Kronstadt

[Xiao Banfa]

The Kronstadt rebellion
In early 1921, as the Civil War was coming to an end, the Bolsheviks were faced with the "tragic necessity" (as Trotsky was later to describe it) of suppressing the notorious rebellion of the sailors at Kronstadt. The situation internally was such that the country was in a state of near-total disorganisation. Industry was on the point of collapse; agriculture had been neglected for years, a fact that, several months after Kronstadt, was to cause immense famine throughout much of the countryside. >From late 1920 to early 1921, looting by armed gangs occurred nearly everywhere. These gangs received support from what remained of the Socialist Revolutionaries, who used this particular method to pursue their struggle to overthrow the Soviet state.

In this situation the Bolsheviks correctly saw that if the Kronstadt rebellion were not swiftly put down, White Army forces — supported by the Mensheviks and SRs and backed up by foreign (especially French) imperialism — would utilise it to relaunch the Civil War.

Both the Kronstadt rebellion and the bureaucratisation of the Soviet workers' state were a product of the same social forces.

The Kronstadt rebellion was an expression of the desire of petty-bourgeois layers to abolish the monopoly of foreign trade held by the workers' state, a monopoly that protected Soviet industry and the jobs of Soviet workers from being decimated by competition from cheaper Western-made goods. The bureaucratisation of the Soviet state and the Communist Party was a result of the weakening of the working class and the growing pressure of petty-bourgeois layers upon the revolutionary vanguard that headed these institutions.

From the Australian DSP. Written by Doug Lorimer.

I deleted the rest of the article because it was shot off into a Trotskyite-Stalinist antagonism.

The one where they call each other Mensheviks/Socialist Revolutionaries.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The Sparts actually did a good piece of this dispelling alot of the bullshit..

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html

[rouchambeau]

Why does it even matter? What are we to learn from this?

[Enragé]

because
depending on who you ask
its either a tragic, but necessary thing
or the murder of the revolution

personally
i dont really know.
Fact is though, that the revolution was in decline, and that i can certainly imagine myself doing the same as the people of kronstadt.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?

[bombeverything]

Tino, do you agree with this article?


In early 1921, as the Civil War was coming to an end, the Bolsheviks were faced with the "tragic necessity" (as Trotsky was later to describe it) of suppressing the notorious rebellion of the sailors at Kronstadt.

The repression of the Kronstadt rebellion was ‘necessary’ only for maintaining Bolshevik control over the workers and peasants. The Kronstadt sailors were angry about the lack of democracy and the policy of war communism and called for a return of full political freedoms. Thus the real threat of Kronstadt was political.


From late 1920 to early 1921, looting by armed gangs occurred nearly everywhere. These gangs received support from what remained of the Socialist Revolutionaries, who used this particular method to pursue their struggle to overthrow the Soviet state.

I don’t see how this justifies anything. There were also spontaneous strikes and uprisings occurring at this time, for instance in Petrograd where a near general strike broke out. These would have been more of a threat to the soviet state then these ‘armed gangs’. The Bolsheviks wanted to suppress soviet democracy. Claiming that the rebellion had to be crushed because of armed gangs is quite pathetic.


In this situation the Bolsheviks correctly saw that if the Kronstadt rebellion were not swiftly put down, White Army forces — supported by the Mensheviks and SRs and backed up by foreign (especially French) imperialism — would utilise it to relaunch the Civil War.

At this stage the civil war had ended right? At this stage I do not think that the whites had all that much foreign support. They were quite disorganized and were not really in any position to take advantage of the rebellion. The only real threat to Bolshevik power was internal - from the workers and peasants themselves.


Both the Kronstadt rebellion and the bureaucratisation of the Soviet workers' state were a product of the same social forces.

Yes, Kronstadt was the end result of four years of revolution and civil war, but it was also the product of the undermining of soviet democracy by the Bolsheviks. By crushing the Kronstadt rebellion, the Bolsheviks merely reproduced in concentrated form what had been occurring ever since they had seized power. That is destroying the power of the soviets.


The bureaucratisation of the Soviet state and the Communist Party was a result of the weakening of the working class and the growing pressure of petty-bourgeois layers upon the revolutionary vanguard that headed these institutions.

No, this was the result of the centralization of state power. In such a situation it is obvious that the bureaucracy would utilize its position to strengthen its power. The problems were very difficult, however these problems were largely the result of Bolshevik economic policies which compounded economic chaos through centralization.


The Kronstadt rebellion was an expression of the desire of petty-bourgeois layers to abolish the monopoly of foreign trade held by the workers' state, a monopoly that protected Soviet industry and the jobs of Soviet workers from being decimated by competition from cheaper Western-made goods.

What? The rebellion was nothing of the sort. The Kronstadt revolt was an expression of a desire from the workers and peasants for political freedom through the restoration of power to the soviets.


Why does it even matter? What are we to learn from this?

I think there is alot to learn from this.


You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?

How were they counter revolutionary?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

How were they counter revolutionary?

I said "You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?" In other words, the Kronstadt sailers' leadership collaborated with the Whites.

The article I linked to explains it... it also tears apart the rest of the old school bullshit you posted.

"Right from the start, the anarchists made common cause with open counterrevolutionaries over Kronstadt. Prominent American anarchist Alexander Berkman’s 1922 pamphlet, The Kronstadt Rebellion, was based largely on a spurious 1921 account entitled The Truth About Kronstadt published by the Social Revolutionaries (SR), bitter opponents of the October Revolution. In 1938, the Kronstadt lie machine was rolled out again—in the form of Ida Mett’s The Kronstadt Commune ... Shortly before his death in 1945, Voline (V. M. Eichenbaum), a leading Russian anarchist in 1917-21, added his authority to the anti-Bolshevik frame-up with an indictment that relied on the mutineers’ own lying proclamations (Voline, The Unknown Revolution [Kronstadt 1921 Ukraine 1918-21] [New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1955]). Today, a resurgent anarchist trend again seizes on alleged atrocities by Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks in Kronstadt to inflame anti-communist prejudices among young activists in the post-Soviet era.

"Trotsky also urged his supporters to undertake a more detailed work. The result was “The Truth About Kronstadt” by John G. Wright of the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP), first published in the SWP’s New International (February 1938) and then in a longer version in an educational bulletin in 1939. Marshaling the historical evidence then available, including the testimony of “the very people who engineered and led and attempted to extend the mutiny,” Wright methodically demonstrated how the Whites supported the uprising and how the sailors were politically driven by their petty-bourgeois class interests and manipulated by the forces of open counterrevolution. ...

"Every serious piece of historical research since has vindicated the Bolsheviks. Notably, this includes pro-anarchist historian Paul Avrich’s Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). In our review, we recommended the book as the work of a conscientious researcher, who was compelled to conclude that he could “sympathize with the rebels and still concede that the Bolsheviks were justified in subduing them” ...

"Avrich’s research showed that the principal leader of the revolt, a seaman named Stepan Petrichenko, had earlier attempted to join the Whites, then helped turn a mass protest meeting into a decisive break with the Bolshevik government. After the uprising, Petrichenko fled to Finland, which was under the iron rule of former tsarist general and White Guard butcher Baron Mannerheim. Petrichenko openly joined forces with the émigré White Guards concentrated there and endorsed plans for a “temporary military dictatorship” to replace Bolshevik rule. Avrich also discovered a White Guard “Memorandum on the Question of Organizing an Uprising in Kronstadt” that detailed the military and political situation inside the fortress and spoke of having recruited a group of Kronstadt sailors who were preparing to take an active role in a forthcoming uprising there ...

"The documents assembled in Kronstadt Tragedy definitively put these objections to rest. The collection contains 829 original documents (with an additional 276, in whole or excerpted, in the footnotes), most never before published. These include firsthand accounts by participants in the uprising, among them mutinous sailors and visiting White Guard emissaries, and secret White reports; memoirs and articles by some of the 8,000 mutineers who fled to Finland after the Bolsheviks retook Kronstadt; and records of interrogation of arrested mutineers by the Soviet Cheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage. Contemporary Soviet accounts include Baltic Fleet commissar Nikolai Kuzmin’s 25 March 1921 report to the Petrograd Soviet and the first official report on the Cheka investigation, by Special Commissioner Yakov S. Agranov, submitted on 5 April 1921. It is particularly valuable now to be able to see how extensively the accounts of the mutineers who escaped coincide as to the facts with those who confessed while in Soviet hands.

