The Workshop Of The Revolution. I. N. Steinberg 1953
Kronstadt was more than a powerful island fortress at the Baltic approach to Petrograd. Kronstadt was also the foremost stronghold of the revolution. Back in the years of the first mass rebellions in 1904-1906, the sailors of the Russian Fleet-both North and South-had taken a most active part in the struggle against czarism.
At Sebastopol and Odessa, the Black Sea Fleet had aroused the admiration of the whole world. Unforgettable to this day is the mutiny of June, 1905, on the Russian battleship Potemkin, which, flying the Red flag, had defied the might of the czarist regime for eleven days. In November of the same year, eleven warships in Sebastopol revolted under the leadership of the remarkable Lieutenant Piotr Schmidt. All were forced to capitulate and the crews were punished cruelly. But just before his execution, Schmidt told his military judges, “Today it is you who kill us. But wait; soon, perhaps in another year, you will suffer a like, or even a worse, fate. You can kill me, but others will rise to avenge us.”
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet did not lag behind their comrades in southern Russia. In October, 1905, they rebelled in Kronstadt. In July, 1906, following the forcible dissolution 0f the first Duma by the Czar’s Government, they fought desperate, losing battles in Sveborg, Helsingfors, Reval, and again in Kronstadt.
Their revolutionary fervor was no accident, for the Russian Fleet was a complicated social organism. The sailors represented a cross-section of all significant classes in the country. Most wer children of the Russian village but, owing to the technical demands of a modem navy, they had become highly qualified maritime workers. Furthermore, during their many years of naval service, these peasant-workers had undergone strict military training and discipline. Large groups of intelligent and courageous young men developed among them, and they observed with intense concern the conditions in village and city. And in the Navy they were face to face daily with the naval officer, the Borin, for whom they already bore an ancestral hatred. The officers were drawn from Russia’s landed and military aristocracy, and they let the peasant sons feel their social inferiority within a rigid system of repression. The Russian Navy thus was seething with social enmity kept in check only by the iron prongs of law and punishment. Small wonder that revolutionary propaganda which showed the sailors the correlation between their troubles and the political system as a whole was always effective among them.
In the very first days of the revolution in 1917, Kronstadt sailors instituted a thorough cleansing of their city and fortress. They set out not only to eradicate all traces of the abominated past, but also to establish “in their midst” a Soviet order of their own. The bourgeois press always referred to them as the “Kronstadt republic,” thinking, for instance, of the resolution passed by their Soviet as early as May 26, 1917: “Power in the city of Kronstadt rests from now on only in the hands of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. Concerning such issues as apply to the country as a whole, our Soviet makes contact with the Provisional government in Petrograd.”
The men of Kronstadt followed the march of events closely, sending armed detachments to Petrograd whenever they felt that the revolution needed a shot in the arm. For such action the French Revolution offered a historic precedent. The people of the harbor city of Marseilles had also sent a famous detachment to Paris to help spur the revolution on, and it was then that the Marseillaise became the revolutionary hymn of France and the world.
When riots broke out in July, 1917, and Petrograd workers demanded the transfer of state power to the Soviets, Kronstadt sailors were strongly represented among them. At one moment during the dramatic demonstrations before the Tauride Palace, Kronstadt sailors seriously threatened Victor Chernov, Minister of Agriculture. They accused him of procrastination in accomplishing the agrarian reform and of compliance with his coalition ministers. It was Trotsky who then saved the situation by his judicious speech to the sailors, whom he called the pride and ornament of the revolution.
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet loyally performed their task of defending the fortress against the Germans, and at the same time took an active part in the October revolt. When the Russian battleship Aurora entered the river Neva from Kronstadt and threatened the Winter Palace, the fate of the Kerensky Government was sealed. Kronstadt became a stronghold of the Soviet regime, and detachments of Baltic sailors fought and died on all critical fronts during the long civil war.
And it was sailors from Kronstadt who raised the revolt against the Bolshevik Government in March, 1921. How had this become possible? Had they broken with their old revolutionary tradition? Or were they acting still in its true spirit?
The time was but a few months after the victory-in November, 1920-over General Wrangel and the end of the civil war in the Crimea. The people had heaved a sigh of relief and waited for some radical change to break the unbearable routine of hunger, dictatorship and persecution. Had not the Government justified all repressions and all miseries in the country with the grim excuse of the civil war? But months passed and there were no signs of relief from terroristic pressure.
Conditions were particularly harsh in the citadel of the revolution, Petrograd. Workers in the factories and their families were living in freezing homes and on starvation rations. According to official documents, workers in January, 1921, received between two hundred and eight hundred grams of black bread a day [29]. And bread was the mainstay of the Russian diet. But even these meager rations were not regularly distributed. It was then that a mood of protest reasserted itself among the Petrograd workers and they embarked on a series of strikes. During the month of February, exactly four years after the outbreak of the revolution, strikes closed down one large plant after another -the same plants that had won a name for themselves in the early days of the revolution. By February 28, 1921, the largest of them, the Putilov Steel Plant, joined the strike.
