This essay question was devised by myself and I wanted to take a closer look at how the Russian Revolution betrayed the people of Kronstadt, and many throughout Russia. I have always been a left leaning (socialist) but I look at communism and how it has been practiced and I lament. This is me lamenting and giving due to the people of Kronstadt who stood up for what they so nobly believed in.
... P.S. I wasn't able to post the footnotes, so if a quote interests you I'll give you the source and page :) ... I've posted the bibliography.
P.P.S. It isn't a perfect essay and certainly did not get perfect marks so don't expect it :P
Research Essay
Did the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 expose the Bolshevik regime in Russia
as an autocracy under Lenin?
In March 1921 a Bolshevik army led by Leon Trotsky sieged and
then invaded Kronstadt, killing thousands and raising the city. These Kronstadt
protestors, whom Trotsky called “counter-revolutionary mutineers,”[1]
were the same people he once described as “the pride and glory of the Russian
Revolution.”[2]
The rebellion of the people of Kronstadt in 1921 was significant in exposing to
the world the autocratic rule of the Bolsheviks under Lenin. This essay will
argue this by examining the rebellion of the Kronstadt Red army, sailors and
workers, and the response of Lenin and the Bolshevik regime to the Kronstadt
resolution and protests. The essay will finally examine the Bolshevik takeover
and argue how the Bolsheviks failed to implement what they had promised the
Russian people.
In 1921, after the Civil War ended, the Kronstadt army and
navy went home expecting the Bolshevik government to “lighten the burdens
[caused by the Civil War], abolish war-time restrictions, introduce fundamental
liberties, and begin the organisation of a more normal life.”[3]
Yet what the 25,000 soldiers and sailors would find is the continuation of War
Communism which had crushed the country for three years. [4]
Not only would the soldiers find the continuation of the unpopular policies of
War Communism but they also found their once “picturesque”[5]
city of Kronstadt[6] was
now one in disarray and ravaged by starvation. This discontent was vocalised by
a Bolshevik sailor who returned home and wrote of the situation in Kronstadt,
“Ours is an ordinary peasant farm, neither Kulak nor
parasitical; yet when I and my brother return home from serving the Soviet
republic people will sneer at our wrecked farm and say: ‘What did you serve
for? What has the Soviet republic given you?”[7]
Stepan Petrichenko, who would become a key figure in the
Kronstadt rebellion, also stated that, “for years the happenings at home while
we were at the front or at sea were concealed by the Bolshevik censorship.”[8]
These responses symbolised the initial cries against the government’s policies
and the changing opinion of the working people towards the government. Yet
despite the crippling situation Kronstadt widely remained supportive of the
government they had fought for and “the people,” as Alexander Berkman wrote
“were eager to cooperate.”[9]
This cooperation though was attached with Kronstadt’s belief that the
government needed to meet with the people to highlight what changes would be
implemented. Instead of approaching the people the Bolshevik government began putting
an end to strikes in Petrograd factories by using terror and violence. Berkman
explains that, “instead of talking matters over with the dissatisfied workers,
the “Workers’ and Peasants’ Government” created a war-time Komitet Oborony (Committee of Defense) with Znioviev, the most
hated man in Petrograd, as Chairman.”[10]
Therefore the government’s plan of proletarian rule had vanished and instead
the government started ruling only in the name of the proletariat. The
Bolsheviks next issued decrees which called anyone who strikes an enemy of the
revolution.
The soldiers and working people of Kronstadt had worked with
and fought for the Bolsheviks since The July Days. In July of 1917 Kronstadt
protestors took to the streets of Petrograd and demanded power to be handed
over the Soviets (through the Bolshevik party). These protestors held up signs
which read, “All power to the soviets.”[11]
The protestors believed that power needed to belong to the soviets instead of a
centralised government which did not look after the interests of the working
people. The Bolsheviks promised to abide by this as they issued their desire to
establish a, “dictatorship of the proletariat.”[12]
The Kronstadt people would join the Bolshevik party and fight for its
revolution from October 1917 and in the following civil war. The Kronstadt
people described their support of the Bolsheviks in 1917 as, “the working
class... hoping to throw off the yoke of oppression.”[13]
However, these same people in less than four years would describe the Bolshevik
take over as, “an even greater enslavement of the human person.”[14]
Behind this claim was the failure and continuation of War Communism which the
people believe established centralised rule over the people instead of the rule
of the people.
