#title The Truth about Kronstadt
#subtitle An Attempt at a Libertarian Soviet Revolution
#author M. Isidine
#LISTtitle Truth about Kronstadt
#date April–May 1921
#source [[http://mariegoldsmith.uk/archives][Marie Goldsmith Project]]. Translated from: Isidine, M. “La Vérité Sur Cronstadt — Une Tentative de
Révolution soviétique Libertaire [The Truth about Kronstadt — An
Attempt at a Libertarian Soviet Revolution].” *Les Temps Nouveaux*
[*The New Times*], September April–May 1921.
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-07-18T07:28:15
#authors Marie Goldsmith, Søren Hough, Christopher Coquard
#topics Kronstadt, Russian Revolution, Soviets
#notoc 1
#notes Translated by Christopher Coquard. Edited by Søren Hough & Christopher Coquard.
*This article is part of a translated collection published in 2023 by
the Marie Goldsmith Project. These articles were translated by Alexandra
Agranovich (Russian) and Christopher Coquard (French) and then edited by
Christopher Coquard and Søren Hough with the goal of preserving
Goldsmith’s original meaning and stylistic emphases. Modern footnotes by
the translator or editors are prefaced “Ed:” while all other footnotes
are from Marie Goldsmith. This translation was originally published in
[[https://irp.cdn-website.com/3fa68967/files/uploaded/BlackFlag-vol3-no2.pdf][Black
Flag Vol. 3 No. 2]].*
We have, at last, reliable information that allows us to understand the
true character of the Kronstadt movement, which the Bolshevist
government has just crushed. And we can affirm without hesitation that
this movement has been odiously slandered: it has absolutely nothing in
common with the Whites,[1] generals, monarchists, agents of the Entente,
etc. Nor is it the work of poor dupes, unwittingly directed by
reactionaries. It is an absolutely spontaneous movement, without
preparation, without plot, without external guides; it was led only by
the sailors of Kronstadt themselves who knew very well what they wanted.
And what they wanted was not at all a counter-revolution, but a change
that would allow, on the contrary, the Russian revolution to go forward
towards a true equality and a true administration of the people by
themselves. They defended the Soviets — a creation of the Russian
working masses — against a government that had, in fact, suppressed them
by substituting a dictatorship of officials.
What may have confused the Western public and given credence to the
slander was the joy shown at the news of the Kronstadt uprising by the
bourgeois press and the Russian reactionary parties. But is it not
always so? If a revolutionary attempt were made in France, wouldn’t the
royalists try to fish in troubled waters? And during the war, did not
the German government encourage the Irish movement and even the Russian
Bolshevist movement in its interests? Did this prevent these movements
from being clearly revolutionary? “Reactionary maneuvers” are always an
easy argument to fall into. When we remember that, in 1893–94, Jaurès
had already seen the role of the Jesuits in the anarchist attacks and
spoke of certain red silk shirts that were found in the homes of all
those searched and that had certainly been distributed to them by the
Church![2]
In Kronstadt, moreover, the reactionaries, if they were more
intelligent, should have seen from the beginning that they had nothing
to hope for. In their *lzvestia* (organ of the Provisional Revolutionary
Committee), the revolting sailors energetically rejected the slander and
clearly declared that they had absolutely nothing in common with the
White generals.[3]
By their acts, moreover, the insurgents of Kronstadt showed their
complete independence. Lacking everything, they refused to be supplied
by the Entente.[4] They also refused to receive the 500,000 francs of
financial aid that Russian financiers from Paris were planning to send
them. From Paris, too, a hundred Russian officers of the reactionary
armies sent their offers of services by radio to Kronstadt; they were
told, “Stay where you are, we don’t need you.”
Besides, all those who know the Russian revolutionary movement knew,
from the beginning, what to expect. The Kronstadt sailors were already
in the forefront of the movement during the first revolution, that of
1906; their role was also important in the revolution of 1917. They
showed absolute intransigence and extreme fighting spirit; under
Kerensky’s government, they proclaimed the Kronstadt Commune and
demanded their autonomy.[5] At that time, the government was reluctant
to repress them and an agreement was reached. Trotsky said then,
responding to some protests: “Yes, the Kronstadt sailors are anarchists.
