Translation: Scott Zenkatsu Parker
Transcription: Mary Huey
HTML-markup: Jonas Holmgren
Our country is enduring a difficult moment. Hunger, cold and economic ruin have held us in an iron vice these three years already. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become separated from the masses, and shown itself unable to lead her from her state of general ruin. It has not faced the reality of the disturbances which in recent times have occurred in Petrograd and Moscow. This unrest shows clearly enough that the party has lost the faith of the working masses. Neither has it recognized the demands presented by the workers. It considers them plots of the counterrevolution. It is deeply mistaken.
This unrest, these demands, are the voice of the people in its entirety, of all laborers. All workers, sailors and soldiers see clearly at the present moment that only through common effort, by the common will of the laborers, is it possible to give the country bread, wood, and coal, to dress the barefoot and naked, and to lead the Republic out of this dead end.
This will of all laborers, soldiers and sailors was definitively expressed at the Garrison Meeting of our town on Tuesday, March 1st. At that meeting, the resolution of ships' crews of the 1st and 2nd Brigades was passed unanimously. Among the decisions taken, it was decided to immediately carry out new elections to the Soviet, for these elections to be carried out on a fairer basis, and specifically, in such a way that true representation of the laborers would be found in the Soviet, and that the Soviet would be an active and energetic organ.
On March 2nd of this year, delegates from all sailor, soldier and worker organizations gathered in the House of Education. It was proposed to form at this Conference a basis for new elections, in order to then enter into peaceful work on redesigning the Soviet structure. But in view of the fact that there were grounds to fear repression, and also due to threatening speeches by the representatives of authority, the Conference decided to form a Provisional Revolutionary Committee, to which to give all authority in governing the town and fortress.
The Provisional Revolutionary Committee is located on the bttlshp. PETROPAVLOVSK.
Comrades and citizens! The Provisional Committee is deeply concerned that there should not be spilled a single drop of blood. It has taken emergency measures for the establishment of revolutionary order in the town and fortress, and at the forts.
Comrades and citizens! Do not stop work. Workers, remain at your machines, sailors and soldiers in your units and at the forts. All Soviet workers and organizations must continue their work. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee calls all workers' organizations, all naval and trade unions, and all naval and military units and individual citizens to give it universal support and aid. The task of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee is a general, comradely effort to organize in the town and fortress means for proper and fair elections to a new Soviet.
And so, comrades, to order, to calm, to restraint, and to a new Socialist construction for the good of all laborers.
Kronstadt, March 2nd, 1921
bttlshp. Petropavlovsk
PETRICHENKO, President of the Prov. Rev. Committee
TUKIN, Secretary
Having heard the report of the crew representatives, sent to the City of Petrograd by the General Meeting of ships' crews for clarification of the situation there, we resolve:
1. In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, to immediately hold new elections to the Soviets by secret ballot, with freedom of pre-election agitation for all workers and peasants.
2. Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, anarchists and left socialist parties.
3. Freedom of assembly of both trade unions and peasant associations.
4. To convene not later than March 10th, 1921 a non-party Conference of workers, soldiers and sailors of the city of Petrograd, of Kronstadt, and of Petrograd province.
5. To free all political prisoners of socialist parties, and also all workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors imprisoned in connection with worker and peasant movements.
6. To elect a Commission for the review of the cases of those held in prisons and concentration camps.
7. To abolish all POLITOTDELS, since no single party should be able to have such privileges for the propaganda of its ideas and receive from the state the means for these ends. In their place must be established locally elected cultural-educational commissions, for which the state must provide resources.
8. To immediately remove all anti-smuggling roadblock detachments.
9. To equalize the rations of all laborers, with the exception of those in work injurious to health.
10. To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all military units, and also the various guards kept in factories and plants by the communists, and if such guards or detachments are needed, they can be chosen in military units from the companies, and in factories and plants by the discretion of the workers.
11. To give the peasants full control over their own land, to do as they wish, and also to keep cattle, which must be maintained and managed by their own strength, that is, without using hired labor.
12. We appeal to all military units, and also to the comrade cadets to lend their support to our resolution.
13. We demand that all resolutions be widely publicized in the press.
14. To appoint a travelling bureau for control.
15. To allow free handicraft manufacture by personal labor.
The resolution was passed by the Brigade Meeting unanimously with two abstentions.
PETRICHENKO, President of the Brigade Meeting
PEREPELKIN, Secretary
The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of the entire Kronstadt garrison.
VASILIEV, President
Together with Comrade Kalinin, Vasiliev votes against the resolution.
By 9 P.M. on March 2nd, the majority of forts and all army units of the fortress had given their support to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. All organizations and the Communications Service are occupied by guards from the Revolutionary Committee. From Oranienbaum have arrived representatives, who declared that the Oranienbaum garrison has also given its support to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.
Comrade Ia. Ilyin was called by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and appointed to continue work on the provision of food to the populace. The produce apparatus will work without break. Today, bread is issued for two days, that is, for March 3rd and 4th.
The Oranienbaum Air Division has given its support to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and is sending delegates. Our resolution was sent to Petrograd. We await an answer.
At Fort Totleben, Novikov, Commissar of the Fortress, who had been making his way toward the Finnish border on horseback, was restrained by the crew of the 6th Battery.