                       What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?

   The Kronstadt rebellion took place in the first weeks of March, 1921.
   Kronstadt was (and is) a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of
   Finland. Traditionally, it has served as the base of the Russian Baltic
   Fleet and to guard the approaches to the city of St. Petersburg (which
   during the first world war was re-named Petrograd, then later
   Leningrad, and is now St. Petersburg again) thirty-five miles away.

   The Kronstadt sailors had been in the vanguard of the revolutionary
   events of 1905 and 1917. In 1917, Trotsky called them the "pride and
   glory of the Russian Revolution." The inhabitants of Kronstadt had been
   early supporters and practitioners of soviet power, forming a free
   commune in 1917 which was relatively independent of the authorities. In
   the words of Israel Getzler, an expert on Kronstadt, "it was in its
   commune-like self-government that Red Kronstadt really came into its
   own, realising the radical, democratic and egalitarian aspirations of
   its garrison and working people, their insatiable appetite for social
   recognition, political activity and public debate, their pent up
   yearning for education, integration and community. Almost overnight,
   the ship's crews, the naval and military units and the workers created
   and practised a direct democracy of base assemblies and committees."
   [Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 248] In the centre of the fortress an enormous
   public square served as a popular forum holding as many as 30,000
   persons. The Kronstadters "proved convincingly the capacity of ordinary
   people to use their 'heads, too' in governing themselves, and managing
   Russia's largest navel base and fortress." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 250]

   The Russian Civil War had ended in Western Russia in November 1920 with
   the defeat of General Wrangel in the Crimea. All across Russia popular
   protests were erupting in the countryside and in the towns and cities.
   Peasant uprisings were occurring against the Communist Party policy of
   grain requisitioning (a policy the Bolsheviks and their argued had been
   thrust upon them by the circumstances but which involved extensive,
   barbaric and counter-productive repression). In urban areas, a wave of
   spontaneous strikes occurred and in late February a near general strike
   broke out in Petrograd.

   On February 26th, in response to these events in Petrograd, the crews
   of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency
   meeting and agreed to send a delegation to the city to investigate and
   report back on the ongoing strike movement. On their turn two days
   later, the delegates informed their fellow sailors of the strikes (with
   which they had full sympathy with) and the government repression
   directed against them. Those present at this meeting on the
   Petropavlovsk then approved a resolution which raised 15 demands which
   included free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press,
   assembly and organisation to workers, peasants, anarchists and
   left-socialists (see [1]section 3 for full details). Of the 15 demands,
   only two were related to what Marxists like to term the
   "petty-bourgeoisie" (the peasantry and artisans) and these demanded
   "full freedom of action" for all peasants and artisans who did not hire
   labour. Like the Petrograd workers, the Kronstadt sailors demanded the
   equalisation of wages and the end of roadblock detachments restricting
   travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city.

   A mass meeting of fifteen to sixteen thousand people was held in Anchor
   Square on March 1st and what has became known as the Petropavlovsk
   resolution was passed after the "fact-finding" delegation had made its
   report. Only two Bolshevik officials voted against the resolution. At
   this meeting it was decided to send another delegation to Petrograd to
   explain to the strikers and the city garrison of the demands of
   Kronstadt and to request that non-partisan delegates be sent by the
   Petrograd workers to Kronstadt to learn first-hand what was happening
   there. This delegation of thirty members was arrested by the Bolshevik
   government.

   As the term of office of the Kronstadt soviet was about to expire, the
   mass meeting also decided to call a "Conference of Delegates" for March
   2nd. This was to discuss the manner in which the new soviet elections
   would be held. This conference consisted of two delegates from the
   ship's crews, army units, the docks, workshops, trade unions and Soviet
   institutions. This meeting of 303 delegates endorsed the Petropavlovsk
   resolution and elected a five-person "Provisional Revolutionary
   Committee" (this was enlarged to 15 members two days later by another
   conference of delegates). This committee was charged with organising
   the defence of Kronstadt, a move decided upon in part by the threats of
   the Bolshevik officials there and the groundless rumour that the
   Bolsheviks had dispatched forces to attack the meeting. Red Kronstadt
   had turned against the Communist government and raised the slogan of
   the 1917 revolution "All Power to the Soviets", to which was added "and
   not to parties." They termed this revolt the "Third Revolution" and
   would complete the work of the first two Russian Revolutions in 1917 by
   instituting a true toilers republic based on freely elected,
   self-managed, soviets.

   The Communist Government responded with an ultimatum on March 2nd. This
   asserted that the revolt had "undoubtedly been prepared by French
   counterintelligence" and that the Petropavlovsk resolution was a
   "SR-Black Hundred" resolution (SR stood for "Social Revolutionaries", a
   party with a traditional peasant base and whose right-wing had sided
   with White forces; the "Black Hundreds" were a reactionary, indeed
   proto-fascist, force dating back to before the revolution which
   attacked Jews, labour militants, radicals and so on). They argued that
   the revolt had been organised by an ex-Tsarist officers led by
   ex-General Kozlovsky (who had, ironically, been placed in the fortress
   as a military specialist by Trotsky). This was the official line
   through-out the revolt.

   During the revolt, Kronstadt started to re-organise itself from the
   bottom up. The trade union committees were re-elected and a Council of
   Trade Unions formed. The Conference of Delegates met regularly to
   discuss issues relating to the interests of Kronstadt and the struggle
   against the Bolshevik government (specifically on March 2nd, 4th and
   11th). Rank and file Communists left the party in droves, expressing
   support for the revolt and its aim of "all power to the soviets and not
   to parties." About 300 Communists were arrested and treated humanly in
   prison (in comparison, at least 780 Communists left the party in
   protest of the actions it was taking against Kronstadt and its general
   role in the revolution). Significantly, up to one-third of the
   delegates elected to Kronstadt's rebel conference of March 2nd were
   Communists. [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 184-7 and p. 81]

   The Kronstadt revolt was a non-violent one, but from the start the
   attitude of the authorities was not one of serious negotiation but
   rather one of delivering an ultimatum: either come to your senses or
   suffer the consequences. Indeed, the Bolsheviks issued the threat that
   they would shoot the rebels "like partridges" and took the families of
   the sailors hostage in Petrograd. Towards the end of the revolt Trotsky
   sanctioned the use of chemical warfare against the rebels and if they
   had not been crushed, a gas attack would have carried out. [Paul
   Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, p. 146 and pp. 211-2] No real attempt was made
   to settle the revolt peacefully. While there was at least three to four
   weeks before the ice was due to melt after the March 2nd "Conference of
   Delegates" meeting which marked the real start of the revolt, the
   Bolsheviks started military operations at 6.45pm on March 7th.

   There were possible means for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. On
   March 5th, two days before the bombardment of Kronstadt had begun,
   anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman offered themselves
   as intermediates to facilitate negotiations between the rebels and the
   government (anarchist influence had been strong in Kronstadt in 1917).
   [Emma Goldman, Living My Life, vol. 2, pp. 882-3] This was ignored by
   the Bolsheviks. Years later, the Bolshevik Victor Serge (and
   eye-witness to the events) acknowledged that "[e]ven when the fighting
   had started, it would have been easy to avoid the worst: it was only
   necessary to accept the mediation offered by the anarchists (notably
   Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman) who had contact with the
   insurgents. For reasons of prestige and through an excess of
   authoritarianism, the Central Committee refused this course." [The
   Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 164]

   Another possible solution, namely the Petrograd Soviet suggestion of
   March 6th that a delegation of party and non-party members of the
   Soviet visit Kronstadt was not pursued by the government. The rebels,
   unsurprisingly enough, had reservations about the real status of the
   non-party delegates and asked that the elections to the delegation take
   place within the factories, with observers from Kronstadt present (in
   itself a very reasonable request). Nothing came of this
   (unsurprisingly, as such a delegation would have reported the truth
   that Kronstadt was a popular revolt of working people so exposing
   Bolshevik lies and making the planned armed attack more difficult). A
   delegation "sent by Kronstadt to explain the issues to the Petrograd
   Soviet and people was in the prisons of the Cheka." [Victor Serge,
   Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 127] According to Serge, "right from the
   first moment, at a time when it was easy to mitigate the conflict, the
   Bolshevik leaders had no intention of using anything but forcible
   methods." [Ibid.] This is confirmed by latter research. The refusal to
   pursue these possible means of resolving the crisis peacefully is
   explained by the fact that the decision to attack Kronstadt had already
   been made. Basing himself on documents from the Soviet Archives,
   historian Israel Getzler states that "[b]y 5 March, if not earlier, the
   Soviet leaders had decided to crush Kronstadt. Thus, in a cable to . .
   . [a] member of the Council of Labour and Defence, on that day, Trotsky
   insisted that 'only the seizure of Kronstadt will put an end to the
   political crisis in Petrograd.' On the same day, acting as chairman of
   the RVSR [the Revolutionary Military Council of the Army and Navy of
   the Republic], he ordered the reformation and mobilisation of the
   Seventh Army 'to suppress the uprising in Kronstadt,' and appointed
   General Mikhail Tukhachevskii as its commander changed with suppressing
   the uprising in Kronstadt 'in the shortest possible time.'" ["The
   Communist Leaders' Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light
   of Recently Published Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp.
   24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2002, p. 32]

   As Alexander Berkman noted, the Communist government would "make no
   concessions to the proletariat, while at the same time they were
   offering to compromise with the capitalists of Europe and America."
   [Berkman, The Russian Tragedy, p. 62] While happy to negotiate and
   compromise with foreign governments, they treated the workers and
   peasants of Kronstadt (like that of the rest of Russia) as the class
   enemy (indeed, at the time, Lenin was publicly worrying whether the
   revolt was a White plot to sink these negotiations!).

   The revolt was isolated and received no external support. The Petrograd
   workers were under martial law and could little or no action to support
   Kronstadt (assuming they refused to believe the Bolshevik lies about
   the uprising). The Communist government started to attack Kronstadt on
   March 7th. The first assault was a failure. "After the Gulf had
   swallowed its first victims," Paul Avrich records, "some of the Red
   soldiers, including a body of Peterhof kursanty, began to defect to the
   insurgents. Others refused to advance, in spite of threats from the
   machine gunners at the rear who had orders to shoot any wavers. The
   commissar of the northern group reported that his troops wanted to send
   a delegation to Kronstadt to find out the insurgents' demands."
   [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 153-4] After 10 days of constant attacks the
   Kronstadt revolt was crushed by the Red Army. On March 17th, the final
   assault occurred. Again, the Bolsheviks had to force their troops to
   fight. On the night of 16-17 March, for example, "the extraordinary
   troika of Aleksei Nikolaev had arrested over 100 so-called instigators,
   74 of whom he had publicly shot." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 35] Once the
   Bolshevik forces finally entered the city of Kronstadt "the attacking
   troops took revenge for their fallen comrades in an orgy of
   bloodletting." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 211] The next day, as an irony of
   history, the Bolsheviks celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the
   Paris Commune.

   The repression did not end there. According to Serge, the "defeated
   sailors belonged body and sole to the Revolution; they had voiced the
   suffering and the will of the Russian people" yet "[h]undreds of
   prisoners were taken away to Petrograd; months later they were still
   being shot in small batches, a senseless and criminal agony"
   (particularly as they were "prisoners of war . . . and the Government
   had for a long time promised an amnesty to its opponents on condition
   that they offered their support"). "This protracted massacre was either
   supervised or permitted by Dzerzhinsky" (the head of the Cheka). The
   "responsibilities of the Bolshevik Central Committee had been simply
   enormous" and "the subsequent repression . . . needlessly barbarous."
   [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 131 and p. 348]

   The Soviet forces suffered over 10,000 casualties storming Kronstadt.
   There are no reliable figures for the rebels loses or how many were
   later shot by the Cheka or sent to prison camps. The figures that exist
   are fragmentary. Immediately after the defeat of the revolt, 4,836
   Kronstadt sailors were arrested and deported to the Crimea and the
   Caucasus. When Lenin heard of this on the 19th of April, he expressed
   great misgivings about it and they were finally sent to forced labour
   camps in the Archangelsk, Vologda and Murmansk regions. Eight thousand
   sailors, soldiers and civilians escaped over the ice to Finland. The
   crews of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol fought to the bitter end, as
   did the cadets of the mechanics school, the torpedo detachment and the
   communications unit. A statistical communiqu of the Special Section of
   the Extraordinary Troikas of 1st May stated that 6,528 rebels had been
   arrested, of whom 2,168 had been shot (33%), 1,955 had been sentenced
   to forced labour (of whom 1,486 received a five year sentence), and
   1,272 were released. A statistical review of the revolt made in 1935-6
   listed the number arrested as 10,026 and stated that it had "not been
   possible to establish accurately the number of the repressed." The
   families of the rebels were deported, with Siberia considered as
   "undoubtedly the only suitable region" for them. Significantly, one of
   the members of the troika judging the rebels complained that they had
   to rely exclusively on information provided by the Special Section of
   the Vecheka as "neither commissars nor local Communists provided any
   material." [Israel Getzler, "The Communist Leaders' Role in the
   Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently Published Archival
   Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp. 24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2002,
   pp. 35-7]

   After the revolt had been put down, the Bolshevik government
   reorganised the fortress. While it had attacked the revolt in the name
   of defending "Soviet Power" Kronstadt's newly appointed military
   commander "abolish[ed] the [Kronstadt] soviet altogether" and ran the
   fortress "with the assistance of a revolutionary troika" (i.e. an
   appointed three man committee). [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 244] Kronstadt's
   newspaper was renamed Krasnyi Kronshtadt (from Izvestiia) and stated in
   an editorial that the "fundamental features" of Kronstadt's restored
   "dictatorship of the proletariat" during its "initial phases" were
   "[r]estrictions on political liberty, terror, military centralism and
   discipline and the direction of all means and resources towards the
   creation of an offensive and defensive state apparatus." [quoted by
   Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 245] The victors quickly started to eliminate all
   traces of the revolt. Anchor square became "Revolutionary Square" and
   the rebel battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol were renamed the
   Marat and the Paris Commune, respectively.

   That, in a nutshell, was the Kronstadt revolt. Obviously we cannot
   cover all the details and we recommend readers to consult the books and
   articles we list at the end of this section for fuller accounts of the
   events. However, that presents the key points in the rebellion. Now we
   must analyse the revolt and indicate why it is so important in
   evaluating Bolshevism in both practice and as a revolutionary theory.

   In the sections which follow, we indicate why the revolt is so
   important ([2]section 1) and place it in historical context ([3]section
   2). We then present and discuss the Kronstadt demands, indicating their
   sources in working class rebellion and radicalism (see sections [4]3
   and [5]4). We indicate the lies the Bolsheviks said about the rebellion
   at the time ( [6]section 5), whether it was, in fact, a White plot ([7]
   section 6) and indicate the revolts real relationship to the Whites
   ([8]section 7). We also disprove Trotskyist assertions that the sailors
   in 1921 were different from those in 1917 ([9]section 8) or that their
   political perspectives had fundamentally changed ([10]section 9). We
   indicate that state coercion and repression was the significant in why
   the Kronstadt revolt did not spread to the Petrograd workers
   ([11]section 10). Then we discuss the possibility of White intervention
   during and after the revolt ([12]section 11). We follow this with a
   discussion of arguments that the country was too exhausted to allow
   soviet democracy ([13]section 12) or that soviet democracy would have
   resulted in the defeat of the revolution ([14]section 13). In the
   process, we will also show the depths to which supporters of Leninism
   will sink to defend their heroes (in particular, see [15]section 14).
   Lastly, we discuss what the Kronstadt revolt tells us about Leninism
   ([16]section 15)

   As we will hope to prove, Kronstadt was a popular uprising from below
   by the same sailors, soldiers and workers that made the 1917 October
   revolution. The Bolshevik repression of the revolt can be justified in
   terms of defending the state power of the Bolsheviks but it cannot be
   defended in terms of socialist theory. Indeed, it indicates that
   Bolshevism is a flawed political theory which cannot create a socialist
   society but only a state capitalist regime based on party dictatorship.
   This is what Kronstadt shows above all else: given a choice between
   workers' power and party power, Bolshevism will destroy the former to
   ensure the latter (see [17]section 15 in particular). In this,
   Kronstadt is no isolated event (as we indicate in [18]section 2).

   There are many essential resources on the revolt available. The best in
   depth studies of the revolt are Paul Avrich's Kronstadt 1921 and Israel
   Getzler's Kronstadt 1917-1921. Anarchist works include Ida Mett's The
   Kronstadt Uprising (by far the best), Alexander Berkman's The Kronstadt
   Rebellion (which is a good introduction and included in his The Russian
   Tragedy), Voline's The Unknown Revolution has a good chapter on
   Kronstadt (and quotes extensively from the Kronstadters' paper
   Izvestiia) and volume two of Daniel Guerin's No Gods, No Masters has an
   excellent section on the rebellion which includes a lengthy extract
   from Emma Goldman's autobiography Living my Life on the events as well
   as extracts from the Kronstadters' paper. Anton Ciliga's (a libertarian
   socialist/Marxist) Kronstadt Revolt is also a good introduction to the
   issues relating to the uprising. Eye-witness accounts include chapters
   in Berkman's The Bolshevik Myth as well as Goldman's My Disillusionment
   in Russia. Goldman's autobiography Living My Life also has useful
   material on the events.

   For the Leninist analysis, the anthology Kronstadt contains Lenin and
   Trotsky's articles on the revolt plus supplementary essays refuting
   anarchist accounts. This work is recommended for those seeking the
   official Trotskyist version of events as it contains all the relevant
   documents by the Bolshevik leaders. Emma Goldman's Trotsky Protests Too
   Much is a great reply to Trotsky's comments and one of his followers
   contained in this work. Victor Serge was another eye-witness to the
   Kronstadt revolt. An individualist anarchist turned Bolshevik, his
   Memoirs of a Revolutionary is worth looking at to discover why he
   supported what the Bolsheviks did, albeit reluctantly.

1 Why is the Kronstadt rebellion important?

   The Kronstadt rebellion is important because, as Voline put it, it was
   "the first entirely independent attempt of the people to liberate
   itself from all yokes and achieve the Social Revolution, an attempt
   made directly, resolutely, and boldly by the working masses themselves
   without political shepherds, without leaders or tutors. It was the
   first step towards the third and social revolution." [The Unknown
   Revolution, pp. 537-8]

   The Kronstadt sailors, solders and workers in 1917 had been the one of
   the first groups to support the slogan "All power to the Soviets" as
   well as one of the first towns to put it into practice. The focal point
   of the 1921 revolt -- the sailors of the warships Petropavlovsk and
   Sevastopol -- had, in 1917, been supporters of the Bolsheviks. The
   sailors had been considered, until those fateful days in 1921, the
   pride and glory of the revolution and considered by all to be
   thoroughly revolutionary in spirit and action. They were the staunchest
   supporters of the Soviet system but, as the revolt showed, they were
   opposed to the dictatorship of any political party.