But when the moment of the decisive struggle for the revolution arrives,
those who are now pushing you to repression will prepare the ropes to
hang us all, while the Kronstadt sailors will give their lives for our
defense.” Later, when the Bolsheviks were the spokesmen of the people’s
demands (“peace, land and all power to the workers’ and peasants’
soviets”), the Kronstadt sailors contributed more than anyone else to
give them the victory. And, during the last years, they were still there
to defend Petrograd against the reactionary armies. And then they
suddenly became agents of the “Whites”? Kronstadt, a nest of reaction?
It is impossible.
Information and documents from there have now come to confirm what we
all felt in advance. Let us say a few words about the course of events.
At the end of February, unrest broke out among the workers of Petrograd;
it was a question of supplies. There were strikes and, as always,
arrests of strikers. Kronstadt, where the discontent against the
government was already great, was moved and decided to support the
comrades of Petrograd. The movement immediately took on a political
character. The powers of the Kronstadt soviet had long since expired,
but the government refused to allow new elections in order to keep the
power of the old, Bolshevist soviet. This was only one of the
manifestations of the dictatorship of the Communist Party which the
Kronstadt sailors had suffered more than once.
A delegation was sent by the sailors to Petrograd to study the situation
there and to work out a plan of joint action. On its return, the
following agenda was voted on March 1st by an assembly of the crews of
ships of the line:
“Having taken note of the report presented by the representatives of the
crews in Petrograd to study the situation in this city, we made the
following decisions:
1. Since the present soviets do not express the will of the workers and
peasants, the soviets must be immediately established by secret vote
with, before the elections, full freedom of propaganda for all the
workers and peasants.
2. Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for anarchists
and left socialist parties.
3. The freedom of meetings, professional unions, and peasant groups.
4. The meeting, before March 10, 1921, of a conference, without party,
of workers, soldiers of the Red Army, and sailors of the city of
Petrograd, Kronstadt, and Petrograd region.
5. The release of all political prisoners belonging to different
socialist parties, all workers and peasants, soldiers of the Red
Army, and sailors arrested for the workers’ and peasants’ revolts.
6. Election of a Commission to review the trials of prisoners in
prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all “political sections,”[6] because no party can
enjoy privileges for the propaganda of its ideas and receive
subsidies from the State for this purpose. In their place must be
established commissions of instruction and education whose expenses
must be borne by the state.
8. The immediate abolition of all “blocking units.”[7]
9. Unification of rations for all workers except for unhealthy
industries.
10. The suppression of the communist detachments in all the units of
the army and of the communist sentinels in the factories and the
plants; in case of need, the detachments and the sentinels will be
able to be ordered by the companies, and in the factories and
plants by the workers.
11. Complete freedom for the peasants to freely use all the land and
own the livestock, provided that they do not resort to wage labor.
12. We ask all military units and all fellow students of military
schools to join our revolution.
13. We demand that all of our resolutions receive wide publicity.
14. That an Office of Mobile Controllers be appointed.
15. The freedom of the home industry, not employing salaried staff.”
The same resolution was then proposed to the general assembly of the
citizens of Kronstadt, comprising about sixteen thousand people, and
adopted unanimously. It became like a “charter” of the movement. On
March 2, at a meeting of the delegates of the ships, military units,
workshops and workers’ unions of Kronstadt (three hundred people in all)
was appointed a “Provisional Revolutionary Committee” in charge of
organizing the new elections, free this time, to the local Soviet; this
Committee published a daily newspaper, the *lzvestia*, and it informs us
about the goals and the character of the movement.[8]
In an “Appeal to the workers, red soldiers and sailors” published on
March 13, they said:
“Here in Kronstadt, we have, since March 2, overthrown the cursed yoke
of the communists and raised the red flag of the third workers’
revolution.
Red soldiers, sailors, workers, the revolutionary Kronstadt calls on
you.
