The Kornilov revolt left its impression on the navy as well. It fired the political passions of the sailors and intensified their distrust of the officers. Crews on vessels lying at Helsingfors demanded that the officers should make written statements of their attitude towards Kornilov. The indignant sailors in some cases wreaked summary vengeance on the officers. In accordance with a decision of a joint meeting of the Helsingfors Soviet and the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, known as the Centrobatt, a Revolutionary Committee was set up which appointed its Commissars to the ships, the telegraph station, the telephone exchange, the post office and other institutions.
At the meetings of the Helsingfors Soviet, and especially at the meeting of its Sailors’ Section, the demand for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the establishment of a Soviet power was raised more and more frequently. In September, the crews of nineteen vessels of the Baltic Fleet adopted a resolution of protest against the decree of the Provisional Government which proclaimed Russia simply a “republic” without the qualifying word “democratic.” The sailors began to speak more and more frequently of the necessity for armed insurrection.
In a telegram to the Commissar of the Northern Front dated October 1, Kerensky referred to the “dangerous” spirit prevailing among the Kronstadt sailors.
“The Kronstadt sailors have already caused a state of affairs in which, at this critical juncture, not all the means of defence are in a state of readiness. . . .”(1)
Influenced by the spread of the revolutionary spirit among the sailors, the Centrobatt began rapidly to shake off the defencist illusions it had still to some extent cherished in August. At the end of September the sailors of the Baltic Fleet began to send reports vowing to the proletarian revolutionaries their complete readiness to take action on behalf of the power of the Soviets. This readiness was manifested at the Second Congress of the Baltic Fleet which opened in Helsingfors on September 25.
On October 3 the Second Congress of the Baltic Fleet issued an appeal to the soldiers and sailors to prepare to fight for the revolution. Replies poured in from all parts of the country expressing readiness to support the proletarian revolution. The sailors of the Black Sea Fleet declared:
“We join our voices to your ardent appeal, we are prepared to stand side by side with you in the last fight on the barricades.”(2)
The soldiers on the Rumanian Front offered their support to the revolutionary sailors:
“Comrades, much now depends on you. Let nothing daunt you. We are always prepared to stand side by side with you.”(3)
The decisions of the Congress were directly guided by the Bolsheviks. The Congress of the Baltic Fleet vigorously protested against the malicious slanders of the press which accused the sailors of deserting the front.
“To you, Bonaparte-Kerensky, who have betrayed the revolution, we send our curses at this time when our comrades are perishing from bullet and shell and drowning in the waves of the sea, calling for the defence of the revolution. And when we all, like one man, lay down our lives for freedom, land and liberty, we shall be perishing in an honest fight in the struggle against the foreign foe and on the barricades against the internal foe, sending you, Kerensky, and your companions curses for the appeals by which you endeavoured to split the forces of the fleet in the hour of peril for the country and the revolution.”(4)
This resolution clearly expressed the readiness of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet to wage an irreconcilable revolutionary struggle for the power of the Soviets. Resolutions like this are possible only when insurrection is imminent. The statement of the Baltic sailors that they were prepared to lay down their lives on the barricades was not an empty phrase. They proved this in the great battles of the October Revolution.
The Baltic Fleet was strongly influenced by the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Lenin. The Baltic sailors were among the first to draw up a definite programme of preparation for the seizure of power. In the Black Sea Fleet, where the influence of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries was strong, the process of Bolshevisation encountered greater obstacles. Unlike the crews of the Baltic Fleet, which were recruited almost entirely from the industrial workers, the crews of the Black Sea Fleet were largely drawn from the more or less prosperous sections of the Ukrainian peasantry. This circumstance, coupled with the remoteness of the Black Sea Fleet from the revolutionary centres, explains why the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries preponderated for a time in the Black Sea Fleet.
There was a period when the Black Sea Fleet was a centre of attraction for the forces of counter-revolution. The foes of the revolution hastened to utilise it for their purposes. In the summer of 1917, Admiral Kolchak, the Commander of the Fleet, and subsequently, after the October Revolution, leader of the counter-revolutionary forces in Siberia, formed a puppet delegation headed by a bogus sailor named Batkin. The delegation travelled through Russia pretending to represent the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and carried on propaganda in Petrograd, the provinces and at the front in favour of a military offensive. The impostor Batkin, supported by the compromisers—the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries—tried to gain a foothold in the Baltic Fleet, but was exposed. Having suffered a complete fiasco in Helsingfors, this admiral’s emissary did not risk appearing in Kronstadt. The Sevastopol Soviet, under pressure of the sailors, very soon withdrew the mandates of the entire delegation.
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party devoted particular attention to the Black Sea Fleet. The Bolshevik organisations near the Black Sea coast were instructed to send experienced propagandists to the fleet. Propagandists were also sent from Petrograd. Among them were sailors of the Baltic Fleet.