At first the workers had put forward economic claims only, primarily a demand for bread. But-and how could it have been otherwise?-they soon added political demands. They wanted freedom of speech and press, and amnesty for political prisoners. There was dismay among the Bolshevik rulers in Petrograd, and Zinoviev, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, flew into a panic.
Immediately the Bolsheviks appointed a military “Defense Committee” of three dictators and proclaimed martial law in Petrograd. S. Petrichenko, a sailor on the warship Petropavlovsk and the man who later led the Kronstadt revolt, described the situation thus: “The Petrograd Soviet remained deaf to the just demands of the workers and began arresting them in masses, accusing them of being spies and agents of the Allied powers. Relying on its superior military strength and hiding behind the banner of the revolution the Cheka applied its usual methods. The bureaucrats had grown spoilt during the civil war, when no one had dared oppose them. But they do not understand the new situation. The workers went out on strike, and were cut down by the regime with bloodthirsty ferocity.” [30]
Petrichenko then related a significant fact. Several formations of Red Army men and sailors who were stationed in Petrograd, and who sympathized with the workers, failed to come to their aid because the Soviet Government threatened them with- Kronstadt. Kronstadt, the Bolsheviks let it be known, was ready to bring down its heavy hand of revenge on all who opposed them. But this time the political trick did not work. Kronstadt learned what was happening in near-by Petrograd. On February 26, it dispatched a delegation to study the situation on the spot. The delegation meant to turn directly to the struck plants and ask for clarification from the workers themselves.
But the sailors’ delegates encountered unexpected obstacles. “The factories looked like Katorga prisons of czarist days,” Petrichenko wrote from his later exile. “They were surrounded by the military outside, and swarmed inside with armed Chekists. The workers stood about aimlessly, looking with confused eyes. When a Factory Committee chairman announced a meeting to hear delegates from Kronstadt, none of the workers stirred.
Instead, we heard murmurs like, ‘We know them, these delegations.’ So we asked: ‘Why won’t you discuss things with us frankly? We came to learn the reasons for your grievances?’ They continued silent for long, and then someone said: ‘We've had delegations before. But afterward all who trusted them were taken away.’ We showed them our documents to prove that we had indeed been sent from Kronstadt. ‘Now do you believe us?’ Still they did not move, but their eyes pointed to the military and the members of the factory committees. Then we understood and said no more. But we scanned their faces and saw moist eyes and tears trickling over the cheeks of some of them. ‘But comrades,’ we finally called to them. ‘What shall we report to Kronstadt? Have you lost your tongues?’
“One brave man at last spoke up. ‘Yes, we have lost our tongues, and our memory too. I know what will happen to me when you leave here. But because you are from Kronstadt, and because they keep threatening us with Kronstadt, you must know the truth: We are starved. We are without clothes or shoes. We are morally and physically terrorized. Go take a look at the Petrograd prisons and see how many of our comrades were arrested during the last three days. No, comrades, the time has come to tell the Communists: Long enough have you covered yourselves with our names! Long live the freely elected Soviets!"’
When the Kronstadt delegation rendered its report concerning Petrograd on February 28, the crew of the battleship Petropavlovsk unanimously passed a resolution which was destined to go down in history. Here are some of its salient points (numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 11 and 15):
“Whereas the present Soviets do not represent the will of the workers and peasants, new elections are to be held immediately by secret ballot, and before the elections a free campaign is to be conducted among all workers and peasants.
“We demand freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists and all left-wing socialist parties.
“We demand freedom of assembly, of trade unions and peasant associations.
“We demand liberation of all socialist prisoners, as well as workers, peasants, Red Armists and sailors arrested in connection with popular resistance.
“The peasants are to be granted full jurisdiction over their land, as also the use of cattle, as long as they work themselves without employing hired labor.
“Freedom of occupation is to be permitted to the small craftsman who does not employ hired labor.”
A day later, on March i, a large open meeting, attended by sixteen thousand sailors, Red Armists of the Kronstadt garrison and workers from the city, took place in the harbor square. The Bolshevik Vassilieff was chairman and speakers included the Bolsheviks Mikhail Kalinin, President of the Central Soviet Executive, and Kuzmin, Commissar of the Baltic Fleet. Despite bitter protests and open threats from the three leading Bolsheviks, the resolution of the warship Pctropavlovsk was passed unanimously. Kalinin immediately left for Moscow. Kronstadt did not yet have rebellious intentions; as yet it still appealed trustingly to the Bolshevik Government. And yet the very words of the resolution were charged with rebellious intent.