"For their part, various anarchist Web sites and ’zines, confronted with the mass of new evidence in Kronstadt Tragedy, have turned to a secondhand commentary by Hebrew University academic Israel Getzler (“The Communist Leaders’ Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently Published Archival Documents,” Revolutionary Russia, June 2002). Getzler elevates the Agranov report to “pride of place,” though it was rushed out only days after the mutiny and without access to any of the ringleaders nor to many of the documents in the present compilation. Getzler then extracts from this initial report one isolated passage in order to claim that Agranov found “that the sailors’ protest was ‘entirely spontaneous’” and that his “findings flatly contradict the official line.” This is sophistry, not scholarship! The Bolsheviks’ “official line” was not that Kronstadt was a White Guard/imperialist conspiracy from start to finish and top to bottom, but rather that it served the interests of and was fully embraced by the counterrevolution. Even the brief passage Getzler cites from Agranov corroborates this, asserting that “the uprising took on a systematic character and was led by the experienced hand of the old generals ..."

[bombeverything]

I said "You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?" In other words, the Kronstadt sailers' leadership collaborated with the Whites. The article I linked to explains it... it also tears apart the rest of the old school bullshit you posted

Sorry, I took it to mean the same thing. As for the link I did not see it. I will respond to the information you posted later today.

[LSD]

Tino, this is a very old argument, but it is useful insofar as it reveals the insane depths to which pro-Bolshevik Marxists are willing to go in defense of their heroes.

Even outright racism isn't beyond them, as, perversely enough, most of the Leninist critique of Kronstadt doesn't flow from analyses of their positions or rebuttals of their demands, it comes from generalizations about their ethnicity.

Materialism is about recognizing that external conditions shape human behaviour, but condemning a revolution because its vanguard is of a particular ethnicity is not Marxism, it's chauvinism.

Kronstad happened 85 years ago and none of us can really say what was in the minds of the rebelling soldiers, but that doesn't mean that we can't dispell a couple of these lingering Bolshevik myths.

Especially this nonsensical line regarding who the sailors actually were.

Obviously sailors died in the war, but the sailors of 1921 were the same people who in May of 1920 lead the revolutionary celebtrations; who in October of that same year were praised by the Bolshevik party as heroes of the revolution and acclaimed as the "saviours" of Petrograd.

Is it really possible that "no one noticed" that these "heroes" had been "inflitrated" or "suppanted" by "pogromists"?

How come none of the "old" Kronstadters reported this "influx" of "fascists? How come as late as 6 months before the rebellion, the Bolsheviks were still pointing them out as a paragon of Red Army virtue?

These Ukrainian "fascists" must have been the smartest fucking people on earth to fool that many people for that long. Seriously, one wonders how people this brilliant didn't manage to stage a better insurrection!

You'd think that with brains like that they'd have been able to take on the entire Red Army single handed!

Or, maybe, could it be that they were exactly what they claimed to be?

Besides, no matter what they started out as, these "conscripts" then spent years along side the surviving "revolutioanry heroes" fighting for the revolution and "workers' state".

And by the time 1921 rolled around, they understood enough to know that it wasn't what the Bolsheviks were setting up.

When the workers in Petrograd were suppressed and coerced and when the central government refused to hear their concerns; the soldiers at Kronstadt did the same thing they did in 1917 and sided with the Proletariat.

Now, you can insist that this was "artificial" or that it was a "conspiracy", but the facts speak for themselves. And, again, personalities aside, if the Bolsheviks had truly been the Proletarian "vanguard" they claimed to be, they would have met the demands of the Kronstadt sailors.

If those demands had been a bluff, the Bolsheviks would have masterfully called it and exposed their duplicity; if they had been genuine, they would have averted another civil war and saved thousands of lives.

Either way, it was the right thing to do.

Not that that mattered to Leon "kill &#39;em all" Trotsky... <_<

Look, Were there peasants among the Kronstadt sailors in 1921? There sure were. But there were workers too. There were new recruits, there were veterans, there were revolutionary fighters.

And to imagine that such a disparate collection of soldiers could represent solely the interest of the, miniscule, Russian petty-bourgeois class is ludicrous.

Sure, there was a degree of loyalty to the peasants being brutally suppressed by the Bolsheviks, but the demands of the Kronstadt sailors went well byond peasant or artisan rights. The overwhelming majority, after all, were about the workers and oppressed proletarian organizations.

The Anarchists, the left-communists, they weren&#39;t "petty bourgeois" or "whitists", in fact they had loyally stood by the Bolsheviks throughout the revolution.

For their troubles, they were locked up, shipped out, and executed.

The solidarity shown by the sailors for their fellow lefists was not "treason", it was the highest form of loyality.


I said "You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?" In other words, the Kronstadt sailers&#39; leadership collaborated with the Whites.

Petrichenko did, as did some orther "leaders". But most of the sailors were captured or killed by the Bolsheviks, so we really don&#39;t know what they "might have done".

What we do know is that, despite any "secret loyalties" that Petrichenko may or may not have had, not a single scrap of assistance was ever sent by the White Army to Kronstadt and the soldiers there repeatedly refused to associate themselves with the Whitists.

Was the White Army glad that a part of the Red Army had rebelled? Of course. Any distraction or inconvienience for the Reds was to their advantage and in military parlance, the "enemy of my enemy is my friend".

But need I remind you that the German government escorted Lenin back into Russia in the spring of 1917? That the Kaiser saw him as an "ally" at that time?

The Bolsheviks&#39; insistance that the Kronstadt sailors were traitors because they were fighting against their government during a critical war is exactly the same as the insistance by the Czarist government 4 years earlier that the revolution was a "german plot" to "undermine Russian solidarity".

In both cases, the enemies being spoke of were glad to see insurrections, but in both cases they also had nothing to do with them.


Why does it even matter? What are we to learn from this?

Mainly I think it illustrates just how desperate Leninists are to resuscitate their icons.

Less and less people are buying into the Lenin-as-God myth and that makes it doubly important for them to keep his "legacy" pristine.

From a historical perspective, I don&#39;t even think this issue is particularly controversial. After all, for all the Leninist bluster about "treason" and "conspiracy", a "rebel victory" would have been the best thing for the Soviet Union.

Certainly it could not have been the calamity that Lenin apologists insist upon.

Remember, Kronstad had no capacity to attack any other position. Nor did it have the force to launch another civil war. The sailors there consistantly rejected any assistance from the White Army and refused an allegiance with them until after they were crushed by the Bolsheviks.

So what exactly was "victory" in their estimation? What would have made them stand down?

Well, from all the historical and documentary evidence available, it is clear that they saw themselves as the vanguard of a "third revolution". That they wished to have their revolutionary message spread across the counry and inspire other military and workers groups to rise up.

Obviously that didn&#39;t happen and thanks to Bolsehvik propaganda, their message never really got to the people they wanted it to.

But the idea that their "victory" would have lead to a White victory is simply ridiculous.

If the revolution was really so tenuous that it needed Bolshevik "iron discipline" to keep it going; if it really could not have survived geniunely communist reforms, then it was never truly revolutionary to begin with.

The White Army did not want a reenvigored proletariat, nor did it have any interest in free Soviets or "workers&#39; control groups". Regardless, that was what Kronstadt demanded and it was what it was fighting for.

If its demands had been met, it would have resulted in a massive restructuring of the Soviet system, one that would have decentralized and liberalized governance and production and accordingly made it harder for any external force to sieze control.

Of course it also would have reduced the power of the "Bolshevik state" and that was something which Lenin was not prepared to tolerate. In his own words "they don&#39;t want a white government, but they don&#39;t want ours either".

Any true revolutionary would put the revolution ahead of petty political interests, but for the Bolsheviks, for Lenin, for Ziminov, for Trotsky; they had become so warped and so corrupt that they genuinely saw their power to be synonymous with revolutionary "victory".

