Kronstadt

[Led Zeppelin]

The debate is Random Precision versus Devrim on the question Was the Bolshevik Party justified in suppressing the Kronstadt Rebellion?, RP in favor, Devrim opposed.

This thread will close in one week, unless of course someone has to make an important point or reply, then the opportunity is given to round up the debate.

No one besides the debaters is allowed to post here. If you do your post will be removed.

The first member in the thread title is the member in favor of the proposition, the second the member opposed, this will be the same for other threads so that it is easier to identify the positions by the titles.

GO!

[Random Precision]

I would like to begin this debate by stating what I do not intend to argue: I do not intend to argue that the Kronstadt sailors were counter-revolutionaries, in the pay of the White generals, or any of the other usual slurs against them. Furthermore, I do not intend to argue that the Bolshevik leadership (men like Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev) were acting in a completely virtuous revolutionary manner; they did indeed make a number of mistakes during the rebellion. Kronstadt represented a tragic situation in which the lines between revolutionary aims and counter-revolutionary actions were often blurred with each other. When analyzing the event nearly 90 years after it happened, we must be careful not to paint one side or the other as virtuous or evil.

My answer to the question of "Was the Bolshevik Party justified in suppressing the Kronstadt Rebellion?" is an emphatic yes. I believe this for several reasons.

First, I would like to say something about the character of the rebellion at Kronstadt. It is quite obvious from the outset that the Kronstadt sailors indeed had revolutionary aims from both their list of demands and the composition of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, among which there was not a single tsarist, priest, or other expected counter-revolutionary. Their initial refusal of aid from White émigré groups, plus the utter lack of evidence for any conspiracy by such groups before the rebellion’s outset, seem to undermine the Bolshevik suggestion that Kronstadt was in the hands of the Whites. On the other hand, it is often said the rebelling sailors had served as a key force of the October 1917 revolution, during which they supported the Bolsheviks against the Provisional Government. It might, and has, been said at this point that the Bolsheviks were betraying their own vanguard during the Kronstadt events. However, the fact is that the sailors at Kronstadt in 1921 were not the same sailors who were stationed there during the October Revolution: by the time of the rebellion, more than three-quarters of the sailors at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin, whereas in 1917 the majority had come from the working class of Petrograd. As Trotsky points out in the polemic Hue and Cry over Kronstadt: “If in 1917-18 the Kronstadt sailor stood considerably higher than the average level of the Red Army, … those sailors who remained in “peaceful” Kronstadt until the beginning of 1921, not fitting in on any of the fronts of the civil war, stood by this time on a level considerably lower…” And as such, the sailors demands can be seen in the main as emanating from the peasant class.

The true aims of the Kronstadt sailors and their source aside, however, there is the matter of mere military necessity. Kronstadt was perfectly situated as a point to attack Petrograd. The winter was nearing its end, and with it the ice connecting Kotlin Island to the mainland would melt, ending any chance for the Bolsheviks to use land troops. The defenders of Kronstadt, already in control of a first-class naval base, could then rush in reinforcements from outside to threaten the mainland, especially Petrograd. With food and other supplies running low in the naval base at this time, it would be hard at this point for the rebels to not accept the offer of aid from émigré organizations that they had previously declined, or even appealing for the assistance of Great Britain, whose navy dominated the Baltic Sea at the time. In this sense, the Bolsheviks did not have any time with which to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. If the sailors appealed for and received outside military aid, there could very well have been assault mounted on Petrograd. If Petrograd had been taken, the way would be open to Moscow, and the return of White or foreign armies. As Trotsky said, this threatened "to turn the wheel of the revolution backwards".

The Socialist-Revolutionary polemic The Truth About Kronstadt rhetorically asks, “For what was Kronstadt crushed? The list of unsatisfied demands clearly shows for what. For the demand for Democracy, for the demand for freely elected Soviets.” While it is true that the Bolshevik political domination was not ended, not much seems to remain of this conventional picture. The abolition of War Communism, the subject of most of the sailors' demands, came not long after the end of the rebellion, and the reforms of the New Economic Policy went much further indeed than the rebels had ever hoped for in their list of demands, allowing trade between the countryside and cities, and even allowing the wealthier peasants to hire labor. That claim of Bolshevik malice must, in the end, be balanced against the real need to put an end to the rebellion from the Bolshevik point of view. The crushing of Kronstadt is more the action of government that was put up against a wall and had no choice but to crush the rebellion, or risk being crushed itself.

[Devrim]

We should be grateful that in his opening post RP decides to spare us from the usual lies and slanders that are generally come up when Kronstadt is discussed. That gratitude though should not blind us to the source of these lies, and slanders.

RP writes that he doesn’t intend to argue that the sailors were ‘counter-revolutionaries, or in pay of the white guards’.

This, however, wasn’t Lenin position at the time. Lenin’s position was very clear “White Guard generals were very active over there. There is ample proof of this”, and he was “quite clear that it is the work of Social Revolutionaries and White Guard émigrés”.

