Kozlovesred (talk | contribs) added first names of authors and some more grammar correction |
Kozlovesred (talk | contribs) inserted other statistics from various scholars; the book by Avrich is key |
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==Composition of the garrison== |
==Composition of the garrison== |
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Defenders of the Bolshevik policy such as Abbie Bakan have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. <ref>"[http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/bakan/90-krons.htm A Tragic Necessity]" by Abbie Bakan</ref> |
Defenders of the Bolshevik policy, such as Abbie Bakan, have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. <ref>"[http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/bakan/90-krons.htm A Tragic Necessity]" by Abbie Bakan</ref> |
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However, Israel Getzler's book ''Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy'' and others (including Evan Mawdsley's and Norman Saul's) overturn this Leninist claim that the composition was significantly different. |
However, Israel Getzler's book ''Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy'' and others (including Evan Mawdsley's and Norman Saul's) overturn this Leninist claim that the composition was significantly different. |
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"... that the politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the [[Petropavlosk]] and the [[Sevastopol]], both reknowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted from [[Great Russia]]n areas (mainly central Russia and the [[Volga]] area), some 10% from the [[Ukraine]] and 9% from [[Finland]], [[Latvia]] and [[Poland]]." |
"... that the politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the [[Petropavlosk]] and the [[Sevastopol]], both reknowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted from [[Great Russia]]n areas (mainly central Russia and the [[Volga]] area), some 10% from the [[Ukraine]] and 9% from [[Finland]], [[Latvia]] and [[Poland]]." |
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"Nor, as so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of |
"Nor, as so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yakinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found out, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920 and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in Petrograd." (Getzler 2002) |
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Bakan, on the other hand, states that "the number of industrial workers in Russia, always a minority, fell from 3 million in 1917 to 1,240,000, a decline of 58.7%, in 1921-22. So was there a decline in the agricultural proletariat, from 2,100,000 in 1917, to 34,000 only two years later (a decline of 98.5%). But the number of peasant households (not individuals which is many times greater) had risen with the parcelization of land from 16.5 million in early 1918 to over 25 million households by 1920, an increase of some 50%. (Cliff, vol. 3, p. 143) |
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By 1921, more than three-quarters of the sailors in the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin. (Avrich, p. 134) But even if the issue of the changing composition of the Kronstadt forces is put aside, the Kronstadt sailors who survived were also influenced by the crisis in the countryside. Petrichenko, the leader of the Kronstadt uprising of March 1921, was himself a Ukrainian peasant. He later acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south who were in sympathy with the peasant opposition movement against the Bolsheviks. In the words of Petrichenko: 'When we returned home our parents asked us why we fought for the oppressors. That set us thinking." (Lincoln, p. 495) |
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==An echo of the rebellion== |
==An echo of the rebellion== |
Revision as of 02:20, 7 June 2006
The Kronstadt rebellion was an unsuccessful uprising of Soviet sailors, led by Stepan Petrichenko, against the government of the early Russian SFSR. It proved to be the last major rebellion against Bolshevik rule.
The rebellion took place in the first weeks of March, 1921 in Kronstadt, a naval fortress on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland. Traditionally, Kronstadt has served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet and as a guardpost for the approaches to Saint Petersburg (later Petrograd, then Leningrad, and then St. Petersburg again, as it is now) thirty-five miles away.
Causes of the rebellion
At the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia was exhausted and ruined. The droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the frightful famine during the latter year added the final chapter to the disaster. In the years following the October Revolution, epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general economic and societal breakdown had taken some twenty million lives. Another million persons had left Russia - with General Wrangel, through the Far East, or in numerous other ways - in order to escape the ravages of the war or to escape one or more of the warring factions. A large proportion of the emigres were educated and skilled.