Despite not being workers themselves and despite their having crushed the actual organs of workers&#39; democacy; Lenin and Trotsky still considered themselves "vanguards" of the proletariat and so the only people "qualified" to speak on "their behalf".

We all know where such arrogance leads.

[VenceremosRed]

Kronstadt was a very murky affair; there were both revolutionary and reactionary elements involved. A complex event but objectively, at that moment, revolting against the Soviet government would have led to a shattering of the revolution and a triumph of the counterrevolutinoary whites (regardless of the intent of the sailors on Kronstadt island.)

The ideals of the anarchists in Kronstadt were admirable, but they sided with counterrevolutionary forces to meet some idealistic demands - it would have been a very wrong step to implement the changes the Kronstadt sailors wanted, and if they had succesfully overthrown the Soviet government, things probably would have been much worse.

Russia was a ruin, and expecting socialism to bring miracles isn&#39;t scientific. Socialism will bring about many sweeping changes very quickly, but in a backwards country like Russia -- there is only so much forward motion before, eventually, you meet the end. Which Lenin recognized in his purposal for the NEP.

But this is history. I don&#39;t see why anarchists and communists can&#39;t find unity in destroying capitalism here and now. :cool:

[GX.]

While it is true that many of the old sailors remained in Kronstadt, most of them opposed the insurrection. Yes, most of the soldiers responsible for the insurrection weren&#39;t workers and didn&#39;t have the interests of the workers in mind, but wanted to (at least superficially) appear to. The mutiny wasn&#39;t even rooted in the Kronstadt soviet. First hand accounts by workers and old sailors in Kronstadt reveal this, and the workers of the city supplanted the mutiny before the Red Army even arrived. But maybe all these first-hand accounts written by people who actually witnessed the rebellion are wrong, and the mutineers were right. Maybe the workers and sailors of Kronstadt were just making it all up. I doubt it, but I don&#39;t think it matters too terribly much either way.

[Leo]

The suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion was the time when the Russian Revolution was officially dead and the Bolshevik Party was officially anti-working class. Of course it could be argued that the line Bolshevik party became anti-working class was earlier, or that they had never been pro-working class, but when you start shooting workers striking for their needs, there is no coming back, it&#39;s all over. Any arguement justifying Kronstadt is also anti-working class. Yes, there were reationary elements involved in the rebellion among with the revolutionary ones, but how can anyone think "the reddest of the red" could so easily act on mere anti-bolshevik propaganda? Kronstadt was a class action, caused by the horrible living conditions, there were many elements and ideologies involved with it, but the main thing was striking workers.


Socialism will bring about many sweeping changes very quickly, but in a backwards country like Russia -- there is only so much forward motion before, eventually, you meet the end. Which Lenin recognized in his purposal for the NEP.


And thus, the first stage of capitalism was put into practice.

[Enragé]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 3 2006, 11:24 PM
You mean collaborating with the counter revolutionaries?
Demands of the kronstadt insurrectionary forces;

1. immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, solders and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political sections various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
8. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
9. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
10. The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
11. The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
12. We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution. 13. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
14. We demand the institution of mobile workers&#39; control groups.
15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it does not utilise wage labour.


nothing counter revolutionary about it.

Sure, you could say that rising up against the CP weakens the revolution, that in that sense it is collaboration with the counter revolutionaries... which is why i said "i dont really know [what to think]"
however
the mere fact that these things had to be demanded (by force even) shows that the revolution itself was already close to death (and this might have given it a new boost).

The autocracy has fallen. The Constituent Assembly has departed to the realm of the damned. The commissarocracy is collapsing... All of Soviet Russia has been turned into an all-Russian penal colony. The moment has come for a true government of toilers, a government of soviets

[YKTMX]

Any arguement justifying Kronstadt is also anti-working class. Yes, there were reationary elements involved in the rebellion among with the revolutionary ones, but how can anyone think "the reddest of the red" could so easily act on mere anti-bolshevik propaganda? Kronstadt was a class action, caused by the horrible living conditions, there were many elements and ideologies involved with it, but the main thing was striking workers.

Apart from anything, this is just false. In fact, as most people know, there was a strike in Petrograd going on at the time before the pogromist rebellion. In actual fact, the Petrograd workers called an immediate halt to the strike upon hearing of the White Rebellion at Kronstadt.

The "working class" was certainly not represented by the fascist forces holding the base. In fact, the only workers involved in the battle were the red volunteers who gave their lives for the Class.

The anti-semitic forces gave their lives to the forces of reaction, terror, murder, class hatred and peasant philistininism.

Celebrate that if you like.

[Enragé]

get your head out of your ass and take a fucking look at the demands they made

"pogromist"
hah&#33;

and what happened in barcelona in the spanish civil war was one big anarchotrotskist rebellion, and trotsky wanted to destroy the USSR&#33; :lol:

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2006, 08:49 PM
get your head out of your ass and take a fucking look at the demands they made

"pogromist"
hah&#33;

and what happened in barcelona in the spanish civil war was one big anarchotrotskist rebellion, and trotsky wanted to destroy the USSR&#33; :lol:
Are you so gullible as to simply take any group at its word? Do you think the Nazis were "liberating" the Sudetenland? Do you think George Bush wanted to bring democracy to the people of Iraq?

As a Marxist, I analyse social forces, trends, historical movements, not the "demands" reactionaries put out about themselves.

It&#39;s a known fact that many of the leaders of the fascist rebellion had connections, either prior or subsequent to the rebellion, with the whites.

Whether you choose to accept this fact or simply stamp your feet like a child is not really important.

[Enragé]

Do you think the Nazis were "liberating" the Sudetenland? Do you think George Bush wanted to bring democracy to the people of Iraq?

Do you think trotsky wasnt a reactionary? Do you think the SWP is truly revolutionary?


It&#39;s a known fact that many of the leaders of the fascist rebellion had connections, either prior or subsequent to the rebellion, with with the whites.


proof?

[Leo]

Apart from anything, this is just false. In fact, as most people know, there was a strike in Petrograd going on at the time before the pogromist rebellion. In actual fact, the Petrograd workers called an immediate halt to the strike upon hearing of the White Rebellion at Kronstadt.

Yeah, I&#39;m sure they thought that sailors who were had rebelled in support to their strike and were chanting "Power back to the soviets&#33;" were whites. And I&#39;m sure it was suppressing an "ordinary white rebellion" that made Lenin so devestated that he decided that his wartime communism policy was not working.

[YKTMX]

proof?

Sure


THE LINKS with the White army are explicit: &#39;A breakdown in morale would be inevitable if the insurgent sailors were not to receive assurances of sympathy and support from the outside, in particular from the Russian Army commanded by General Wrangel. Further, the rising was seen as &#39;a very rare opportunity-an opportunity that probably will not be repeated-to seize Kronstadt and inflict upon Bolshevism the heaviest of blows, from which it may not recover.&#39;

The Bolsheviks of course did not know of this memorandum. The point is that Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership were able to assess the balance of class forces with complete accuracy, and therefore made a similarly accurate assessment of the risks. Kronstadt was perceived as a step to counter-revolution not only by the Bolsheviks but by the White army and the world&#39;s ruling classes.

There was a second consideration regarding the timing of the repression. The Gulf of Finland is frozen from late November until the end of March or early April.

Two weeks after the Kronstadt rebellion the ice was due to melt, at which time the sailors&#39; control of the ships would give them the strategic and military basis to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Holding out until the ice melted was identified as critical in the memorandum, after which point counter-revolution would be secured.

The rebellion was suppressed militarily after the appeal for the categorical lowering of arms was rejected by the sailors. The first attacks ended in failure for the Bolsheviks, but after a regroupment including the enlistment of 320 delegates from the Bolshevik Tenth Party Congress into the ranks, on 10 March the offensive broke through successfully. Some 8,000 Kronstadt rebels fled to Finland, where some, including Petrichenko, openly identified their links with the White army.

The events were a tragic necessity. But the tragedy would have been far greater if the Kronstadt rebellion had succeeded, and the already weakened Bolshevik state been crushed.