Victor Serge, who is generally taken as a reliable source, writes about these lies in his auto-biography, ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionary’, “At intervals along the deserted streets there were little wall posters announcing treacherous seizure of Kronstadt by the counter-revolutionary general Kozlovski and his accomplices, and summoning the workers to arms. But even before I reached the District Committee headquarters I ran into several comrades who had already turned out, mauser in hand, and they told me that the Kozlovski business was a contemptible lie: the Kronstadt sailors had mutinied, and what we were up against was a naval rebellion led by the Kronstadt Soviet. If anything, that was still more serious; and the worst of it was the paralyzing effect of the official lie upon us. For the party to lie to us this way was something new. 'They had to do it because of the mood of the people,' some of my acquaintances explained. But they were frightened too. The strike had become almost general. Nobody even knew whether the street-cars would run.”

Obviously, as an honest communist Serge was absolutely shocked, and horrified by the fact that his party needed to lie to the working class. The reason given by his acquaintances is all the more shocking, “They had to do it because of the mood of the people”. The fact was that the period leading up to the Kronstadt rebellion was one of massive strikes in Petrograd. The strike wave started at the Troubotchny factory, on 23rd February 1921 where Zinoviev sent the Courante (student officers) against demonstrating workers. Despite this the strike quickly spread to the Baltisky factory, then the Laferma factory as well as a number of others including the Skorokhod shoe factory, the Admiralteiski factory, the Bormann and Metalischeski plants, and finally, on 28th February, the great Putilov works itself.

In fact the great bastions of the working class in Petrograd were striking, and as Serge said “The strike had become almost general. Nobody even knew whether the street-cars would run.”

The Kronstadt uprising began with the sailors attempting to show solidarity with the workers in the city. A delegation was sent to Petrograd to investigate the situation in the factories. It then returned to the navel base to report to the sailors.

The resolution of the meeting to which they reported was met immediately by lies and slanders from the party so as to divide the sailors from the working class and ultimately by naked repression.

RP, despite not arguing that the sailors were ‘tsarist[s], priest[s], or other expected counter-revolutionary’, still puts forward the idea that ‘However, the fact is that the sailors at Kronstadt in 1921 were not the same sailors who were stationed there during the October Revolution’. This seems to go along with all of the other lies that were circulated by the RCP(B) at the time, but has like the rest been thoroughly refuted.

In [I]‘Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy’ , the academic, Israel Getzler, who had access to previous unavailable Soviet Military sources analysed much of the data about Kronstadt. On the two major battleships the Petropavlovsk, where the revolt started, and the Sevastopol, over 90% of sailore for whom the data is available had joined the navy either before or during the revolution.

“... that the veteran 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 Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, both renowned 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 some 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 into the fleet before 1918. Over 80% were drawn from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine, and 9% from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland.
...
Nor, as has so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yasinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920 and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in Petrograd.”

RP then continues to argue that these elements couldn’t be trusted, and that the Bolshevik party had to crush the rebellion to prevent these sailors from calling in the White Guards, or foreign interventionists. His basic point is that the party had to attack a revolutionary section of the working class because it didn’t trust it.

This point of view brings up considerably questions about who was actually in power in Russia. Three years earlier the communist left had warned against the dangers that were present for the revolution. "We stand for the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by the ukases of the captains of industry. . . if the proletariat itself does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for the socialist organisation of labour no one can do this for it and no one can compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; but the soviet power will then be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class (e.g. the peasantry) and by this it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all - something else will be set up - state capitalism”

Their faction was promptly banned by the party, in April 1918. This was the sort of democracy that existed, even for proven communists.

Random Precision concludes by saying that ‘the reforms of the New Economic Policy went much further indeed than the rebels had ever hoped for in their list of demands, allowing trade between the countryside and cities, and even allowing the wealthier peasants to hire labor.’ Yet these were not the things that the Kronstadt Soviet called for in fact they were unequivocally against them. In two points of the resolution they address the peasant question;

“11. To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to the land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means, that is without employing hired labour;
…
15. To permit free handicrafts production by one's own labour.”

There is no call here for ‘allowing the wealthier peasants to hire labour’. Nor were there any calls for letting the old bosses operate their factories again, something else which the NEP did.

The Party ended up relying on the peasantry, and the petit bourgeoisie against the proletariat. This two the communist left had warned against years earlier;

“the introduction of labour discipline in connection with the restoration of capitalist management of industry cannot really increase the productivity of labour". It would "diminish the class initiative, activity and organisation of the proletariat. It threatens to enslave the working class. It will arouse discontent among the backward elements as well as among the vanguard of the proletariat. In order to introduce this system in the face of the hatred prevailing at present among the proletariat against the 'capitalist saboteurs' the Communist Party would have to rely on the petty - bourgeoisie, as against the workers". It would "ruin itself as the party of the proletariat”.

And ruin itself as the party of the proletariat it did. Kronstadt was crushed, and the Petrograd strikes broken as a necessary prerequisite for the implementation of the NEP, which was rightly known amongst workers as the New Exploitation of the Proletariat.

RP finishes by stating that “The crushing of Kronstadt is more the action of government that was put up against a wall and had no choice but to crush the rebellion, or risk being crushed itself.” On this I agree. The question is which class interests the RCP(B) represented.
I would say clear that it was those of capital, and the state, against those of the workers.