We know that you are being deceived, that you are not being told the
truth about what is happening in our country, where we are all ready to
give our lives for the sacred work of the emancipation of the worker and
the peasant.
They try to convince you that there are white generals and popes among
us.
In order to put an end to these lies, we bring to your attention that
the Provisional Revolutionary Committee consists of the following
fifteen members:
1. Petritchenko, clerk of the ship of the line Petropavlosk; 2.
Jacovenko, telephonist of the liaison service of the Kronstadt zone; 3.
Ossossov, mechanic of the ship of the line Sevastopol; 4. Arkhipov,
chief mechanic; 5. Perepelkin, electrician of Sevastopol; 6. Patrushev,
chief electrician of the Petropavlovsk; 7. Kupelov, auxiliary doctor; 8.
Vershinin, sailor of the Sevastopol; 9. Tukin, worker at the electric
factory; 10. Romanenko, manager of the repair yards; 11. Orechine,
supervisor of the 3rd school of work; 12. Valk, foreman of the sawmill;
13. Pavlov, worker at the ammunition factory; 14. Baikov, head of the
rolling stock of the fortress; 15. Kilgaste, pilot.
The article “Why We Fight” is very characteristic in this regard.
Another article entitled “Stages of the Revolution,” published in the
anniversary issue of the 1917 Revolution (March 12), develops this idea
that revolutionary Russia went through two successive periods: the one
when, during the Provisional Government, it put all its hopes in the
Constituent Assembly,[9] and the period of the domination of the
communist party.
“The communist party seized power by pushing aside the peasants and
workers in whose name it acted... A new communist serfdom was born. The
peasant became a mere laborer, the worker a salaried employee of the
state factory. Intellectual workers were reduced to zero... The time has
come to overthrow the commissarocracy. The vigilant sentinel of the
revolution, Kronstadt, did not sleep. She had been in the front row in
February and October. She was the first to raise the flag of revolt for
the third workers’ revolution... The tsarist autocracy fell. The
Constituent Assembly has become a thing of the past. The commissarocracy
will fall, too. The time has come for real workers’ power, for soviet
power.”
And here is an excerpt from the *Appeal to the World Proletariat*, March
13:
“For twelve days, a handful of true heroes, proletarian workers,
soldiers of the Red Army and sailors, isolated from the whole world,
have taken it upon themselves to endure all the blows of the communist
executioners. We will carry to the end the work begun for the liberation
of the people oppressed by party fanaticism, or we will die with the cry
of ‘Long live the freely elected Soviets!’ Let the proletariat of the
whole world know this. Comrades, we need your moral support; protest
against the violence of the communist autocrats…”
A fact worth noting. Everything we have said about the character of the
Kronstadt movement is confirmed by the Bolsheviks themselves. A Russian
Bolshevist newspaper published in Riga, the *Novy Put*, while
propagating the fable of reactionary Kronstadt, imprudently publishes,
in its March 19 issue, the following lines:
“The Kronstadt sailors are, as a whole, anarchists. They are not to the
right, but, on the contrary, to the left of the communists. In their
last radio communication they proclaim: ‘Long live the power of the
Soviets!’ Not once have they shouted, ‘Long live the Constituent!’ Why
did they rise up against the Soviet government? Because they don’t find
it Soviet enough! They proclaim the same slogans, half anarchist, half
communist, that the Bolsheviks themselves had launched three and a half
years ago, in the aftermath of the October revolution.
In their struggle against the Soviet government, the Kronstadt
insurgents speak of their deep hatred for the ‘bourgeois,’ for
everything that is bourgeois. They say: the Soviet government has become
‘gentrified,’ Zinoviev is ‘exhausted.’[10] Here we are dealing with a
left-wing rebellion, not a right-wing rebellion.”
The Kronstadt uprising is — at least for the time being — defeated. We
do not know what repercussions it will have in Russia, all the while
feeling a communion of spirit between it and all those peasant and
worker revolts which, during the same period, agitated and still agitate
the vast and various corners of Russia. But a certain conclusion emerges
for us. Revolutionary Russia is burning the previous stages and setting
a new path. It had hardly begun to linger on a purely political
emancipation and of the cult of universal suffrage before being
immediately confronted with the great social problem. Now, it is the
state-centralizing tendency of social democratic movements which is
collapsing.