   Therefore Kronstadt is important in evaluating the honesty of Leninist
   claims to be in favour of soviet democracy and power. The civil war was
   effectively over, yet the regime showed no signs of stopping the
   repression against working class protest or rights. Opposing
   re-elections to soviets, the Bolshevik regime was repressing strikers
   in the name of "soviet power" and "the political power of the
   proletariat." In the countryside, the Bolsheviks continued their
   futile, evil and counterproductive policies against the peasants
   (ignoring the fact that their government was meant to be at the head of
   a workers and peasants' state). Occurring as it did after the end of
   the civil war, Kronstadt played a key role in opening the eyes of
   anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to the real role of
   Bolshevism in the revolution. Until then, they (like many others)
   supported the Bolsheviks, rationalising their dictatorship as a
   temporary measure necessitated by the civil war. Kronstadt smashed that
   illusion, "broke the last thread that held me to the Bolsheviki. The
   wanton slaughter they had instigated spoke more eloquently against than
   aught else. Whatever the pretences of the past, the Bolsheviki now
   proved themselves the most pernicious enemies of the Revolution. I
   would have nothing further to do with them." [Emma Goldman, My
   Disillusionment in Russia, p. 200]

   The events at Kronstadt cannot be looked at in isolation, but rather as
   part of a general struggle of the Russian working people against
   "their" government. Indeed, as we indicate in the [19]next section,
   this repression after the end of the Civil War followed the same
   pattern as that started before it. Just as the Bolsheviks had repressed
   soviet democracy in Kronstadt in 1921 in favour of party dictatorship,
   they had done so regularly elsewhere in early 1918.

   The Kronstadt revolt was a popular movement from below aiming at
   restoring soviet power. As Alexander Berkman notes, the "spirit of the
   Conference [of delegates which elected the Provisional Revolutionary
   Committee] was thoroughly Sovietist: Kronstadt demanded Soviets free
   from interference by any political party; it wanted non-partisan
   Soviets that should truly reflect the needs and express the will of the
   workers and peasants. The attitude of the delegates was antagonistic to
   the arbitrary rule of bureaucratic commissars, but friendly to the
   Communist Party as such. They were staunch adherents of the Soviet
   system and they were earnestly seeking to find, by means friendly and
   peaceful, a solution of the pressing problems" facing the revolution.
   [The Russian Tragedy, p. 67] The attitude of the Bolsheviks indicated
   that, for them, soviet power was only useful in so far as it ensured
   their party's power and if the two came into conflict then the latter
   must survive over the corpse of the former. Thus Berkman:

     "But the 'triumph' of the Bolsheviks over Kronstadt held within
     itself the defeat of Bolshevism. It exposes the true character of
     the Communist dictatorship. The Communists proved themselves willing
     to sacrifice Communism, to make almost any compromise with
     international capitalism, yet refused the just demands of their own
     people -- demands that voiced the October slogans of the Bolsheviks
     themselves: Soviets elected by direct and secret ballot, according
     to the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet
     Republic; and freedom of speech and press for the revolutionary
     parties." [Op. Cit., p. 90]

   Investigating the Kronstadt revolt forces intelligent and honest minds
   into a critical examination of Bolshevik theories and practices. It
   exploded the Bolshevik myth of the Communist State being the "Workers'
   and Peasants' Government". It proved that the Communist Party
   dictatorship and the Russian Revolution are opposites, contradictory
   and mutually exclusive. While it may be justifiable to argue that the
   repression directed by the Bolsheviks against working class people
   during the civil war could be explained by the needs of the war, the
   same cannot be said for Kronstadt. Similarly, the Leninist
   justifications for their power and actions at Kronstadt have direct
   implications for current activity and future revolutions. As we argue
   in [20]section 15, the logic of these rationales simply mean that
   modern day Leninists will, if in the same position, destroy soviet
   democracy to defend "soviet power" (i.e. the power of their party).

   In effect, Kronstadt was the clash between the reality of Leninism and
   its image or rhetoric. It raises many important issues as regards
   Bolshevism and the rationale it has produced to justify certain
   actions. "The Kronstadt experience," as Berkman argues, "proves once
   more that government, the State -- whatever its name or form -- is ever
   the mortal enemy of liberty and popular self-determination. The state
   has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim -- to secure power and
   hold it, at any cost. That is the political lesson of Kronstadt." [Op.
   Cit., p. 89]

   Kronstadt is also important in that it, like most of the Russian
   Revolution and Civil War, confirmed anarchist analysis and predictions.
   This can be seen when Izvestiia (the paper produced during the
   rebellion by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee) argued that in
   Kronstadt "there have been laid the foundations of the Third
   Revolution, which will break the last chains of the workers and lay
   open the new highway to socialist construction." [quoted by Voline, The
   Unknown Revolution, p. 508]

   This confirmed the arguments of Russian anarchists in 1917, who had
   predicted that "if the 'transfer of power to the soviets' comes in fact
   to signify the seizure of political authority by a new political party
   with the aim of guiding reconstruction from above, 'from the centre'"
   then "there is no doubt that this 'new power' can in no way satisfy
   even the most immediate needs and demands of the people, much less
   begin the task of 'socialist reconstruction' . . . Then, after a more
   or less prolonged interruption, the struggle will inevitably be
   renewed. Then will begin a third and last stage of the Great
   Revolution. There will begin a struggle between the living forces
   arising from the creative impulse of the popular masses on the spot, on
   the one hand, namely the local workers' and peasants' organisations
   acting directly . . . and the centralist Social Democratic power
   defending its existence, on the other; a struggle between authority and
   freedom." [quoted by Paul Avrich, Anarchists in the Russian Revolution,
   p. 94]

   Thus Kronstadt is a symbol of the fact that state power cannot be
   utilised by the working class and always becomes a force for minority
   rule (in this case of former workers and revolutionaries, as Bakunin
   predicted).

   There is another reason why the study of Kronstadt is important. Since
   the suppression of the revolt, Leninist and Trotskyist groups have
   continually justified the acts of the Bolsheviks. Moreover, they have
   followed Lenin and Trotsky in slandering the revolt and, indeed, have
   continually lied about it. When Trotskyist John Wright states that the
   supporters of Kronstadt have "distort[ed] historical facts, monstrously
   exaggerat[ed] every subsidiary issue or question . . . and throw[n] a
   veil . . . over the real program and aims of the mutiny" he is, in
   fact, describing his and his fellow Trotskyists. [Lenin and Trotsky,
   Kronstadt, p. 102] Indeed, as we will prove, anarchist accounts have
   been validated by later research while Trotskyist assertions have been
   exploded time and time again. Indeed, it would be a useful task to
   write a companion to Trotsky's book The Stalin School of Falsification
   about Trotsky and his followers activities in the field of re-writing
   history.

   Similarly, when Trotsky argues that anarchists like Goldman and Berkman
   "do not have the slightest understanding of the criteria and methods of
   scientific research" and just "quote the proclamations of the
   insurgents like pious preachers quoting Holy Scriptures" he is, in
   fact, just describing himself and his followers (as we shall see, the
   latter just repeat his and Lenin's assertions regardless of how silly
   or refuted they are). Ironically, he states that "Marx has said that it
   is impossible to judge either parties or peoples by what they say about
   themselves." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 88] As Emma Goldman
   argued, "[h]ow pathetic that he does not realise how much this applies
   to him!" [Trotsky Protests Too Much] Kronstadt shows what the
   Bolsheviks said about their regime was the opposite of what it really
   was, as show by its actions.

   What will also become clear from our discussion is the way Trotskyists
   have doctored the academic accounts to fit their ideological account of
   the uprising. The reason for this will become clear. Simply put, the
   supporters of Bolshevism cannot help lie about the Kronstadt revolt as
   it so clearly exposes the real nature of Bolshevik ideology. Rather
   than support the Kronstadt call for soviet democracy, the Bolsheviks
   crushed the revolt, arguing that in so doing they were defending
   "soviet power." Their followers have repeated these arguments.

   This expression of Leninist double-think (the ability to know two
   contradictory facts and maintain both are true) can be explained. Once
   it is understood that "workers' power" and "soviet power" actually mean
   party power then the contradictions disappear. Party power had to be
   maintained at all costs, including the destruction of those who desired
   real soviet and workers' power (and so soviet democracy).

   For example, Trotsky argued that in 1921 "the proletariat had to hold
   political power in its hands" yet later Trotskyists argue that the
   proletariat was too exhausted, atomised and decimated to do so. [Lenin
   and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 81] Similarly, the Trotskyist Pierre Frank
   states that for the Bolsheviks, "the dilemma was posed in these terms:
   either keep the workers' state under their leadership, or see the
   counterrevolution begin, in one or other political disguise, ending in
   a counterrevolutionary reign of terror that would leave not the
   slightest room for democracy." [Op. Cit., p. 15] Of course the fact
   that there was "not the slightest room for democracy" under Lenin is
   not mentioned, nor is the fact that the "dictatorship of the party" had
   been a fundamental aspect of Bolshevik idelogy since early 1919 and
   practice since mid-1918 (by the latest). Nor does Frank consider it
   important to note that a "reign of terror" did develop under Stalin
   from the terror, repression and dictatorship practised in 1921 by Lenin
   and Trotsky.

   Most Leninists follow Frank and argue that the suppression of the
   rebellion was essential to defend the "gains of the revolution." What
   exactly were these gains? Not soviet democracy, freedom of speech,
   assembly and press, trade union freedom and so on as the Kronstadters
   were crushed for demanding these. No, apparently the "gains" of the
   revolution was a Bolshevik government pure and simple. Never mind the
   fact it was a one-party dictatorship, with a strong and privileged
   bureaucratic machine and no freedom of speech, press, association or
   assembly for working people. The fact that Lenin and Trotsky were in
   power is enough for their followers to justify the repression of
   Kronstadt and subscribe to the notion of a "workers' state" which
   excludes workers from power.

   Thus the double-think of Bolshevism is clearly seen from the Kronstadt
   events. The Bolsheviks and their supporters argue that Kronstadt was
   suppressed to defend soviet power yet argue that the Kronstadt demand
   for free soviet elections was "counter-revolutionary", "backward",
   "petty-bourgeois" and so on. How soviet power could mean anything
   without free elections is never explained. Similarly, they argue that
   it was necessary to defend the "workers state" by slaughtering those
   who called for workers to have some kind of say in how that state
   operated. It appears that the role of workers in a workers' state was
   simply that of following orders without question (indeed, Trotsky was
   arguing in the 1930s that the Russian working class was still the
   ruling class under Stalin -- "So long as the forms of property that
   have been created by the October Revolution are not overthrown, the
   proletariat remains the ruling class." [The Class Nature of the Soviet
   State]).

   How can the Bolshevik repression be justified in terms of defending
   workers power when the workers were powerless? How can it be defended
   in terms of soviet power when the soviets were rubber stamps of the
   government?

   The logic of the Bolsheviks and their latter-day apologists and
   supporters is the same character as that of the U.S. Officer during the
   Vietnam War who explained that in order to save the village, they first
   had to destroy it. In order to save soviet power, Lenin and Trotsky had
   to destroy soviet democracy.

   One last point, while the Kronstadt revolt is a key event in the
   Russian Revolution, one that signified its end, we must not forget that
   it is just one in a long series of Bolshevik attacks on the working
   class. As we indicated in the appendix on [21]"What happened during the
   Russian Revolution?" (and provide an overview in the [22]next section),
   the Bolshevik state had proven itself to be anti-revolutionary
   continually since October 1917. However, Kronstadt is important simply
   because it so clearly pitted soviet democracy against "soviet power"
   and occurred after the end of the civil war. As it brings the Russian
   Revolution to an end, it deserves to be remembered, analysed and
   discussed by all revolutionaries who seek to understand the past in
   order not to repeat the same mistakes again.

2 What was the context of the Kronstadt revolt?

   The Kronstadt revolt cannot be understood in isolation. Indeed, to do
   so misses the real reason why Kronstadt is so important. Kronstadt was
   the end result of four years of revolution and civil war, the product
   of the undermining of soviet democracy by a combination of Bolshevism
   and war. The actions of the Bolsheviks in 1921 and their ideological
   justifications for their actions (justifications, of course, when they
   got beyond lying about the revolt -- see [23]section 5) merely
   reproduced in concentrated form what had been occurring ever since they
   had seized power.

   Therefore it is necessary to present a short summary of Bolshevik
   activities before the events of Kronstadt (see [24]"What happened
   during the Russian Revolution?" for fuller details). In addition, we
   have to sketch the developing social stratification occurring under
   Lenin and the events immediate before the revolt which sparked it off
   (namely the strike wave in Petrograd). Once this has been done, we will
   soon see that Kronstadt was not an isolated event but rather an act of
   solidarity with the oppressed workers of Petrogard and an attempt to
   save the Russian Revolution from Communist dictatorship and
   bureaucracy.

   Alexander Berkman provides an excellent overview of what had happened
   in Russia after the October Revolution:

     "The elective system was abolished, first in the army and navy, then
     in the industries. The Soviets of peasants and workers were
     castrated and turned into obedient Communist Committees, with the
     dreaded sword of the Cheka [political para-military police] ever
     hanging over them. The labour unions governmentalised, their proper
     activities suppressed, they were turned into mere transmitters of
     the orders of the State. Universal military service, coupled with
     the death penalty for conscientious objectors; enforced labour, with
     a vast officialdom for the apprehension and punishment of
     'deserters'; agrarian and industrial conscription of the peasantry;
     military Communism in the cities and the system of requisitioning in
     the country . . . ; the suppression of workers' protests by the
     military; the crushing of peasant dissatisfaction with an iron hand.
     . ." [The Russian Tragedy, p. 27]

   We discussed each of these features in more detail in the appendix on
   [25]"What happened during the Russian Revolution?". Here we will simply
   indicate that the Bolsheviks had systematically undermined the
   effective power of the soviets. Both locally and nationally,
   post-October power was centralised into the hands of the soviet
   executives rather than the general assemblies. At the top, power was
   concentrated even further with the creation of a Bolshevik government
   above the Central Executive Council elected by the (then) quarterly
   soviet congress. This is not all. Faced with growing opposition to
   their policies, the Bolsheviks responded in two ways. Either the soviet
   was gerrymandered to make the workplace soviet elections irrelevant (as
   in, say, Petrograd) or they simply disbanded any soviet elected with a
   non-Bolshevik majority (as in all provincial soviets for which records
   exist). So Bolshevik opposition to the soviet democracy demanded by the
   Kronstadt revolt had a long pedigree. It had started a few months after
   the Bolsheviks seizure of power in the name of the soviets.

   They repressed opposition parties to maintain their position (for
   example, suppressing their newspapers). Similarly, the Bolsheviks
   attacked the anarchists in Moscow on the 11-12 of April, 1918, using
   armed detachments of the Cheka (the political police). The Kronstadt
   soviet, incidentally, condemned the action by a vote of 81 to 57
   against (with 15 abstentions). [Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 186]
   This repression was political in nature, aiming to neutralise a
   potential political threat and was not the only example of political
   repression in this period (see the appendix on [26]"What happened
   during the Russian Revolution?").

   This is just a summary of what was happening in Russia in early 1918
   (see [27]section 3 of the appendix on [28]"What caused the degeneration
   of the Russian Revolution?" for more details). This Bolshevik assault
   on the soviets occurred during the spring of 1918 (i.e. in March, April
   and May). That is before the Czech rising and the onset of full scale
   civil war which occurred in late May. Clearly, any attempt to blame the
   Civil War for the elimination of soviet power and democracy seems
   woefully weak given the actions of the Bolsheviks in the spring of
   1918. And, equally clearly, the reduction of local soviet influence
   cannot be fully understood without factoring in the Bolshevik prejudice
   in favour of centralisation (as codified in the Soviet Constitution of
   1918) along with this direct repression. Indeed, the net effect of the
   Russian Civil War helped the Bolsheviks as it would make many dissident
   workers support the Bolsheviks during the war. This, however, did not
   stop mass resistance and strikes breaking out periodically during the
   war when workers and peasants could no longer put up with Bolshevik
   policies or the effects of the war (see [29]section 5 of the appendix
   on [30]"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?").

   Which, incidentally, answers Brian Bambery's rhetorical question of
   "why would the most militant working class in the world, within which
   there was a powerful cocktail of revolutionary ideas, and which had
   already made two revolutions (in 1905 and in February 1917), allow a
   handful of people to seize power behind its back in October 1917?"
   ["Leninism in the 21st Century", Socialist Review, no. 248, January
   2001] Once the Russian workers realised that a handful of people had
   seized power they did protest the usurpation of their power and rights
   by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks repressed them. With the start of the
   Civil War, the Bolsheviks played their trump card -- "Us or the
   Whites." This ensured their power as the workers had few choices but to
   agree. Indeed, it may explain why the Bolsheviks finally eliminated
   opposition parties and groups after the end of the Civil War and only
   repressed them during it. With the Whites gone, the opposition were
   rising in influence again and the "White card" could no longer be
   played.

   Economically, the Bolshevik regime imposed a policy later called "War
   Communism" (although, as Victor Serge noted, "any one who, like myself,
   went so far as to consider it purely temporary was locked upon with
   disdain." [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 115] This regime was marked
   by extreme hierarchical and dictatorial tendencies. The leading lights
   of the Communist Party were expressing themselves on the nature of the
   "socialist" regime they desired. Trotsky, for example, put forward
   ideas for the "militarisation of labour" (as expounded in his infamous
   work Terrorism and Communism). Here are a few representative selections
   from that work:

     "The very principle of compulsory labour service is for the
     Communist quite unquestionable. . . . But hitherto it has always
     remained a mere principle. Its application has always had an
     accidental, impartial, episodic character. Only now, when along the
     whole line we have reached the question of the economic re-birth of
     the country, have problems of compulsory labour service arisen
     before us in the most concrete way possible. The only solution of
     economic difficulties that is correct from the point of view both of
     principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole
     country as the reservoir of the necessary labour power . . . and to
     introduce strict order into the work of its registration,
     mobilisation, and utilisation." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 135]

     "The introduction of compulsory labour service is unthinkable
     without the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods
     of militarisation of labour." [Op. Cit., p. 137]

     "Why do we speak of militarisation? Of course, this is only an
     analogy -- but an analogy very rich in content. No social
     organisation except the army has ever considered itself justified in
     subordinating citizens to itself in such a measure, and to control
     them by its will on all sides to such a degree, as the State of the
     proletarian dictatorship considers itself justified in doing, and
     does." [Op. Cit., p. 141]

     "Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the
     expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
     connected regions . . . under Socialism there will not exist the
     apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have
     melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None
     the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest
     possible intensification of the principle of the State . . . Just as
     a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the
     State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of
     the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which
     embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every
     direction. . . No organisation except the army has ever controlled
     man with such severe compulsion as does the State organisation of
     the working class in the most difficult period of transition. It is
     just for this reason that we speak of the militarisation of labour."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 169-70]

   This account was written as a policy to be followed now that the
   "internal civil war is coming to an end." [Op. Cit., p. 132] It was not
   seen as a temporary policy imposed upon the Bolsheviks by the war but
   rather, as can be seen, as an expression of "principle" (perhaps
   because Marx and Engels had written about the "[e]stablishment of
   industrial armies" in the Communist Manifesto? [Selected Writings, p.
   53]).