Devrim

[Random Precision]

Devrim's post is long on critiques of the Bolsheviks from the purest revolutionary stance, yet surprisingly short when it comes to dealing with the objective realities of the situation. I would like to know most of all what Devrim would have proposed for the Bolsheviks as their course of action in this most difficult situation. Quite frankly, I don't even see the point of discussing that course of action, unless Devrim is proposing a sound alternative.

Nevertheless, I will take a few words to address his criticism of the Bolsheviks. The Civil War had devastated the class-conscious proletariat of Russia, and with it the vanguard of the workers, the Bolshevik Party. The reward which the Bolsheviks received for pursuing the revolution to a victorious conclusion was to rule a country devastated by seven years of war and famine, in which their rule was made contradictory by the fact that the proletariat, the class which formed their base as they took power, no longer existed in any meaningful way. Obviously, the Bolshevik leaders, especially Lenin, were in a very difficult situation here, and as they had just emerged from a vicious civil war, had the best of reasons to make assumptions (even wrong ones) about the intent of the Kronstadt sailors.

More generally, this difficult situation obviously required a quite different approach than that used previously, war communism. But their new approach also comes in for criticism by Devrim as the "new exploitation of the proletariat". In this he misses the point of the NEP: it was designed as a temporary strategic retreat by an isolated revolutionary party ruling over a severely backward nation. The necessity of this policy was demonstrated by the uprising in Kronstadt, as well as circumstances all across the country; in the month of February 1921 there were no less than 116 separate peasant revolts in Russia. Contrary to the expectations of the Left Communists, a revolution does not continually advance but is often forced to retreat. Given that Devrim obviously opposes war communism, I am once again curious as to what alternative he would have proposed given the objective circumstances of the Bolshevik Party.

I am glad that Devrim has quoted Victor Serge on Kronstadt. For those not familiar with his career, Serge was an anarchist who became a Bolshevik after the events of October 1917, and remained in the party even after Kronstadt, until the expulsion of the United Opposition, of which he was a member. It is precisely his conclusions on the Kronstadt affair that I wish to draw attention to (and which, one notices, Devrim has not bothered to mention). I quote from Memoirs of a Revolutionary (emphasis mine):


After much hesitation, my Communist friends and I finally sided with the party. It was a painful step to take, and this is why we did it: the Kronstadt sailors, we reasoned, were right. They had begun a new freedom-giving revolution which would lead to popular democracy. Certain Anarchists who had not outgrown the illusions of childhood gave it a name: the 'Third Revolution'. The country, by this time, was in bad shape. Production had come virtually to a stop. Reserves of all kinds had been used up, including even the reserves of nervous energy which sustain popular morale. The workers' elite, formed in the course of the struggles under the old regime, had literally been decimated. The party, its membership swollen by the influx of bandwagon riders, inspired little confidence. And there was nothing left of the other parties but tiny cadres, of doubtful ability. Some of them, to be sure, might in a few weeks' time have put on flesh, but only by admitting en masse the soured, the bitter, the exasperated - very different types from the 1917 enthusiasts of the young revolution. Soviet democracy had lost its vitality. lt lacked leadership. It had no organisational basis. And it had no defenders, except among the hungry and desperate masses of the people.

The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected Soviets into the slogan 'Soviets without Communists!' If the Bolshevik dictatorship were to fall, we felt, the result would be chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the emigres, and, finally, another dictatorship, of necessity anti-proletarian. The dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinn showed that the emigres were thinking in precisely these terms. (These dispatches, by the way, strengthened the determination of the leaders to put down the Kronstadt rebellion quickly, and without regard to the cost.) Our thinking about all this, had, furthermore, a factual basis. We knew of fifty rallying-points for peasant insurrections in European Russia alone. We knew that Antonov, the proponent of Revolutionary Socialism of the Right, was active in the area south of Moscow, and that he was preaching both the destruction of the Soviet regime and the reinstatement of the Constituent Assembly. He had at his command, in and around Tambov, a skillfully organized army made up of several tens of thousands of peasants, and he had negotiated with the Whites. (Tukachevsky liquidated this Vendee towards the middle of 1921.)

In these circumstances, the party should have beat a retreat by admitting that the existing economic set-up was indefensibe. It should not, however, have given up power. 'In spite of its faults, in spite of its abuses, in spite of everyrthing,' I wrote at the time, ' the Bolshevik party, because of its size, its insight, its stability, is the organized force to which we must pin our faith. The Revolution has at its disposal no other weapon, and it is no longer capable of genuine renewal from within'.

While I call the readers of this debate to pay close attention to his defense of the Bolshevik Party, as it mirrors my own, Serge brings up several important points not related to the Bolsheviks which I wish to deal with in detail:

First, there are the goals of the Kronstadt sailors. Serge writes, "If the Bolshevik dictatorship were to fall, we felt, the result would be chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the emigres, and, finally, another dictatorship, of necessity anti-proletarian." The very demand for "Soviets without Communists" is indicative of this. Without the Communists, who would be left in the Soviets? Mensheviks? Socialist-Revolutionaries?