White exiles had tried to help the mutineers and the main leader of the rebellion, Petrichenko, didjoin the Whites for a period after the mutiny was suppressed.

link (http://libcom.org/library/beyond-kronstadt)

That link is an anarchist one.

So, the main leader is a fascist, and fascists tried to help them before and afterwards.

But, yeh, "up" the rebellion because they used words I like.

Great.

Sorry if you&#39;re Jewish or a Bolshevik, but that&#39;s what happens.

[Enragé]

"White exiles had tried to help the mutineers and the main leader of the rebellion, Petrichenko, didjoin the Whites for a period after the mutiny was suppressed. Still, there is no convincing evidencethat the mutineers had any ties to the Whites during the rebellion itself and it appears that noforeign power even attempted to take military advantage of the situation. Moreover Lenin himselfsaid, "there they do not want either the White Guards or our government". So the Bolshevikregime&#39;s need to suppress any rebellion calling for democracy was at least as much a factor in itsattitude to the sailors as the threat of intervention from abroad.40
"

from the same link, comrade

[YKTMX]

Yes, comrade, I noticed that.

One would suspect that the reason they refused fascist assistance until after they&#39;d be beaten is precisely because they hoped to rouse the support of the workers. They could hardly have done that by openly proclaiming to be Wrangel&#39;s men.

[Enragé]

but they weren&#39;t wrangel&#39;s men, they just happened to seem by wrangel as something that could benefit him

big difference
technically, a workers rebellion in the US during WW2 would be great for Hitler (most definitely on the short term)
still that doesnt mean that those workers would have been "Hitler&#39;s men"

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2006, 09:31 PM
but they weren&#39;t wrangel&#39;s men, they just happened to seem by wrangel as something that could benefit him

big difference
technically, a workers rebellion in the US during WW2 would be great for Hitler (most definitely on the short term)
still that doesnt mean that those workers would have been "Hitler&#39;s men"
I don&#39;t accept that.

In any case, if a workers&#39; rebellion had been led by a man who had previously tried to become a Nazi, was of German descent and called for the "freedom of organisation for Nazi parties", I think we may have guessed where their loyalties lay.

Or maybe not.

[Enragé]

ok this is really weak i know but

people change?
i wanted to join the military when i was younger :P


besides, who cares if the intentions of that one man werent good, its about what the whole fought for.

[LSD]

I don&#39;t accept that.

In any case, if a workers&#39; rebellion had been led by a man who had previously tried to become a Nazi, was of German descent and called for the "freedom of organisation for Nazi parties", I think we may have guessed where their loyalties lay.

What if a revolution in Russia was started by a man who was supported by the German government and was even escorted into the country by the German army?

Of course the whitists like the Kronstadt rebellion, any enemy of the Bolsheviks was seen as a potential ally. It&#39;s the same reason that Lenin allied with Kronstadt in the early days of the revolution.

Kronstad was never a Bolshevik stronghold, it was pro-revolution, sure, but it was largely anarchist and left-communsit from the begining.

When Lenin needed allies, though, he was willing to take any support he could get. Well, the same was true for the whites.

You can go ahead and claim that every example of Kronstadt anti-whitism was "conspiracy" or "strategy", but at some point you&#39;ve got to provide some evidence for your assertions.

If we&#39;re to ignore what the rebels said and what the rebels did, you&#39;ve better have some awfully convining evidence that they were lying. &#39;Cause otherwise it&#39;s nothing but outright racism.

They "couldn&#39;t have meant" their demands &#39;cause a lot of them were Ukrainian and a couple of them came from peasant backgrounds? What kind of lunatic ethnicist faux-materialist bullshit is that?

Trotsky was a an upper class land-owner and Lenin was petty-bourgeois. That doesn&#39;t stop you from viewing both of them as "saviours" of the Proletariat.

For the hopefuly last time, YKTMX, it really doesn&#39;t matter what the Kronstadt sailors "really meant", they were never in a positon to force their ideas on anyone. All that they had was their message.

If that message was phony, all the worse for them. &#39;Cause all the Bolsheviks had to do to end the rebellion in a day was actually enact it. Or at the very least, enact some of it.

If Lenin&#39;s government had truly been democratic or proletarian, that wouldn&#39;t have been a problem. But then again, if Lenin&#39;s government had been democratic or proletarian, they wouldn&#39;t have had to have been made.

In any case though, if it was all the grand lie that you assert it was, taking the mutineers would have been a masterstroke of political genius. It would have simultaneously ended a threatening mutinee and demonstrated once and for all the legitimacy of the Bolshevik government.

So why didn&#39;t the government even consider the published demands? Why did they immediately begin plans for an invasion?

Because, like it or not, as far as the government of the Soviet Union was concerned, in 1921, the "revolution" was synonymous with their personal absolute power.

And that has nothing to do with "Marxism"&#33;

[GX.]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 4 2006, 08:57 PM

Apart from anything, this is just false. In fact, as most people know, there was a strike in Petrograd going on at the time before the pogromist rebellion. In actual fact, the Petrograd workers called an immediate halt to the strike upon hearing of the White Rebellion at Kronstadt.

Yeah, I&#39;m sure they thought that sailors who were had rebelled in support to their strike and were chanting "Power back to the soviets&#33;" were whites. And I&#39;m sure it was suppressing an "ordinary white rebellion" that made Lenin so devestated that he decided that his wartime communism policy was not working.
As I already mentioned, the Kronstadt rebeliion wasn&#39;t even rooted in the Kronstadt soviet, but the "Court for the Defence of Kronstadt" or something like that, which was funded and led by White-sympathizers who couldn&#39;t have given a shit about soviets. That&#39;s why the mutineers couldn&#39;t have meant a word they said. And ace if the October Revolution were led and funded almost entirely by German nationalists I would be calling fowl.

[YKTMX]

Unfortunately, Ace, I&#39;m not a post-modernist hack. I don&#39;t believe that "history is discourse" and that we can only judge history by what people at the time wrote and thought about themselves and others.

There is objective historical truth beyond the subjectivities of agents.

And, once again, for the last time hopefully, discounting for the moment the fascist leanings of the main leaders, even if the Rebellion really was a "anarchist rebellion", it would still inevitably lead to a fascist government in Soviet Russia had it not been defeated.

[Enragé]

are you saying it didnt lead to a "fascist" government anyway?

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 11:47 AM
are you saying it didnt lead to a "fascist" government anyway?
I don&#39;t follow.

Are you saying the Stalinist dictatorship was "fascist"?

[Leo]

As I already mentioned, the Kronstadt rebeliion wasn&#39;t even rooted in the Kronstadt soviet

No Kronstadt rebellion was rooted in the problems workers had with their everyday life conditions.


but the "Court for the Defence of Kronstadt" or something like that, which was funded and led by White-sympathizers

There were reactionary elements in Kronstadt but they were only minor elements.


who couldn&#39;t have given a shit about soviets. That&#39;s why the mutineers couldn&#39;t have meant a word they said.

Maybe not, but the workers and sailors who were killed did give a shit about soviets and they did mean what they said.

[YKTMX]

Maybe not, but the workers and sailors who were killed did give a shit about soviets and they did mean what they said.

This is bizaare. The only "workers" who died in the course of the rebellion were the volunteers and worker-militants fighting to defend Soviet rule on the Bolshevik side.

The Kronstadt sailors were not "workers". In fact, the suspicion is most of them were Ukranian peasants (like their leader, the fascist Petrichenko).

So, please, stop just inserting words that sound nice and actually try and have some historical integrity.

[Leo]

This is bizaare. The only "workers" who died in the course of the rebellion were the volunteers and worker-militants fighting to defend Soviet rule on the Bolshevik side.

No, those volunteers were Red Armys soldiers, and the workers who died were strikers. If you didn&#39;t know, wartime communism policy declared striking illegal and allowed the government to shoot strikers.