   In the same work, Trotsky justified the elimination of soviet power and
   democracy by party power and dictatorship (see sections [31]10 and
   [32]15). Thus we have the application of state serfdom by the
   Bolsheviks (indeed, Trotsky was allowed to apply his ideas on the
   militarisation of labour to the railways).

   This vision of strict centralisation and top-down military structures
   built upon Bolshevik policies of the first months after the October
   revolution. The attempts at workers' self-management organised by many
   factory committees was opposed in favour of a centralised state
   capitalist system, with Lenin arguing for appointed managers with
   "dictatorial" powers (see Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers'
   Control for full details as well as [33]"What happened during the
   Russian Revolution?").

   Strikes were repressed by force. In early May, 1918, a major wave of
   labour protest started which climaxed in early July. In Petrograd it
   included strikes, demonstrations and anti-Bolshevik factory meetings.
   Of the meetings unconnected to the Petrograd Soviet elections, "the
   greatest number by far were protests against some form of Bolshevik
   repression: shootings, incidents of 'terrorist activities', and
   arrests." During the opposition organised strike of July 2nd, "Zinoviev
   and others took quick counteraction . . . Any sign of sympathy for the
   strike was declared a criminal act. More arrests were made . . . On
   July 1 . . . machine guns were set up at main points throughout
   Petrograd and Moscow railroad junctions, and elsewhere in both cities
   as well. Controls were tightened in the factories. Meetings were
   forcefully dispersed." [William G. Rosenberg, Russian Labour and
   Bolshevik Power, pp. 123-4 and p. 127]

   In 1918, workers who took strike action "were afraid to lose their
   jobs" as "a strike inevitably led to a closure of the factory, a
   dismissal of the workers, and a careful screening of those rehired to
   determine their political preferences." By 1920, as well as these
   methods, workers also faced arrest by the Cheka and "internment in a
   concentration camp." During the first six months of 1920 there were
   strikes in 77 percent of the medium- and large-size enterprises in
   Russia. As an example of the policies used to crush strikes, we can
   take the case of a strike by the workers of the Ryazan-Urals railroad
   in May 1921 (i.e. after the end of the Civil War). The authorities
   "shut down the depot, brought in troops, and arrested another hundred
   workers" in addition to the strikers delegates elected to demand the
   release of a railroad worker (whose arrest had provoked the strike).
   Ironically, those "who had seized power in 1917 in the name of the
   politically conscious proletariat were in fact weeding out all these
   conscious workers." [V. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil
   War, pp. 287-8, pp. 290-1 and p. 298]

   In the Red Army and Navy, anti-democratic principles were again
   imposed. At the end of March, 1918, Trotsky reported to the Communist
   Party that "the principle of election is politically purposeless and
   technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by
   decree." Soldiers did not have to fear this system of top-down
   appointment as "political power is in the hands of the same working
   class from whose ranks the Army is recruited" (i.e. in the hands of the
   Bolshevik party). There could "be no antagonism between the government
   and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the
   administration of the union and the general assembly of its members,
   and, therefore, there cannot be any grounds for fearing the appointment
   of members of the commanding staff by the organs of the Soviet Power."
   [Work, Discipline, Order] Of course, as any worker in struggle can tell
   you, they almost always come into conflict with the union's bureaucracy
   (as Trotskyists themselves often point out).

   In the Navy, a similar process occurred -- much to the disgust and
   opposition of the sailors. As Paul Avrich notes, "Bolshevik efforts to
   liquidate the ship committees and impose the authority of the centrally
   appointed commissars aroused a storm of protest in the Baltic Fleet.
   For the sailors, whose aversion to external authority was proverbial,
   any attempt to restore discipline meant a betrayal of the freedoms for
   which they had struggles in 1917." [Kronstadt 1921, p. 66] This process
   "began in earnest on 14 May 1918 with the appointment of Ivan Flerovsky
   as general commissar of the Baltic Fleet and chairman of its Council of
   Commissars, a body which replaced the disbanded elective Central
   Committee of the Baltic Fleet. Flerovsky promptly appointed bridge
   commissars to whom all ships' committees were subordinated . . . Naval
   democracy was finally destroyed on 18 January 1919 when Trotsky . . .
   decreed the abolition of all ships' committees, the appointment of
   commissars to all ships, and the setting up of revolutionary tribunals
   to maintain discipline, a function previously vested in elected
   'comradely courts.'" [I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 191]

   In the countryside, grain requisitioning was resulting in peasant
   uprisings as food was taken from the peasants by force. While the armed
   detachments were "instructed to leave the peasants enough for their
   personal needs, it was common for the requisitioning squads to take at
   gun-point grain intended for personal consumption or set aside for the
   next sowing." The villagers predictably used evasive tactics and cut
   back on the amount of land they tilled as well as practising open
   resistance. Famine was a constant problem as a result. [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., pp. 9-10]

   Thus Voline:

     "the Bolshevik government evidently understood the slogan 'power to
     the soviets' in a peculiar way. It applied it in reverse. Instead of
     giving assistance to the working masses and permitting them to
     conquer and enlarge their own autonomous activity, it began by
     taking all 'power' from them and treating them like subjects. It
     bent the factories to its will and liberated the workers from the
     right to make their own decisions; it took arbitrary and coercive
     measures, without even asking the advice of the workers' concerned;
     it ignored the demands emanating from the workers' organisations.
     And, in particular, it increasingly curbed, under various pretexts,
     the freedom of action of the Soviets and of other workers'
     organisations, everywhere imposing its will arbitrarily and even by
     violence." [The Unknown Revolution, pp. 459-60]

   From before the start of Civil War, the Russian people had been slowly
   but surely eliminated from any meaningful say in the progress of the
   revolution. The Bolsheviks undermined (when not abolishing) workers'
   democracy, freedom and rights in the workplaces, the soviets, the
   unions, the army and the navy. Unsurprisingly, the lack of any real
   control from below heightened the corrupting effects of power.
   Inequality, privilege and abuses were everywhere in the ruling party
   and bureaucracy ("Within the party, favouritism and corruption were
   rife. The Astoria Hotel, where many high officials lived, was the scene
   of debauchery, while ordinary citizens went without the bare
   necessities." [Paul Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T.
   Miasnikov and the Workers' Group]).

   With the end of the Civil War in November 1920, many workers expected a
   change of policy. However, months passed and the same policies were
   followed. "The Communist State," as Alexander Berkman summarised,
   "showed no intention of loosening the yoke. The same policies
   continued, with labour militarisation still further enslaving the
   people, embittering them with added oppression and tyranny, and in
   consequence paralysing every possibility of industrial revival." [The
   Russian Tragedy, p. 61] Finally, in the middle of February, 1921, "a
   rash of spontaneous factory meetings" began in Moscow. Workers called
   for the immediate scrapping of War Communism. These meetings were
   "succeeded by strikes and demonstrations." Workers took to the streets
   demanding "free trade", higher rations and "the abolition of grain
   requisitions." Some demanded the restoration of political rights and
   civil liberties. Troops had to be called in to restore order. [Paul
   Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 35-6]

   Then a far more serious wave of strikes and protests swept Petrograd.
   The Kronstadt revolt was sparked off by these protests. Like Moscow,
   these "street demonstrations were heralded by a rash of protest
   meetings in Petrograd's numerous but depleted factories and shops."
   Like Moscow, speakers "called for an end to grain requisitioning, the
   removal of roadblocks, the abolition of privileged rations, and
   permission to barter personal possessions for food." On the 24th of
   February, the day after a workplace meeting, the Trubochny factory
   workforce downed tools and walked out the factory. Additional workers
   from nearby factories joined in. The crowd of 2,000 was dispersed by
   armed military cadets. The next day, the Trubochny workers again took
   to the streets and visited other workplaces, bringing them out on
   strike too. [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 37-8]

   The strikers started to organise themselves. "As in 1918, workers from
   various plants elected delegates to the Petrograd Assembly of
   Plenipotentiaries." [V. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil
   War, p. 393]

   A three-man Defence Committee was formed and Zinoviev "proclaimed
   martial law" on February 24th. [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 39] A curfew of
   11pm was proclaimed, all meetings and gatherings (indoor and out) were
   banned unless approved of by the Defence Committee and all
   infringements would "be dealt with according to military law." [Ida
   Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 37]

   The workers "were ordered to return to their factories, failing which
   they would be denied their rations. That, however, had no impact: but
   in addition, a number of trade unions was disbanded, their leaders and
   the most die-hard strikers tossed into prison." [Emma Goldman, No Gods,
   No Masters, vol. 2, p. 168]

   As part of this process of repression, the Bolshevik government had to
   rely on the kursanty (Communist officer cadets) as the local garrisons
   had been caught up the general ferment and could not be relied upon to
   carry out the government's orders. Hundreds of kursanty were called in
   from neighbouring military academies to patrol the city. "Overnight
   Petrograd became an armed camp. In every quarter pedestrians were
   stopped and their documents checked . . . the curfew [was] strictly
   enforced." The Petrograd Cheka made widespread arrests. [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., pp. 46-7]

   The Bolsheviks also stepped up their propaganda drive. The strikers
   were warned not to play into the hands of the counterrevolution. As
   well as their normal press, popular party members were sent to agitate
   in the streets, factories and barracks. They also made a series of
   concessions such as providing extra rations. On March 1st (after the
   Kronstadt revolt had started) the Petrograd soviet announced the
   withdrawal of all road-blocks and demobilised the Red Army soldiers
   assigned to labour duties in Petrograd. [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 48-9]

   Thus a combination of force, propaganda and concessions was used to
   defeat the strike (which quickly reached a near general strike level).
   As Paul Arvich notes, "there is no denying that the application of
   military force and the widespread arrests, not to speak of the tireless
   propaganda waged by the authorities had been indispensable in restoring
   order. Particularly impressive in this regard was the discipline shown
   by the local party organisation. Setting aside their internal disputes,
   the Petrograd Bolsheviks swiftly closed ranks and proceeded to carry
   out the unpleasant task of repression with efficiency and dispatch."
   [Op. Cit., p. 50]

   This indicates the immediate context of the Kronstadt rebellion. Yet
   Trotskyist J. G. Wright wonders whether the Kronstadt's paper "lied
   when in the very first issue . . . it carried a sensational headline:
   'General Insurrection in Petrograd'" and states that people "spread . .
   . lies about the insurrection in Petrograd." [Lenin and Trotsky,
   Kronstadt, p. 109] Yes, of course a near general strike, accompanied by
   mass meetings and demonstrations and repressed by force and martial
   law, is a everyday occurrence and has nothing in common with an
   "insurrection"! If such events occurred in a state not headed by Lenin
   and Trotsky it is unlikely Mr. Wright would have such difficulty in
   recognising them for what there were. Historian V. Brovkin states the
   obvious when he wrote "[t]o anyone who had lived through the events of
   February 1917, this chain of events appeared strikingly similar. It
   looked as if a popular insurrection had begun." [Brovkin, Op. Cit., p.
   393]

   It was these labour protests and their repression which started the
   events in Kronstadt. While many sailors had read and listened to the
   complaints of their relatives in the villages and had protested on
   their behalf to the Soviet authorities, it took the Petrograd strikes
   to be the catalyst for the revolt. Moreover, they had other political
   reasons for protesting against the policies of the government. Navy
   democracy had been abolished by decree and the soviets had been turned
   into fig-leaves of party dictatorship.

   Unsurprisingly, the crew of the battleships Petropavlovsk and
   Sevastopol decided to act once "the news of strikes, lockouts, mass
   arrests and martial law" in Petrograd reached them. They "held a joint
   emergency meeting in the face of protests and threats of their
   commissars . . . [and] elected a fact-finding delegation of thirty-two
   sailors which, on 27 February, proceeded to Petrograd and made the
   round of the factories. . . They found the workers whom they addressed
   and questioned too frightened to speak up in the presence of the hosts
   of Communist factory guards, trade union officials, party committee men
   and Chekists." [Gelzter, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 212]

   The delegation returned the next day and reported its findings to a
   general meeting of the ship's crews and adopted the resolutions which
   were to be the basis of the revolt (see [34]next section). The
   Kronstadt revolt had started.

3 What was the Kronstadt Programme?

   It is rare for a Trotskyist to actually list the demands of the
   Kronstadt revolt in their entirety. For example, John Rees does not
   provide even a summary of the 15 point programme. He asserts that the
   "sailors represented the exasperated of the peasantry with the War
   Communism regime" while, rather lamely, noting that "no other peasant
   insurrection reproduced the Kronstadters demands." ["In Defence of
   October", pp. 3-82, International Socialism, no. 52, p. 63] Similarly,
   it is only the "Editorial Preface" in the Trotskyist work Kronstadt
   which presents even a summary of the demands. This summary states:

     "The resolution demanded free elections in the soviets with the
     participation of anarchists and Left SRs, legalisation of the
     socialist parties and the anarchists, abolition of the Political
     Departments [in the fleet] and the Special Purpose Detachments,
     removal of the zagraditelnye ottyady [Armed troops used to prevent
     unauthorised trade], restoration of free trade, and the freeing of
     political prisoners." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, pp. 5-6]

   They assert in the "Glossary" that it "demanded political and economic
   changes, many of which were soon realised with the adoption of the
   NEP." [Op. Cit., p. 148] Which, ironically enough, contradicts Trotsky
   who claimed that it was an "illusion" to think "it would have been
   sufficient to inform the sailors of the NEP decrees to pacify them."
   Moreover, the "insurgents did not have a conscious program, and they
   could not have had one because of the very nature of the petty
   bourgeoisie. They themselves did not clearly understand that their
   fathers and brothers needed first of all was free trade." [Op. Cit., p.
   91-2]

   So we have a uprising which was peasant in nature, but whose demands
   did not have anything in common with other peasant revolts. It
   apparently demanded free trade and did not demand it. It was similar to
   the NEP, but the NEP decrees would not have satisfied it. It produced a
   platform of political and economic demands but did not, apparently,
   have a "conscious program." The contradictions abound. Why these
   contradictions exist will become clear after we list the 15 demands.

   The full list of demands are as follows:

     "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' control groups.

     15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it
     does not utilise wage labour."
     [quoted by Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Revolt, pp. 37-8]

   This is the program described by the Soviet government as a "SR-Black
   Hundreds resolution"! This is the program which Trotsky maintains was
   drawn up by "a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers." [Lenin
   and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 65 and p. 98] As can be seen, it was nothing
   of the kind. Indeed, this resolution is largely in the spirit of the
   political slogans of the Bolsheviks before they seized of power in the
   name of the soviets. Moreover, it reflected ideals expounded in 1917
   and were formalised in the Soviet State's 1918 constitution. In the
   words of Paul Avrich, "[i]n effect, the Petropavlovsk resolution was an
   appeal to the Soviet government to live up to its own constitution, a
   bold statement of those very rights and freedom which Lenin himself had
   professed in 1917. In spirit, it was a throwback to October, evoking
   the old Leninist watchword of 'All power to the soviets.'" [Kronstadt
   1921, pp. 75-6] Hardly an example of "reactionary" politics, unless the
   slogans of 1917 and the 1918 constitution of the U.S.S.R. are also
   "reactionary."

   While these fifteen demands are central to the revolt, looking at the
   paper produced by the revolt helps us understand the nature of these
   demands and place them in a fuller political context. "The pages of
   Izvestiia," as Voline argued, "give abundant proof of th[e] general
   enthusiasm, which re-appeared once the masses felt they had regained,
   in the free Soviets, the true road to emancipation and the hope of
   achieving the real revolution." [Unknown Revolution, p. 495] For
   example, food rations were equalised, except for the sick and to
   children, who received a larger one. Left-wing political parties were
   legalised. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee was elected by a
   "Conference of Delegates" made up of over two hundred delegates from
   military units and workplaces. This body elected the Provisional
   Revolutionary Committee on March 2nd and enlarged it (again by
   election) on March 4th.

   The March 4th Conference of Delegates also "decided that all workers,
   without exception, should be armed and put in charge of guarding the
   interior of the city" and to organise re-elections for "the
   administrative commissions of all the unions and also of the Council of
   Unions" (which could "become the principle organ of the workers").
   [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 494]

   In the article "The Goals for Which We Fight," the rebels argue that
   "[w]ith the aid of state unions" the Communists have "chained the
   workers to the machines, and transformed work into a new slavery
   instead of making it pleasant." Moreover, to the "protests of the
   peasants, which have gone so far as spontaneous revolts, to the demands
   of the workers, compelled by the very conditions of their life to
   resort to strikes, they reply with mass shootings and a ferocity that
   the Tsarist generals might have envied." An "inevitable third
   revolution" was coming, shown by "increasing" workers' strikes, which
   will be "achieved by the labouring masses themselves." This would be
   based on "freely elected soviets" and the reorganisation of "the state
   unions into free associations of workers, peasants and intellectuals."
   [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., pp. 507-8]

   Thus the rebels saw clearly the real nature of nationalisation. Rather
   than being the basis of socialism, it simply produced more wage
   slavery, this time to the state ("From a slave of the capitalist the
   worker was transformed into a slave of state enterprises." [Izvestiia
   quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 518]). They clearly saw the need to
   replace wage slavery to the state (via nationalised property) with free
   associations of free workers and peasants. Such a transformation would
   come from the collective direct action and self-activity of working
   people, as expressed in the strikes which had so recently swept across
   the country.