The Bolsheviks in the Black Sea coastal towns developed extensive activities on the battleships, where they formed Party nuclei. They steadily won the firm and determined support of the sailors. Borisov, the Acting Commissar-General of the Black Sea Fleet, telegraphed Naval Headquarters on August 24:
“During my short period of absence, Sevastopol has become a city of Bolsheviks. Great excitement, continuous meetings, at which only the Bolsheviks are allowed to speak, excited groups at every street corner. The mood has become tense in the organisations as well. The masses are stirred up by fantastic rumours of counter-revolutionary plots and of the arrival of Cossacks. Certain of the units have already seized possession of arms. Good agitators have appeared among the Bolsheviks. To cap all this, a delegation arrived yesterday from the Baltic Fleet to agitate for support of the ultimatum of the Baltic Fleet demanding an increase in pay. At my orders, four of them were not allowed to enter Sevastopol. Two of them, who had mandates from the Central Fleet Committee, were allowed through, but after a conversation with the Executive Committee, they were sent back the same day. It has been impossible to adopt vigorous measures against the agitation of the Bolsheviks and against the holdings of meetings because there is nobody to rely on. They refuse even to listen to the Black Sea delegation. It has lost all prestige.”(5)
In August, Sevastopol could not yet be called “a city of Bolsheviks.” The Socialist-Revolutionary organisation in Sevastopol had a membership of 20,000, whereas the Bolshevik organisation had a membership of only 250. All the leading elected bodies were still under the control of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. But in his panicky telegram, Borisov gave a correct picture of the course of events. The ground was steadily slipping from under the feet of the compromisers, while the position of the Bolsheviks was growing stronger every day.
There were 145 members of the Sevastopol Soviet. In July the Bolshevik fraction on the Soviet consisted of only twelve members, whereas by October it had grown to fifty. The Bolshevisation of the Sevastopol Soviet was chiefly due to the growing revolutionary spirit among the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet guided by the Bolsheviks.
Side by side with the Sevastopol Soviet, a Central Committee of the Black Sea Fleet was set up, consisting overwhelmingly of non-party men or members of the compromising parties. Nevertheless, on a number of questions it adopted a more Left attitude than the Sevastopol Soviet. And the further it moved to the Left, the more its authority and influence grew.
On September 7 a meeting representing twenty ships and coastal garrisons was held on the battleship Rostislav, at which a decision was taken to demand the transfer of power to the Socialists. On September 9 another meeting was held on the Rostislav, this time representing forty vessels and coastal garrisons, at which a sharp protest was adopted against an order which had been issued establishing guarantees for the counter-revolutionary officers and forbidding political activities within the army and navy. This was quite rightly regarded as a violation of the elementary civil rights of the soldiers and sailors.
On September 15 the Central Fleet Committee, in pursuance of a decision of a delegate meeting, resolved temporarily to fly the red flag on all the vessels of the Black Sea Fleet together with the signal “Long Live the Russian Democratic Republic!” When this demonstration was over, the majority of the crews categorically refused to lower the red flags. Under pressure of the sailors, the Central Fleet Committee decided to leave the question of the flag open until the Constituent Assembly met.
The Ukrainian bourgeoisie, taking advantage of the Kerensky government to settle the national question, endeavoured to spread bourgeois nationalism in the Black Sea Fleet and to Ukrainise it. But this met with very little success, only one cruiser, Pamyat Merkuria replacing the red flag by the Ukrainian flag.
In the middle of October the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party dispatched two delegates to Sevastopol to reinforce Party work. One of them was a Kronstadt sailor. They were told by J. M. Sverdlov that the seizure of power by the proletariat was a question of the next few days. The proletarian forces were already ripe enough in all the big cities. But the situation was bad in the South, especially in the Crimea. There the social-compromisers held complete sway. This was all the more regrettable in view of the importance of Sevastopol as a naval port. Their task, Sverdlov said, was to transform Sevastopol into the revolutionary base of the Black Sea Coast. Sevastopol must become the Kronstadt of the South.
By the time of the October Revolution, the compromising Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders entrenched on the Central Fleet Committee in the Admiralty had lost the last remnants of their influence over the sailors. Even after the Provisional Government decided to abolish the Central Fleet Committee, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries on the Committee continued their servile support of the government.
In face of the Bolshevisation of the navy and of the Petrograd garrison, the Provisional Government on the eve of the October Revolution attempted to disarm Kronstadt and Petrograd and to dismantle the guns from some of the forts on the pretext that they were to be dispatched to the front. But the revolutionary sailors, supported by the workers and soldiers, prevented this action.
[1] I. Kolbin, “The Baltic Fleet on the Eve of the October Revolution,” Krasny Flot (Red Fleet), 1927, No. 20. p. 24.
[2] I. Kolbin, “The Baltic Fleet on the Eve of the October Revolution,” Krasny Flot (Red Fleet), 1927, No. 20, p. 27.
[3] Ibid., p. 27.
[4] “The Baltic Fleet to Kerensky,” Rabochy Put, No. 34, October 12, 1917.
[5] “The Black Sea Sailors in the October Revolution,” Morskoi Sbornik (Naval Miscellany), 1933, No. 11, p. 103.
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