The Kronstadt sailors were not "workers". In fact, the suspicion is most of them were Ukranian peasants

Yeah, all Ukrainian peasants are evil <_<

I know where this bullshit is coming from, Trotsky started this line of justification during the revolt, stating the Baltic Fleet had been "inevitably thinned out with respect to personnel" and so a "great many of the revolutionary sailors" of 1917 had been "transferred" elsewhere. They had been "replaced in large measure by accidental elements." This "facilitated" the work of the "counterrevolutionary organisers" who had "selected" Kronstadt. However, recent research disproves Trotsky&#39;s claims. Those serving in the Baltic fleet on 1st January 1921 at least 75.5% were drafted before 1918. Over 80% were from Great Russian areas, 10% from the Ukraine and 9% from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. Thus the veteran politicised Red sailor still predominated in Kronstadt at the end of 1920. Also of the 2,028 sailors of crews of the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol where years of enlistment are known, 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution. Only 6.8% of the sailors were recruited in the years 1918-21. Moreover, the majority of the revolutionary committee were veterans of the Kronstadt Soviet and the October revolution.


So, please, stop just inserting words that sound nice and actually try and have some historical integrity.

And please stop perverting history to make you dear Trotsky look like a saint.

Even Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky&#39;s biographer said that the Bolsheviks "denounced the men of Kronstadt as counter-revolutionary mutineers, led by a White general. The denunciation appears to have been groundless." (The Prophet Armed) Lenin admitted as much on the 15th of March at the Tenth Party Conference: "they did not want the White Guards, and they do not want our power either." In fact, Lenin was so devestated by the Kronstadt rebellion that he ended his wartime communism policy.

[YKTMX]

No, those volunteers were Red Armys soldiers, and the workers who died were strikers. If you didn&#39;t know, wartime communism policy declared striking illegal and allowed the government to shoot strikers.

No, you&#39;re (not unsurprisingly) uninformed about the battle. The first time the Red Army tried to re-take the fort, they were routed. They won by, amongst other things, recruiting partisans of the class from the party congress, which was happening at the time:


Tragic beyond a doubt-about 600 of the Kronstadt sailors who rebelled against Bolshevik rule were killed in the events, and some 2,500 were taken prisoner. Among the dead were undoubtedly some who were unilaterally killed in the very final stages of the military conflict.

But this number pales against the list of casualties among the loyal Bolshevik defenders of the young workers&#39; state who were killed at the hands of the Kronstadt rebel forces. The number of dead, wounded and missing is conservatively estimated at 10,000, including among the dead some 15 delegates to the Bolsheviks&#39; Tenth Party Congress.

So, the fascist rebels mercilessly butcher 10,000 priceless class warriors for the "freedom of the peasantry" and we&#39;re all supposed to roll over onto our bellies crying crocodile tears? I don&#39;t think so.

As for the war communism policy, it&#39;s a completely different thing. Violence was used against striking workers only in very few cases. Most strikes at this time were resolved peacefully and in favour the working class.

In comparison with Stalinism, were the class was too brutalized and demoralized to strike in the first place.


Yeah, all Ukrainian peasants are evil

No, but most of them anti-semitic.


Moreover, the majority of the revolutionary committee were veterans of the Kronstadt Soviet and the October revolution.


Of course, no one is doubting that amongst the pogromist forces there were some former revolutionaries who had becomed pissed off with the state of affairs. No doubt there were many Bolsheviks and workers who were angry at how events were progressing. The question is this though: do you side with the workers&#39; state against all forms of reaction and counter-revolution?

Some Kronstadt sailors did:


According to documents published in these two books new facts emerge about what happened in the town around Kronstadt. During the attack on Kronstadt, the workers of the town moved against the putschists and liberated the town even before the main forces of the Red Army arrived. So in reality what we had was not a workers&#39; and sailors&#39; rebellion against Bolshevism, but a workers&#39; and sailors&#39; Bolshevik uprising against the "rebels"&#33;

In the proclamations of the Kronstadt sailors we see the words that refer to "the men of the White guards that are leading the rebels ". These were not mere words. The real command over the rebels was concentrated not in the Kronstadt soviet, as some naive individuals may think, but in the so-called "Court for the Defence of Kronstadt Fortress". One of its leaders was rear-admiral S.H. Dmitriev (who was executed after the fortress fall), the other was general A. H. Koslovsky, who escaped to Finland. Both of these senior officers were very far from having any kind of sympathy for Socialism "with Bolsheviks" or "without Bolsheviks".



And please stop perverting history to make you dear Trotsky look like a saint.


I&#39;m not interested in making anyone appear "saintly". And Trotsky can and did defend himself more than admirably from far more formidable people than yourself.


In fact, Lenin was so devestated by the Kronstadt rebellion that he ended his wartime communism policy.

Of course he was "devastated". It&#39;s devestating for any socialist that a place like Kronstadt, with its history, could have become a haven for reaction, Whitism, anti-semitism and defeatism. It showed, probably more clearly than ever, how fast the revolution was degenerating.

[rebelworker]

Your totally ingnoring the make up of the red army sailors as mentioned above.

If there wer any facist officers in the navy it was because Trotsky wanted them there (he was the iron fist behind the leadedship of the red army) and the fucking men who were charging the fortress had macheinguns put at thier backs so they would do it, most knew they were attacking fellow revolutionaries and didnt want to be there, with the exception of a bunch of party die hards who would later be killed by their own leadership.

Your a joke YKTMX.

Here is a list of the prominent Bolsheviks who took part in the supression of kronstad,

lets see their fate after this event.

Zinoviev: Dictator of Petrograd, ispired the struggle against the sailors and strikers.
Later shot by the party.

Trotsky: Peoples commisar of the war and the navy Assasinated by Stalinist agents.

Lashevich: member of revolutionary war committee, member of defence committee that organized the fight against the petrograd strikers. Commit suicide

Dybenko: vteran sailor. Organiser of the central committee of the Baltic fleet, particularly active in the crushing of the rebellion. Later shot by the Party.

Kuzmin: commisar of the baltic fleet. Fate unknown. Never spoken of after the attack.

Kalinin: survived to die a natural death.

Tukhachevsky: Elaborated the plan and lead the assault. Later shot by the party.

Putna: decorated officer for his participation of the assault, later military atache in London. Later shot by the party.

10th party congress delegates who came to fight:

Pyatokov : Later shot by party
Rukhimovich : later shot by party
Zatonsky : Dissapeared
Bubnov : Disapeared
Voroshilov : survived to fight in WWII

Which side would you trust, the hardened revolutionary sailors and strikers who argued that the revolution was slipping away into dictatorship or the above mentioned guys who said they were just counter revolutionaries?

[YKTMX]

Your a joke YKTMX.

YOU&#39;RE*

Tut tut.

[Devrim]

I wrote this on another board last time the Kronstaft question came up. The arguments are basically the same:

The leftists’ theoretical gymnastics over the degeneration of the Russian revolution are really quite impressive. If they acknowledge that the Russian revolution was destroyed from within, it all comes down to when it actually decayed, and how to remove responsibility for this from their respective heroes. I can remember speaking to old Stalinists who thought that Khrushchev’s speech at the 20th congress was the greatest ever betrayal of the international working class. The SWP are a little more sophisticated, but not much. Instead of looking at what happened in the Russian revolution, and trying to draw a balance sheet of events they remain steadfast in their opinion that the &#39;great&#39; Lenin could do no wrong, and therefore are forced into the rather untenable position of supporting the suppression of the working class at Kronstadt.

The easiest way to do this is by taking up the slanders made against the Kronstadt rebels by Lenin, and Trotsky at the time.

Originally posted by SWP member+--> (SWP member)
To understand what happened we have to look at the background of the sailors there. It 1917 it had been stronghold of the revolution, but by 1920 the compostion of the garison had greatly changed. Large numbers of the orginal garison had died in the civil war. By 1920 there was a much larger peasant component of the garison.[/b]



This belief is backed up by the assertions of Lenin, and the RCP(B) at the time, and has very little basis in reality. In fact it seems to fly in the face of all historical evidence:

Originally posted by Israel Getzler+ in Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy--> (Israel Getzler &#064; in Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy)
... that the politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlosk and the Sevastopol, both reknowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine and 9% from Finland, Latvia and Poland.[/b]



If we take this information as being representative of the Kronstadt rebels as a whole it would suggest that 59% of the sailors had been there since at least 1916 whilst 93.9% had been there at the time of the October revolution, hardly a great change in the composition of the garrison from when it was the ‘stronghold of the revolution’ in 1917.


