Kronstadt rebellion

The Kronstadt rebellion (Russian: Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was one of many major unsuccessful left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. Led by Stepan Petrichenko and consisting of Soviet sailors, soldiers and civilians, the rebellion was a major reason for Lenin and the Communist Party's decision to loosen its control of the Russian economy by implementing the New Economic Policy (NEP)..

The rebellion originated in Kronstadt, a naval fortress on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland that served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet and as a guardpost for the approaches to Petrograd, 55 kilometres away.

Economic background

By 1921 the Bolsheviks (named communists since 1918) were winning the Russian Civil War^[1] and although foreign troops were beginning to withdraw, Bolshevik leaders continued to keep tight control of the economy through the policy of War Communism. As a result, the bolshevik economy started to collapse, although it had never truly recovered from the economic crises caused by World War I and the Russian Civil War.^[1] Industrial output fell dramatically; 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. This coincided with the terrible droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the frightful famine in 1921 and in the latter years. This brought about large-scale discontent among the Russian populace, particularly amongst the peasantry, who felt disadvantaged by Communist grain requisitioning (forced seizure of large portions of the peasants grain crop used to feed urban dwellers) and as a result often refused to till their land. Peasant uprisings in February 1921 exceeded one hundred. The workers in Petrograd were also involved in a series of strikes sparked by the reduction of bread rations by one third over a 10 day period.^[2]

Petropavlovsk resolution

On February 26, delegates from the Kronstadt sailors visited Petrograd to investigate the situation. On February 28, in response to the delegates' report of heavy-handed Bolshevik repression of strikes in Petrograd (claims which might have been inaccurate or exaggerated^[3]), the crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting, which approved a resolution raising fifteen demands:^[4]

On March 1, a general meeting of the garrison was held, attended also by Mikhail Kalinin and Commissar of the Soviet Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, who made speeches for the Government. The general meeting passed a resolution including the fifteen demands given above. On March 2 a conference of sailor, soldier and worker organization delegates, after hearing speeches by Kuzmin and Vasiliev, President of the Kronstadt Executive Committee, arrested these two, and amid incorrect rumors of immediate attack approved formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Committee.^[5] The Government responded with an ultimatum the same day. This alleged that the revolt had "undoubtedly been prepared by French counterintelligence" and that the Petropavlovsk resolution was an "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, and whose right wing had refused to support the Bolsheviks. The Black Hundreds were a reactionary ultra-nationalist movement in Russia in the early 20th century, that were supporters of the House of Romanov and opposed any retreat from the autocracy of the reigning monarch.

Suppression of the revolt

The Bolshevik government began its attack on Kronstadt on March 7.^[6] Some 60,000 troops under command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky took part in the attack.^[7] The workers of Petrograd were under martial law and could offer little support to Kronstadt.^[8] There was a hurry to gain control of the fortress before the melting of the bay as it would have made it impregnable for the land army.^[6] On March 17, the Bolshevik forces finally entered the city of Kronstadt after having suffered over 10,000 fatalities.^[7] On March 19, the Bolshevik forces took full control of the city of Kronstadt after having suffered fatalities ranging from 527 to 1,412 (or higher if the toll from the first assault is included.) The day after the surrender of Kronstadt, the Bolsheviks celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Paris Commune.

Although there are no reliable figures for the rebels' battle losses, historians estimate that 1,200 to 2,168 were executed in the days following the revolt, and a like number were jailed, many in the Solovki prison camp.^[7] Official Soviet figures claim approximately 1,000 rebels were killed, 2,000 wounded, and between 2,300 to 6,528 captured, with 6,000 to 8,000 defecting to Finland, while the Red Army lost 527 killed and 3285 wounded.^[9] Later on, 1,050 to 1,272 prisoners were freed and 750 to 1,486 sentenced to five years' forced labour. More fortunate rebels managed to escape to Finland, their large number causing the first major refugee problem for the newly-independent state.^[10] The refugees in Finland were later pardoned through an amnesty. Among them was Petrichenko himself, who lived in Finland and worked as a spy for the Soviet GPU.^[10] He was arrested by the Finnish authorities in 1941 and was expelled to the Soviet Union in 1944. Some months after his return, he was arrested on espionage charges and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in Vladimir prison in 1947.^[11]

Although Red Army units suppressed the uprising, the general dissatisfaction with the state of affairs could not have been more forcefully expressed. Lenin himself stated that Kronstadt "lit up reality like a lightning flash". Against this background of discontent, Lenin concluded that world revolution was not imminent and proceeded in the spring of 1921 to replace the War Communism with his New Economic Policy.