Only a spark was needed to cause the explosion. It occurred on the second of March, during a perfectly legal conference held to discuss new elections for the Kronstadt Soviet. The three hundred delegates from all ships, military detachments and factories included several Communists. Petrichenko, the sailor from the Petropavlovsk, was elected chairman. The conference debated the question as to what they could do, by peaceful means, to alleviate the distress in the country. The general tenor of the meeting was pro-Soviet and even sympathetic to the Communist Party; it was hostile only to the violent ways of the Commissars. Then Kuzmin took the floor and at once changed this atmosphere. He arrogantly rejected all reports and complaints and closed with these words: “If you want open and armed conflict, then you'll get it. The Communists will not voluntarily resign their power. They will fight to the end.”
Kuzmin’s provocative speech was followed by that of Vas- silieff, chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet. The conference was further transformed. The delegates realized that these two men- Kuzmin and Vassilieff-could no longer be trusted, and both were seized and removed from the hall. It was characteristic that, at the same time, the conference rejected a proposal to arrest all Communist delegates present. Kronstadt was still hoping for an agreement with the Government.
Again the resolution was read and enthusiastically approved. And suddenly the alarming news spread through the hall that the Government was preparing an attack on the conference, and that fifty carloads of soldiers armed with rifles and machine guns had been dispatched for that purpose. In answer, one of the delegates proposed that Kronstadt immediately organize its defense, and that a temporary revolutionary committee be elected on the spot. The committee was quickly formed from among the men on the presidium of the conference, again under the chairmanship of Petrichenko. For security reasons the committee transferred to the Petropavlovsk, whence it began functioning as the only de facto power of the city of Kronstadt, its forts and its fleet.
The composition of the committee proved beyond all doubt the popular character of the movement. Among its fifteen members there was not a single party leader or political writer. Eight sailors (none of them officers) and seven workers were non- party men and represented directly the workingmen of Kronstadt. Furthermore, their main document-the resolution of the Petropavlovsk-and their subsequent public utterances had not been formulated by experienced party politicians. They bore the unmistakable stamp of a people’s program. True, an analysis of the historic document shows, first, that in their revolt the sailors held fast to the Soviet constitution. And, second, that most of their points reflected the program of the Left Social- Revolutionaries. But the party of the Left Social-Revolutionaries had had no part in the formulation of that document. (Had it been otherwise, the Bolshevik Government would not have failed to accuse the party of complicity in the revolt.) The rebels had drawn for their formulations upon their own experience, upon their knowledge of the people’s needs and their loyalty to the ideas of October. They stood by these ideas from the first day of their uprising to the last.
Events now moved rapidly. Without the firing of a single shot, all strategic points and public institutions in the city went over to the revolutionary committee on March 2, 1921, as did all warships, forts and all Red Army formations. The printing plant of the Government newspaper was occupied. The third of March, 1921, saw the first issue of the famous Izvestya of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Red Armists and Workers of Kronstadt. (Hereafter we shall refer to it simply as the Izvestya.) In the very first article the leaders of the movement put down the following significant words:
“Our country is passing through a difficult period. Starvation, cold, economic chaos have not relaxed their grip during almost three years. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has withdrawn itself from the masses and has proved itself incapable of dealing with the situation. It has paid no attention to the recent disturbances in Petrograd and Moscow, though they proved clearly that the Party has lost the confidence of the working masses. It views the demands of the workers as intrigues of the counter-revolution. It is greatly mistaken.
“These disturbances and demands are the voice of the entire people. All workers, sailors and Red Armists now realize that only with the common will and effort of the whole people can the country be provided with bread, fuel, coal, clothes for the naked and boots for the barefooted. Only the people can rescue the republic from its impasse. The will to do this is clearly manifested in the Kronstadt resolution of March 1. It was there also decided to call immediately for new elections to the Kronstadt Soviet and to begin the peaceful reorganization of the Soviet order. The threatening speeches of the representatives of the regime have caused the establishment of the Revolutionary Committee.”
The appeal closed with a statement of policy to which the committee adhered faithfully to the end.
“Comrades and citizens! The Committee is anxious that not a single drop of blood be shed. Do not stop work in factories, forts or on ships. Our task is to secure together the conditions for honest and just elections to the new Soviet. We call you to order, to calmness, to firmness, to new creative socialist labor for the welfare of all working people.”
The sailors thus passed from rebellious words to action. And still they hoped that an agreement with the rulers of the country would prove possible. Their goal was not revolution but reform within the framework of the Soviet system. They felt competent-because of their tradition and merit-to speak in the name of the people. But they did not foresee the panic and the desperate recklessness of the Bolsheviks, who did not even consider coming to terms. Initiative among the Bolsheviks had already passed from the local autocrat Zinoviev to the central authority of Lenin and Trotsky. And in Moscow they quickly furnished their own methods of struggle. As early as March 2, Lenin and Trotsky signed and published an official statement filled with malicious lies and slanders. They called the Kronstadt movement mutinous and the sailors “the tools of former Czarist generals who, together with Social-Revolutionary traitors, were staging a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the proletarian republic.” Their order proceeded to inform the Russian people and the world of the following “pure” truths.