Originally posted by SWP member

By 1920 there was a much larger peasant component of the garison.


I don&#39;t know if you realise it, Dom, but in a newly developing capital large numbers of the working class tend to come from peasant backgrounds Where else do you think that they come from? In Turkey today for example large proportions of the working class come from peasant backgrounds. The point is that they are proletarianised by their experience as workers.

As for your assertion that the Bolshevik party in Kronstadt contained more workers than the garrison in general, your support for it is plainly laughable.

Originally posted by SWP member

We can asume that the Bolshevik party had a higher content of workers than the garison as a whole.

Why? Please give a reason.

The Bolsheviks were a party that organised the working class. It believed the working class had to organise seperately than the peasantry so it follows that they had more support in the working class than the peasantry.



So, the &#39;Bolsheviks were a party that organised the working class&#39; therefore they must have had a higher percentage of workers than the garrison as a whole&#39;. However, according to information released by Sorine, Commissar for Petrograd, 5,000 sailors left the Party in January 1921 alone.


Originally posted by the Second Conference of Communist Sailors of the Baltic Fleet+ on 15th Feb 1921--> (the Second Conference of Communist Sailors of the Baltic Fleet &#064; on 15th Feb 1921)
Poubalt, having totally detached itself from the Party masses, has destroyed all local initiative. It has transformed all political work into paper work. This has had harmful repercussions on the organisation of the masses in the Fleet. Between June and November last year, 20 per cent of the (sailor Party members have left the Party. This can be explained by the wrong methods of the work of Poubalt.[/b]



Are we to assume then that all of these sailors were actually peasants, and that those who stayed were workers? Is it not slightly conceivable that some of those who left were workers disgusted with the way that the regime had taken to attacking the working class?

After all take a look at the situation in Petrograd at the time:

Ida Mett

The first strike broke out at the Troubotchny factory, on 23rd February 1921. On the 24th, the strikers organised a mass demonstration in the street. Zinovlev sent detachments of &#39;Koursanty&#39; (student officers) against them. The strikers tried to contact the Finnish Barracks. Meanwhile, the strikes were spreading. The Baltisky factory stopped work. Then the Laferma factory and a number of others: the Skorokhod shoe factory, the Admiralteiski factory, the Bormann and Metalischeski plants, and finally, on 28th February, the great Putilov works itself.



Is it not possible that this could have led to the Bolshevik party in Kronstadt actually having a lower percentage of workers than the garrison as a whole? Neither of us have any figures to prove it either way, but the assertion that

Originally posted by SWP member

&#39;Bolsheviks were a party that organised the working class&#39; therefore they must have had a higher percentage of workers than the garrison as a whole.

is little more than idealist, subjectivist nonsense, and not worthy of a so-called Marxist.

Just to finish on the class nature of the rebels lets look at the class composition of the Provisional Revolutionary committee of the Kronstadt soviet:
* Petritchenko, chief quartermaster of the battleship &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Yakovenko, liaison telephonist to the Kronstadt section,
* Ossossov, boiler man in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Arkhipov, chief engineer,
* Perepelkin, electrician in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Patrouchev, chief electrician in the &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Koupolov, head male nurse,
* Verchinin, sailor in the &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Toukin, worker in the &#39;Electrotechnical&#39; factory,
* Romanenko, docks maintenance worker,
* Orechin, headmaster of the Third labour School,
* Valk, sawmill worker,
* Pavlov, worker in a marine mining shop,
* Boikev, head of the building section of the Kronstadt fortress,
* Kilgast, harbour pilot.

It seems like it was composed of workers, and sailors to me. Unlike the Bolshevik party Politburo at the time, which was composed of full members - Kamenev, Krestinsky, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky; candidate members - Bukharin, Zinovyev and Kalinin, only one of whom, Kalinin, had ever been a worker, and two of whom, Trotsky, and Zinovyev, actually came from rich peasant backgrounds.

Anyway enough of class composition, lets look at the programme of the Kronstadt rebels:

Originally posted by Kronstadt Izvestiia #1

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.



Again it doesn&#39;t look that petty bourgeois to me. Admittedly points 11, and 15 do offer concessions to the poor peasantry, and can not be described in any way as Socialist measures. However, it does stress without using hired labor, and by personal labor. If we compare this to the NEP:

Originally posted by Wiki

promulgated by decree on March 21, 1921, "On the Replacement of Foodstuff and Natural Resource Assessment by a Natural Tax." In essence, the decree required the khulacks, middle-class farmers, to give the government a specified amount of any surplus agricultural, raw product, and fodder, and allowed them to keep the remaining surplus to use as capital or to trade for industrial goods. Further decrees refined the policy and expanded it to include some industries.


I find it hard to believe that anybody comparing the two programmes could see the Kronstadt one as the petty bourgeois one. Yes, it was brought in after the Kronstadt uprising, but was actually proposed by Trotsky one year earlier.

After the slanders have been refuted there remains the argument that:

Originally posted by SWP member

What would have happened if the revolt had not been crushed? The only viable alternative to the Bolsheviks power was the whites. They were not totally beated. On hearing news of the revolt they rised lots of money and prepared to land troups near by with the help of the French NAvy. Had the Bolsheviks waited for the ice to melf the Battleships would hve been able to sail up and attack Petrograd.



We seem to be forgetting here that the civil war was over. Lenin himself said at the time that

Originally posted by Lenin

This Kronstadt affair in itself is a very petty incident. It no more threatens to break up the Soviet state than the Irish disorders are threatening to break up the British Empire.

Was the threat of the Whites to be used eternally to discipline the working class?
When the Bolsheviks used force to settle an argument within the working class, they lined up on the side of the state, and capital against the workers, and thus ruined themselves as a party of the proletariat.

Originally posted by SWP member



How does a so-called proletarian movement justify using force against a proletarian movement?
I could turn that argument around to the Kronstadt rebellion. The Bolsheviks didn&#39;t fire the first shot.


I have never heard this one before. Trotsky declared on 6th March that :

Originally posted by Trotsky

&#39;The Workers&#39; and Peasants&#39; Government has decided to reassert its authority without delay, both over Kronstadt and over the mutinous battleships, and to put them at the disposal of the Soviet Republic. I therefore order all those who have raised a hand against the Socialist Fatherland, immediately to lay down their weapons. Those who resist will be disarmed and put at the disposal of the Soviet Command. The arrested commissars and other representatives of the Government must be freed immediately. Only those who surrender unconditionally will be able to count on the clemency of the Soviet Republic. I am meanwhile giving orders that everything be prepared to smash the revolt and the rebels by force of arms. The responsibility for the disasters which will effect the civilian population must fall squarely on the heads of the White Guard insurgents.


and the first military action of the engagement was on the 8th March when a plane dropped a bomb on Kronstadt. All of this before the rebels had fired a shot.

Originally posted by SWP member

In reply to Alf


The fallacy is evident: the Bolshevik party did &#39;fall&#39;, but in a far worse way than being defeated by the Whites - it &#39;fell&#39; into becoming the agent of the counter-revolution in Russia. It &#39;fell&#39; into Stalinism, which was indeed an "anti-proletarian dictatorship", and one which has done far more damage to the cause of communism than any White Guard regime could have done, precisely because it claimed to speak in the name of communism.

Ah the wonders of having hindsight. Unless you are arguing that in 1921 the Bolshevik party was anti-proletarian before Kronstadt or became anti-proletarian because of it. (Which I don&#39;t think you are.) Then this is a bit of a pointless counter argument. If it was still proletarian then it was right to defend itself. You mention left communist opostion to Stalinism but at the time the &#39;workers oppostion&#39; supported the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt.


I am arguing that the Bolshevik party&#39;s actions put them on the side of capital against the working class. The &#39;Worker&#39;s Opposition&#39; did support the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt, but although they represented a protest against the regime, they were actually a bureaucratic opposition based in the trade unions. In return for their support the party banned all factional activity:

Originally posted by Tenth Party Congress. &#39;O sindikalistskom i anarkhistskom uklone v nashei partii&#39; (On the syndicalist and anarchist deviation in our party). Resolutions [email protected] 530

The Congress prescribes the rapid dispersal of all groups without exception which have formed themselves on one platform or another . . . failure to execute this decision of the Congress will lead to immediate and unconditional expulsion from the Party".