War Communism sought to centralise rule and implement
government control over every aspect of life in Russia. The five million Bolshevik
soldiers during the Civil War had to be fed and equipped so the government took
food, materials, transport (horses), and household belongings and sent it to
the army and cities. [15]
Lenin himself admitted that,
“The essence of ‘War
Communism’ was that we actually took from the peasants all his surpluses and
sometimes not only the surpluses but part of the grain the peasant needed for
food. We took this in order to meet the requirements of the army and to sustain
the workers.”[16]
These measures would help lead to a Red Army victory but it also
spread starvation, discontent and death across the country. The peasants and
the workers grew disillusioned with its government which had promised freedom
and “peace, land and bread,” at the beginning of the revolution. This
collectivisation program not only ensured government ownership over the lives
of the people but it did not support the urban areas of Russia. The population
drop in Petrograd during these years’ best indicates this as the population of
the city shrunk to 750,000 from its 2.5 million inhabitants in 1917.[17]
This catastrophic figure was brought on by starvation and the breakdown in
transport which stopped food and supplies from getting into the city. Death
from famine got so severe that the amount of people who died in “1921-2 would
exceed the combined total of casualties in the First World War and Civil War.”[18]
The industrial economy in turn also “shrunk to about a fifth of 1913 levels.”[19]
Yet it was not the war time conditions which started strikes across the country
but the continuation of this oppressive rule after the war. Berkman states that,
“the communist state showed no intention of loosening the yoke.”[20]
This led to the belief that the “Communist Party was more interested in
retaining political power than in saving the Revolution.”[21]
The people of Kronstadt wanted the government to see its
fault in War Communism and collectivisation, and freely give power to the
soviets. This was the central issue underlying the Kronstadt rebellion: that
all power was to belong to the soviets, “not to parties.”[22]
The Kronstadt people believed this to mean, “that each locality would run its
own affairs, with little or no interference from any central authority.”[23]
This belief was then echoed across the country and the “Cheka reported 118
separate peasant risings in various parts of the country”[24]
in February 1921 alone. One Kronstadt protestor addressed his people and told
them that, “the time has come to tell the Communists openly – you have spoken
enough on our behalf. Down with your dictatorship which has landed us in this
blind alley.”[25] Protestors
then asked the government for the “abolition of martial law; freedom of speech,
press and assembly for all who labor; Free election of shop and factory
committees (zahkomi), of labor union and soviet representatives.”[26]
The government’s oppressive reply to this message demonstrates the autocratic
nature of the regime as decrees were sent out to place Petrograd under martial
law and arrest those suspected of being a part of labour organisations. This
was perceived by the Kronstadt people to be the response of a dictatorship and
not a soviet state and so the sailors of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol ships
(who had been a part of the revolution in 1917) rebelled and left their posts.
The “Communist authorities of Kronstadt (i.e., the Executive Committee of the
Soviet, as well as the District Committee of the party)”[27]
decided to then meet the sailors and protestors at a public meeting on the
first of March. At this meeting the Kronstadt protestors presented the
government with their resolution. It is this resolution which best highlights
the desires of the protestors and the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks.
The fifteen point resolution asked for the freedom “to hold
new elections by secret ballot,” as well as, “freedom of speech and press for
workers and peasants... freedom of assembly for labor unions... freedom of
action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle.”[28]
This freedom of land usage and livestock was what Lenin had promised the people
prior to the revolution and many Kronstadt men spoke out against failure of the
government to do so. A sailor in the navy for example said about the
government’s actions,
“I have stood up for the interests of the worker-peasant
government and defended it against the onslaughts of all sorts of snakes... I
appeal to you as defenders of truth... the district commissar took away our
sole remaining horse and after that my father himself was arrested.”[29]
With arrests like this in mind the resolution called for the
government to free imprisoned socialist politicians and “workers, peasants,
soldiers and sailors imprisoned in connection with the labour and peasant
movements.”[30]
The government’s response to the resolution was not one of understanding
and acceptance towards the people’s concerns but one of anger and oppression.
One Communist leader said of the resolution that “Kronstadt is not the whole of
Russia and we therefore shall not take account of it.”[31]
Yet the Bolsheviks were aware of the thousands of protests which were happening
all around Russia at this time. Historian Paul Avrich states that the
importance in the resolution lies in the fact that “of the resolution’s 15
points, only one... applied specifically to their [Kronstadt’s] own situation.