   This transformation from the bottom up was stressed elsewhere. The
   unions, Izvestiia argued, would "fulfil the great and urgent task of
   educating the masses for an economic and cultural renovation of the
   country. . . The Soviet Socialist Republic cannot be strong unless its
   administration be exercised by the working class, with the help of
   renovated unions." These should "become real representatives of the
   interests of the people." The current unions did "nothing" to promote
   "economic activity of a co-operative nature" or the "cultural
   education" of their members due centralised system imposed by the
   Communist regime. This would change with "true union activity by the
   working class." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 510] A strong
   syndicalist perspective clearly can be seen here, urging self-managed
   unions to be at the forefront of transforming the economy into a free
   association of producers. They opposed any "socialist" system in which
   the peasant "has been transformed into a serf in the 'soviet' economy,"
   the worker "a simple wage-worker in the State factories" and those who
   protest are "thrown into the jails of the Cheka." [Izvestiia quoted by
   Voline, Op. Cit., p. 512]

   The rebels saw that soviet power cannot exist while a political party
   dominated the soviets. They argued that Russia was just "State
   Socialism with Soviets of functionaries who vote docilely what the
   authorities and their infallible commissars dictate to them." Without
   real working class power, without "the will of the worker" expressed in
   their free soviets, corruption had become rampant ("Communists . . .
   live in ease and the commissars get fat."). Rather than a "time of free
   labour in the fields, factories and workshops," where "power" was in
   "the hands of the workers," the "Communists ha[d] brought in the rule
   of the commissars, with all the despotism of personal power."
   [Izvestiia, quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 519, p. 518, p. 511 and p.
   518]

   In opposition to this, the rebels argued that "Revolutionary Kronstadt
   . . . fights for the true Soviet Republic of the workers in which the
   producer himself will be owner of the products of his labour and can
   dispose of them as he wishes." They desired "a life animated by free
   labour and the free development of the individual" and so proclaimed
   "All power to the Soviets and not to the parties" and "the power of the
   free soviets." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 519]

   As can be seen, while the 15 demands are the essence of the revolt,
   looking at Izvestiia confirms the revolutionary nature of the demands.
   The rebels of 1921, as in 1917, looked forward to a system of free
   soviets in which working people could transform their society into one
   based on free associations which would encourage individual freedom and
   be based on working class power. They looked to a combination of
   renewed and democratic soviets and unions to transform Russian society
   into a real socialist system rather than the system of state capitalism
   the Bolsheviks had imposed (see Maurice Brintin's The Bolsheviks and
   Workers' Control for details of Lenin's commitment to building state
   capitalism in Russia from 1917 onwards).

   Clearly, Kronstadt's political programme was deeply socialist in
   nature. It opposed the new wage slavery of the workers to the state and
   argued for free associations of free producers. It was based on the key
   slogan of 1917, "All power to the soviets" but built upon it by adding
   the rider "but not to parties." The sailors had learned the lesson of
   the October revolution, namely that if a party held power the soviets
   did not. The politics of the revolt were not dissimilar to those of
   libertarian socialists and, as we argue in [35]section 9, identical to
   the dominant ideas of Kronstadt in 1917.

   The question now arises, whose interests did these demands and politics
   represent. According to Trotskyists, it is the interests of the
   peasantry which motivated them. For anarchists, it is an expression of
   the interests of all working people (proletarian, peasant and artisan)
   against those who would exploit their labour and govern them (be it
   private capitalists or state bureaucrats). We discuss this issue in the
   [36]next section.

4 Did the Kronstadt rebellion reflect "the exasperation of the peasantry"?

   This is a common argument of Trotskyists. While rarely providing the
   Kronstadt demands, they always assert that (to use John Rees' words)
   that the sailors "represented the exasperation of the peasantry with
   the War Communist regime." ["In Defence of October", International
   Socialism no. 52, p. 63]

   As for Trotsky, the ideas of the rebellion "were deeply reactionary"
   and "reflected the hostility of the backward peasantry toward the
   worker, the self-importance of the soldier or sailor in relation to
   'civilian' Petrograd, the hatred of the petty bourgeois for
   revolutionary discipline." The revolt "represented the tendencies of
   the land-owning peasant, the small speculator, the kulak." [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 80 and p. 81]

   How true is this? Even a superficial analysis of the events of the
   revolt and of the Petropavlovsk resolution (see [37]last section) can
   allow the reader to dismiss Trotsky's assertions.

   Firstly, according to the definition of "kulak" proved by the
   Trotskyists' themselves, we discover that kulak refers to "well-to-do
   peasants who owned land and hired poor peasants to work it." [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 146] Point 11 of the Kronstadt demands explicitly
   states their opposition to rural wage labour. How could Kronstadt
   represent "the kulak" when it called for the abolition of hired labour
   on the land? Clearly, the revolt did not represent the "small
   speculator, the kulak" as Trotsky asserted. Did it represent the
   land-owning peasant? We will return to this issue shortly.

   Secondly, the Kronstadt revolt started after the sailors at Kronstadt
   sent delegates to investigate the plight of striking workers in
   Petrograd. Their actions were inspired by solidarity for these workers
   and civilians. This clearly shows that Trotsky's assertion that the
   revolt "reflected the hostility of the backward peasantry toward the
   worker, the self-importance of the soldier or sailor in relation to
   'civilian' Petrograd" to be utter and total nonsense.

   As for the being "deeply reactionary," the ideas that motivated the
   revolt clearly were not. They were the outcome of solidarity with
   striking workers and called for soviet democracy, free speech, assembly
   and organisation for workers and peasants. These express the demands of
   most, if not all, Marxist parties (including the Bolsheviks in 1917)
   before they take power. They simply repeat the demands and facts of the
   revolutionary period of 1917 and of the Soviet Constitution. As Anton
   Ciliga argues, these demands were "impregnated with the spirit of
   October; and no calumny in the world can cast a doubt on the intimate
   connection existing between this resolution and the sentiments which
   guided the expropriations of 1917." ["The Kronstadt Revolt", The Raven,
   no, 8, pp. 330-7, p. 333] If the ideas of the Kronstadt revolt are
   reactionary, then so is the slogan "all power to the soviets."

   Not that the Kronstadters had not been smeared before by their
   opponents. The ex-Bolshevik turned Menshevik Vladimir Voitinsky who had
   visited the base in May 1917 later remembered them as being "degraded
   and demoralised" and "lack[ing] proletarian class-consciousness. It has
   the psychology of a Lumpenproletariat, a stratum that is a danger to a
   revolution rather than its support." They were "material suitable for a
   rebellion a la Bakunin." [quoted by I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p.
   253]

   So did the demands represent the interests of the (non-kulak)
   peasantry? To do so we must see whether the demands reflected those of
   industrial workers or not. If the demands do, in fact, match those of
   striking workers and other proletarian elements then we can easily
   dismiss this claim. After all, if the demands of the Kronstadt
   rebellion reflected those of proletarians then it is impossible to say
   that they simply reflected the needs of peasants (of course,
   Trotskyists will argue that these proletarians were also "backward"
   but, in effect, they are arguing that any worker who did not quietly
   follow Bolshevik orders was "backward" -- hardly a sound definition of
   the term!!).

   We can quickly note that demands echoed those raised during the Moscow
   and Petrograd strikes that preceded the Kronstadt revolt. For example,
   Paul Avrich records that the demands raised in the February strikes
   included "removal of roadblocks, permission to make foraging trips into
   the countryside and to trade freely with the villagers, [and]
   elimination of privileged rations for special categories of working
   men." The workers also "wanted the special guards of armed Bolsheviks,
   who carried out a purely police function, withdrawn from the factories"
   and raised "pleas for the restoration of political and civil rights."
   One manifesto which appeared (unsigned but bore earmarks of Menshevik
   origin) argued that "the workers and peasants need freedom. They do not
   want to live by the decrees of the Bolsheviks. They want to control
   their own destinies." It urged the strikers to demand the liberation of
   all arrested socialists and nonparty workers, abolition of martial law,
   freedom of speech, press and assembly for all who labour, free
   elections of factory committees, trade unions, and soviets. [Avrich,
   Kronstadt 1921, pp. 42-3]

   In the strikes of 1921, according to Lashevich (a Bolshevik Commissar)
   the "basic demands are everywhere the same: free trade, free labour,
   freedom of movement, and so on." Two key demands raised in the strikes
   dated back to at least 1920. These were "for free trade and an end to
   privilege." In March 1919, "the Rechkin coach-building plant demanded
   equal rations for all workers" and that one of the "most characteristic
   demands of the striking workers at that time were for the free
   bringing-in of food." [Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 299 and p.
   302]

   As can be seen, these demands related almost directly to points 1, 2,
   3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13 of the Kronstadt demands. As Paul Avrich
   argues, the Kronstadt demands "echoed the discontents not only of the
   Baltic Fleet but of the mass of Russians in towns and villages
   throughout the country. Themselves of plebeian stock, the sailors
   wanted relief for their peasant and worker kinfolk. Indeed, of the
   resolution's 15 points, only one -- the abolition of the political
   departments in the fleet -- applied specifically to their own
   situation. The remainder . . . was a broadside aimed at the policies of
   War Communism, the justification of which, in the eyes of the sailors
   and of the population at large, had long since vanished." Avrich argues
   that many of the sailors had returned home on leave to see the plight
   of the villagers with their own eyes played at part in framing the
   resolution (particularly of point 11, the only peasant specific demand
   raised) but "[b]y the same token, the sailors' inspection tour of
   Petrograd's factories may account for their inclusion of the
   workingmen's chief demands -- the abolition of road-blocks, of
   privileged rations, and of armed factory squads -- in their program."
   [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 74-5] Simply put, the Kronstadt resolution
   "merely reiterated long standing workers' demands." [V. Brovkin, Behind
   the Front Lines of the Civil War, p. 395]

   Which means, of course, that Ida Mett had been correct to argue that
   the "Kronstadt revolution had the merit of stating things openly and
   clearly. But it was breaking no new ground. Its main ideas were being
   discussed everywhere. For having, in one way or another, put forward
   precisely such ideas, workers and peasants were already filling the
   prisons and the recently set up concentration camps." [The Kronstadt
   Uprising, p. 39]

   Nor can it be claimed that these workers were non-proletarians (as if
   class is determined by thought rather than social position). Rather
   than being those workers with the closest relations with the
   countryside who were protesting, the opposite was the case. By 1921
   "[a]ll who had relatives in the country had rejoined them. The
   authentic proletariat remained till the end, having the most slender
   connections with the countryside." [Ida Mett, Op. Cit., p. 36]

   Thus the claims that the Kronstadt demands reflected peasant needs is
   mistaken. They reflected the needs of the whole working population,
   including the urban working class who raised these demands continually
   throughout the Civil War period in their strikes. Simply put, the
   policies of the Bolsheviks as regards food were not only evil, they did
   not work and were counter-productive. As many of the Russian working
   class recognised from the start and took strike action over again and
   again.

   Moreover, by focusing on the "free trade" issue, Leninists distort the
   real reasons for the revolt. As Ida Mett points out, the Kronstadt
   rebellion did not call for "free trade" as the Trotskyists argue, but
   rather something far more important:

     "In the Kronstadt Isvestia of March 14th we find a characteristic
     passage on this subject. The rebels proclaimed that 'Kronstadt is
     not asking for freedom of trade but for genuine power to the
     Soviets.' The Petrograd strikers were also demanding the reopening
     of the markets and the abolition of the road blocks set up by the
     militia. But they too were stating that freedom of trade by itself
     would not solve their problems." [Op. Cit., p. 77]

   Thus we have the Petrograd (and other) workers calling for "free trade"
   (and so, presumably, expressing their economic interests or those of
   their fathers and brothers) while the Kronstadt sailors were demanding
   first and foremost soviet power! Their programme called for 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." This was point 11 of the 15 demands,
   which showed the importance it ranked in their eyes. This would have
   been the basis of trade between town and village, but trade between
   worker and peasant and not between worker and kulak. So rather than
   call for "free trade" in the abstract (as many of the workers were) the
   Kronstadters (while reflecting the needs of both workers and peasants)
   were calling for the free exchange of products between workers, not
   workers and rural capitalists (i.e. peasants who hired wage slaves).
   This indicates a level of political awareness, an awareness of the fact
   that wage labour is the essence of capitalism.

   Thus Ante Ciliga:

     "People often believe that Kronstadt forced the introduction of the
     New Economic Policy (NEP) -- a profound error. The Kronstadt
     resolution pronounced in favour of the defence of the workers, not
     only against the bureaucratic capitalism of the State, but also
     against the restoration of private capitalism. This restoration was
     demanded -- in opposition to Kronstadt -- by the social democrats,
     who combined it with a regime of political democracy. And it was
     Lenin and Trotsky who to a great extent realised it (but without
     political democracy) in the form of the NEP. The Kronstadt
     resolution declared for the opposite since it declared itself
     against the employment of wage labour in agriculture and small
     industry. This resolution, and the movement underlying, sought for a
     revolutionary alliance of the proletarian and peasant workers with
     the poorest sections of the country labourers, in order that the
     revolution might develop towards socialism. The NEP, on the other
     hand, was a union of bureaucrats with the upper layers of the
     village against the proletariat; it was the alliance of State
     capitalism and private capitalism against socialism. The NEP is as
     much opposed to the Kronstadt demands as, for example, the
     revolutionary socialist programme of the vanguard of the European
     workers for the abolition of the Versailles system, is opposed to
     the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles achieved by Hitler." [Op.
     Cit., pp. 334-5]

   Point 11 did, as Ida Mett noted, "reflected the demands of the peasants
   to whom the Kronstadt sailors had remained linked -- as had, as a
   matter of fact, the whole of the Russian proletariat . . . In their
   great majority, the Russian workers came directly from the peasantry.
   This must be stressed. The Baltic sailors of 1921 were, it is true,
   closely linked with the peasantry. But neither more nor less than had
   been the sailors of 1917." To ignore the peasantry in a country in
   which the vast majority were peasants would have been insane (as the
   Bolsheviks proved). Mett stresses this when she argued that a "workers
   and peasants' regime that did not wish to base itself exclusively on
   lies and terror, had to take account of the peasantry." [Op. Cit., p.
   40]

   Given that the Russian industrial working class were also calling for
   free trade (and often without the political, anti-capitalist, riders
   Kronstadt added) it seems dishonest to claim that the sailors purely
   expressed the interests of the peasantry. Perhaps this explains why
   point 11 becomes summarised as "restoration of free trade" by
   Trotskyists. ["Editorial Preface", Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 6]
   John Rees does not even mention any of the demands (which is amazing in
   a work which, in part, tries to analyse the rebellion).

   Similarly, the working class nature of the resolution can be seen from
   who agreed to it. The resolution passed by the sailors on the
   battleships was ratified by a mass meeting and then a delegate meeting
   of workers, soldiers and sailors. In other words, by workers and
   peasants.

   J.G. Wright, following his guru Trotsky without question (and using him
   as the sole reference for his "facts"), stated that "the incontestable
   facts" were the "sailors composed the bulk of the insurgent forces" and
   "the garrison and the civil population remained passive." [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 123] This, apparently, is evidence of the peasant
   nature of the revolt. Let us contest these "incontestable facts" (i.e.
   assertions by Trotsky).

   The first fact we should mention is that the meeting of 1st March in
   Anchor Square involved "some fifteen to sixteen thousand sailors,
   soldiers and civilians." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 215] This represented
   over 30% of Kronstadt's total population. This hardly points to a
   "passive" attitude on behalf of the civilians and soldiers.

   The second fact is that the conference of delegates had a "membership
   that fluctuated between which two and three hundred sailors, soldiers,
   and working men." This body remained in existence during the whole
   revolt as the equivalent of the 1917 soviet and, like that soviet, had
   delegates from Kronstadt's "factories and military units." It was, in
   effect, a "prototype of the 'free soviets' for which the insurgents had
   risen in revolt." In addition, a new Trade Union Council was created,
   free from Communist domination. [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 159 and p. 157]
   Trotsky expects us to believe that the soldiers and civilians who
   elected these delegates were "passive"? The very act of electing these
   delegates would have involved discussion and decision making and so
   active participation. It is extremely doubtful that the soldiers and
   civilians would have so apathetic and apolitical to not have taken an
   active part in the revolt.

   Thirdly, the declarations by sailors, soldiers and workers printed in
   Izvestiia which expressed their support for the revolt and those which
   announced they had left the Communist Party also present evidence which
   clearly contests Trotsky's and Wright's "incontestable facts." One
   declaration of the "soldiers of the Red Army from the fort
   Krasnoarmeietz" stated they were "body and soul with the Revolutionary
   Committee." [quoted by Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 500]

   Lastly, given that the Red Army troops manned the main bastion and the
   outlying forts and gun emplacements at Kronstadt and that the Bolshevik
   troops had to take these forts by force, we can safely argue that the
   Red Army soldiers did not play a "passive" role during the rebellion.
   [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 54 and pp. 205-6]

   This is confirmed by later historians. Based on such facts, Paul Avrich
   states that the townspeople "offered their active support" and the Red
   Army troops "soon fell into line." [Op. Cit., p. 159] Fedotoff-White
   notes that the "local land forces of the Kronstadt garrison . . . fell
   in and joined the seamen." [The Growth of the Red Army, p. 154] Getzler
   notes that elections were held for the Council of Trade Unions on the
   7th and 8th of March and this was a "Council committee consisting of
   representatives from all trade unions." He also notes that the
   Conference of Delegates "had been elected by Kronstadt's body politic
   at their places of work, in army units, factories, workshops and Soviet
   institutions." He adds that the revolutionary troikas (the equivalent
   of the commissions of the Executive Committee of the Soviet in 1917)
   were also "elected by the base organisations." Likewise, "the
   secretariats of the trade unions and the newly founded Council of Trade
   Unions were both elected by the entire membership of trade unions."
   [Op. Cit., pp. 238-9 and p. 240]

   That is a lot of activity for "passive" people.

   In other words, the Petropavlovsk resolution not only reflected the
   demands of proletarians in Petrograd, it gained the support of
   proletarians in Kronstadt in the fleet, the army and the civilian
   workforce. Thus the claim that the Kronstadt resolution purely
   reflected the interests of the peasantry is, yet again, refuted.