As the &#39;Red Army&#39; was crushing the workers at Kronstadt the Party moved to crush any opposition within its own ranks.
Maisankov and other left communists, however, refused to support the suppression of the rebellion, and organised themselves as a faction within the Party which took part in worker&#39;s struggles.

Just one final point on Stepan Petrichenko:

SWP [email protected]

After the revolt was crushed Stepan Petrichenko got in tuch with the whites and joined forces with Wrangal a white general.



Wiki

He stayed in Finland for many years, until he got into a conflict with the Finnish government after supporting Soviet groups during the war between The Soviet Union and Finland in 1940. He was expelled to the Soviet Union, where he was soon arrested and deported to prison camp where he died shortly after.


Hardly seems like the actions of a &#39;white guardist&#39; to me.

Devrim Valerian

[Enragé]

Originally posted by YKTMX+Oct 5 2006, 01:49 PM--> (YKTMX &#064; Oct 5 2006, 01:49 PM)
[email protected] 5 2006, 11:47 AM
are you saying it didnt lead to a "fascist" government anyway?
I don&#39;t follow.

Are you saying the Stalinist dictatorship was "fascist"? [/b]
if you&#39;d call the whites fascist, then yes, i&#39;d be able to call stalin a fascist too.

the whites were everything from monarchists to the bourgeois (anti-october revolution) left.

not fascist.

If you can call the government which would have come out of a victory by the Whites "fascist", then i surely can call Stalin under russia "fascist"

in any case
this is not what this topic is about

point is
The kronstadt fighters were defending the basic tenets of the revolution, even if the timing was bad

[rebelworker]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2006, 04:03 PM

Your a joke YKTMX.

YOU&#39;RE*

Tut tut.
yahh yes typical of your lot.

The intelectual member of the working class party look down apon the woring class member of a petty burgeoise movement.... ;)

how do you guys make all this shit up without laughing :lol:

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by rebelworker+Oct 5 2006, 08:39 PM--> (rebelworker @ Oct 5 2006, 08:39 PM)
[email protected] 5 2006, 04:03 PM

Your a joke YKTMX.

YOU&#39;RE*

Tut tut.
yahh yes typical of your lot.

The intelectual member of the working class party look down apon the woring class member of a petty burgeoise movement.... ;)

how do you guys make all this shit up without laughing :lol: [/b]
Not really. I was brought up in a working class socialist household but I can still use apostrophes properly.

[kaaos_af]

That Spart article is a joke- who do you believe? The Chekist report, which was probably formulated with the help of such Leninist revolutionary tools as red-hot pokers and finger-nail wrenching, or the masses&#39; account- that is the accounts of the revolutionaries themselves of Kronstadt? As for Comrade Lorimer (who I&#39;ve met personally) is full of shit- the sailors of Kronstadt were not petty-bourgeois elements. Their demands were reasonable in the face of the Bolsheviki crackdowns on grass-roots democracy.

Even if it was a &#39;counter-revolutionary conspiracy&#39;, as so many working class actions tend to be under the hammer and sickle, shouldn&#39;t the fact that the demands of the Kronstadt Soviet had the overwhelming support of all the revolutionaries on the island mean anything?

[Leo]

No, you&#39;re (not unsurprisingly) uninformed about the battle. The first time the Red Army tried to re-take the fort, they were routed. They won by, amongst other things, recruiting partisans of the class from the party congress, which was happening at the time:


including among the dead some 15 delegates to the Bolsheviks&#39; Tenth Party Congress.

Bolds added.


So, the fascist rebels mercilessly butcher 10,000 priceless class warriors for the "freedom of the peasantry" and we&#39;re all supposed to roll over onto our bellies crying crocodile tears? I don&#39;t think so.

You have no justifiacation to call them fascists, your arguement is refuted by Lenin himself who says that they did not want the whites. As for the 10,000 I think rebels are also included in this number and, from a military perspective it is something you should expect when attacking a fortress on ice isn&#39;t it? Besides, it was the Bolsheviks who started the offensive.


No, but most of them anti-semitic.

First of all, this is a horribly racist generalization. Secondly, only 10% of the sailors were Ukrainian and 80% was mainstream Russian.


Of course he was "devastated".

So he wasn&#39;t devestated enough after the economically disastorous civil war to stop wartime communism, but he was convinced to end this policy just because of a so called "ordinary white" rebellion? You are contradicting yourself.


It showed, probably more clearly than ever, how fast the revolution was degenerating.

It showed that the revolution had completely degenerated. Even Lenin saw that. Why else would he start capitalist development in Russia if he wasn&#39;t convinced that the revolution had degenerated?


I&#39;m not interested in making anyone appear "saintly". And Trotsky can and did defend himself more than admirably from far more formidable people than yourself.

Yeah, all Trotsky did was defending himself, I would imagine that he would be quite good at it and obviously much better than I am as I&#39;m not into this "my own ego" thing, of course I would also imagine that Trotsky would be quite a boring person because he was so interested in himself.

[YKTMX]

As for the 10,000 I think rebels are also included in this number

If you&#39;d bothered to actually read the post, you&#39;ll see that the number of "rebels" killed was also given - it was 600 by the way.


from a military perspective it is something you should expect when attacking a fortress on ice isn&#39;t it? Besides, it was the Bolsheviks who started the offensive.

Of course, but the rebels were given the chance to stand down, instead they decided to slaughter ten thousand people.


First of all, this is a horribly racist generalization.

Not really, it&#39;s just a historical fact.


Secondly, only 10% of the sailors were Ukrainian and 80% was mainstream Russian.

Those numbers are disputed, as you&#39;ll know. Since neither of us has any knowledge of the primary sources involved, I think we should agree that Ukranian peasants made up a significant proportion of the "rebel" forces.



So he wasn&#39;t devestated enough after the economically disastorous civil war to stop wartime communism, but he was convinced to end this policy just because of a so called "ordinary white" rebellion? You are contradicting yourself.


I don&#39;t I think commented on the reasons for the change in policy did I?


It&#39;s devestating for any socialist that a place like Kronstadt, with its history, could have become a haven for reaction, Whitism, anti-semitism and defeatism. It showed, probably more clearly than ever, how fast the revolution was degenerating.

Nothing in there about NEP or War Communism, is there Leo?

So I&#39;m contradicting myself on a subject I didn&#39;t actually engage with? How odd.



Why else would he start capitalist development in Russia if he wasn&#39;t convinced that the revolution had degenerated?

I don&#39;t think NEP was about "capitalist development". I think it was about making neccessary concessions to the peasantry and about restoring the Soviet economy so that the workers&#39; state could feed the workers.

Of course, for ultra-leftists like you, feeding yourself is secondary to "MARXIST PRINCIPLES". Although, of course, like most people who think like that, you&#39;ve lived such a sheltered life of bourgeois domesticity, you&#39;ve never known hunger.


I&#39;m not into this "my own ego" thing

Christ, I don&#39;t think anyone on this board has a bigger ego than you.

[Leo]

Of course, but the rebels were given the chance to stand down, instead they decided to slaughter ten thousand people.

Blah, blah, blah...


Not really, it&#39;s just a historical fact.

Yeah, and I bet you call all Germans Nazis, isn&#39;t it a historical fact as well?


Those numbers are disputed, as you&#39;ll know. Since neither of us has any knowledge of the primary sources involved, I think we should agree that Ukranian peasants made up a significant proportion of the "rebel" forces.

Yeah cuz all Ukrainians are evil and world would be a lot better place without them right?

Lets just look at the class nature of the rebels lets look at the class composition of the Provisional Revolutionary committee of the Kronstadt soviet:
* Petritchenko, chief quartermaster of the battleship &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Yakovenko, liaison telephonist to the Kronstadt section,
* Ossossov, boiler man in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Arkhipov, chief engineer,
* Perepelkin, electrician in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Patrouchev, chief electrician in the &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Koupolov, head male nurse,
* Verchinin, sailor in the &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Toukin, worker in the &#39;Electrotechnical&#39; factory,
* Romanenko, docks maintenance worker,
* Orechin, headmaster of the Third labour School,
* Valk, sawmill worker,
* Pavlov, worker in a marine mining shop,
* Boikev, head of the building section of the Kronstadt fortress,
* Kilgast, harbour pilot.