“On February 28 the crew of the Petropavlovsk passed resolutions evincing the spirit of the Black Hundreds \ former monarchist gangs]. Then the former general Kozlovsky entered the picture. [31] Thus once again a Czarist general stands behind the Social-Revolutionaries. In view of all this the Council of Labor and Defense orders:
1. to declare Kozlovsky and his aides outlawed;
2. to put the Petrograd Province under martial law;
3. to place supreme power in the hands of the Petrograd Committee of Defense.”
As we already know, there is not a word of truth in these cynical assertions. Their purpose was to discredit the Kronstadt sailors and represent them as followers of Right Social-Revolutionaries, monarchists and “French spies.” Yet Kronstadt had assiduously refrained from all contact with counter-revolutionary forces. Even when Victor Chernov, in the name of the Right Social- Revolutionary Party, sent them an offer of help, they declined politely but firmly. Their exchange of radio messages is worth recalling: Chernov sent the following telegram from Reval, Estonia:
“The chairman of the Constituent Assembly, Victor Chernov, sends his fraternal greetings to the heroic comrades-sailors, the Red Armists and workers, who for the third time since 1905 are throwing off the yoke of tyranny. He offers to aid them with men and to provision Kronstadt through the Russian co-operatives abroad. Inform what and how much is needed. Am prepared to come in person and place my energies and authority at the service of the people’s revolution. . . . I hail you as the first to raise the banner of the people’s liberation! Down with despotism from the left and right!”
The Revolutionary Committee replied in a short radio message:
“The Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt expresses to all our brothers abroad its deep gratitude for their sympathy. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee is thankful for the offer of Comrade Chernov, which it declines for the present: that is, until further developments clarify the situation. Meantime everything will be taken into consideration.
Petrichenko, Chairman Provisional Revolutionary Committee.”
It was becoming evident in Kronstadt that the Bolshevik Government was mounting an armed attack against them. The sailors themselves had not planned any armed rising; the entire movement had not really been planned. As was pointed out correctly at that time, had they really intended an uprising, they would not have started it at the beginning of March when Kronstadt was still solidly ringed by frozen waters. [32] Had they waited a little while, until the spring sun had broken up the ice, Kronstadt would have become an unapproachable fortress, with the added advantage of a powerful fleet pointed against-Petrograd. Theirs had been the truly spontaneous and peaceful move of a shaken people who were relying on the moral strength of mutual solidarity. That is why Kronstadt did not, in the first decisive days, take any aggressive steps, or mount a military offensive to exploit the confusion of the Bolsheviks. That is why they did no ice breaking around the fortress to prevent a Red Army approach from the mainland.
But the Bolsheviks, who well recognized the deadly danger of such a movement, decided to suppress it quickly and ruthlessly and without negotiations. On the sixth of March, Trotsky radioed an ultimatum to Kronstadt:
“The Workers’ and Peasants’ government demands that Kronstadt and the mutinous ships immediately submit to the authority of the Soviet republic. I therefore command all who have raised their hand against the socialist fatherland to lay down their arms at once. The obdurate are to be disarmed and turned over to the Soviet authorities. The arrested Commissars and other representatives of the government are to be liberated immediately. Only those who surrender unconditionally may count on the mercy of the Soviet republic.
“At this moment I am issuing orders to prepare to quell the mutiny and subdue the mutineers by force of arms. Responsibility for the injury that may be suffered by the peaceful population will fall entirely on the heads of the counterrevolutionary mutineers.
“This warning is final.
Trotsky, Chairman,
Revolutionary Military Soviet of the Republic. Kamenev, Commander in Chief.”
If Trotsky expected an immediate surrender, he was mistaken. In the March 7 issue of Izvestya, the rebels replied earnestly and proudly:
“Field Marshal Trotsky has threatened the free Kronstadt which has rebelled against the three-year-old autocracy of the Communist Commissars. He threatens the working people, who have thrown off the humiliating yoke of Communist dictatorship, with military destruction and the shelling of the peaceful population. He has the audacity to speak in the name of long-suffering Russia and to promise mercy. . . . That’s enough! You will fool the workers no longer. Your hopes, Communists, are vain and your threats impotent. The “ninth wave” of the revolution has risen and it will wash away the slanderers and oppressors of the country (). We have no need, Mr. Trotsky, of your mercy!” [33]
Next day the bombardment began. On the seventh of March, at six forty-five p.m.., according to official notice of the Revolutionary Committee, Communist shore batteries opened fire on the Kronstadt forts. The forts took up the challenge and soon silenced the batteries.
