had the nature of a mutiny against the Bolshevik leadership of the military and of the state. This came about at a time when that state was in a desperately vulnerable position, with its survival at stake. Military struggles are only politics in a hothouse, and individual lives often become subordinate to the torrential waves of historic social change. And this is why Kronstadt symbolized not only tragedy, but also absolute necessity (Baken, 2007).