Nothing in there about NEP or War Communism, is there Leo?

Oh right, I forgot that you decided not to reply my point. Where was my mind, it was so obvious that you couldn&#39;t reply that.


I don&#39;t think NEP was about "capitalist development". I think it was about making neccessary concessions to the peasantry and about restoring the Soviet economy so that the workers&#39; state could feed the workers.

Bold added. The entire Trotskyist paradigm of the USSR is simply idealist bullshit that has nothing to do with the material reality. "If only Trotsky became the great leader instead of that evil Stalin"... Things don&#39;t work that way, unfortunately.


Of course, for ultra-leftists like you, feeding yourself is secondary to "MARXIST PRINCIPLES".

Saying that capitalism started in Russia with NEP is not trying to attack USSR. It was going to happen, it had to happen. When Lenin had started NEP, he had realized that the revolution was dead, and he was right. The revolution had been degenerated. Now Russia reached modern capitalism after 69 years of development under a command based economy. It could not have been in any other way. Yet calling Kronstadt counter revolutionary while praising NEP is just idealist bullshit and it is caused by your admiration to Trotsky&#39;s cult.


Although, of course, like most people who think like that, you&#39;ve lived such a sheltered life of bourgeois domesticity, you&#39;ve never known hunger.

And you&#39;ve known hunger? :lol: I live in Turkey, and both of my parents and I am unemployed. My fathers retirement money is about 300 pounds a month which is of course not enough for anything. Half of my relatives had been in prison for their political activities and gone through horrible tortures. You&#39;ve lived such a sheltered life of bourgeois domesticity, you&#39;ve never known hunger. After all you are a Cliffite.


Christ

After supporting Nasrallah and his band of reactionary islamic nationalists, did you become a christian now :rolleyes: :P

[GX.]

Yeah cuz all Ukrainians are evil and world would be a lot better place without them right?

Lets just look at the class nature of the rebels lets look at the class composition of the Provisional Revolutionary committee of the Kronstadt soviet:
* Petritchenko, chief quartermaster of the battleship &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Yakovenko, liaison telephonist to the Kronstadt section,
* Ossossov, boiler man in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Arkhipov, chief engineer,
* Perepelkin, electrician in the battleship &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Patrouchev, chief electrician in the &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,
* Koupolov, head male nurse,
* Verchinin, sailor in the &#39;Sebastopol&#39;,
* Toukin, worker in the &#39;Electrotechnical&#39; factory,
* Romanenko, docks maintenance worker,
* Orechin, headmaster of the Third labour School,
* Valk, sawmill worker,
* Pavlov, worker in a marine mining shop,
* Boikev, head of the building section of the Kronstadt fortress,
* Kilgast, harbour pilot.
Again, the real leadership of the Kronstadt mutiny wasn&#39;t concentrated in the Kronstadt soviet, which itself consisted largely of petit bourgeois liberals (remember the slogan "Soviets without Communists"). But anyway, the argument is that most of the mutineers came from peasant/petit-bourgeois backgrounds.


Bold added. The entire Trotskyist paradigm of the USSR is simply idealist bullshit that has nothing to do with the material reality. "If only Trotsky became the great leader instead of that evil Stalin"... Things don&#39;t work that way, unfortunately. Unfortunately for you, that&#39;s not the Trotskyist position at all.

[rebelworker]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 05:21 PM

Again, the real leadership of the Kronstadt mutiny wasn&#39;t concentrated in the Kronstadt soviet, which itself consisted largely of petit bourgeois liberals (remember the slogan "Soviets without Communists"). But anyway, the argument is that most of the mutineers came from peasant/petit-bourgeois backgrounds.

[/quote]
So they are the vanguard of the revolution in 1917, but when they call the Bolsheviks on their bullshit they become rectionaries????????

[Xiao Banfa]

Petritchenko, chief quartermaster of the battleship &#39;Petropavlovsk&#39;,

Yeah, and when he was chased out of the USSR by the Marxist-Leninists, the **** went to Finland to smash trade unionists for the whites.

Have you guys any idea how many reds were killed by artillery on the ice outside Kronstadt? Thousands.

Anyone trying to break the USSR after a fucking civil war in that way is a scumbag who deserves to be in a fucking camp, paying his debt to the workers.

[chimx]

Originally posted by Tino [email protected] 27, 2006 05:00 am
Anyone trying to break the USSR after a fucking civil war in that way is a scumbag who deserves to be in a fucking camp, paying his debt to the workers.
Not meaning to derail the conversation, but why the insistence on romanticizing workers in russia and ignore the historical reality that production in russia was centered around its mainly agrarian economy. what of their debt? it seems naive and completely unrealistic to early 20th century russia.

I believe the actual population of petrograd in 1917 was only around 2 million, but what of the striking in the city during the civil war, despite bolshevik decrees of the illegality of labor strikes? should the "workers" pay debt to themselves in labor camps?

[Xiao Banfa]

I believe the actual population of petrograd in 1917 was only around 2 million, but what of the striking in the city during the civil war, despite bolshevik decrees of the illegality of labor strikes? should the "workers" pay debt to themselves in labor camps?

Your point about the agrarian composition of Russia and the future SSRs is correct but you are neglecting the spearhead role of the urban proletarian which any sensible anarchist supposedly represents (although not exclusively).

Executive power was delegated to the Bolshevik leadership for the practical purpose of winning the civil war ,strikes by workers were strategically pointless.

Who were they striking against? Their own state that they helped bring about?

[chimx]

well i disagree that urban labor "spearheaded" the revolution in russia. the social revolutions in the military and in the country side were just as significant as any of the other urban revolutions. in petrograd, most of the industrial labor had only been working in the city for upwards of a generation or two. it was very rare to get a 3rd generation city dweller. so your "proletariat" was far more tied to the land culturally than you may think.

as far as your question:


Who were they striking against? Their own state that they helped bring about?

yeah, that is exactly it.

[Xiao Banfa]

well i disagree that urban labor "spearheaded" the revolution in russia. the social revolutions in the military and in the country side were just as significant as any of the other urban revolutions

That&#39;s not what I heard, convince me otherwise. If you go by marxist science the russian proletariat was the most revolutionary class.

Why have you not dealt with the fact that the leader of the Kronstadt revolt was a disgusting bourgeois. A white&#33;?

Have some self respect as an Anarchist, who really should be our brothers and sisters in revoluton.

We want the same thing.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Tino [email protected] 31, 2006 10:42 am
Why have you not dealt with the fact that the leader of the Kronstadt revolt was a disgusting bourgeois. A white&#33;?
Can you show me the evidence for that please.


We want the same thing.

No we don&#39;t.

[chimx]

Originally posted by Tino [email protected] 31, 2006 09:42 am
i&#39;Have some self respect as an Anarchist, who really should be our brothers and sisters in revoluton.

We want the same thing.
i don&#39;t know what you mean. i thought we were discussing history. i am not getting emotionally or ideologically involved in the discussion at all. i&#39;m just enjoying a pleasant history debate. what do you mean by self-respect?

if you would like to read some books on the social revolutions underway in russia, than read these titles:

Rex Wade The Russian Revolution, 1917
Marc Ferro The Bolshevik Revolution: A Social History
Leon Trotsky the Hsitory of the Russian Revolution

Christoopher Read has a book called From Tsar to Soviets that has a chapter both on the agrarian revolution as well as the military revolution, but i can&#39;t say i&#39;m a big fan of the book--whose research strikes me as second rate.

--

If there was an officer in Kronstadt using the uprising for his own, despotic ends, than that hardly implies the damnation of all the Kronstadt sailors--that they were sympathetic to the white armies. It could be indicative of their distaste for Bolshevik rule and the subversion of soviet power, or it could tell of their optimism in eventually defeating the white army. I don&#39;t know, as Kronstadt has never been a serious area of interest for me in history.