The effect of the first shells on Kronstadt was shattering. Until that moment they had hoped that the regime would not resort to its armed might. Now they realized that they must defend themselves with the same weapons. That night their desires for peaceful reform gave way to a clamor for revolution. And they fought their revolutionary battle not for themselves alone, but for all Russia, and not against the “Communist Commissars,” but against the whole Bolshevik regime. On March 8, the Revolutionary Committee broadcast an impassioned radio appeal titled: “Let the World Know.”
“To all, all, all!
“The first shot has been fired. . . . Standing up to his knees in workers’ blood, Marshal Trotsky was the first to open fire against revolutionary Kronstadt which has risen against the autocracy of the Communists, to establish the true power of the Soviets.
“Without shedding a drop of blood we, Red Armists, sailors and workers of Kronstadt, have freed ourselves from the yoke of the Communists and have even spared their lives. By the threat of artillery they want to subject us again to their tyranny.
“Not wishing for bloodshed, we asked that nonpartisan delegates of the Petrograd proletariat be sent to us, to learn that Kronstadt was fighting for the power of the Soviets. But the Communists have kept our request from the workers of Petrograd and now they have opened fire-the customary reply of the pseudo workers’ and peasants’ government to the demands of the laboring masses."Let the workers of the world know that we are guarding the conquests of the social Revolution.
“We will win, or perish beneath the ruins of Kronstadt, fighting for the just cause of the working masses.
“Let the workers of the world be our judges. The blood of the innocent will be on the heads of the Communist fanatics.
“Long live the power of the Soviets! “
In the same issue (March 8) of the Izvestya the Kronstadters formulated their program in positive terms. Knowing that from now on they were engaged in a desperate struggle, they wanted to clarify for themselves and for the world the purpose of their battle. The article is therefore no less significant than the resolution of February 28. It was entitled: “What Arc We Fighting For?”
“With the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its emancipation. But the upshot was an even greater enslavement of the human personality.
“The power of the Czarist police and gendarmes fell into the hands of usurpers-the Communists-who, instead of giving the people liberty, have instilled in them the constant dread of the Cheka. . . . Worst, and most criminal of all is the spiritual plot of the Communists: they have laid their hand on the inner world of the laborer, compelling everyone to think according to their dogma.
“The Russia of the toilers, the first country to raise the red banner of labor’s emancipation, is drenched with the blood of those martyred for the glory of Communist dominion. In that sea of blood the Communists are drowning all the bright promises and visions of the workers’ revolution. It has now become clear that the Russian Communist that the Russian Communist Party is not the defender of the laboring masses, as it pretends to be. The interests of the working people are alien to it.
“There must be an end to long-suffering patience. Here and there the land is lit by the fires of rebellion against oppression and violence. But the Bolshevik police regime has taken every precaution against the outbreak of the inevitable Third Revolution.
“But it has come just the same, and it is being fashioned by the workers themselves. The generals of Communism know full well that it is the people who have risen. Fearing for their safety and realizing that there will be no escape from the wrath of the workers, they try to terrorize the rebels with prison, shooting, and other barbarities. But life under the Communist dictatorship is more terrible than death. . . .
“There is no middle road. Conquer or die! The example has been set by Kronstadt, the foe of all counter-revolution, whether from the right or from the left. Kronstadt has raised the banner of rebellion against the thrcc-year-old tyranny of Communist autocracy which overshadows even the three- century-old despotism of monarchy. Here in Kronstadt, the cornerstone has been laid of the Third Revolution which will break the last chains of the worker and open a new, wide road for socialist upbuilding.
“The new Revolution will arouse the masses of the East and West and it will serve as an example of new socialist creativity, not of bureaucratic, cut-and-dried Communist ‘construction.’ The people will learn that what has been done until now in the name of the workers and peasants was not , socialism.
“Without firing a single shot, without shedding a drop of blood, the first step has been taken. Those who labor need no blood. They will shed it only in self-defense. The workers
and peasants march on: they are leaving behind both the Constituent Assembly with its bourgeois regime, and the Communist Party dictatorship with its Cheka and its State capitalism, which have put the noose about the neck of the workers and threaten to strangle them.
“The present uprising offers the people the opportunity to secure at last freely elected Soviets functioning without fear of the Party whip; they can now reorganize the governmental- ized labor unions into voluntary associations of workers, peasants and the working intelligentsia. At last the police club of Communist autocracy is broken.”