So the Kronstadt sailors wished to make a revolution, to free the country of the Bolsheviks and their "commisarocracy", returning to pure Soviet democracy. Fine, let us assume that. But, one may ask, with what army did they plan to do this with? The Kronstadters, of course, had not nearly enough force to pose a military challenge to the "commisarocracy" on their own. But the Russian émigré associations were willing to muster all their influence to ensure the rebellion against the Bolsheviks was successful. Their attempts to reach Kronstadt with military supplies and food, as well as their calls on imperialist Britain and France to support the Kronstadters in a renewed assault on the Russian workers state are detailed in Paul Avrich's book Kronstadt 1921, which is generally considered the best academic work on the subject in English.

It also must not be forgotten that Kronstadt was a fortress in the Baltic Sea, which was at the time dominated by the British. Had the Bolsheviks delayed assaulting the fortress, the sailors would have been placed in an interesting position indeed. Would they accept isolation and eventually defeat by the Bolsheviks, or would they pursue their overthrow, entering Petrograd backed by the guns of the Royal Navy? We will never know what choice they would have made, but it was for this very reason the Bolsheviks could not afford to delay assaulting Kronstadt. Was this the victory the sailors had hoped for? No, but circumstances dictated it the only victory they could have.

An interesting tidbit here is that the leader of Kronstadt's Provisional Revolutionary Committee, Stepan Petrichenko, after fleeing to Finland, openly associated with the White guards and endorsed the need for a "temporary military dictatorship" to replace Bolshevik rule.

The objective reality of the situation, which Devrim cannot and does not deny, is that the victory of the Kronstadt sailors in the name of pure Soviet power would be followed by the victory of the forces of reaction. This reality was what made the rebellion at Kronstadt so incredibly tragic.

[Devrim]

RP accuses me of being long on the purest revolutionary words, yet surprisingly short when it comes to dealing with the objective realities of the situation. He asks what course of action I would have proposed the Bolsheviks took in this situation.

To me it seems that RP’s method relies more on some sort of ‘alternative history scenario’. Than on a materialist analysis of history, which is something that I will return to latter in this post. What happened happened, and there is no real point in saying, ‘they should have done this’, or ‘they should have done that’. What is important is to understand what happened, why it happened, and what can be learnt about it for today, and the future.

One of the things that did happen was that the Bolsheviks provoked a crisis. The Kronstadt Soviet elected a new committee, and passed a resolution. Surely something that it was entitled to do. Let’s look at how the Bolshevik party responded. Once again we will let Serge tell it;

“ The Petrograd Pravda informed its readers that Kouzmin, Commissar for the navy and the army, had been manhandled during his imprisonment at Kronstadt, and had narrowly escaped summary execution - on written orders from the counter-revolutionaries. I knew Kouzmin, an energetic, hard-working soldier, a teacher of military science, grey from tip to toe; his uniform, even his wrinkled face were grey. He 'escaped' from Kronstadt and turned up at Smollny.
'It is hard to believe.' I said to him , 'that they intended to shoot you. Did you really see any such order?'
He looked embarrassed, and did not answer for a moment.
'Oh, one always exaggerates a bit. There was a threatening note.'
In short, he had let his tongue run away with him. That was the whole story. The Kronstadt rebels had spilled not a single drop of blood, had gone no further than to arrest a few Communist officials, all of whom had been well treated. Most of the Communists, several hundred in all, had gone over to the rebels, which showed clearly enough how weak the party had become at its base. Nevertheless, someone had cooked up this story about hairbreadth escapes from the firing squad!”

So what happened was that the workers, soldiers, and sailors legitimately expressed their grievances, and the local Bolshevik party leaders lied about the events and turned it into an uprising. It will come as no surprise for readers to learn that the Bolsheviks also fired the first shoots, and that many of the troops who they brought in to suppress the ‘uprising’ were Central Asians who they told that they were fighting the German imperialists.

I don’t think that there is any point in saying that the Bolsheviks should have done this, or done that. It is clear though that they did not in anyway attempt to open a dialogue with workers who had, as RP says, ‘revolutionary aims’.

Readers can make their own decisions about whether armed force is the best way to settle debates within the working class.

When he attempts to answer the criticisms that I make of the Bolshevik party it turns out that his statements are nonsense.

He claims that ‘the proletariat…no longer existed in any meaningful way’. The Russian proletariat had been devastated by the civil war. This is obviously true. To say that in no longer existed in any material way is, however, a falsehood. To avoid any controversy over the figures here, I will use those that come from RP’s own tendency even though I, and most historians today consider them to be exaggerated. Tony Cliff wrote that “the number of industrial workers in Russia, always a minority, fell from 3 million in 1917 to 1,240,000, a decline of 58.7%, in 1921-22”. Terrible, terrible losses, yes (also note that this figure goes to 1922, not February 1921), but not crushed out of existence, the working class in Russia still existed in 1921.