International reaction to the rebellion

The anarchist Emma Goldman, who was in Petrograd at the time of the rebellion, mentions in her account that "the news in the Paris Press about the Kronstadt uprising two weeks before it happened had been stressed in the campaign against the sailors as proof positive that they had been tools of the Imperialist gang and that rebellion had actually been hatched in Paris. It was too obvious that this yarn was used only to discredit the Kronstadters in the eyes of the workers."^[12] Lenin's claim of an international conspiracy linked up with the Kronstadt events is claimed by marxist Abbie Bakan to be supported by the discovery of a handwritten memorandum preserved in the Russian Archive of Columbia University, dated 1921 and marked 'Top Secret'. The document is titled Memorandum on the Question of Organizing an Uprising in Kronstadt, and includes information about the Kronstadt rebellion. It also details plans regarding White army and French government support for the "Kronstadt sailors' March rebellion".^[13]

The memorandum was part of a collection of documents written by National Centre, which originated first in 1918 as a self-claimed 'underground organisation formed in Russia for the struggle against the Bolsheviks'. After suffering military defeat and the arrest of many of its central members, the group reconstituted itself in exile by late 1920. General Wrangel, with his trained army of tens of thousands ready and waiting, was their principal military base of support. This memorandum was probably written between January and early February 1921 by an agent of the National Centre in Finland.^[14]

However, reading the document quickly shows that Kronstadt was not a product of a White conspiracy but rather that the White "National Centre" aimed to try and use a spontaneous "uprising" it thought was likely to "erupt there in the coming spring" for its own ends. The report notes that "among the sailors, numerous and unmistakable signs of mass dissatisfaction with the existing order can be noticed." Indeed, the "Memorandum" states that "one must not forget that even if the French Command and the Russian anti-Bolshevik organisations do not take part in the preparation and direction of the uprising, a revolt in Kronstadt will take place all the same during the coming spring, but after a brief period of success it will be doomed to failure." [quoted by Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, p. 235 and p. 240]

Avrich rejects the idea that the "Memorandum" explains the revolt:

Nothing has come to light to show that the Secret Memorandum was ever put into practice or that any links had existed between the emigres and the sailors before the revolt. On the contrary, the rising bore the earmarks of spontaneity... there was little in the behaviour of the rebels to suggest any careful advance preparation. Had there been a prearranged plan, surely the sailors would have waited a few weeks longer for the ice to melt... The rebels, moreover, allowed Kalinin (a leading Communist) to return to Petrograd, though he would have made a valuable hostage. Further, no attempt was made to take the offensive... Significant too, is the large number of Communists who took part in the movement.(...)

The Sailors needed no outside encouragement to raise the banner of insurrection... Kronstadt was clearly ripe for a rebellion. What set it off was not the machination of emigre conspirators and foreign intelligence agents but the wave of peasant risings throughout the country and the labour disturbances in neighboring Petrograd. And as the revolt unfolded, it followed the pattern of earlier outbursts against the central government from 1905 through the Civil War." [Op. Cit., pp. 111–2]

Moreover, whether the Memorandum played a part in the revolt can be seen from the reactions of the White "National Centre" to the uprising. Firstly, they failed to deliver aid to the rebels or to get French aid to them. Secondly, Professor Grimm, the chief agent of the National Centre in Helsingfors and General Wrangel's official representative in Finland, stated to a colleague after the revolt had been crushed that if a new outbreak should occur then their group must not be caught unawares again. Avrich also notes that the revolt "caught the emigres off balance" and that "nothing . . . had been done to implement the Secret Memorandum, and the warnings of the author were fully borne out." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 212 and p. 123]^[15]

US Senator Joseph I. France was the first US politician to visit Russia after the Revolution and an advocate of cordial relations with the Soviet Union; he had spent time in Russia negotiating with Lenin and other Russian officials to secure the release of Marguerite Harrison, a US spy. He attracted controversy by accusing Colonel Edward W. Ryan of the American Red Cross of fomenting the Kronstadt rebellion.^[16]

Composition of the garrison

Emma Goldman criticized Leon Trotsky for his role in the suppression of the rebellion, arguing that it made his later criticism of Stalinism hypocritical.^[12] Trotsky responded that Goldman's criticisms were mainly perfunctory, and that they ignored the differing social composition between the pro-Bolshevik Kronstadt Uprising of 1917 and the mainly "petty bourgeois" Kronstadt Uprising of 1921.^[17]

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.^[18] In response, Israel Getzler presents detailed evidence that the vast majority of the sailors had been in the Navy since 1917:^[19]

(...)that the veteran 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 Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, both renowned 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 some 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 into the fleet before 1918. Over 80% were drawn from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine, and 9% from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland.
...

Nor, as has so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yasinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found, '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.