The remainder of the document was a broadside aimed at the policies of War
Communism.”[32] The
meeting between the Bolsheviks and Kronstadt protestors ended with a threat
from Bolshevik leaders, they said that because the Kronstadt people were vying
for power (according to the Bolsheviks) the “Communists will never voluntarily
relinquish power and will fight it out to the end.”[33]
Two Bolshevik leaders were therefore arrested by the protestors and this marked
the start of Bolshevik propaganda against the citizens of Kronstadt. The
Bolsheviks described what was happening as “the tools of former Tsarist
generals who together with Socialist-Revolutionary traitors staged a counter
revolutionary conspiracy against the proletarian Republic.”[34]
Berkman further recorded a Bolshevik radio broadcast which read,
“That the armed uprising of the former general Kozlovsky has
been organised by the spies of the Entente, like many similar previous plots,
is evident from the bourgeois French newspaper Matin, which two weeks prior to the Kozlovsky rebellion published
the following telegram from Helsingfors: ‘As a result of the recent Kronstadt
uprising the Bolshevik military authorities have taken steps to isolate
Kronstadt and to prevent the sailors and soldiers of Kronstadt from entering
Petrograd... it is clear that the Kronstadt uprising was made in Paris and
organised by the French secret service.”[35]
Berkman states that the reason why the government had issued
orders for a propaganda campaign against the Kronstadt revolutionaries is
because “they [the Communists] have failed to persuade the proletariat that
Kronstadt is in the hands of counter-revolutionaries.”[36]
Lenin also attempted to distance the Kronstadt protestors from the rest of Russia
by stating that if Kronstadt is successful the country will “lead directly to
the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat and, consequently, to the
restoration of capitalism and of the old landowner and capitalist regime.”[37]
Yet while Lenin attempted to distance the Kronstadt protestors from socialism
the Kronstadt protestors in return attempted to display to the people, through
the demands of their resolution, that the Bolsheviks were an autocratic party
prepared to do anything to retain power. The claims of the Bolsheviks, that the
Kronstadt protestors were French bourgeoisie and of white guard influence, was
also fabricated and Lenin himself would state on March 15th that the
people “do not want the White Guards and they do not want our state power
either.”[38]
The great failing of the Kronstadt rebellion was not that the
Bolsheviks were able to invade and slaughter “Kronstadt men, women and even
children.”[39]
The great failure was in their belief that Petrograd workers would come to
their aid and spread the cause of this third revolution across Russia. Berkman
states that one reason Petrograd strikers did not “come to its [Kronstadt’s]
aid” was because “the workers... were terrorized, and Kronstadt was effectively
blockaded and isolated.”[40]
The Bolsheviks had also sought to use terror as a way of defeating enemies and maintaining
power. Lenin would ask of his fellow socialists before the Civil War, “If we
are not ready to shoot a saboteur and White Guardist, what sort of revolution
is that?”[41]
This use of terror by the Bolsheviks to maintain rule by fear was the same
tactic used by the Tsar (widely seen as autocratic) who was able to use the
army and Oskrana to maintain power for centuries.
The Civil War which broke out only months after the
Bolsheviks staged its revolution in October 1917 was exactly what Lenin and his
Bolshevik party needed to gain complete control over the country. Fitzpatrick
states that “Bolshevik leaders knew perfectly well before the event [the Civil
War], their October coup was seen by many as an outright provocation to civil
war,” and that the Bolsheviks, “may even have sought”[42]
it out. The Bolsheviks had drawn the proletariat into its ranks with its
slogans which promised that power would be their hands and that Bolshevik
Russia would be the rule of the proletariat. “Peace, land and bread,”[43]
was Lenin’s early promise and the party said this would then lead to “free toil
on the land, in factories and plants.” Only these promises never came to
fruition and the Kronstadt people died in protest of what they perceived to be
lies. Yet prior to 1921 Russians did believe the Bolshevik slogans and this led
the people to fight for Bolshevik victory in the Civil War.
The Civil War was also crucial because it gave the Bolsheviks
the opportunity to try and stamp out opposing political parties and create the
idea that, “the shining Kingdom of Socialism,” was one which, “the Bolsheviks
alone knew how to build.”[44]
Berkman states that the Bolsheviks tried to force the people “to think
according to Communist prescription,”[45]
while telling the people they were in control. The Bolsheviks stripped the
people of power during the Civil War as it collectivised everyone under the
government. Land for example was stripped from the toiling peasants and given
to the state, and thus the state became the new land owners of Russia. The
former feudal rule of landowners had switched hands and now another regime was
going to dictate to the people where they are work, what they can do and what
they can keep from their own labour. What this equates to is a country which
had re-established autocratic rule in the proletariat’s name. These measures
were taken in the name of victory, yet when victory was ensured the government
maintained this War Communism top down rule over the people. There were soviets
put in place in the towns and districts but they were forced to vote in
obedience to the ruling party or risk being removed and attacked by the Cheka. Berkman,
in his analysis of the Kronstadt rebellion, explained that Russia under
Bolshevik rule “has no soul, no principles... It has but one aim – to secure
power and hold it, at any cost.”[46]
The killing of thousands in Kronstadt in March of 1921 highlights this fact and
foreshadows the future of Bolshevik Russia and the USSR.
Bibliography
Avrich, Paul. Kronstadt 1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Berkman, Alexander. What is Communist Anarchism?. New York: Dover Publications, 1972.
Getzler, Israel. Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy. Bristol:
Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. 3rd
ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Lenin, Vladimir. “Official Statement on
the Kronstadt Mutiny, March 8, 1921” in Russia
in War and Revolution 1914-1922: A Documentary History, edited and
translated by Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, Indianapolis: Hacking
Publishing Company, 2009, pp. 292-294.
Moorehead, Alan. The Russian Revolution. London: Collins with Hamish Hamilton, 1958.
Petrograd Soviet. “Worker Unrest in
Petrograd, March 4, 1921” in Russia in
War and Revolution 1914-1922: A Documentary History, edited and translated
by Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, Indianapolis: Hacking Publishing Company,
2009, pp. 288-291.
“Russian Revolutionary Series: The
Kronstadt Rebellion.” Anarchy Archives. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/kronstadt/berkkron.html