One has to ask oneself what the reason for these exaggerations is. It is like in RP’s first post when he told us that the Kronstadt sailors were not the same sailors as in 1917, and then we saw that they were. The reason is simple. If the working class had ceased to exist then the RCP(B)’s actions could be justified as acting in defence of the historic interests of the working class. This, however, is not the case. The working class did exist, and in 1921 in Petrograd it was struggling in the work place and in the barracks against the state’s actions. Where were the working class in Petrograd in February 1921? They were on the picket lines, at demonstrations, and in mass meetings. The rule of the party by 1921 is not the dictatorship of the class, but the dictatorship over the class.

He then comments on how I refer to the NEP, as the ‘New Exploitation of the Proletariat’, which is to sort of miss the point a little. It was not myself who coined this term. It was a phrase, which was common amongst Russian workers, and even amongst members of the communist party. Factions in the RCP(B) clearly said this about the NEP, yet RP tries to imply that it is just some phrase that I came up with.

The long quote from Serge that follows this explaining why he chose to remain in the party adds little to the debate. Although Serge was considered to be an honest reporter of the events, he is someone whose political judgement even the Trotskyists had little time for. It is merely the opinion of one man.

RP then talks about the goals of the Kronstadt sailors. Let’s see exactly what he says about this;

“First, there are the goals of the Kronstadt sailors. Serge writes, "If the Bolshevik dictatorship were to fall, we felt, the result would be chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the emigres, and, finally, another dictatorship, of necessity anti-proletarian." The very demand for "Soviets without Communists" is indicative of this. Without the Communists, who would be left in the Soviets? Mensheviks? Socialist-Revolutionaries?”

Whether this is deliberate, or not this comes across as implying that the Kronstadt sailors were demanding ‘Soviets without Communists’. They weren’t, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they were. Let us look at the extract from Serge where the phrase comes from;

“The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected Soviets into the slogan 'Soviets without Communists!’”.

So Soviets without communists is how the ‘popular counter-revolution translated the demand’, not the goal of the Kronstadt sailors.
In actual fact the Kronstadt sailors allowed the Bolshevik members in Kronstadt access to their press, and included people who were still members of the party on investigatory committees. Here is an extract from the RCP’s Kronstadt Bureau in the second issue of "Izvestiia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Soldiers and Workers of the town of Kronstadt";

“The moment currently being endured demands of us special caution, restraint and tact. Our party has not betrayed, and is not betraying, the working class, in the defense of which it has stood for many years. The historic course of political events requires us, in the interests of all laborers, to be at our places, and to carry on our daily work without any stoppages. We must remember that the smallest weakening or break in work, in any section of our economic life, brings about worse living conditions for the working class and peasantry.
May every comrade of our party be imbued with an understanding of the moment being endured. Do not believe the absurd rumors that Communist leaders are supposedly being shot, and that Communists are preparing for armed action in Kronstadt. They are spread by a clearly provocative element, which wishes to provoke bloodshed. These are lies and absurdities, and it is on such as these that the agents of the Entente, working to achieve the overthrow of Soviet power, wish to play.”

So these people who supposedly wanted ‘Soviets without communists’ are the same people who included communists on their committees, and gave the RCP access to their press. These are the people who as Serge reports ‘died shouting. 'Long live the World Revolution!'. Some even died with the cry: 'Long Live the Communist International!’.

It seems quite shameful that after starting his opening post by saying he wasn’t going to argue ‘any of the … usual slurs’ about the Kronstadt sailors. That he is crediting them with the slogans of the reaction.

Then we come to the mainstay of RP’s argument, which is to sum it up very briefly, that the Kronstadt sailors, the elite of the revolution (and as we have seen over 90% of these sailors were the same), a group of workers, soldiers and sailors who as RP clearly admits ‘had revolutionary aims’, could have called upon the British for aid.

He provides no evidence at all to suggest that they would have done it. He just suggests that this was possible. Why these sailors would call upon the Entente isn’t explained at all. It is the sort of ‘alternative history’ view of Marxism as opposed to historical materialism, which was evident earlier.

Incidentally, the interesting ‘tidbit’ that RP closes with is another of the ‘usual slurs’. Stepan Petrichenko did not ‘openly associat[e] with the White guards’. He did associate with SRs, and was eventually deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940. Obviously the actions of a ‘White guard‘.

Devrim

[Random Precision]

I am sorry for letting this debate wait for so long. As I explained to Devrim, I have started a new job at which I've been doing a lot of overtime, working anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day. Once my response is done I will edit it into this post. I thank Devrim and our readers for being patient with me.

EDIT: Alright, it's been nearly three weeks since Devrim's reply above. It's become clear to me that I no longer have the time nor energy to pursue these debates, especially not with Devrim, whose arguments would require a great deal of research on my part to refute. So, I'm content to chalk this one up as a loss, although we can go through the whole voting thing if it's necessary. I'll just say a few words in response first.

First, Devrim makes a good case as to the the recalcitrance of Kosygin et al to engage the sailors productively. I think a great deal of their hostility can be explained not be their inbred hostility to revolution, but rather by the fact they had just been through a long and vicious civil war, and the threat of the Whites returning seemed very real still at that point.