War communism assisted the Soviet government in achieving victories in the Russian Civil War, but it damaged the nation's economy. With private industry and trade proscribed and the newly-constructed state unable to adequately perform these functions, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories fell in 1921 to 20% of the pre-World War I level, with many crucial items experiencing an even more drastic decline. Production of cotton, for example, fell to 5%, and iron to 2%, of the prewar level. The peasants responded to requisitioning by refusing to till their land. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to some 62% of the prewar area, and the harvest yield was only 37% of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle fell from 58 to 37 million during the same span. The exchange rate of the US dollar, which had been two rubles in 1914, rose to 1,200 in 1920.
This unbearable situation led to uprisings in the countryside, such as the Tambov rebellion, and to strikes and violent unrest in the factories. In some urban areas, a wave of spontaneous strikes occurred.
Demands are issued
On February 26, in response to these conditions and facing rumors of strikes and insurrection in Petrograd printed in the Kronstadt Isvestia, the crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting which approved a resolution raising fifteen demands:
- Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.
- Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
- The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisations.
- The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
- The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
- The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
- 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.
- The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
- The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
- 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.
- The granting to 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.
- We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
- We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
- We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
- We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it does not utilise wage labour.
Of the fifteen demands, only two were related to what Marxists term the "petty-bourgeoisie", the reasonably wealthy peasantry and artisans. These demanded "full freedom of action" for all peasants and artisans who did not hire labour. Like the Petrograd workers, the Kronstadt sailors demanded the equalisation of wages and the end of roadblock detachments which restricted both travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city.
Finally, in March 1921, the Kronstadt naval base rose in rebellion against Bolshevik rule. The sailors and other Kronstadt rebels demanded free Soviets and the summoning of a constituent assembly. The Bolshevik Government responded with an ultimatum on March 2. This asserted that the revolt had "undoubtedly been prepared by French counterintelligence" and that the Petropavlovsk resolution was a "SR-Black Hundred" resolution (SR stood for "Social Revolutionaries", a democratic socialist party that had been dominant in the soviets before the return of Lenin, whose right-wing had refused to support the Bolsheviks; the "Black Hundreds" were a reactionary, indeed proto-fascist, force dating back to before the revolution which attacked Jews, labour militants and radicals, among others). They also argued that the revolt had been organised by ex-Tsarist officers led by ex-General Kozlovsky (ironically, he had been placed in the fortress as a military specialist by Trotsky). This was the official line throughout the revolt.
The revolt is put down
The Petrograd workers were under martial law and could offer little support to Kronstadt. The Bolshevik government began its attack on Kronstadt on March 7. After 10 days of continuous attacks, during which many Red Army units were forced onto the ice at gunpoint and during which some had actually joined the rebellion, 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 finally entered the city of Kronstadt after having suffered over 10,000 fatalities. Although there are no reliable figures for the rebels' battle losses, historians estimate that thousands were executed in the days following the revolt, and a like number were sent to Siberian labor camps. A large number of more fortunate rebels managed to escape to Finland. These people caused the first major refugee problem for the newly-independent state of Finland. Among the refugees was Petrichenko himself, who lived in Finland as a refugee until he was returned to Soviet Union after the Second World War.
The day after the surrender of Kronstadt, the Bolsheviks celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune.
Although Red Army units ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, the general dissatisfaction with the state of affairs 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.
Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman has criticized Leon Trotsky for his role in the suppression of the rebellion, arguing that this makes his later criticism of Stalin's regime hypocritical. [1] Trotsky, however, responded that Goldman's criticisms were mainly perfunctory, and ignored the differing social composition between the pro-Bolshevik Kronstadt Uprising of 1917 and the mainly petit-bourgeois Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. [2]
Composition of the garrison
Defenders of the Bolshevik policy, such as Abbie Bakan, have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. [3]
However, Israel Getzler's book Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy and others (including Evan Mawdsley's and Norman Saul's) overturn this Leninist claim that the composition was significantly different.
"... that the politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlosk and the Sevastopol, both reknowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine and 9% from Finland, Latvia and Poland."