   As can be seen, the Kronstadters' (like the Petrograd workers) raised
   economic and political demands in 1921 just as they had four years
   earlier when they overthrew the Tsar. Which, again, refutes the logic
   of defenders of Bolshevism. For example, Wright excelled himself when
   he argued the following:

     "The supposition that the soldiers and sailors could venture upon an
     insurrection under an abstract political slogan of 'free soviets' is
     absurd in itself. It is doubly absurd in the view of the fact [!]
     that the rest of the Kronstadt garrison consisted of backward and
     passive people who could not be used in the civil war. These people
     could have been moved to an insurrection only by profound economic
     needs and interests. These were the needs and interests of the
     fathers and brothers of these sailors and soldiers, that is, of
     peasants as traders in food products and raw materials. In other
     words the mutiny was the expression of the petty bourgeoisie's
     reaction against the difficulties and privations imposed by the
     proletarian revolution. Nobody can deny this class character of the
     two camps." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 111-2]

   Of course, no worker or peasant could possibly reach beyond a trade
   union consciousness by their own efforts, as Lenin so thoughtfully
   argued in What is to be Done?. Neither could the experience of two
   revolutions have an impact on anyone, nor the extensive political
   agitation and propaganda of years of struggle. Indeed, the sailors were
   so backward that they had no "profound economic needs and interests" of
   their own but rather fought for their fathers and brothers interests!
   Indeed, according to Trotsky they did not even understand that ("They
   themselves did not clearly understand that what their fathers and
   brothers needed first of all was free trade." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op.
   Cit., p. 92])! And these were the sailors the Bolsheviks desired to man
   some of the most advanced warships in the world?

   Sadly for Wright's assertions history has proven him wrong time and
   time again. Working people have constantly raised political demands
   which were far in advance of those of the "professional"
   revolutionaries (a certain German and the Paris Commune springs to
   mind, never mind a certain Russian and the soviets). The fact that the
   Kronstadt sailors not only "venture[d] upon an insurrection under an
   abstract political slogan of 'free soviets'" but actually created one
   (the conference of delegates) goes unmentioned. Moreover, as we prove
   in [38]section 8, the majority of sailors in 1921 had been there in
   1917. This was due to the fact that the sailors could not be quickly or
   easily replaced due to the technology required to operate Kronstadt's
   defences and battleships.

   Given that the "a smaller proportion of the Kronstadt sailors were of
   peasant origin than was the case of the Red Army troops supporting the
   government," perhaps we will discover Trotskyists arguing that because
   "ordinary Red Army soldiers . . . were reluctant and unreliable
   fighters against Red Kronstadt, although driven at gunpoint onto the
   ice and into battle" that also proves the peasant nature of the revolt?
   [Sam Farber, Op. Cit., p. 192; Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p.
   243] Given the quality of the previous arguments presented, it is only
   a matter of time before this one appears!

   Indeed, Trotskyists also note this non-peasant nature of the Kronstadt
   demands (as indicated in the [39]last section). Thus was have John Rees
   pathetically noting that "no other peasant insurrection reproduced the
   Kronstadters' demands." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 63] As we have indicated
   above, proletarian strikes, resolutions and activists all produced
   demands similar or identical to the Kronstadt demands. These facts, in
   themselves, indicate the truth of Trotskyist assertions on this matter.
   Rees mentions the strikes in passing, but fails to indicate that
   Kronstadt's demands were raised after a delegation of sailors had
   returned from visiting Petrograd. Rather than their "motivation" being
   "much closer to that of the peasantry" that to the "dissatisfaction of
   the urban working class" the facts suggest the opposite (as can be seen
   from the demands raised). [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 61] The motivation for
   the resolution was a product of the strikes in Petrograd and it also,
   naturally enough, included the dissatisfaction of the peasantry (in
   point 11). For the Kronstadters, it was a case of the needs of all the
   toilers and so their resolution reflected the needs and demands of
   both.

   Unfortunately for Rees, another revolt did reproduce the Kronstadt
   demands and it was by urban workers, not peasants. This revolt took
   place in Ekaterinoslavl (in the Ukraine) in May, 1921. It started in
   the railway workshops and became "quickly politicised," with the strike
   committee raising a "series of political ultimatums that were very
   similar in content to the demands of the Kronstadt rebels." Indeed,
   many of the resolutions put to the meeting almost completely coincided
   with the Kronstadt demands. The strike "spread to the other workshops"
   and on June 1st the main large Ekaterinoslavl factories joined the
   strike. The strike was spread via the use of trains and telegraph and
   soon an area up to fifty miles around the town was affected. The strike
   was finally ended by the use of the Cheka, using mass arrests and
   shootings. Unsurprisingly, the local communists called the revolt a
   little Kronstadt." [Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin, pp. 171-3]

   Therefore to claim that Kronstadt solely reflected the plight or
   interests of the peasantry is nonsense. Nor were the economic demands
   of Kronstadt alarming to the Bolshevik authories. After all, Zinovioev
   was about to grant the removal of the roadblock detachments (point 8)
   and the government was drafting what was to become known as the New
   Economic Policy (NEP) which would satisfy point 11 partially (the NEP,
   unlike the Kronstadters, did not end wage labour and so, ironically,
   represented the interests of the Kulaks!). It was the political demands
   which were the problem. They represented a clear challenge to Bolshevik
   power and their claims at being the "soviet power."

5 What lies did the Bolsheviks spread about Kronstadt?

   From the start, the Bolsheviks lied about the uprising. Indeed,
   Kronstadt provides a classic example of how Lenin and Trotsky used
   slander against their political opponents. Both attempted to paint the
   revolt as being organised and lead by the Whites. At every stage in the
   rebellion, they stressed that it had been organised and run by White
   guard elements. As Paul Avrich notes, "every effort was made to
   discredit the rebels" and that the "chief object of Bolshevik
   propaganda was to show that the revolt was not a spontaneous outbreak
   of mass protest but a new counterrevolutionary conspiracy, following
   the pattern established during the Civil War. According to the Soviet
   press, the sailors, influenced by Mensheviks and SR's in their ranks,
   had shamelessly cast their lot with the 'White Guards,' led by a former
   tsarist general named Kozlovsky . . . This, in turn, was said to be
   part of a carefully laid plot hatched in Paris by Russian emigres in
   league with French counterintelligence." [Op. Cit., p. 88 and p. 95]

   Lenin, for example, argued in a report to the Tenth Congress of the
   Communist Party on March 8th that "White Guard generals were very
   active over there. There is ample proof of this" and that it was "the
   work of Social Revolutionaries and White Guard emigres." [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 44]

   The first government statement on the Kronstadt events was entitled
   "The Revolt of Ex-General Kozlovsky and the Warship Petropavlovsk" and
   read, in part, that the revolt was "expected by, and undoubtedly
   prepared by, French counterintelligence." It continues by stating that
   on the morning of March 2 "the group around ex-General Kozlovsky . . .
   had openly appeared on the scene . . . [he] and three of his officers .
   . . have openly assumed the role of insurgents. Under their direction .
   . . a number of . . . responsible individuals, have been arrested. . .
   Behind the SRs again stands a tsarist general." [Op. Cit., pp. 65-6]

   Victor Serge, a French anarchist turned Bolshevik, remembered that he
   was first told that "Kronstadt is in the hands of the Whites" and that
   "[s]mall posters stuck on the walls in the still empty streets
   proclaimed that the counter-revolutionary General Kozlovsky had seized
   Kronstadt through conspiracy and treason." Later the "truth seeped
   through little by little, past the smokescreen put out by the Press,
   which was positively berserk with lies" (indeed, he states that the
   Bolshevik press "lied systematically"). He found out that the
   Bolshevik's official line was "an atrocious lie" and that "the sailors
   had mutinied, it was a naval revolt led by the Soviet." However, the
   "worse of it all was that we were paralysed by the official falsehoods.
   It had never happened before that our Party should lie to us like this.
   'It's necessary for the benefit of the public,' said some . . . the
   strike [in Petrograd] was now practically general" (we should note that
   Serge, a few pages previously, mentions "the strenuous calumnies put
   out by the Communist Press" about Nestor Makhno, "which went so far as
   to accuse him of signing pacts with the Whites at the very moment when
   he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against them" which
   suggests that Kronstadt was hardly the first time the Party had lied to
   them). [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 124-6 and p. 122] (In the
   interests of honesty, it should be noted that Serge himself contributed
   to the Bolshevik lie machine about Kronstadt. For example, in March
   1922 he happily repeated the Soviet regime's falsifications about the
   rebels. [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, pp. 18-9]).

   Even Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky'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, p. 511]

   Thus the claim that the Kronstadt rebellion was the work of Whites and
   led by a White/Tzarist General was a lie -- a lie deliberately and
   consciously spread. This was concocted to weaken support for the
   rebellion in Petrograd and in the Red Army, to ensure that it did not
   spread. Lenin admitted as much on the 15th of March when he stated at
   the Tenth Party Conference that in Kronstadt "they did not want the
   White Guards, and they do not want our power either." [quoted by
   Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 129]

   If you agree with Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci that "to tell the
   truth is a communist and revolutionary act" then its clear that the
   Bolsheviks in 1921 (and for a long time previously) were not communist
   or revolutionary (and as the subsequent Leninist accounts of Kronstadt
   show, Bolshevism is still neither). In stark contrast to the
   Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt paper Izvestiia published Bolshevik leaflets,
   paper articles and radio broadcasts so that the inhabitants of the
   island could see exactly what lies the Bolsheviks were telling about
   them.

   The Trotskyist editors of Kronstadt show the same contempt for their
   readers as the Bolsheviks showed for the truth. They include an
   "Introduction" to their work by Pierre Frank in which he argues that
   the Bolsheviks merely "state that [White] generals,
   counterrevolutionaries, sought to manipulate the insurgents" and that
   anarchists "turn this into a claim that these generals had launched the
   rebellion and that 'Lenin, Trotsky and the whole Party leadership knew
   quite well that this was no mere 'generals' revolt.'" [quoting Ida
   Mett] This apparently shows how "[a]nything having to do with the
   facts" gets treated by such authors. He states that Mett and others
   "merely distort the Bolsheviks' positions." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op.
   Cit., p. 22]

   This is argued in the same work that quotes Lenin actually stating on
   March 8th, 1921, that "the familiar figures of White Guard generals"
   were "very quickly revealed," that "White generals were very active"
   there, that it was "quite clear that it is the work of Social
   Revolutionaries and White Guard emigres" and that Kronstadt was "bound
   up initially" with "the White Guards." Lenin is also quoted, on March
   9th, arguing that "the Paris newspapers reported the events two weeks
   before they actually occurred, and a White general appeared on the
   scene. That is what actually happened." [Op. Cit., pp. 44-5 and p. 48]
   This is stated in spite of presenting the government statement we have
   quoted above in which the Bolshevik government clearly argued that two
   Communist leaders had been arrested under Kozlovsky's "direction" and
   he "stands" behind the right-SRs whose agitation had started the revolt
   (according to the Bolsheviks).

   Nor can it be said that Ida Mett claims that the Lenin and Trotsky had
   said a general had "launched" the revolt. She quotes Moscow radio as
   stating that the revolt ("Just like other White Guard insurrections")
   was in fact "the mutiny of ex-General Kozlovsky and the crew of the
   battle ship 'Petropavlovsk'" had been organised by Entene spies, while
   Socialist Revolutionaries had "prepared" the ground and that their real
   master was a "Tsarist general" on the page before that quoted by Frank,
   so indicating who the Bolsheviks did claim had launched the revolt.
   [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 43] It seems strange that Frank complains that
   others "distort" the Bolsheviks position when, firstly, the person he
   quotes does not and, secondly, he distorts that persons' actual
   position.

   Mett simply acknowledging the Bolshevik lies spewed out at the time.
   Then she said that "Lenin, Trotsky and the whole Party leadership knew
   quite well that this was no mere 'generals' revolt." [Op. Cit., p. 43]
   She then turns to General Kozlovsky whom the Bolsheviks indicated by
   name as the leader of the revolt and had outlawed in the statement of
   March 2nd quoted above. Who was he and what part did he play? Mett sums
   up the evidence:

     "He was an artillery general, and had been one of the first to
     defect to the Bolsheviks. He seemed devoid of any capacity as a
     leader. At the time of the insurrection he happened to be in command
     of the artillery at Kronstadt. The communist commander of the
     fortress had defected. Kozlovsky, according to the rules prevailing
     in the fortress, had to replace him. He, in fact, refused, claiming
     that as the fortress was now under the jurisdiction of the
     Provisional Revolutionary Committee, the old rules no longer
     applied. Kozlovsky remained, it is true, in Kronstadt, but only as
     an artillery specialist. Moreover, after the fall of Kronstadt, in
     certain interviews granted to the Finnish press, Kozlovsky accused
     the sailors of having wasted precious time on issues other than the
     defence of the fortress. He explained this in terms of their
     reluctance to resort to bloodshed. Later, other officers of the
     garrison were also to accuse the sailors of military incompetence,
     and of complete lack of confidence in their technical advisers.
     Kozlovsky was the only general to have been present at Kronstadt.
     This was enough for the Government to make use of his name.

     "The men of Kronstadt did, up to a point, make use of the military
     know how of certain officers in the fortress at the time. Some of
     these officers may have given the men advice out of sheer hostility
     to the Bolsheviks. But in their attack on Kronstadt, the Government
     forces were also making use of ex Tsarist officers. On the one side
     there were Kozlovsky, Salomianov, and Arkannihov; On the other,
     ex-Tsarist officers and specialists of the old regime, such as
     Toukhatchevsky. Kamenev, and Avrov. On neither side were these
     officers an independent force."
     [Op. Cit., p. 44]

   Not that this is good enough for Trotskyists. Wright, for example, will
   have none of it. He quotes Alexander Berkman's statement that there was
   "a former general, Kozlovsky, in Kronstadt. It was Trotsky who had
   placed him there as an Artillery specialist. He played no role whatever
   in the Kronstadt events." [The Russian Tragedy, p. 69]

   Wright protests that this is not true and, as evidence, quotes from an
   interview by Kozlovsky and states that "[f]rom the lips of the
   counterrevolutionary general himself . . . we get the unambiguous
   declaration that from the very first day, he and his colleagues had
   openly associated themselves with the mutiny, had elaborated the 'best'
   plans to capture Petrograd . . . If the plan failed it was only because
   Kozlovsky and his colleagues were unable to convince the 'political
   leaders', i.e. his SR allies [!], that the moment was propitious for
   exposing their true visage and program." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt,
   p. 119]

   In other words, because the Provisional Revolutionary Committee failed
   to take the advice of the military specialists it proves that, in fact,
   they were in league! That is very impressive. We wonder if the
   Kronstadters had taken their advice then this would have proved that
   they were not, in fact, in league with them after all? Similarly, by
   failing to take over the command of the fortress Kozlovsky must have
   shown how he was leading the revolt as the Bolshevik radio said!

   Every non-Leninist account agrees that Kozlovsky played no part in the
   revolt. Paul Avrich notes that when trouble erupted "the Bolsheviks at
   once denounced him as the evil genius of the movement," "outlawed" him
   and seized his family as hostages. He confirms that the military
   specialists "threw themselves into the task of planning military
   operations on behalf of the insurrection" and that Kozlovsky had
   refused to succeed as the commander of the fortress after the old one
   had fled to the mainland (as demanded by military rules). He stresses
   that "the officers remained in a purely advisory capacity throughout
   the rebellion. They had no share, as far as one can tell, in initiating
   or directing the revolt, or in framing its political program, which was
   alien to their way of thinking." Their role "was confined to providing
   technical advice, just as it had been under the Bolsheviks." The
   Provisional Revolutionary Committee "showed its distrust of the
   specialists by repeatedly rejecting their counsel, however sound and
   appropriate it might be." And, of course, we should mention that "[f]or
   all the government's accusations that Kronstadt was a conspiracy of
   White Guard generals, ex-tsarist officers played a much more prominent
   role in the attacking force than among the defenders." [Op. Cit., p.
   99, p. 100, p. 101 and p. 203]

   Indeed, Kozlovsky "had served the Bolsheviks so loyally that on 20
   October 1920 the chief commander of the Baltic Fleet . . . had awarded
   him a watch 'for courage and feat of arms in the battle against
   Yudenich'" [I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 219] This was simply
   officially confirming the award made on the 3rd of December, 1919, by
   the Petrograd Soviet "for military feats and energetic activities
   during the attack of the Yudenich bands on Petrograd." Indeed, he was
   one of the first generals who entered into service of the Bolsheviks
   and the Kronstadt soviet had elected him Chief-of-Staff of the fortress
   in the wake of the February revolution. All this did not stop the
   Bolsheviks claiming on March 3rd, 1921, that Kozlovsky was a "supporter
   of Yudenich and Kolchak"! [quoted by Israel Getzler, "The Communist
   Leaders' Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently
   Published Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp. 24-44, Vol.
   15, No. 1, June 2002, p. 43 and p. 31]

   Berkman was clearly correct. Kozlovsky took no role in the revolt. What
   he did do was offer his expertise to the Kronstadt rebels (just as he
   had to the Bolsheviks) and make plans which were rejected. If
   associating yourself with an event and making plans which are rejected
   by those involved equals a role in that event then Trotsky's role in
   the Spanish revolution equalled that of Durruti's!

   Finally, it should be noted that Victor Serge reported that it "was
   probably [the leading Bolshevik] Kalinin who, on his return to
   Petrograd [from attending the initial rebel meetings at Kronstadt],
   invented 'the White General Kozlovsky.'" [Memoirs of a Revolutionary,
   p. 127] The ironic thing is, if the Kronstadt rebels had been following
   Kozlovsky and the other Bolshevik appointed "military specialists" then
   the defences of Kronstadt would have been strengthened considerably.
   However, as Kozlovsky later explained, the sailors refused to
   co-operate because of their congenital mistrust of officers. [Paul
   Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 138-9]

   It is hard to find a Leninist who subscribes to this particular
   Bolshevik lie about Kronstadt. It has, for the main, been long
   abandoned by those who follow those who created it, despite the fact it
   was the cornerstone of the official Bolshevik account of the rebellion.
   As the obvious falseness of the claims became more and more well-known,
   Trotsky and his followers turned to other arguments to slander the
   uprising. The most famous is the assertion that the "Kronstadt sailors
   were quite a different group from the revolutionary heroes of 1917."
   [Wright, Op. Cit., p. 129] We turn to this question in the [40]section
   8 and indicate that research as refuted it (and how Trotskyists have
   misused this research to present a drastically false picture of the
   facts). However, first we must discuss whether the Kronstadt revolt
   was, in fact, a White conspiracy (the [41]next section) and its real
   relationship to the Whites ([42]section 7).

6 Was the Kronstadt revolt a White plot?

   At the time, the Bosheviks portrayed the Kronstadt revolt as a White
   plot, organised by the counter-revolution (see [43]last section for
   full details). In particular, they portrayed the revolt as a
   conspiracy, directed by foreign spies and executed by their SR and
   White Guardist allies.