Most characteristic perhaps of the spirit that reigned in Kronstadt was the fact that, even on the tragic day of the first bombardment, they did not forget their international ties. In its March 8 issue, Izvestya published a radio message to the working women of the world. “Today is the world holiday, the day of the working woman. Under the thunder of bombardment, in the blast of exploding shells fired by the enemies of the working people, we-the men of Kronstadt-send you our brotherly greetings. This greeting comes to you from Red Kronstadt, the republic of freedom. Our enemies may want to break us, but we are invincible. We wish you speedy liberation from all oppression and violence. Long live the world revolution!” From that day on the battle continued ceaselessly. Bolshevik artillery shelled and airplanes bombed the forts and the city. The Kronstadters who, by that time, had established a Defense Committee, returned a vigorous fire. The workers of the city aimed rifles at the planes overhead. A spirit of enthusiasm and readiness for sacrifice took hold of the entire population. But their military capacities were limited because they had not prepared for such a struggle and because the Government blockade was isolating them from the entire country (excepting only the neighboring, but now foreign, territory of Finland). The Government, on the other hand, had all the resources of Russia at its disposal. Even as the daily bombardment continued, the Government was mobilizing soldiers in the most distant sections of the hinterland for the assault on Kronstadt.
But there was confusion in the Government camp, too. The Bolsheviks were not sure of their military forces, who were instinctively attracted to the Kronstadt slogans. A Bolshevik historian of that period, N. Pukhoff, confirmed this.[34] He described the Red Armists dressed in long white overalls (like shrouds) to camouflage them in the snow. They were opening their attack on Kronstadt on the night of March 8. A fierce snowstorm was raging over the Baltic Sea and visibility was almost nil. “At the very beginning of the operation,” Pukhoff reported, “the Second Battalion refused to go into action. Only with great difficulties, and the help of the Communist Commissars, were they persuaded to step on to the ice. But they no sooner reached the first southern battery of Kronstadt, then an entire company of that battalion surrendered to the enemy, and only the officers returned. . . . Dawn was breaking. Soon it was learned that another military unit, the Third Battalion, had done the same. It had been approaching Fort Milutin, from where men were waving red flags at them and they heard the rebels’ warning to surrender or be fired on. AH, except the Commissar and three or four soldiers, surrendered. They brought back the Seventh Company which had also been about to give up.” This report was taken from an official communiqué of the Red Army, which was not then made public.
The situation was similar in the northern sector of the front.
Uglanov, the Political Commissar, wrote on March 8 to the Petrograd Party Committee: “I consider it my revolutionary duty to report on the morale of the troops. We had occupied Fort No. 7. But today we had to abandon it because of the dejection among the soldiers. I must report on their qualms: they want to know what the Kronstadters demand and they want to send their own delegates to them.”
These conditions prevailed in a number of other military formations. Not only did the soldiers fall under the shells of Kronstadt guns, but the ice often cracked beneath them. The wounded slipped through the cracks to be engulfed in the icy waters. The wide snowy expanse, tinted red with soldiers’ blood, became a nightmarish symbol. The leaders of Kronstadt saw all this happen and they felt for their own flesh and blood who were being driven to this fratricide. On March 10, they sent a touching message to the “Red Armists who are fighting on the Bolshevik side”:
“Comrades. We did not want to shed the blood of our brothers, and we did not fire a single shot until compelled to do so. ... To your misfortune a terrible snowstorm broke in the dark of night. Nevertheless, the Communist executioners drove you along the ice, threatening you in the rear with their Communist-operated machine guns. Many of you perished that night on the icy vastness of the Gulf of Finland. And when day broke and the storm quieted down, only pitiful remnants of you came to us, clad in your white shroudis, worn and hungry, hardly able to move.
“Early in the morning there were already about a thousand of you and later in the day countless more. You have paid dearly for this adventure. But they will send new regiments. . . . What are you doing, Comrades? Come to your senses.
Unite with us; let us march shoulder to shoulder against our common enemy, and free Soviet Russia and our brother workers and peasants!”
Following this the Government, in all its three manifestations -Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, the Cheka and the Red Army-adopted decisive measures. General Tukhachevsky was appointed head of the “operation” to conquer Kronstadt; army divisions were reorganized, and they were reinforced with Central Asiatic-Kirgiz and Bashkir-soldiers who knew little about Kronstadt’s history and merit. From Moscow, where at that moment the Tenth Communist Party Congress was in session, they dispatched no less than three hundred delegates who poured as agitators into the Army and the military Cheka. Among them were many of the party’s most important leaders. In some military units the Communists comprised 30 per cent, in others, up to 60 per cent of the total. And to intimidate the rest of the soldiers, the “revolutionary” tribunals were set working at full speed.
“The confirmed opponents and provocateurs,” historian Pu- khoff reported, “were punished by the tribunals according to their deserts, and the sentences were immediately made known to the troops.” And when the “morale” had been raised in this manner, Tukhachevsky issued this order on March 15: “During the night of March 16th to 17th, the fortress of Kronstadt is to be taken by storm.” Special units were commanded to attack the forts and to do hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Kronstadt.
