Narodniks and Kronstadt

[Cleansing Conspiratorial Revolutionary Flame]

In which ways (If any) did the Narodniks influence Russian Anarchists during the Kronstadt Rebellion?

[Jose Gracchus]

The Kronstadt rebellion was not an "anarchist" action, despite the fact anarchists frequently sympathize with it and lean on its record as a point of proof for their polemics about "Bolshevik" or "State socialist" practice.

The major ideological current on Kronstadt was an ultra-left split of SRs called the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalists, who had been ideologically moving toward positions identified with the Russian Communist Left and Russian anarcho-syndicalists (for instance disagreeing with the Leninist pragmatic on the national question and having sided with soviet power and against class-collaboration along with the Bolsheviks all throughout 1917, siding with the anarcho-syndicalists on the factory committee debate in 1917 and 18, and also wanting to move away immediately from peasant private plot ownership and redistribution to agrarian communes).

The SRs were obviously a current which stressed voluntarist themes and the contribution of the peasantry as a revolutionary agent in its own right (not merely under "the leadership of the working class") and had emerged from Narodnikism. So they were narodniks-come-revolutionary communists.

Of course, this doesn't mean the Kronstadters were a "SR Maximialist" rebellion either (to be honest calling it a "rebellion" is somewhat misleading and tails the fraudulent Bolshevik CC line on the affair; force was initiated by the government against a soviet that dared to act independently). There was no tight party organization, and the Kronstadt's soviet was pretty strongly under the active control and participation of base assemblies and elected committees of workers and sailors in the squares and workshops and naval units of Kronstadt. The Kronstadt soviet was a much better model of workers' democracy than the party apparatus-dominated (Menshevik and SR before Bolshevik) ones in Petrograd and Moscow. Anarchists and other SR fractions, as well as dissident Communists who disagreed with the government actively participated.

[Blake's Baby]

Almost the entire Bolshevik Party in Kronstadt supported the Kronstadt Soviet. I'd reckon that the biggest ideological current in the 'rebellion' was Bolshevik.

[syndicat]

Almost the entire Bolshevik Party in Kronstadt supported the Kronstadt Soviet. I'd reckon that the biggest ideological current in the 'rebellion' was Bolshevik. Almost the entire Bolshevik Party in Kronstadt supported the Kronstadt Soviet. I'd reckon that the biggest ideological current in the 'rebellion' was Bolshevik. Today 03:50

nope. a large part of the Communist rank and file went over to the rebel movement only after a majority of the sailors and workers initiated the solidarity movement. the "rebellion" was a solidarity movement of soldiers and sailors in Kronstad with a general strike in Petrograd that was put down with brutal force by the Communist regime.

the Kronstadt soviet in 1917 had been highly a grassroots affairr with assemblies on ships and in workplaces, elected officers, elected department commmittees, and a highly democratic soviet. all of this was abolished in 1918-1919 by the Communists. the solidarity movement in Kronstadt in 1921 aimed to recreate the democratic soviet of 1917, and was influenced by the SR-Maximalists who had been the dominant influence in the 1917 Kronstadt soviet.

the dominance of the SR-Maximalists is shown by the fact that Anatoly Lamonov, the main Maximalist figure in Kronstadt, was the main articulator of the positions of the solidarity movement/and interim soviet (conference of delegates), as expressed in their newspaper. The three editors of the paper were Lamonov, plus a Left-Menshevik and a syndicalist.

The SR-Maximalists throughout the Russian revolution worked in a close alliance with the Russian anarcho-syndicalist federation, and took similar positions. I would describe them as a libertarian socialist organization. Calling them "ultra-left" is a bit misleading since that term is usually reserved for the Left factions and splits from the Marxist Communist parties, whereas the SR-Maximalists had a different ideological background.

Anarchists as such were not involved as far as I know in the Kronstadt conference of delegates & solidarity movement, but were supportive of it. best account of the history of the Kronstadt soviet, which shows the continuity between 1917 and 1921, is "Kronstadt 1917-1921" by Israel Getzler. Ida Mett's pamphlet is also quite good.

narodnikism has no relevance at all to understanding the Kronstadt 1921 solidarity movement.

[Geiseric]

I read somewhere that Lenin thought there was a french provoceteur presence in Kronstadt, which was partially why he chose to suppress it, besides from their demands being impossible at the time due to the fallout from the civil war.

[Kiev Communard]

Actually The Inform Candidate summarised everything better that I could have done, and I just have to add that Kronstadters' program was far superior to later Leninist NEP project, as it both provided for restoration of working-class political sovereignty through the freedom of soviet elections and allowed for reconciliation with peasantry and urban artisans without providing for foreign capital concessions or private wage labour enterprises in general, while this was the case with Bolshevik economic policies after 1921.

[Jose Gracchus]

The SR-Maximalists throughout the Russian revolution worked in a close alliance with the Russian anarcho-syndicalist federation, and took similar positions. I would describe them as a libertarian socialist organization. Calling them "ultra-left" is a bit misleading since that term is usually reserved for the Left factions and splits from the Marxist Communist parties, whereas the SR-Maximalists had a different ideological background.

I chose to note their similarity to the Communist Left insofar that they opposed bureaucratic unionism and opposed the Leninist line on the national question from the left (they supported the self-determination of the workers and toiling peasantry in all nations but not the nations in their own right, to set up a bourgeois state).

However it is absolutely true that after power passed to the soviets, they did form the only significant support for the position of the anarcho-syndicalists on the factory committee debate in late 1917, and opposed the suppression of the Left SRs and soviet democracy in 1918.


Anarchists as such were not involved as far as I know in the Kronstadt conference of delegates & solidarity movement, but were supportive of it. best account of the history of the Kronstadt soviet, which shows the continuity between 1917 and 1921, is "Kronstadt 1917-1921" by Israel Getzler. Ida Mett's pamphlet is also quite good.

These are the best sources available, indeed.


narodnikism has no relevance at all to understanding the Kronstadt 1921 solidarity movement.

Well the SR party came out of the Narodnik political background, the SR Maximalists were an ultra-radical left splinter from the SR party, so I thought one should be clear about their lineage. From their SR background they had a much more positive outlook on the toiling peasantry, and their economic and political radicalism in support of revolution and bottom-up worker-and-peasant power (as expressed in the program for a "Toilers' Republic") in production and political decision-making led them from different origins to a political outlook which closely approached class-strugglist anarchism.

[Kiev Communard]

narodnikism has no relevance at all to understanding the Kronstadt 1921 solidarity movement.

Actually this is not true, as Narodniks of the early 1870s were very much oriented towards agitation within the St.-Petersburg working class, and the "People's Will" had about 500 sympathizers among urban workers, so that Menshevik and Stalinist interpretations of Narodniks as exclusively peasant/intellectual revolutionaries are scarcely in agreement with the facts. For instance, it was as Narodnik that Kropotkin began his lectures of 1873-1874 for workers of St.-Petersburg concerning the Commune of Paris, and the first library of revolutionary literature for the workers (including the works by Marx, Bakunin and Lassalle) was established by Narodnik propagandists. In total, several hundreds St.-Petersburg workers participated in workers' group established by Narodniks.

Moreover, Narodniks of "Chaykovtsy" circle (1871-1874) were the first who began translating and disseminating the IWMA documents in Russian, including the works of Marx (The Civil War in France), so I do not think that the widespread view of Narodniks as somehow "backward" and "irrelevant" for the further development of the Russian revolutionary movement is true. It may be said, on the contrary, that Maximalist SR programme and activities were the most mature and successful expressions of revolutionary Narodnikism ever.