Second, on the subject of my reliance on "alternate history", when looking at historical events we must try to understand the motivations of our subjects. What could happen was a major motivator of the Bolsheviks' actions when they were trying to deal with Kronstadt, and as such we must take those possibilities into account when judging to what extent their actions were justified

As for Petrichenko, I do not know which Socialist-Revolutionaries in Finland he was involved with. Nevertheless, Paul Avrich repeats the claim that he was involved with the Whites in Kronstadt 1921, along with several other members of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee who managed to escape. I apologize if this information was mistaken, but I had no reason to disbelieve it.

[Led Zeppelin]

Since you're content in taking it up as a loss I don't think there's much point in going to a poll, so I'll just start a thread for documentation purposes and then move this thread to History.

[Devrim]

As I explained to Devrim, I have started a new job at which I've been doing a lot of overtime, working anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day. Once my response is done I will edit it into this post. I thank Devrim and our readers for being patient with me.

EDIT: Alright, it's been nearly three weeks since Devrim's reply above. It's become clear to me that I no longer have the time nor energy to pursue these debates, especially not with Devrim, whose arguments would require a great deal of research on my part to refute.

That is fine. It takes time to construct a decent argument (instead of the general abuse that usually passes for it on RevLeft).

For me it was interesting, much more interesting than it would have been with somebody who completely based their arguments on lies and slanders. I think on the whole you did try to avoid that, and presented a strong argument.

It would be interesting to see what others think.

Devrim

[Devrim]

So none of the 'Leninists' who go on about counter revolutionaries at Krondstadt have any comments to make on this.

Devrim

[Qwerty489]

Petite-bourgeois liberal uprisings are of little concern to me, Lenin was in the right to crush that stupid anarchist debating society called ' Kronstadt'.

[RedAnarchist]

Petite-bourgeois liberal uprisings are of little concern to me, Lenin was in the right to crush that stupid anarchist debating society called ' Kronstadt'.

Yeah, this is the grown up forum. The kiddy section is over there. Come back when you can make an intelligent and coherent post.

[Devrim]

Petite-bourgeois liberal uprisings are of little concern to me, Lenin was in the right to crush that stupid anarchist debating society called ' Kronstadt'.

Why do you refer to Krondstadt as an anarchist uprising when it so plainly wasn't. The anarchists themselves admitted they had very little influence there.

What was 'Petite-bourgeois' about it. The class composition was massivly proletarian.

What do you even mean by liberal?

Devrim

[Qwerty489]

Why do you refer to Krondstadt as an anarchist uprising when it so plainly wasn't. The anarchists themselves admitted they had very little influence there.

What was 'Petite-bourgeois' about it. The class composition was massivly proletarian.

What do you even mean by liberal?

Devrim
It was an uprising against the dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore it was counter-revolutionary.

[Devrim]

It was an uprising against the dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore it was counter-revolutionary.

What this uprising actually involved initially was passing a motion in a Soviet. Certainly the motion itself had a more left wing orientation than that which the RCP (B) was about to embark on, and didn't advocate nearly as many concessions to the bourgeoisie. If workers couldn't do that I would suggest that there wasn't any dictatorship of the proletariat.

Devrim

[RedAnarchist]

It was an uprising against the dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore it was counter-revolutionary.

How does that answer any of his questions? He didn't ask if it was counter-revolutionary or not.

[Unicorn]

So none of the 'Leninists' who go on about counter revolutionaries at Krondstadt have any comments to make on this.
About 2000 veterans of the Kronstadt Rebellion settled to Finland after the war. In June 1941, they were conscripted to the Finnish army and invaded the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany. This demonstrates that they did not have socialist convictions.

Source:
Wessman Erkki,
Kronstadtin kapina 1921 ja sen perilliset Suomessa.

[RedAnarchist]

About 2000 veterans of the Kronstadt Rebellion settled to Finland after the war. In June 1941, they were conscripted to the Finnish army and invaded the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany. This demonstrates that they did not have socialist convictions.

Source:
Wessman Erkki,
Kronstadtin kapina 1921 ja sen perilliset Suomessa.

I thought Finland was just an anti-Soviet, nationalistic co-belligerent of Nazi Germany rather than an actual pro-Nazi state?

[Unicorn]

I thought Finland was just an anti-Soviet, nationalistic co-belligerent of Nazi Germany rather than an actual pro-Nazi state?
Yes, but the Kronstadt veterans were Russians who sided with Finland and Germany. Even normal Russian nationalists and non-communists wanted to defend Russia against Nazi aggression and admittedly many of them fought bravely. There were millions of such people in 1941.

There were few Russian collaborationists during the Great Patriotic War and those people were scumbag Fascist sympathizers of the first order. Kronstadt sailors who fought in the war sided with Finland and Nazi Germany as a rule.

[Dimentio]

Yes, but the Kronstadt veterans were Russians who sided with Finland and Germany. Even normal Russian nationalists and non-communists wanted to defend Russia against Nazi aggression and admittedly many of them fought bravely. There were millions of such people in 1941.

There were few Russian collaborationists during the Great Patriotic War and those people were scumbag Fascist sympathizers of the first order. Kronstadt sailors who fought in the war sided with Finland and Nazi Germany as a rule.