   For example, Lenin argued on March 8th that "White Guard generals were
   very active" at Kronstadt. "There is ample proof of this. Two weeks
   before the Kronstadt events, the Paris newspapers reported a mutiny at
   Kronstadt. It is quite clear that it is the work of Social
   Revolutionaries and White Guard emigres." [Lenin and Trotsky,
   Kronstadt, p. 44]

   Trotsky, on March 16th, made the same point, arguing that "in a number
   of foreign newspapers . . . news of an uprising in Kronstadt appeared
   as far back as the middle of February . . . How [to] explain this? Very
   simply . . . The Russian counterrevolutionary organisers promised to
   stage a mutiny at a propitious moment, while the impatient yellow and
   financial press write about it as an already accomplished fact." [Op.
   Cit., p. 68]

   This appears to be the greatest "evidence" for Lenin and Trotsky as
   regards the White-Guardist nature of the revolt. Indeed, Trotsky on the
   "basis of the dispatch . . . sent a warning to Petrograd to my naval
   colleagues." [Ibid.]

   However, to see the truth of these claims it is simply a case of
   looking at how the Bolsheviks reacted to this announcement of an
   uprising in Kronstadt. They did nothing. As the Trotskyist editors of a
   book justifying the repression note, the "Red Army command was caught
   unprepared by the rebellion." [Op. Cit., p. 6] J.G. Wright, in his
   defence of Trotsky's position (a defence recommended by Trotsky
   himself), acknowledged that the "Red Army command" was "[c]aught off
   guard by the mutiny." [Op. Cit., p. 123] This clearly shows how little
   weight the newspaper reports were held before the rebellion. Of course,
   during and after the rebellion was a different matter and they quickly
   became a focal point for Bolshevik smears.

   Moreover, as proof of a White plot, this evidence is pathetic. As Ida
   Mett argued out, the "publication of false news about Russia was
   nothing exceptional. Such news was published before, during and after
   the Kronstadt events. . . To base an accusation on a 'proof' of this
   kind is inadmissible and immoral." [Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising, p.
   76]

   Even Trotsky admitted that "the imperialist press . . . prints . . . a
   great number of fictitious reports about Russia" but maintained that
   the reports on Kronstadt were examples of "forecasts" of "attempts at
   overturns in specific centres of Soviet Russia" (indeed, the
   "journalistic agents of imperialism only 'forecast' that which is
   entrusted for execution to other agents of this very imperialism.").
   Lenin also noted, in an article entitled "The Campaign of Lies", that
   "the West European press [had] indulged in such an orgy of lies or
   engaged in the mass production of fantastic inventions about Soviet
   Russia in the last two weeks" and listed some of them (such as
   "Petrograd and Moscow are in the hands of the insurgents"). [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 69, p. 50 and p. 51]

   Yet this same press can be used as evidence for a White conspiracy in
   Kronstadt? Unsurprisingly, as Mett notes, "[i]n 1938 Trotsky himself
   was to drop this accusation." [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 76] Little wonder,
   given its pathetic nature -- although this does not stop his loyal
   follower John G. Wright from asserting these reports are the
   "irrefutable facts" of the "connection between the counterrevolution
   and Kronstadt." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 115] The question of
   why the counterrevolutionary plotters would given their enemies advance
   notice of their plans never crossed his mind.

   As can be seen, at the time no evidence was forthcoming that the Whites
   organised or took part in the revolt. As Ida Mett argues:

     "If, at the time the Bolshevik Government had proofs of these
     alleged contacts between Kronstadt and the counter-revolutionaries
     why did it not try the rebels publicly? Why did it not show the
     working masses of Russia the 'real' reasons for the uprising? If
     this wasn't done it was because no such proofs existed." [Mett, Op.
     Cit., p. 77]

   Unsurprisingly, the first soviet investigation into the revolt came to
   the conclusion that it was spontaneous. Iakov Agranov, a special
   plenipotentiary of the Secret-Operation Department of the Vecheka (and
   later to become its head), was sent the presidium of that body to
   Kronstadt soon after the crushing of the uprising. His mandate was "to
   ascertain the role of various parties and groups in the start and
   development of the uprising and the ties of its organisers and
   inspirers with counter-revolutionary parties and organisations
   operating both in and outside Soviet Russia." He produced a report on
   the 5th of April, 1921, which expressed his considered opinion that the
   "uprising was entirely spontaneous in origin and drew into its
   maelstrom almost the entire population and the garrison of the
   fortress. . . the investigation failed to show the outbreak of the
   mutiny was preceded by the activity of any counter-revolutionary
   organisation at work among the fortress's command or that it was the
   work of the entente. The entire course of the movement speaks against
   that possibility. Had the mutiny been the work of some secret
   organisation which predated its outbreak, then that organisation would
   not have planned it for a time when the reserves of fuel and provisions
   were hardly sufficient for two weeks and when the thawing of the ice
   was still far off." He notes that the "masses" in Kronstadt "were fully
   aware of the spontaneity of their movement." [quoted by Israel Getzler,
   "The Communist Leaders' Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the
   Light of Recently Published Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia,
   pp. 24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2002, p. 25]

   Agranov's conclusion was also that of Aleksei Nikolaev's, who, as
   chairman of the Extraordinary Troika of the First and Second Special
   Section, was given the double assignment of "the punishment of the
   mutineers and the unmasking of all the organisations that prepared and
   led the mutiny." He reported on April 20th, 1921, that "in spite of all
   efforts we have been unable to discover the presence of any
   organisation and to seize any agents." [quoted by Getzler, Op. Cit., p.
   26] Ironically enough, a prominent SR leader and head of the SR
   Administrative Centre in Finland wrote a letter on the 18th of March
   that stated the revolt was "absolutely spontaneous," that the "movement
   began spontaneously, without any organisation and quite unexpectedly.
   After all, a month later, Kronstadt would have been inaccessible to the
   Bolsheviks and a hundred times more dangerous to them." [quoted by
   Getzler, Op. Cit., pp. 25-6]

   This did not stop the Bolsheviks reiterating the official line that the
   revolt was a White plot, with SR help (nor has it stopped their
   latter-day supporters repeating these lies since). For example,
   Bukharin was still pedalling the official lies in July 1921, stating
   that, as regards Kronstadt, the "documents which have since been
   brought to light show clearly that the affair was instigated by purely
   White Guard centres." [contained in In Defence of the Russian
   Revolution, Al Richardson (ed.), p. 192] It is redundant to note that
   said "documents" were not "brought to light" then or since.

   It should be noted here that the Bolsheviks were quite willing to
   invent "evidence" of a conspiracy. Trotsky, for example, raised, on the
   24th of March 1921, the possibility of a "Political Trial of
   Kronstadters and Makhnovites." This show trial would be part of the
   "struggle" against "anarchism (Kronstadt and Makhno)." This was
   "presently an important task" and so it "seems . . . appropriate to
   organise trials of Kronstadters . . . and of Makhnovites." The "effect
   of the reports and the speeches of the prosecutor etcetera would be far
   more powerful than the effects of brochures and leaflets about . . .
   anarchism." [quoted by Getzler, Op. Cit., pp. 39] While Trotsky's show
   trial was never staged, the fact that the idea was taken seriously can
   be seen from the invented summaries of the testimonies of three men
   considered by the Bolsheviks as ringleaders of the revolt. Perhaps the
   fact that the three (Kozlovsky, Petrichenko, Putilin) managed to escape
   to Finland ensured that Trotsky's idea was never carried out. Stalin,
   of course, utilised the "powerful" nature of such trials in the 1930s.

   Decades later historian Paul Avrich did discover an unsigned hand
   written manuscript labelled "Top Secret" and entitled "Memorandum on
   the Question of Organising an Uprising in Kronstadt." Trotskyist Pierre
   Frank considered it "so convincing" that he "reproduced it in its
   entirety" to prove a White Conspiracy existed behind the Kronstadt
   revolt. Indeed, he considers it as an "indisputable" revelation and
   that Lenin and Trotsky "were not mistaken in their analysis of
   Kronstadt." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 26 and p. 32]

   However, reading the document quickly shows that Kronstadt was not a
   product of a White conspiracy but rather that the White "National
   Centre" aimed to try and use a spontaneous "uprising" it thought was
   likely to "erupt there in the coming spring" for its own ends. The
   report notes that "among the sailors, numerous and unmistakable signs
   of mass dissatisfaction with the existing order can be noticed."
   Indeed, the "Memorandum" states that "one must not forget that even of
   the French Command and the Russian anti-Bolshevik organisations do not
   take part in the preparation and direction of the uprising, a revolt in
   Kronstadt will take place all the same during the coming spring, but
   after a brief period of success it will be doomed to failure." [quoted
   by Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, p. 235 and p. 240]

   As Avrich notes, an "underlying assumption of the Memorandum is that
   the revolt would not occur until after the springtime thaw, when the
   ice had melted and Kronstadt was immune from an invasion from the
   mainland." [Kronstadt 1921, pp. 106-7] Voline stated the obvious when
   he argued that the revolt "broke out spontaneously" for if it "had been
   the result of a plan conceived and prepared in advance, it would
   certainly not have occurred at the beginning of March, the least
   favourable time. A few weeks later, and Kronstadt, freed of ice, would
   have become an almost impregnable fortress . . . The greatest
   opportunity of Bolshevik government was precisely the spontaneity of
   the movement and the absence of any premeditation, of any calculation,
   in the action of the sailors." [The Unknown Revolution, p. 487] As can
   be seen, the "Memorandum" also recognised this need for the ice to thaw
   and it was the basic assumption behind it. In other words, the revolt
   was spontaneous and actually undercut the assumptions behind the
   "Memorandum."

   Avrich rejects the idea that the "Memorandum" explains the revolt:

     "Nothing has come to light to show that the Secret Memorandum was
     ever put into practice or that any links had existed between the
     emigres and the sailors before the revolt. On the contrary, the
     rising bore the earmarks of spontaneity . . . there was little in
     the behaviour of the rebels to suggest any careful advance
     preparation. Had there been a prearranged plan, surely the sailors
     would have waited a few weeks longer for the ice to melt . . . The
     rebels, moreover, allowed Kalinin [a leading Communist] to return to
     Petrograd, though he would have made a valuable hostage. Further, no
     attempt was made to take the offensive . . . Significant too, is the
     large number of Communists who took part in the movement. . .

     "The Sailors needed no outside encouragement to raise the banner of
     insurrection. . . Kronstadt was clearly ripe for a rebellion. What
     set it off were not the machinations of emigre conspirators and
     foreign intelligence agents but the wave of peasant risings
     throughout the country and the labour disturbances in neighbouring
     Petorgrad. And as the revolt unfolded, it followed the pattern of
     earlier outbursts against the central government from 1905 through
     the Civil War."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 111-2]

   He explicitly argues that while the National Centre had "anticipated"
   the revolt and "laid plans to help organise it," they had "no time to
   put these plans into effect." The "eruption occurred too soon, several
   weeks before the basic conditions of the plot . . . could be
   fulfilled." It "is not true," he stresses, "that the emigres had
   engineering the rebellion." The revolt was "a spontaneous and
   self-contained movement from beginning to end." [Op. Cit., pp. 126-7]

   Moreover, whether the Memorandum played a part in the revolt can be
   seen from the reactions of the White "National Centre" to the uprising.
   Firstly, they failed to deliver aid to the rebels nor get French aid to
   them. Secondly, Professor Grimm, the chief agent of the National Centre
   in Helsingfors and General Wrangel's official representative in
   Finland, stated to a colleague after the revolt had been crushed that
   if a new outbreak should occur then their group must not be caught
   unawares again. Avrich also notes that the revolt "caught the emigres
   off balance" and that "[n]othing . . . had been done to implement the
   Secret Memorandum, and the warnings of the author were fully borne
   out." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 212 and p. 123]

   If Kronstadt was a White conspiracy then how could the organisation of
   the conspiracy have been caught unawares?

   Clearly, the attempts of certain later-day Trotskyists to justify and
   prove their heroes slanders against Kronstadt are pathetic. No evidence
   of a White-Guardist plot existed until 1970 when Paul Avrich produced
   his study of the revolt and the single document in question clearly
   does not support the claim that the Whites organised the revolt.
   Rather, the Whites aimed to use a sailors "uprising" to further their
   cause, an "uprising" which they predicted would occur in the spring
   (with or without them). The predicted revolt did take place, but
   earlier than expected and was not a product of a conspiracy. Indeed,
   the historian who discovered this document explicitly argues that it
   proves nothing and that the revolt was spontaneous in nature.

   Therefore, the claim that Kronstadt was a White plot cannot be defended
   with anything but assertions. No evidence exists to back up such
   claims.

7 What was the real relationship of Kronstadt to the Whites?

   As we proved in the [44]last section, the Kronstadt revolt was not a
   White conspiracy. It was a popular revolt from below. However, some
   Trotskyists still try and smear the revolt by arguing that it was, in
   fact, really or "objectively" pro-White. We turn to this question now.

   We must first stress that the Kronstadters' rejected every offer of
   help from the National Centre and other obviously pro-White group (they
   did accept help towards the end of the rebellion from the Russian Red
   Cross when the food situation had become critical). Historian Israel
   Getzler stressed that "the Kronstadters were extremely resentful of all
   gestures of sympathy and promises of help coming from the
   White-Guardist emigres." He quotes a Red Cross visitor who stated that
   Kronstadt "will admit no White political party, no politician, with the
   exception of the Red Cross." [Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 235]

   Avrich notes that the Kronstadter's "passionately hated" the Whites and
   that "both during and afterwards in exile" they "indignantly rejected
   all government accusations of collaboration with counterrevolutionary
   groups either at home or abroad." As the Communists themselves
   acknowledged, no outside aid ever reached the insurgents. [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., p. 187, p. 112 and p. 123]

   In other words, there was no relationship between the revolt and the
   Whites.

   Needless to say, the Whites were extremely happy that Kronstadt
   revolted. There is no denying that. However, it would be weak politics
   indeed that based itself on the reactions of reactionaries to evaluate
   social struggles. If we did then we would have to conclude that the
   overthrow of Stalinism in 1989 was nothing more than a
   counter-revolution rather than a popular revolt against a specific form
   of capitalism (namely state capitalism). Indeed, many orthodox
   Trotskyists took this position (and supported the attempted coup
   organised by a section of the Stalinist bureaucracy to re-impose its
   dictatorship).

   Indeed, the Kronstadters themselves acknowledged that the Whites were
   happy to support their actions (indeed, any actions against the
   Bolsheviks) but that this joy was for different reasons than theirs:

     "The . . . Kronstadt sailors and workers have wrested the tiller
     from the Communists' hands and have taken over the helm . . .
     Comrades, keep a close eye upon the vicinity of the tiller: enemies
     are even now trying to creep closer. A single lapse and they will
     wrest the tiller from you, and the soviet ship may go down to the
     triumphant laughter from tsarist lackeys and henchmen of the
     bourgeoisie.

     "Comrades, right now you are rejoicing in the great, peaceful
     victory over the Communists' dictatorship. Now, your enemies are
     celebrating too.

     "Your grounds for such joy, and theirs, are quite contradictory.

     "You are driven by a burning desire to restore the authentic power
     of the soviets, by a noble hope of seeing the worker engage in free
     labour and the peasant enjoy the right to dispose, on his land, of
     the produce of his labours. They dream of bringing back the tsarist
     knout and the privileges of the generals.

     "Your interests are different. They are not fellow travellers with
     you.

     "You needed to get rid of the Communists' power over you in order to
     set about creative work and peaceable construction. Whereas they
     want to overthrow that power to make the workers and peasants their
     slaves again.

     "You are in search of freedom. They want to shackle you as it suits
     them. Be vigilant! Don't let the wolves in sheep's clothing get near
     the tiller."
     [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 187-8]

   Of course, this is not enough for the followers of Lenin and Trotsky.
   John Rees, for example, quotes Paul Avrich to support his assertion
   that the Kronstadt revolt was, in fact, pro-White. He argues as
   follows:

     "Paul Avrich . . . says there is 'undeniable evidence' that the
     leadership of the rebellion came to an agreement with the Whites
     after they had been crushed and that 'one cannot rule out the
     possibility that this was the continuation of a longstanding
     relationship.'" [Op. Cit., p. 64]

   What Rees fails to mention is that Avrich immediately adds "[y]et a
   careful search has yielded no evidence to support such a belief." He
   even states that "[n]othing has come to light to show that . . . any
   links had existed between the emigres and the sailors before the
   revolt." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 111] How strange that Rees fails to
   quote or even mention Avrich's conclusion to his own speculation! As
   for the post-revolt links between the "leadership" of the rebellion and
   the Whites, Avrich correctly argues that "[n]one of this proves that
   there were any ties between the [National] Centre and the Revolutionary
   Committee either before or during the revolt. It would seem, rather,
   that the mutual experience of bitterness and defeat, and a common
   determination to overthrow the Soviet regime, led them to join hands in
   the aftermath." [Op. Cit., p. 129] Seeing you friends and fellow
   toilers murdered by dictators may affect your judgement, unsurprisingly
   enough.

   Let us, however, assume that certain elements in the "leadership" of
   the revolt were, in fact, scoundrels. What does this mean when
   evaluating the Kronstadt revolt?

   Firstly, we must point out that this "leadership" was elected by and
   under the control of the "conference of delegates," which was in turn
   elected by and under the control of the rank-and-file sailors, soldiers
   and civilians. This body met regularly during the revolt "to receive
   and debate the reports of the Revolutionary committee and to propose
   measures and decrees." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 217] The actions of the
   "leadership" were not independent of the mass of the population and so,
   regardless of their own agendas, had to work under control from below.
   In other words, the revolt cannot be reduced to a discussion of whether
   a few of the "leadership" were "bad men" or not. Indeed, to do so just
   reflects the elitism of bourgeois history.