In the meantime, Kronstadt was preparing for the decisive battle, hoping still that the workers of Petrograd and Russia would come to their aid. The Kronstadters were resolute. Hundreds of Communists in that city, in the factories, schools and
in the Army, publicly stated in the Izvestya that they were resigning from the Communist Party. Their total reached seven hundred and eighty. They did not do so from fear, but in the conviction that the true liberation of the people was at hand. Hence their statements were direct and eloquent. The soldiers who had surrendered to Kronstadt reorganized themselves and joined the defenders. None in Kronstadt thought of capitulation. The twelfth of March-the fourth anniversary of the fall of czarism-was celebrated in Kronstadt, and the leading article in the Izvestya reminded its readers that their fortress, “the wakeful guardian of the social revolution,” had fought for the rights of the people in February and in October (1917). And now it was the first to “raise the banner of revolt in this Third Revolution of the working people.” And just as the autocracy of the Czars had crumbled, so the autocracy of the Commissars would perish too. “Twelve days have passed,” they continued, “since a small group of heroic men took it upon themselves to withstand the full fury of the Party hangmen. But we are confident. We shall fight to a victorious end, or else go down with the cry: Long live the freely elected Soviets! “
And even on the last day of their free existence, in the final issue of their Izvestya, on March 16, they restated in clear terms their ideological goals. The words read like a testament to future generations of Russian fighters:
“When the working people of Russia staged the October revolt, they shed their blood for the erection of a republic of work. But the Communists repulsed first, socialists of all other persuasions, then the workers and peasants in general. . . . On orders from the state the citizen’s life has become intolerably tedious and dry. Instead of the free development of the personality, a free life of work, unspeakable slavery was instituted. Every free thought, every justified criticism directed at the leaders, became a crime, punished with imprisonment and frequently with death. The death penalty and the utter contempt of man flourish in the ‘socialist fatherland.’ Life has become unbearable, and Kronstadt is the first to start breaking the steel bars of the prison. Kronstadt is fighting for a different socialism, for a republic of work, where the producer himself will be full master and manager of the products of his labor.”
Their spirits remained high, but it became increasingly difficult to carry on. They were exhausted by the military strain; there were about fourteen thousand men in all, ten thousand of them sailors. With insufficient food (it had been distributed equally among all) and poorly clad in the cold, they stood by their guns day and night, without respite. Many were utterly worn out. Tukhachevsky’s concentrated attack began, as planned, on March 16. The Bolshevik troops suffered great losses, but they stormed the forts and reduced them one by one. The sailors retreated into the city and armed worker-battalions fought with them side by side in every street. They kept firing from every house, roof, and cellar, and still tried to win the soldiers over. The casualties were enormous. The battle continued into the eve of March 18, and through the following day. Then the fire died down and a deathly silence descended on Kronstadt.
And what happened to the sailors, the Red Armists and workers who escaped with their lives? Several thousand managed to flee during the final night across the ice, into Finland. The others fell into the hands of the Cheka and military tribunals.
Every night groups of imprisoned sailors were taken from the Petrograd jails and shot. Great numbers were sent to the prisons and concentration camps of Archangel and Turkestan.
Despite the “victory,” the Bolshevik regime could not rejoice. It had correctly assessed the Kronstadt movement as a threat to its power, and Lenin immediately dealt with it by proposing a new instrument of domination. It offered no freedom, nor liberation for the Soviets from the party dictatorship but . . . the economic NEP (New Economic Policy). It was to be a system of economic concessions to the “property instincts” of the peasants, coupled with the political dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communists took no notice of the passionate desire of the masses for justice and human dignity; instead they decided to mollify them-for a time-with economic “freedoms.” The Pravda of January 1, 1922, analyzing the previous year, had this to say about Kronstadt. “Our enemies,” it wrote, “failed to consider one important fact: the political wisdom of the leader of the Communist Party. Within sight of a mortal threat, the Party was able-in a matter of twenty-four hours-to change its course and give the ship of state the necessary sharp turn to a New Economic Policy.” Thus did the ship of state and its skipper save themselves.
But Kronstadt was not forgotten. In no sense had it been a counter-revolution, but rather a revolution within the revolution. According to their subjective intentions, and their objective historic function, the Kronstadt sailors had risen to restore the Russian Revolution to its original path. All that had accumulated in the people during four long years-their sufferings and anxieties, their golden hopes and deep faith in their truth-all this had found expression and articulation in the
Kronstadt rising. The voice of the peasant, browbeaten on his soil; of the worker, humiliated and hungry; of the intellectual, degraded and turned into a robot-all their tormented voices were contained in the appeals and later in the sound of cannon, from Kronstadt. And because it had been a rising of the people, the best and most unforgettable features of the Russian Revolution stood out at Kronstadt with shining clarity.