Tony Cliff defends the Bolshevik policy, stating 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%."^[20]

According to this view, the majority of the sailors in the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin. Stepan Petrichenko was himself a Ukrainian peasant.^[21] 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."^[22]

Impact of Kronstadt

Kronstadt became a symbol of Anti-Communism.

Walter Krivitsky's concept of "Kronstadt"

In 1939, Isaac Don Levine introduced Whittaker Chambers to Walter Krivitsky in New York City. First, Krivitsky asked, "Ist die Sowjetregierung eine faschistische Regierung? -- Is the Soviet Government a fascist government?" to which Chambers assented. "Du hast recht," he said, "und Kronstadt war der Wendepunkt -- You are right, and Kronstadt was the turning point." Chambers explained:

From Kronstadt during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet had steamed their cruisers to aid the Communists in capturing Petrograd. Their aid had been decisive... They were the first Communists to realize their mistake and the first to try to correct it. When they saw that Communism meant terror and tyranny, they called for the overthrow of the Communist Government and for a time imperiled it. They were bloodily destroyed or sent into Siberian slavery by Communist troops led in person by the Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, and by Marshal Tukhachevsky, one of whom was later assassinated, the other executed, by the regime they then saved. Krivitsky meant that by the decision to destroy the Kronstadt sailors, and by its cold-blooded action in doing so, Communism had made the choice that changed it from benevolent socialism to malignant fascism.^[23]

Louis Fischer's concept of "Kronstadt"

The 1949 book The God That Failed contains Louis Fischer's definition of "Kronstadt" as the moment in which communists or fellow-travelers decide not just to leave the Communist Party but to oppose it as anti-communists. Editor Richard Crossman said in the book's introduction: "The Kronstadt rebels called for Soviet power free from Bolshevik dominance" (p. x). After describing the actual Kronstadt rebellion, Fischer spent many pages applying the concept to subsequent former-communists — including himself: "What counts decisively is the 'Kronstadt.' Until its advent, one might waver emotionally or doubt intellectually or even reject the cause altogether in one's mind, and yet refuse to attack it. I had no 'Kronstadt' for many years." (p. 204).

Others

Writers who subsequently picked up the term have included Clark Kerr, David Edgar, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Norman Podhoretz.

See also

• Russian anarchism
• Russian battleship Potemkin
• Hungarian Revolution of 1956
• Spithead and Nore mutinies
• Chilean naval mutiny of 1931
• Royal Indian Navy Mutiny
• Wilhelmshaven mutiny
• HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën (1909)#Mutiny in the Indies
• Invergordon Mutiny
• Revolt of the Lash

Notes

References

• Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, Israel Getzler ISBN 0-521-89442-5, Cambridge University Press 2002
• Kronstadt, 1921, Paul Avrich ISBN 0-691-08721-0, 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 0-19-515394-4, Oxford University Press (USA)
• The Russian Revolution, W.H.Chamberlin ISBN 0-691-00816-7, Princeton University Press
• Lenin: A Biography, Robert Service ISBN 0-330-49139-3, Pan
• Lenin, Tony Cliff, London, 4 vols., 1975–1979
• Red Victory, W. Bruce Lincoln, New York, 1989
• Kronstadt, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, ISBN 0-87348-883-0
• The Unknown Revolution, Voline, Free Life Editions, New York, 1974
• The Kronstadt Commune, Ida Mett, ISBN 978-0900688126, Solidarity, London: 1967.
• Reaction and Revolution: The Russian Revolution 1894-1924, Michael Lynch
• Kronstadtin kapina 1921 ja sen perilliset Suomessa (Kronstadt Rebellion 1921 and Its Descendants in Finland), Erkki Wessmann, ISBN 952-464-213-1, Pilot Kustannus Oy, 2004

External links

• Kronstadt Archive at marxists.org
• Kronstadt 1921 (in Russian)
• The Kronstadt Izvestia Online archive of the newspaper brought out by the rebels, including their list of demands
• Alexander Berkman The Kronstadt Rebellion
• Leon Trotsky Protests too Much by Emma Goldman, a response to Trotsky's "Hue and Cry over Kronstadt"
• Kronstadt 1921 Bolshevism vs. Counterrevolution – Spartacist English Edition No.59 (International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist))
• Ida Mett's pamphlet of the Kronstadt Commune Originally published by Solidarity, UK
• There is an extended discussion from an Anarchist point of view in the Anarchist FAQ
• The Truth about Kronstadt, translation of the 1921 book Правда о Кронштадте published in Prague by the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper Volia Rossii, and 1992 thesis, by Scott Zenkatsu Parker
• New York Times archives of the ending of the rebellion
• Kronstadt: Trotsky was right!