   And Rees does just that and reduces the Kronstadt revolt and its
   "ideology" down to just one person (Petrichenko). Perhaps we can
   evaluate Bolshevism with this method? Or Italian Socialism. After all,
   influential figures in both these movements ended up making contacts
   and deals with extremely suspect organisations and acting in ways we
   (and the movements they sprang from) would oppose. Does that mean we
   gain an insight into their natures by mentioning Stalin's or
   Mussolini's later activities? Or evaluating their revolutionary nature
   from such individuals? Of course not. Indeed, Rees's article is an
   attempt to argue that objective circumstances rather than Bolshevism as
   such lead to Stalinism. Rather than do the same for Kronstadt, he
   prefers to concentrate on an individual. This indicates a distinctly
   bourgeois perspective:

     "What passes as socialist history is often only a mirror image of
     bourgeois historiography, a percolation into the ranks of the
     working class movement of typically bourgeois methods of thinking.
     In the world of this type of 'historian' leaders of genius replace
     the kings and queens of the bourgeois world. . . . The masses never
     appear independently on the historic stage, making their own
     history. At best they only 'supply the steam', enabling others to
     drive the locomotive, as Stalin so delicately put it . . . This
     tendency to identify working class history with the history of its
     organisations, institutions and leaders is not only inadequate -- it
     reflects a typically bourgeois vision of mankind, divided in almost
     pre-ordained manner between the few who will manage and decide, and
     the many, the malleable mass, incapable of acting consciously on its
     own behalf . . . Most histories of the degeneration of the Russian
     Revolution rarely amount to more than this." ["Solidarity's Preface"
     to Ida Mett's The Kronstadt Uprising, pp. 18-9]

   Secondly, the question is one of whether workers are in struggle and
   what they aim for and definitely not one of whether some of the
   "leaders" are fine upstanding citizens. Ironically, Trotsky indicates
   why. In 1934, he had argued "[a]nyone who had proposed that we not
   support the British miners' strike of 1926 or the recent large-scale
   strikes in the United States with all available means on the ground
   that the leaders of the strikes were for the most part scoundrels,
   would have been a traitor to the British and American workers." ["No
   Compromise on the Russian Question", Writings of Leon Trotsky:
   Supplement (1934-40), p. 539]

   The same applies to Kronstadt. Even if we assume that some of the
   "leadership" did have links with the National Centre (an assumption we
   must stress has no evidence to support it), this in no way invalidates
   the Kronstadt revolt. The movement was not produced by the so-called
   "leaders" of the revolt but rather came from below and so reflected the
   demands and politics of those involved. If it was proved, as KGB and
   other soviet sources argued, that some of the "leaders" of the Hungary
   uprising of 1956 had CIA links or were CIA agitators, would that make
   the revolution and its workers' councils somehow invalid? Of course
   not. If some of the "leadershp" were scoundrels, as Trotsky argued,
   this does not invalid the revolt itself. The class criteria is the
   decisive one.

   (As an aside, we must point out that Trotsky was arguing against those
   claiming, correctly, that to unconditionally defend the Soviet Union
   was to give an endorsement to Stalinism. He stated immediately after
   the words we have quoted above: "Exactly the same thing applies to the
   USSR!" However, there was a few obvious differences which invalidates
   his analogy. Firstly, the Stalinist leadership was exploiting and
   oppressing the workers by means of state power. Trade Union
   bureaucrats, for all their faults, are not mass murdering butchers at a
   head of a dictatorship defended by troops and secret police. Secondly,
   strikes are examples of proletarian direct action which can, and do,
   get out of control of union structures and bureaucrats. They can be the
   focal point of creating new forms of working class organisation and
   power which can end the power of the union bureaucrats and replace it
   with self-managed strikers assemblies and councils. The Stalinist
   regime was organised to repress any attempts at unseating them and was
   not a form of working class self-defence in even the limited form that
   trade unions are.)

   John Rees continues by arguing that:

     "As it became clear that the revolt was isolated Petrichenko was
     forced to come to terms with the reality of the balance of class
     forces. On 13 March Petrichenko wired David Grimm, the chief of the
     National Centre and General Wrangel's official representative in
     Finland, for help in gaining food. On 16 March Petrichenko accepted
     an offer of help from Baron P V Vilkin, an associate of Grimm's whom
     'the Bolsheviks rightly called a White agent.' None of the aid
     reached the garrison before it was crushed, but the tide of events
     was pushing the sailors into the arms of the Whites, just as the
     latter had always suspected it would." [Op. Cit., p. 64]

   We should note that it was due to the "food situation in Kronstadt . .
   . growing desperate" that Petrichenko contacted Grimm. [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., p. 121] If the revolt had spread to Petrograd and the striking
   workers there, such requests would have been unnecessary. Rather than
   isolation being due to "the reality of the balance of class forces" it
   was due to the reality of coercive forces -- the Bolsheviks had
   successfully repressed the Petrograd strikes and slandered the
   Kronstadt revolt (see [45]section 10). As historian V. Brovkin notes,
   the "key here us that the Communists suppressed the workers uprising in
   Petrograd in the first days of March. The sailors' uprising in
   Kronstadt, which was an outgrowth of the uprising in Petrograd, was now
   cut off from its larger social base and localised on a small island.
   From this moment on the Kronstadt sailors were on the defensive."
   [Behind the Lines during the Civil War, pp. 396-7]

   So, given that the Bolshevik dictatorship had lied to and repressed the
   Petrograd working class, the Kronstadters had few options left as
   regards aid. Rees's argument smacks of the "logic" of Right as regards
   the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban revolution and the Sandinistas.
   Isolated, each of these revolts turned to the Soviet Union for aid thus
   proving what the Right had always known from the start, namely their
   objectively Communist nature and their part in the International
   Communist Conspiracy. Few revolutionaries would evaluate these
   struggles on such a illogical and narrow basis but Rees wants us to do
   so with Kronstadt.

   The logic of Rees arguments was used by the Stalinists later. Indeed,
   he would have to agree with Stalinists that the fact the Hungarian
   revolution of 1956 called on Western aid against the Red Army shows
   that it was objectively counter-revolutionary and pro-capitalist, just
   as the Communist Party bureaucrats had argued. The fact that during
   that revolt many messages of support for the rebels also preached
   bourgeois values would also, according to Rees's logic, damn that
   revolt in the eyes of all socialists. Similarly, the fact that the
   Polish union Solidarity got support from the West against the Stalinist
   regime does not mean that its struggle was counter-revolutionary. So
   the arguments used by Rees are identical to those used by Stalinists to
   support their repression of working class revolt in the Soviet Empire.
   Indeed, orthodox Trotskyists also called "Solidarnosc" a company union
   of the CIA, bankers, the Vatican and Wall Street for capitalist
   counterrevolution in Poland and considered the fall of the Soviet Union
   as a defeat for the working class and socialism, in other words, a
   counterrevolution. As evidence they pointed to the joy and support each
   generated in Western elite circles (and ignored the popular nature of
   those revolts).

   In reality, of course, the fact that others sought to take advantage of
   these (and other) situations is inevitable and irrelevant. The
   important thing is whether working class people where in control of the
   revolt and what the main objectives of it were. By this class criteria,
   it is clear that the Kronstadt revolt was a revolutionary revolt as,
   like Hungry 1956, the core of the revolt was working people and their
   councils. It was they who were in control and called the tune. That
   Whites tried to take advantage of it is as irrelevant to evaluating the
   Kronstadt revolt as the fact that Stalinists tried to take advantage of
   the Spanish struggle against Fascism.

   Moreover, in his analysis of the "balance of class forces", Rees fails
   to mention the class which had real power (and the related privileges)
   in Russia at the time -- the state and party bureaucracy. The working
   class and peasantry were officially powerless. The only influence they
   exercised in the "workers' and peasants state" was when they rebelled,
   forcing "their" state to make concessions or to repress them (sometimes
   both happened). The balance of class forces was between the workers and
   peasants and ruling bureaucracy. To ignore this factor means to
   misunderstand the problems facing the revolution and the Kronstadt
   revolt itself.

   Lastly, we must comment upon the fact that members of Kronstadt's
   revolutionary Committee took refuge in Finland along with "[s]ome 8,000
   people (some sailors and the most active part of the civilian
   population)." [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 57] This was as the Bolsheviks had
   predicted on March 5th ("At the last minute, all those generals, the
   Kozlovskvs, the Bourksers, and all that riff raff, the Petrichenkos,
   and the Tourins will flee to Finland, to the White guards" [cited by
   Mett, Op. Cit., p. 50]). However, this does not indicate any "White
   guardist" connections. After all, where else could they go? Anywhere
   else would have been in Soviet Russia and so a Bolshevik prison and
   ultimately death. The fact that active participants in the revolt ended
   up in the only place they could end up to avoid death has no bearing to
   that nature of that revolt nor can it be used as "evidence" of a "white
   conspiracy."

   In other words, the attempts of Trotskyists to smear the Kronstadt
   sailors with having White links is simply false. The actions of some
   rebels after the Bolsheviks had crushed the revolt cannot be used to
   discredit the revolt itself. The real relationship of the revolt to the
   Whites is clear. It was one of hatred and opposition.

8 Did the rebellion involve new sailors?

   The most common Trotskyist assertion to justify the repression of the
   Kronstadt revolt is that of Trotsky. It basically consists of arguing
   that the sailors in 1921 were different than those in 1917. Trotsky
   started this line of justification during the revolt when he stated on
   March 16th that 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. He repeated this argument in 1937 and 1938 [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Kronstadt, pp. 68-9, p. 79, p. 81 and p. 87]

   His followers repeated his assertions. Wright argues that "the
   personnel of the fortress could not possibly have remained static
   throughout the years between 1917 and 1921." He doubts that the
   revolutionary sailors of 1917 could have remained behind in the
   fortress while their comrades fought the Whites. [Op. Cit., pp. 122-3]
   These sailors had been replaced by peasant conscripts. John Rees,
   continuing this line of rationale, argued that "the composition of the
   garrison had changed . . . it seems likely that the peasants had
   increased their weight in the Kronstadt, as Trotsky suggested." [Rees,
   Op. Cit., p. 61]

   As can be seen, the allegation that the Kronstadt sailors were a "grey
   mass" and had changed in social composition is a common one in
   Trotskyist circles. What are we to make of these claims?

   Firstly, we must evaluate what are the facts as regards the social
   composition and turnover of personnel in Kronstadt. Secondly, we must
   see how Trotskyists have misused these sources in order to indicate how
   far they will abuse the truth.

   The first task is now, thanks to recent research, easy to do. Were the
   majority of the sailors during the uprising new recruits or veterans
   from 1917? The answer is that it was predominantly the latter. Academic
   Israel Getzler investigated this issue and demonstrated that of 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. He argues
   that the "veteran politicised Red sailor still predominated in
   Kronstadt at the end of 1920" and presents more "hard statistical data"
   like that just quoted. He investigated the crews of the two major
   battleships, the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol (both renown since
   1917 for their revolutionary zeal and revolutionary allegiance and, in
   Paul Avrich's words, "the powder kegs of the rising." [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., p. 93]). His findings are conclusive, showing that of the 2,028
   sailors where years of enlistment are known, 93.9% were recruited into
   the navy before and during the 1917 revolution (the largest group,
   1,195, joined in the years 1914-16). Only 6.8% of the sailors 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. [Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, pp. 207-8] Historian
   Fedotoff-White indicates that the cruiser Rossiia had joined in the
   decision to re-elect the Kronstadt Soviet and its "crew consisted
   mostly of old seamen." [The Growth of the Red Army, p. 138]

   Moreover, the majority of the revolutionary committee were veterans of
   the Kronstadt Soviet and the October revolution. [Ida Mett, Op. Cit.,
   p. 42] "Given their maturity and experience, not to speak of their keen
   disillusionment as former participants in the revolution, it was only
   natural that these seasoned bluejackets should be thrust into the
   forefront of the uprising." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 91]

   Getzler stresses that it was "certainly the case" that the "activists
   of the 1921 uprising had been participants of the 1917 revolutions" for
   the "1,900 veteran sailors of the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol who
   spearheaded it. It was certainly true of a majority of the
   Revolutionary Committee and of the intellectuals . . . Likewise, at
   least three-quarters of the 10,000 to 12,000 sailors -- the mainstay of
   the uprising -- were old hands who had served in the navy through war
   and revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 226]

   Little wonder, then, that Paul Avrich argues (in a review of Getzler's
   book) that "Getzler draws attention to the continuity in institutions,
   ideology, and personnel linking 1921 with 1917. In doing so he
   demolishes the allegation of Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders that
   the majority of veteran Red sailors had, in the course of the Civil
   War, been replaced by politically retarded peasant recruits from the
   Ukraine and Western borderlands, thereby diluting the revolutionary
   character of the Baltic fleet. He shows, on the contrary, that no
   significant change had taken place in the fleet's political and social
   composition, that at least three-quarters of the sailors on active duty
   in 1921 had been drafted before 1918 and were drawn predominantly from
   Great Russian areas." [Soviet Studies, vol. XXXVI, 1984, pp. 139-40]

   Other research confirms Getzler's work. Evan Mawdsley argues that "it
   seems reasonable to challenge the previous interpretation" that there
   had been a "marked change in the composition of the men in the fleet .
   . . particularly . . . at the Kronstadt Naval Base." "The composition
   of the DOT [Active Detachment]," he concludes, "had not fundamentally
   changed, and anarchistic young peasants did not predominate there. The
   available data suggests that the main difficulty was not . . . that the
   experienced sailors were being demobilised. Rather, they were not being
   demobilised rapidly enough." The "relevant point is length of service,
   and available information indicates that as many as three-quarters of
   the DOT ratings -- the Kronstadt mutineers -- had served in the fleet
   at least since the World War." In a nutshell, "the majority of men seem
   to have been veterans of 1917." He presents data which shows that of
   the "2,028 ratings aboard the DOT battleships Petropavlovsk and
   Sevastopol at the time of the uprising, 20.2% had begun service before
   1914, 59% between 1914 and 1916, 14% in 1917, and 6.8% from 1918 to
   1921." For the DOT as a whole on 1st January, 1921, 23.5% could have
   been drafted before 1911, 52% from 1911 to 1918 and 24.5% after 1918.
   ["The Baltic Fleet and the Kronstadt Mutiny", pp. 506-521, Soviet
   Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 508-10]

   This is not the end of the matter. Unfortunately for Trotsky recently
   released documents from the Soviet Archives also refutes his case. A
   report by Vasilii Sevei, Plenipotentiary of the Special Section of the
   Vecheka, dated March 7th, 1921, stated that a "large majority" of the
   sailors of Baltic Fleet "were and still are professional
   revolutionaries and could well form the basis for a possible third
   revolution." He notes that the "disease from which they suffer has been
   too long neglected." What is significant about this social-political
   profile of the "large majority" of sailors was that it was not written
   in response of the Kronstadt revolt but that it was formulated well
   before. As its author put it in the report, "I stated these views more
   than a month ago in my memorandum to comrade Krestinskii" (then
   secretary of the Communist Party). [quoted by Israel Getzler, "The
   Communist Leaders' Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light
   of Recently Published Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp.
   24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2002, pp. 32-3]

   In other words, some time in January, 1921, a leading member of the
   Cheka was of the opinion that the "large majority" of sailors in the
   Baltic fleet "were and still are professional revolutionaries." No
   mention was made of new recruits, indeed the opposite is implied as the
   sailors' "disease" had been "too long neglected." And the recipient of
   this March 7th, 1921, report? Leon Trotsky. Unsurprisingly, Trotsky did
   not mention this report during the crisis or any time afterward.

   Needless to say, this statistical information was unavailable when
   anarchists and others wrote their accounts of the uprising. All they
   could go on were the facts of the uprising itself and the demands of
   the rebels. Based on these, it is little wonder that anarchists like
   Alexander Berkman stressed the continuity between the Red Kronstadters
   of 1917 and the rebels of 1921. Firstly, the rebels in 1921 took action
   in solidarity with the striking workers in Petrograd. In the words of
   Emma Goldman, it was "after the report of their Committee of the real
   state of affairs among the workers in Petrograd that the Kronstadt
   sailors did in 1921 what they had done in 1917. They immediately made
   common cause with the workers. The part of the sailors in 1917 was
   hailed as the red pride and glory of the Revolution. Their identical
   part in 1921 was denounced to the whole world as counter-revolutionary
   treason" by the Bolsheviks. [Trotsky Protests Too Much] Secondly, their
   demands were thoroughly in-line with the aspirations and politics of
   1917 and clearly showed a socialist awareness and analysis. Thirdly,
   Emma Goldman spoke to some of those wounded in the attack on Kronstadt.
   She records how one "had realised that he had been duped by the cry of
   'counter-revolution.' There were no Tsarist generals in Kronstadt, no
   White Guardists -- he found only his own comrades, sailors and soldiers
   who had heroically fought for the Revolution." [My Disillusionment in
   Russia, pp. 199-200]

   The later research has just confirmed what is obvious from an analysis
   of such facts, namely that the rebels in 1921 were acting in the spirit
   of their comrades of 1917 and this implies a significant continuity in
   personnel (which perhaps explains the unwillingness of Leninists to
   mention that the revolt was in solidarity with the strikers or the
   demands of the rebels). Thus the research provides empirical evidence
   to support the political analysis of the revolt conducted by
   revolutionaries like Berkman, Voline and so on.

   In summary, the bulk of the sailors at the start of 1921 had been there
   since 1917. Even if this was not the case and we assume that a majority
   of the sailors at Kronstadt were recent recruits, does this invalidate
   the rebellion? After all, the Red sailors of 1917 were once raw
   recruits. They had become politicised over time by debate, discussion
   and struggle. So had the workers in Petrograd and elsewhere. Would
   Leninists have denounced strikers in 1905 or 1917 if it was discovered
   that most of them were recent peasant arrivals in the city? We doubt
   it.

   Indeed, the Bolsheviks were simply repeating old Menshevik arguments.
   Between 1910 and 1914, the industrial workforce grew from 1,793,000
   workers to 2,400,000. At the same time, the influence of the Bolsheviks
   grew at Menshevik expense. The Mensheviks considered this a
   "consequence of the changes that were taking place in the character of
   urban Russia" with peasants joining the labour force. ["introduction",
   The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution, Abraham Archer (Ed.), p. 24]
   Somewhat ironically, given later Leninist arguments against Kronstadt,
   the Mensheviks argued that the Bolsheviks gained their influence from
   such worker-peasant industrial "raw recruits" and not from the genuine
   working class. [Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, p. 830] As Robert
   Service noted in his study of the Bolshevik party during the 1917
   revolution, "Menshevik critics were fond of carping that most Bolshevik
   newcomers were young lads fresh from the villages and wanting in long
   experience of industrial life and political activity. It was not
   completely unknown for Bolshevik spokesmen to come close to admitting
   this." [The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 44] And, of course, it
   was the industrial "raw recruits" who had taken part in the 1905 and
   1917 revolutions. They helped formulate demands and organise soviets,
   strikes and demonstrations. They helped raised slogans which were to
   the left of the Bolsheviks. Does this process somehow grind to a halt
   when these "raw recruits" oppose Trotsky? Of course not.

   Given the political aspects of the Kronstadt demands we can safely
   argue that even if the rebellion had been the work of recent recruits
   they obviously had been influenced by the veteran sailors who remained.
   They, like the peasant-workers of 1905 and 1917, would have been able
   to raise their own political demands and ideas while, at the same time,
   listening to those among them with more political experience. In other
   words, the assumption that the sailors could not raise revolutionary
   political demands if they were "raw recruits" only makes sense if we
   subscribe to Lenin's dictum that the working class, by its own efforts,
   can only reach a trade union consciousness (i.e. that toiling people
   cannot liberate themselves). In other words, this Trotsky inspired
   sociology misses the point. Sadly, we have to address it in order to
   refute Leninist arguments.