Kronstadt had been generous and humanitarian. From the first moment to the last it had abhorred bloodshed. The same sailors who had spent years in the brutal Russian civil war specifically rejected its bloody ways in their own struggle for liberation. They constantly reiterated this in their manifestoes and articles in the Izvestya. On March 8, the day after the first shot against their forts had been fired, despite their deep emotional shock, they had declared laconically: “Those who labor need no blood. They will shed it only in self-defense.” One cannot but recall the very similar words of Rosa Luxemburg: “The proletarian revolution has no need of terror to realize its task. It has only hatred and loathing for murder.”
The leaders of Kronstadt not only tried to spare the lives of the island’s defenders wherever possible, but were filled with despairing pity for their fellow-soldiers whom the Government was driving against them. In genuine grief they wrote of the “red blood that colors the icy waters of the Gulf of Finland,” and called upon those among whom they were forced to sow death to awaken from their stupor. Unwittingly they repeated the great words which the Populist terrorist Gregory Gershuni had once hurled at his czarist judges: “We hate you not because you shed our blood, but because you force us to shed yours. . . .” In a country where death and destruction reigned almost unchecked, the leaders of Kronstadt preached peace, mutual understanding and, first and foremost, life. When, for instance, it became known in Kronstadt that the Government in Petrograd was holding the families of Kronstadt sailors and Red Armists as hostages, the Revolutionary Committee sent the following radio message to the Petrograd Soviet on March 7:
“In the name of the Kronstadt garrison the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt demands that the families of the sailors, workers and Red Armists held as hostages by the Petrograd government be liberated within twenty-four hours.
“The garrison states that Communists in Kronstadt enjoy full liberty and their families are absolutely safe. The example of the Petrograd Soviet will not be followed here, because we consider such methods shameful and vicious even if prompted by desperate fury. History knows no such infamy. Sailors Petrichenko, Chairman, and Kilgast, Secretary,of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee”
It was true. Kronstadt did not touch its Communists. There was no thought of persecution or punishment. No Chekas were established and none thought of introducing the death penalty- even though Communist enemies were everywhere in the city. Furthermore, Izvestya published a short manifesto to the people of Kronstadt under the heading, “We Take No Revenge”: “The long continued oppression of the people by the Communist dictatorship has produced very natural indignation on the part of our population. As a result relatives of Communists have in some instances been boycotted or discharged from their positions. That must not be. We take no revenge-we defend our labor interests.”
In Kronstadt the people fought not only for their economic interests. They strove consciously, and above all, for the emancipation of man. Their fervent demand for “free Soviets” expressed a desire to rid the man, the citizen, the comrade of his spiritual and moral chains. In their last article, where they wrote sarcastically of “socialism in quotation marks,” they again reminded the Russians how, instead of the free development of the personality, an unexpected slavery had risen up. It is enough to scan the fourteen issues of their Izvestya to sense the libertarian and humanistic spirit of those men. They did not betray it even in the final hours of the desperate battle. When the forts were already occupied and the battle was raging in the streets; when thousands were escaping to seek exile in Finland; when bitter hatred could have blinded the eyes of any defeated army; when they knew how cruelly the triumphant regime would avenge itself, the people of Kronstadt took no vengeance upon the Communists in their midst. The two leading Bolsheviks mentioned above-Kuzmin and Vassilicff-were freed by the Cheka when it forced its way into the city. Together with some local Communists, they at once proceeded to knife in the back those who had spared them during the time of their imprisonment. . . .
These men of the people, these Kronstadters, knew not only respect for human life. They remained fully aware of their international and universal duties. That is why they found time to send greetings to the working women of the world; that is why they always thought of themselves as a vanguard of oppressed mankind; and they were Maximalists because they wanted for themselves and for the world no less than absolute justice and full truth. Their words and deeds echoed once more the cry heard at the start of the revolution: “Change all. Change everything so that our mendacious, tedious, miserable life may become just, joyous and beautiful.”
In its heroic struggle, Kronstad again affirmed the basic trait of the Russian Revolution: its humanitarian, universal and Maximalist character. Even as it perished, Kronstadt did not hoist the white flag of capitulation.
Kronstadt marked the end of an era. After Kronstadt the Russian people no longer had the strength to stand up in such manner for their rights and honor. One might say in a melancholy spirit that the just never triumph in history; that tyrants replace each other but the tyrannic sword remains. And yet it is not so. The shadow of Kronstadt still hangs over the length and breadth of Russia. And where today are the victorious subduers-Trotsky, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky? The regime which they had so; boastfully defended later damned them as traitors and destroyed them one by one. But the martyrs of Kronstadt survive in the memory of the Russian people as its guiltless children.
When in 1793 Danton faced the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, he heard ghostly voices reminding him of the September massacres, calling, “September! September! “ As long as the incumbent regime rules in the Kremlin, it will hear the cry, “Kronstadt! Kronstadt!”