International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, pp.

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Kronstadt Mutiny of 1921 2003

Kronstadt Mutiny of 1921

Christian Garland
The Kronstadt Mutiny refers to an uprising in the early part of March 1921 by Russian sailors at the Kronstadt naval base on Kotlin Island, near the Gulf of Finland, against the Bolshevik regime. The uprising remains of key historical importance to this day, drawing differing and opposing positions on the Russian Revolution, and questions of workers control, the nature of post-revolutionary politics, and where power should lie. Broadly speaking, left communists and class struggle anarchists almost without exception take the view that the Kronstadt revolt was an authentic proletarian uprising against an authoritarian regime, controlled by a new bureaucratic class. Leninists, by contrast, are equally rm in their belief, albeit with a few variations, that the suppression of the rebellion led by Leon Trotsky was vital however regrettable to the survival of the revolution. The uprising was the culmination of a period of discontent across a country ravaged by famine and poverty, following the end of the Russian Civil War. Lenins policy of War Communism saw production in many sectors falling to around 20 percent of pre-World War I levels, creating intense hardship for the general population in the process. Elsewhere, in the Ukraine, Nestor Makhnos anarchist guerrilla army would soon nally be crushed by the Bolshevik regime it had helped sustain against the counterrevolutionary White Guard throughout the bitter civil war. The Bolsheviks had continually struggled to impose party discipline on both non-party and party members of the Baltic Fleet; however, sailors refused to accept the partys will, despite all attempts to enforce acceptance of its directives. Measures such as Army customs from 1920

International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, pp. 20032005

2004 Kronstadt Mutiny of 1921

onwards met with opposition and outright resistance from the rank and le. Hostility to the Bolshevik hierarchy was voiced in the sailors anger at the dictatorial attitudes of party apparatchik, and an atmosphere of open insubordination largely prevailed. On February 15 the Second Conference of Communist Sailors of the Baltic Fleet had met and assembled 300 delegates who voted to condemn the Poubalt (Political Section of the Baltic Fleet) as a a bureucratic organ which had separated itself from the masses, adding that it now had no authority amongst the sailors. The second resolution condemned the total absence of a plan or method in the work of Poubalt, adding: There is also a lack of agreement between its actions and the resolutions adopted at the Ninth Party Congress. The third resolution stated that Poubalt had totally detached itself from the Party masses, [and] destroyed all local initiative. The resolution also stated that Poubalt had transformed all political work into paper work, adding: This has had harmful repercussions on the organization of the masses in the Fleet. Between June and November last year, 20 percent of the sailor party members have left the party. This can be explained by the wrong methods of the work of Poubalt. The four resolutions concluded with criticism of the centralized bureucratic nature of Poubalt, citing the very principles of [its] organization. These principles must be changed in the direction of greater democracy (Mett 1967). The Kronstadt sailors once referred to as the ower of the revolution by Trotsky sent delegates to St. Petersburg to report back on the situation; reports of repression and near-terror continued. On February 28 the crews of the the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol met and agreed a resolution issuing the following 15 demands: 1 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. 2 Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the anarchists, and for the left socialist parties. 3 The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organizations. 4 The organization, at the latest on March 10, 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 of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working-class 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 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 labor. 12 We request that all military units and ofcer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution. 13 We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution. 14 We demand the institution of mobile workers control groups. 15 We demand that handicraft production be authorized provided it does not utilize wage labor. In response, a general meeting of the garrison was held, attended by Bolshevik dignatries including the commissar of the Baltic Fleet. In opposition to the Bolshevik presence, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee was formed, approving the 15 demands. On March 2 the Bolsheviks responded with an ultimatum demanding the Kronstadt rebels disband their new committee or face the consequences. The Kronstadt sailors refused. The Bolsheviks denounced the mutiny, claiming it had undoubtedly been pre-

International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, pp. 20032005

Kropotkin, Peter (18421921) 2005

pared by French counterintelligence and that the Petropavlovsk resolution was a SR-Black Hundred resolution, referring to the Social Revolutionaries and the unrelated right-wing Black Hundreds. The rebels by now had occupied strategic points across the naval town, taking over all government establishments, including staff headquarters, and the telephone and wireless buildings. Meanwhile, each battleship and regiment elected its own committee, modeled on the directly recallable model of the Soviets. By 9:00 p.m. on the evening of March 2 the majority of Red Army detachments at Kronstadt had declared their support for the rebellion. On March 3 Kronstadt published the rst issue of the Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. On March 7 Trotsky and Lev Kamenev ordered the attack against Kronstadt, dispatching around 60,000 troops under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The Red Army forces met erce resistance, losing more than 10,000 men, not including those who joined the rebellion. The rebellion was nally crushed on March 19. Ofcial Soviet gures put the number of rebels killed at just 1,000 but the real gure is almost certainly more, with some estimates putting it as high as 14,00016,000. Many ed to nearby Finland, while many more were sent to labor camps. The Kronstadt mutiny had been provoked by the depredations and miseries of a prolonged civil war, and a Bolshevik regime impervious to criticism from below. Besides the seemingly modest demands of the rebels calling for freedom of speech and free elections, there was the belief that the Soviets, originally organs of proletarian democracy, had been suffocated by the bureacracy who maintained a rigid policy of top-down diktats imposed by force. Trotsky notoriously claimed that his suppression of the mutiny had with an iron broom, rid Russia of anarchism once and for all. The suppression of the mutiny continues to provoke bitter argument, but what is apparent in the demands and actions of the sailors is the resolute belief that the revolutionary hopes of 1917 had been betrayed by an increasingly authoritarian party growing ever more removed from the masses it claimed to represent; the rebellion was an attempt, made from the bottom up, to confront the power of the Bolsheviks with what it saw as the power of the people.

SEE ALSO: Anarchism, Russia; Russia, Revolution of February/March 1917

References and Suggested Readings

Avrich, P. (1970) Kronstadt 1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ciliga, A. (1942) The Kronstadt Revolt. London: Freedom Press. Available at www.geocities.com/ cordobakaf/ciligakrond.html (downloaded April 17, 2008). Mett, A. (1967) The Kronstadt Commune. London: Solidarity. Available at www.libcom.org/library/ the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mett (downloaded April 17, 2008). MK (1997) Beyond Kronstadt. London: Escape. Available at www.libcom.org/library/beyond-kronstadt (downloaded April 17, 2008).