The Soviets, as they take shape in the minds of the masses, represent
extreme decentralization and autonomy. There remains the great question,
the most difficult, the most serious: that of the organization of
production not by the state, but by the producers.
*** Bibliography
Getzler, Israel. *Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy*.
United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press (1983).
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Grigory Yevseyevich Zinovyev.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, September 19, 2022.
[[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Grigory-Yevseyevich-Zinovyev][britannica.com/biography/Grigory-Yevseyevich-Zinovyev]].
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Aleksandr Kerensky.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, April 28, 2023.
[[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Kerensky][britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Kerensky]].
Jaurès, Jean. “On the Anarchists.” Translated by Mitchell Abidor.
Marxists Internet Archive, 1894. Last modified 2010.
[[https://www.marxists.org/archive/jaures/1894/anarchists.htm][marxists.org/archive/jaures/1894/anarchists.htm]].
[1] Ed: The Whites were one of many factions during the Russian Civil
War. They were a politically heterogeneous group, ranging from
social democrats to republicans to nationalists, united primarily by
their anti-Bolshevik position.
[2] Ed: We do not know for certain what Goldsmith is alluding to here.
This may refer to the anarchist bombings that took place in 1893 and
which led to severe repression of anarchist newspapers, such as
*Pére Peinard*. After right-wing opponents attacked the Socialist
Party for being in league with the anarchists, socialist politician
Jean Jaurès made an impassioned speech in the Chamber of Deputies
denying the connection and pointing the finger back at the
capitalist and clerical classes for causing the unrest (Jaurès, “On
the Anarchists”).
[3] Ed: *Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of sailors,
soldiers and workers of the town of Kronstadt* (1921) was the
official newspaper of the Kronstadt rebels. Not to be confused with
*Izvestia* (1917 – present), which was the official state newspaper
of the Soviet Union which operated at the behest of the central
government.
[4] Ed: The Entente refers to the Allies during World War I (France,
Britain, and Russia).
[5] Ed: Aleksandr Kerensky (1881 – 1970) was the first prime minister of
Russia and led the provisional government from March 1917 to
November 1917. He was a moderate socialist whose government was
deposed during the October Revolution. Kerensky fled to the United
States where he spent the rest of his life (The Editors, “Aleksandr
Kerensky”).
[6] Organization belonging exclusively to the “communist party” created
to control them within all civil and military institutions.
[7] Military detachments posted at railway stations to prevent the
arrival of foodstuffs other than those bought and sold by the State.
[8] Extracts from this newspaper were given by the newspaper *Voila
Rosati* (Prague) and the bulletin *Pour la Russie* (Paris).
[9] Ed: The Constituent Assembly was an elected body composed of
Socialist Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, and other parties. After
elections were held in November 1917 and the Bolsheviks did not
achieve a majority, they dissolved the Assembly on January 11,
1918, and shifted the government to one-party rule. Of note,
although Kronstadt revolutionaries and their *Izvestia* were early
proponents of the Constituent Assembly, they ultimately agreed with
the Bolsheviks, stating they would only back the Assembly if it
were “so composed as to confirm the achievements of the October
revolution.” They would go on to provide armed support for the
Soviet government following the Assembly’s dissolution (Getzler,
*Kronstadt 1917–21*, 180–183).
[10] Ed: Grigory Yevseyevich Zinovyev (1883 — 1936) was a Russian
revolutionary, Bolshevik, and associate of Vladimir Lenin. At the
peak of his career, he was a prominent member of the Communist
Party, serving as chairman of the Communist International
(Comintern) and of the Petrograd Soviet. Zinovyev worked with
Joseph Stalin to prevent Leon Trotsky from taking over once Lenin
had died, but was eventually turned on and executed in the Great
Purge (The Editors, “Grigory Yevseyevich Zinovyev”).