Few?

[Devrim]

About 2000 veterans of the Kronstadt Rebellion settled to Finland after the war. In June 1941, they were conscripted to the Finnish army and invaded the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany. This demonstrates that they did not have socialist convictions.

Source:
Wessman Erkki,
Kronstadtin kapina 1921 ja sen perilliset Suomessa.

I am obviously not familiar with the source as I presume it is in Finnish. However, according to official Soviet sources between 6,000 and 8,000 men fled to Finland. On this issue both Soviet and anarchist sources agree (Ida Met gives 8,000) so it can be considered quite credible. The figure of 2,000 seems a bit at odds with those figures.

Certainly not all of the refugees were conscripted. Stepan Petrichenko, the Chairman of Kronstadt's Provisional Revolutionary Committee, was, for example, deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940. Of course the idea all the Krondstadt sailors who fled to Finland were conscripted is completely absurd. June 1941 was twenty years later. Many would have left the country, died, or simply been too old.

Finally, many workers were conscripted to armies (including the German one) during WWII. This in no way suggests that they had not been socialists twenty years earlier.

Devrim

[Unicorn]

I am obviously not familiar with the source as I presume it is in Finnish. However, according to official Soviet sources between 6,000 and 8,000 men fled to Finland. On this issue both Soviet and anarchist sources agree (Ida Met gives 8,000) so it can be considered quite credible. The figure of 2,000 seems a bit at odds with those figures.
Between 6000 and 8000 men fled to Finland. Around 2000 of them settled in Finland permanently.



Certainly not all of the refugees were conscripted. Stepan Petrichenko, the Chairman of Kronstadt's Provisional Revolutionary Committee, was, for example, deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940.
Your facts are wrong. Petrichenko was a GPU agent from 1922 to his arrest by Finnish authorities in 1941. He was deported to the Soviet Union in 1945 as per the armistice agreement and died there in a labor camp.
Source: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Петриченко%2C_Степан_Максимович



Of course the idea all the Krondstadt sailors who fled to Finland were conscripted is completely absurd. June 1941 was twenty years later. Many would have left the country, died, or simply been too old.
The sailors were young men in 1921 and Finland recruited even the men born in the 1890s because of the manpower shortage. The sailors who had settled to Finland had gained the Finnish citizenship by 1941.



Finally, many workers were conscripted to armies (including the German one) during WWII. This in no way suggests that they had not been socialists twenty years earlier.
In Finland conscientious objectors faced just prison and were freed after the war. It is understandable if a Finnish worker fights for the Finnish army but it is not excusable if a Russian worker fights for the Finnish army from the socialist point of view. The Russian Kronstadt sailors fighting for the Finnish army were guilty of treason. It was very rare that a Russian person, a socialist or not, betrayed his country during the Great Patriotic War in this way.

[Unicorn]

Few?
There were Russian traitors who sided with Nazi Germany during the war but their amount was very small compared to the number of soldiers in the Red Army.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

[Dimentio]

Well, one entire Soviet Army defected to the Germans, and over one million Soviet citizens collaborated with the invaders. Even interrupt_00h admitted that during his stalinist days.

[Unicorn]

Well, one entire Soviet Army defected to the Germans
What was the said Army? It didn't exist.



and over one million Soviet citizens collaborated with the invaders. Even interrupt_00h admitted that during his stalinist days
There were different kinds of collaborationists. Those who fought with arms were very rare and most of them did just labor. The recruitment of collaborationists focused on various national minorities rather than Russians who very rarely sided with Germans.

[Dimentio]

One general Vlassov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vlasov) and his army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Movement) for example.

[Unicorn]

One general Vlassov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vlasov) and his army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Movement) for example.
:laugh:

Your comment was silly. An "entire Soviet Army" of course did not defect to the Germans. There were many divisions in the armies and an army had the strength of over 100 000 men.

Vlasov's "army" did not actually exceed the strength of a division. The men in his army did not come from a single unit that defected but from the whole mass of millions of POWs the Germans captured. Some White emigres also volunteered.

[Dimentio]

An army could also be considered "a lot of people" in the informal sense of the word. Could you not concede that many Soviet citizens were in fact not so delighted with Stalin?

[Unicorn]

An army could also be considered "a lot of people" in the informal sense of the word.
The small number of people who were in Vlasov's army were not "a lot".



Could you not concede that many Soviet citizens were in fact not so delighted with Stalin?
Although some Russians disliked Stalin they generally despised and feared the Nazis far more. Because the Nazis had genocidal policies collaborationism on the Eastern Front was very rare.

[Red October]

Vlasov's army never reached full strength, but those were only the volunteers who had been equipped. By that point in the war, Germany was so disorganized that they did not have the time or resources to equip the thousands who volunteered for the "Russian Liberation Army". Also, the numbers in Vlasov's division does not count the many other Russian soldiers who fought in regular Wehrmacht units. A Russian unit of many thousands also fought in the Balkans on behalf of Germany.

[Dimentio]

Yes I know, and that's what saved Stalin's ass. If the Germans had been smart and treated the Soviet population well, several times more Soviet citizens would have defected.