"Nor, as so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yakinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found out, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920 and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in Petrograd." (Getzler 2002)
Bakan, on the other hand, states that "the number of industrial workers in Russia, always a minority, fell from 3 million in 1917 to 1,240,000, a decline of 58.7%, in 1921-22. So was there a decline in the agricultural proletariat, from 2,100,000 in 1917, to 34,000 only two years later (a decline of 98.5%). But the number of peasant households (not individuals which is many times greater) had risen with the parcelization of land from 16.5 million in early 1918 to over 25 million households by 1920, an increase of some 50%. (Cliff, vol. 3, p. 143)
By 1921, more than three-quarters of the sailors in the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin. (Avrich, p. 134) But even if the issue of the changing composition of the Kronstadt forces is put aside, the Kronstadt sailors who survived were also influenced by the crisis in the countryside. Petrichenko, the leader of the Kronstadt uprising of March 1921, was himself a Ukrainian peasant. He later acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south who were in sympathy with the peasant opposition movement against the Bolsheviks. In the words of Petrichenko: 'When we returned home our parents asked us why we fought for the oppressors. That set us thinking." (Lincoln, p. 495)
An echo of the rebellion
Years later, in November 1975 dissatisfaction with the apparent contradictions within Soviet society helped forment a mutiny aboard the USSR frigate Storozhevoy. It echoed the rebellion at Kronstadt, with the crew voting unanimously for action and that at least half of the officers had decided to back the ship's 30 year-old commander Valery Sablin in his revolt against the authorities. Futile attempts at propaganda broadcasts were made in the hope of inciting civilian rebellion. But in the end the ship was stormed and Sablin was eventually shot for his actions.
Quotes
On the 1917 Kronstadt sailors: "the pride and glory of the revolution.... the reddest of the red" - Leon Trotsky after the 1917 revolution
"The autocracy has fallen. The Constituent Assembly has departed to the realm of the damned. The commissarocracy is collapsing... All of Soviet Russia has been turned into an all-Russian penal colony. The moment has come for a true government of toilers, a government of soviets" - Kronstadt sailors in 1921
"It was the lightning flash that lit up reality" - Vladmir Lenin after the 1921 uprising
"Power back to the soviets!" - one of the main slogans of the rebels in 1921
"The men of the White guards that are leading the rebels can do a lot of damage to the Republic, and they may not even hesitate to bomb Petrograd" - statement from sailors who refused to join the rebellion [4]
Further reading
- Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The fate of a Soviet democracy, Israel Getzler ISBN 0521894425 , Cambridge University Press
- Kronstadt, 1921, Paul Avrich ISBN 0691087210 , Princeton University Press
- The Russian revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics Evan Mawdsley, London, 1978
- Sailors in Revolt: The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1917 Norman Saul, Kansas, 1978
- A History of Russia, N.V. Riasanovsky ISBN 0195153944 , Oxford University Press (USA)
- The Russian Revolution, W.H.Chamberlin ISBN 0691008167 , Princeton University Press
References
- ^ "Trotsky Protests Too Much" by Emma Goldman
- ^ "Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt by Leon Trotsky
- ^ "A Tragic Necessity" by Abbie Bakan
- ^ "Kronstadt: Trotsky Was Right!" by A. Kramer
Additional external links
- The initial version of this article appeared on Infoshop (see Infoshop.org). There is an extended discussion from an Anarchist point of view in the Anarchist FAQ
- Alexander Berkman The Kronstadt Rebellion
- Kronstadt and the Stock Exchange by Leon Trotsky
- On the Kronstadt Revolt by Vladimir Lenin
- Kronstadt 1921 Bolshevism vs. Counterrevolution - Spartacist English Edition No.59 (International Communist League)
- The Kronstadt Izvestia Online archive of the newspaper brought out by the rebels, including their list of demands
- Ida Mett's pamphlet of the Kronstadt Commune Originally published by Solidarity, UK
- The later Storozhevoy mutiny described from a Trotskyist point of view
- 1992 thesis by Scott Parker
- Maggots and Men - New independent American film about the uprising.