[Devrim]

Certainly not all of the refugees were conscripted. Stepan Petrichenko, the Chairman of Kronstadt's Provisional Revolutionary Committee, was, for example, deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940.

Your facts are wrong. Petrichenko was a GPU agent from 1922 to his arrest by Finnish authorities in 1941. He was deported to the Soviet Union in 1945 as per the armistice agreement and died there in a labor camp.
Source: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Петриченко%2C_Степан_Максимович (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BD%D 0%BA%D0%BE%2C_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD _%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2% D0%B8%D1%87)


My facts aren't wrong nor do they contradict what you are saying. I think maybe that you have misunderstood the English syntax. It reads 'deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940', not 'deported in 1940 from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter'.


In Finland conscientious objectors faced just prison and were freed after the war. It is understandable if a Finnish worker fights for the Finnish army but it is not excusable if a Russian worker fights for the Finnish army from the socialist point of view. The Russian Kronstadt sailors fighting for the Finnish army were guilty of treason. It was very rare that a Russian person, a socialist or not, betrayed his country during the Great Patriotic War in this way.

In our opinion 'the Great Patriotic War' was an inter imperialist war. We refuse to blame workers who are conscripts. The talk of treason is that of bourgeois nationalism.

Devrim

[Unicorn]

My facts aren't wrong nor do they contradict what you are saying. I think maybe that you have misunderstood the English syntax. It reads 'deported from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter war in 1940', not 'deported in 1940 from Finland for supporting pro-Soviet groups in the Winter'.
He was arrested in 1941 for spying on the Germans in Finland. There were no pro-Soviet groups of significance in Finland during the Winter War.

But please, tell me why your hero Petrichenko became an agent for the Soviet Secret Police GPU in 1922? Could it be because Petrichenko realized that the whole rebellion was a big mistake and Lenin and later Stalin were indeed leading the USSR towards socialism?



In our opinion 'the Great Patriotic War' was an inter imperialist war.
That position is absurd.

[Devrim]

He was arrested in 1941 for spying on the Germans in Finland. There were no pro-Soviet groups of significance in Finland during the Winter War.

Whether they were significant or not that is what he was arrested for. according to Soviet sources.


But please, tell me why your hero Petrichenko became an agent for the Soviet Secret Police GPU in 1922? Could it be because Petrichenko realized that the whole rebellion was a big mistake and Lenin and later Stalin were indeed leading the USSR towards socialism?

Not my hero at all, nor someone I know that much about, especially his ideas.. He came up on this thread, first as it was alleged that he was a White Guard, which I think it is very clear he was not.

Then as an example that not all of the Kronstadt workers joined the Finish army.

Whether he joined the GPU in 1922 I have no idea, nor have you provided any evidence. He was still active in SR circles in 1926 Though this doesn't disprove your point. He could have been a GPU agent.



That position is absurd.

In my opinion much less than yours which claims that the Soviet Union under Stalin had something to do with socialism.

Back to the point though, I notice that you haven't addressed any of the arguments about Kronstadt at all. You have just tried to imply things from the activities of a smaller number of the krondstadt workers twenty years later.

Devrim

[Unicorn]

Whether they were significant or not that is what he was arrested for. according to Soviet sources.
The Finns arrested him in 1941, not during the Winter War. The Soviets arrested him in 1945 after he was deported "for participating in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization". What Soviet sources are you talking about? There should be no official Soviet record of his arrest by the bourgeois Finnish police.



Not my hero at all, nor someone I know that much about, especially his ideas.. He came up on this thread, first as it was alleged that he was a White Guard, which I think it is very clear he was not.

Then as an example that not all of the Kronstadt workers joined the Finish army.

Whether he joined the GPU in 1922 I have no idea, nor have you provided any evidence. He was still active in SR circles in 1926 Though this doesn't disprove your point. He could have been a GPU agent.
See this source:

http://www.hronos.km.ru/biograf/bio_p/petrichenko_sm.html



In my opinion much less than yours which claims that the Soviet Union under Stalin had something to do with socialism.

Back to the point though, I notice that you haven't addressed any of the arguments about Kronstadt at all. You have just tried to imply things from the activities of a smaller number of the krondstadt workers twenty years later.
I don't have anything else to add to what Lenin and Trotsky wrote at the time.

[Devrim]

Unicorn, the source is Russian. I can't read it. I think you missed the point earlier. I didn't say he was arrested during the winter war. I said he was arrested for his activities in the winter war.

I don't think you are interested in discussing the issue of Krondstadt at all though. Just in making insinuations about some of the participants.

Devrim

[Unicorn]

Unicorn, the source is Russian. I can't read it.
Use Google Translator. It allows you to read Russian sources.



I think you missed the point earlier. I didn't say he was arrested during the winter war. I said he was arrested for his activities in the winter war.

I don't think you are interested in discussing the issue of Krondstadt at all though. Just in making insinuations about some of the participants.
I just added my 2 cents. John Wright's article sums up my own views:
http://www.marx.org/history/etol/writers/wright/1938/02/kronstadt.htm