   Therefore, Getzler's research refutes the claims of Trotskyists such as
   Chris Harman who follow Trotsky and argue that "Kronstadt in 1921 was
   not Kronstadt of 1917. The class composition of its sailors had
   changed. The best socialist elements had long ago gone off to fight in
   the army in the front line. They were replaced in the main by peasants
   whose devotion to the revolution was that of their class." [quoted by
   Sam Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 192] As can be seen, the ship crews
   were remarkably consistent over the period in question. It is, however,
   useful to discuss this question further in order to show what passes as
   analysis in Trotskyist circles.

   Harman is, of course, following Trotsky. Writing in 1937 Trotsky argued
   that Kronstadt had "been completely emptied of proletarian elements" as
   "[a]ll the sailors" belonging to the ships' crews "had become
   commissars, commanders, chairmen of local soviets." Later, realising
   the stupidity of this claim, he changed it to Kronstadt being "denuded
   of all revolutionary forces" by "the winter of 1919." He also
   acknowledged that "a certain number of qualified workers and
   technicians" remained to "take care of the machinery" but these were
   "politically unreliable" as proven by the fact they had not been
   selected to fight in the civil war. As evidence, he mentions that he
   had wired a "request at the end of 1919, or in 1920, to 'send a group
   of Kronstadt sailors to this or that point'" and they had answered "No
   one left to send." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 87, p. 90 and p.
   81] Obviously, the Communist commander at Kronstadt had left his
   fortress and its ships totally unmanned! Such common sense is sadly
   lacking from Trotsky (as indicated above, the evidence supports the
   common sense analysis and not Trotsky's claims).

   Moreover, does this claim also apply to the Communist Party membership
   at Kronstadt? Is Trotsky really arguing that the Bolsheviks in
   Kronstadt after the winter of 1919 were not revolutionary? Given that
   the bulk of them had joined the CP during or after this time, we must
   obviously conclude that the recruiters let anyone join. Moreover, there
   had been a "rigorous local purge" of the party conducted in the autumn
   of 1920 by the commander of the Baltic Fleet. [I. Getzler, Kronstadt
   1917-1921, p. 211 and p. 205] Must we also conclude that this purge did
   not have revolutionary politics as a factor when determining whether a
   party member should be expelled or not?

   Trotsky claims too much. Based on his claims we must conclude one of
   two possibilities. The first possibility is that the Kronstadt
   Communist Party was not revolutionary and was made up of politically
   backward individuals, careerists and so on. If that was the case in
   Kronstadt then it must also have been the case elsewhere in Russia and
   this discredits any attempt to argue that the Bolshevik party
   dictatorship was revolutionary. The second possibility is that it did
   have revolutionary elements. If so, then the fact that hundreds of
   these members left the party during the revolt and only a minority of
   them opposed it makes the claim that the rebellion was
   "counter-revolutionary" difficult (indeed, impossible) to maintain (of
   the 2,900 members of the Communist Party in Kronstadt, 784 officially
   resigned and 327 had been arrested). And it also makes Trotsky's claims
   that Kronstadt was "denuded" of revolutionary elements false.

   J.G. Wright, as noted above, thought that it was "impossible" to
   believe that the sailors of 1917 could leave their comrades to fight
   the Whites while they stayed at Kronstadt. This may have been a valid
   argument if the Soviet armed forces were democratically run. However,
   as we indicated in [46]section 2, it was organised in a typically
   bourgeois fashion. Trotsky had abolished democratic soldiers and
   sailors councils and the election of officers in favour of appointed
   officers and hierarchical, top-down, military structures. This meant
   that the sailors would have stayed in Kronstadt if they had been
   ordered to. The fact that they had to defend Petrograd combined with
   the level of technical knowledge and experience required to operate the
   battleships and defences at Kronstadt would have meant that the 1917
   sailors would have been irreplaceable and so had to remain at
   Kronstadt. This is what, in fact, did happen. In the words of Israel
   Gelzter:

     "One reason for the remarkable survival in Kronstadt of these
     veteran sailors, albeit in greatly diminished numbers, was precisely
     the difficulty of training, in war-time conditions, a new generation
     competent in the sophisticated technical skills required of Russia's
     ultra-modern battleships, and, indeed, in the fleet generally." [Op.
     Cit., p. 208]

   We should also note here that "by the end of 1919 thousands of veteran
   sailors, who had served on many fronts of the civil war and in the
   administrative network of the expanding Soviet state, had returned to
   the Baltic Fleet and to Kronstadt, most by way of remobilisation."
   [Getzler, Op. Cit., pp. 197-8] Thus the idea that the sailors left and
   did not come back is not a valid one.

   Trotsky obviously felt that this (recently refuted) argument of
   changing social composition of the sailors would hold more water than
   claims White Guards organised it. He continued this theme:

     "The best, most self-sacrificing sailors were completely withdrawn
     from Kronstadt and played an important role at the fronts and in the
     local soviets throughout the country What was left was the grey mass
     with big pretensions ('We are from Kronstadt'), but without the
     political education and unprepared for revolutionary sacrifice. The
     country was starving. The Kronstadters demanded privileges. The
     uprising was dictated by a desire to get privileged food rations."
     [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 79]

   This was Trotsky's first comment on the uprising for 16 years and it
   contained a lie. As Ida Mett notes, "[s]uch a demand was never put
   forward by the men of Kronstadt" and so Trotsky "started his public
   accusations with a lie." [The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 73] He repeated
   the claim again, six months later [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 92]
   Unfortunately for him, the opposite was the case. Point 9 of the
   Kronstadt demands explicitly called for an end of privileges by the
   "equalisation of rations for all workers." This was implemented during
   the uprising.

   As an aside, Trotsky later states that "[w]hen conditions became very
   critical in hungry Petrograd, the Political Bureau more than once
   discussed the possibility of securing an 'internal loan' from
   Kronstadt, where a quantity of old provisions still remained. But
   delegates of the Petrograd workers answered: 'You will get nothing from
   them by kindness. They speculate in cloth, coal, and bread. At present
   in Kronstadt every kind of riffraff has raised its head.'" [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 87-8] As Ida Mett pointed out, "[w]e should add
   that before the insurrection these 'stores' were in the hands of
   communist functionaries and that it was upon these people alone that
   consent to the proposed 'loan' depended. The rank and file sailor, who
   took part in the insurrection, had no means open to him whereby he
   could have opposed the loan, even if he had wanted to." [The Kronstadt
   Uprising, pp. 74-5] If Trotsky's words were true, then they were a
   crushing indictment of Bolshevik practice, not the Kronstadt sailors.

   As for Trotsky's claim of a "lack of political education," the 15 point
   resolution voted upon by the sailors exposes this as nonsense and the
   fact the sailors fought the Red Army to the end indicates that there
   were prepared to die for their ideals. Similarly, Trotsky's argument
   that "in 1917-18, the Kronstadt sailor stood considerably higher than
   the average level of the Red Army" but by 1921 they "stood . . . on a
   level considerably lower, in general, than the average level of the Red
   Army." In fact, as we indicate in [47]section 9, the political
   programme of the revolt was fundamentally the same as Kronstadt's
   soviet democracy of 1917 and, we should note, opposed the introduction
   of wage labour, a basic socialist idea (and one missing from the
   Bolshevik's NEP policies). Moreover, the mass meeting that agreed the
   resolution did so unanimously, meaning old and new sailors agreed to
   it. So much for Trotsky's assertions.

   Others have pointed out the weak nature of Trotsky's arguments as
   regards the changing nature of the sailors. We will quote Emma
   Goldman's evaluation of Trotsky's assertions. As will be seen,
   Trotsky's assertions seem to be based on expediency (and,
   significantly, were not uttered before the revolt):

     "Now, I do not presume to argue what the Kronstadt sailors were in
     1918 or 1919. I did not reach Russia until January, 1920. From that
     time on until Kronstadt was 'liquidated' the sailors of the Baltic
     fleet were held up as the glorious example of valour and unflinching
     courage. Time on end I was told not only by Anarchists, Mensheviks
     and social revolutionists, but by many Communists, that the sailors
     were the very backbone of the Revolution. On the 1st of May, 1920,
     during the celebration and the other festivities organised for the
     first British Labour Mission, the Kronstadt sailors presented a
     large clear-cut contingent, and were then pointed out as among the
     great heroes who had saved the Revolution from Kerensky, and
     Petrograd from Yudenich. During the anniversary of October the
     sailors were again in the front ranks, and their re-enactment of the
     taking of the Winter Palace was wildly acclaimed by a packed mass.

     "Is it possible that the leading members of the party, save Leon
     Trotsky, were unaware of the corruption and the demoralisation of
     Kronstadt, claimed by him? I do not think so. Moreover, I doubt
     whether Trotsky himself held this view of the Kronstadt sailors
     until March, 1921. His story must, therefore, be an afterthought, or
     is it a rationalisation to justify the senseless 'liquidation' of
     Kronstadt?"
     [Trotsky Protests Too Much]

   Ante Ciliga quoted the testimony regarding Kronstadt of a fellow
   political prisoner in Soviet Russia:

     "'It is a myth that, from the social point of view, Kronstadt of
     1921 had a wholly different population from that of 1917,' [a] man
     from Petrograd, Dv., said to me in prison. In 1921 he was a member
     of the Communist youth, and was imprisoned in 1932 as a 'decist' (a
     member of Sapronov's group of 'Democratic Centralists')." [Op. Cit.,
     pp. 335-6]

   Since then, both Paul Avrich and Israel Gelzter have analysed this
   question and confirmed the arguments and accounts of Goldman and
   Ciliga. Moreover, continuity between the sailors of 1917 and 1921 can
   also been seen from their actions (rising in solidarity with the
   Petrograd workers) and in their politics (as expressed in their demands
   and in their paper).

   Now we turn to our second reason for looking into this issue, namely
   the misuse of these sources to support their case. This indicates well
   the nature of Bolshevik ethics. "While the revolutionaries," argued
   Ciliga with regards to the Bolsheviks, "remaining such only in words,
   accomplished in fact the task of the reaction and counter-revolution,
   they were compelled, inevitably, to have recourse to lies, to calumny
   and falsification." [Op. Cit., p. 335] Defending these acts also pays
   its toll on those who follow this tradition, as we shall see.

   Needless to say, such evidence as provided by Avrich and Getzler is
   rarely mentioned by supporters of Bolshevism. However, rather than
   ignore new evidence, the Trotskyists use it in their own way, for their
   own purposes. Every new work about Kronstadt has been selectively
   quoted from by Trotskyists to support their arguments, regardless of
   the honesty of such activity. We can point to two works, Paul Avrich's
   Kronstadt 1921 and Kronstadt 1917-1921 by Israel Getzler, which have
   been used to support Bolshevist conclusions when, in fact, they do the
   opposite. The misuse of these references is quite unbelievable and
   shows the mentality of Trotskyism well.

   Pierre Frank argues that Paul Avrich's work has "conclusions" which are
   "similar to Trotsky's" and "confirms the changes in the composition of
   the Kronstadt garrison that took place during the civil war, although
   with a few reservations." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 25] A quick
   look at these reservations shows how false Frank is. It is worth
   quoting Avrich at length to show this:

     "There can be little doubt that during the Civil War years a large
     turnover had indeed taken place within the Baltic Fleet, and that
     many of the old-timers had been replaced by conscripts from rural
     districts who brought with them the deeply felt discontent of the
     Russian peasantry. By 1921, according to official figures, more than
     three-quarters of the sailors were of peasant origin, a
     substantially higher proportion that in 1917 . . . Yet this does not
     necessarily mean that the behavioural patterns of the fleet had
     undergone any fundamental change. On the contrary, alongside the
     technical ratings, who were largely drawn from the working class,
     there had always been a large and unruly peasant element among the
     sailors . . . Indeed, in 1905 and 1917 it was these very youths from
     the countryside who had given Kronstadt its reputation as a hotbed
     of revolutionary extremism. And throughout the Civil War the
     Kronstadters had remained an independent and headstrong lot,
     difficult to control and far from constant in their support for the
     government. It was for this reason so many of them . . . had found
     themselves transferred to new posts remote from the centres of
     Bolshevik powers. Of those who remained, many hankered for the
     freedoms they had won in 1917 before the new regime began to
     establish its one-party dictatorship throughout the country.

     "Actually, there was little to distinguish the old-timers from the
     recent recruits in their midst. Both groups were largely of peasant
     background . . . Not unexpectedly, when the rebellion finally
     erupted, it was the older seamen, veterans of many years of service
     (dating in some cases before the First World War) who took the lead
     . . . Given their maturity and experience, not to speak of their
     keen disillusionment as former participants of the revolution, it
     was only natural that these seasoned bluejackets should be thrust
     into the forefront of the uprising . . . The proximity of Petrograd,
     moreover, with its intense intellectual and political life, had
     contributed towards sharpening their political awareness, and a good
     many had engaged in revolutionary activity during 1917 and after. .
     .

     "As late as the autumn of 1920, Emma Goldman recalled, the sailors
     were still held up by the Communists themselves as a glowing example
     of valour and unflinching courage; on November 7, the third
     anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power, they were in the
     front ranks of the celebrations . . . No one at the time spoke of
     any 'class degeneration' at Kronstadt. The allegation that
     politically retarded muzhiks had diluted the revolutionary character
     of the fleet, it would seem, was largely a device to explain away
     dissident movements among the sailors, and had been used as such as
     early as October 1918, following the abortive mutiny at the
     Petrograd naval station, when the social composition of the fleet
     could not yet have undergone any sweeping transformation."
     [Kronstadt 1921, pp. 89-92]

   As can be seen, Avrich's "reservations" are such as to make clear he
   does not share Trotsky's "conclusions" as regards the class make-up of
   Kronstadt and, indeed, noted the ideological bias in this
   "explanation."

   Moreover, Avrich points to earlier revolts which the Bolsheviks had
   also explained in terms of a diluting of the revolutionary sailors of
   the Baltic Fleet by peasants. In April 1918 "the crews of several
   Baltic vessels passed a strongly worded resolution" which "went so far
   as to call for a general uprising to dislodge the Bolsheviks and
   install a new regime that would adhere more faithfully to the
   principles of the revolution." In October that year, "a mass meeting at
   the Petrograd naval base adopted a resolution" which included the
   sailors going "on record against the Bolshevik monopoly of political
   power. Condemning the suppression of the anarchists and opposition
   socialists, they called for free elections to the soviets . . . [and]
   denounced the compulsory seizure of gain." Their demands, as Avrich
   notes, "strikingly anticipated the Kronstadt programme of 1921, down to
   the slogans of 'free soviets' and 'Away with the commissarocracy.'" He
   stresses that a "glance at the behaviour of the Baltic Fleet from 1905
   to 1921 reveals many elements of continuity." [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp.
   63-4]

   However, a worse example of Trotskyist betrayal of the truth is
   provided by the British SWP's John Rees. The evidence Rees musters for
   the claim that the "composition" of the Kronstadt sailors "had changed"
   between 1917 and 1921 is a useful indication of the general Leninist
   method when it comes to the Russian revolution. Rees argues as follows:

     "In September and October 1920 the writer and the Bolshevik party
     lecturer Ieronymus Yasinksky went to Kronstadt to lecture 400 naval
     recruits. They were 'straight from the plough'. And he was shocked
     to find that many, 'including a few party members, were politically
     illiterate, worlds removed from the highly politicised veteran
     Kronstadt sailors who had deeply impressed him'. Yasinsky worried
     that those steeled in the revolutionary fire' would be replaced by
     'inexperienced freshly mobilised young sailors'." [Op. Cit., p. 61]

   This quote is referenced to Israel Getzler's Kronstadt 1917-1921. Rees
   account is a fair version of the first half of Yasinskys' report. The
   quote however continues exactly as reproduced below:

     "Yasinsky was apprehensive about the future when, 'sooner or later,
     Kronstadt's veteran sailors, who were steeled in revolutionary fire
     and had acquired a clear revolutionary world-view would be replaced
     by inexperienced, freshly mobilised young sailors'. Still he
     comforted himself with the hope that Kronstadt's sailors would
     gradually infuse them with their 'noble spirit of revolutionary
     self-dedication' to which Soviet Russia owed so much. As for the
     present he felt reassured that 'in Kronstadt the red sailor still
     predominates.'" [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 207]

   Rees handy 'editing' of this quote transforms it from one showing that
   three months before the rising that Kronstadt had retained its
   revolutionary spirit to one implying the garrison had indeed been
   replaced.

   Rees tries to generate "[f]urther evidence of the changing class
   composition" by looking at the "social background of the Bolsheviks at
   the base." However, he goes on to contradict himself about the
   composition of the Bolshevik party at the time. On page 61 he says the
   "same figures for the Bolshevik party as a whole in 1921 are 28.7%
   peasants, 41% workers and 30.8% white collar and others". On page 66
   however he says the figures at the end of the civil war (also 1921)
   were 10% factory workers, 25% army and 60% in "the government or party
   machine". An endnote says even of those classed as factory workers
   "most were in administration." [Op. Cit., p. 61 and p. 78] The first
   set of figures is more useful for attacking Kronstadt and so is used.

   What is the basis of Rees "further evidence"? Simply that in "September
   1920, six months before the revolt, the Bolsheviks had 4,435 members at
   Kronstadt. Some 50 per cent of these were peasants, 40 percent workers
   and 10 percent intellectuals . . . Thus the percentage of peasants in
   the party was considerably higher than nationally . . . If we assume
   [our emphasis] that the Bolshevik party was more working class in
   composition than the base as a whole, then it seems likely [our
   emphasis] that the peasants had increased their weight in the
   Kronstadt, as Trotsky suggested." [Op. Cit., p. 61]

   So on the basis of an assumption, it may be "likely" that Trotsky was
   correct! Impressive "evidence" indeed!

   The figures Rees uses are extracted from D. Fedotoff-White's The Growth
   of the Red Army. Significantly, Rees fails to mention that the
   Kronstadt communists had just undergone a "re-registration" which saw
   about a quarter of the 4,435 members in August 1920 voluntarily
   resigning. By March 1921, the party had half as many members as in the
   previous August and during the rebellion 497 members (again, about
   one-quarter of the total membership) voluntarily resigned, 211 were
   excluded after the defeat of the rebellion and 137 did not report for
   re-registration. [Fedotoff-White, The Growth of the Red Army, p. 140]
   It seems strange that the party leadership had not taken the
   opportunity to purge the Kronstadt party of "excessive" peasant
   influence in August 1920 when it had the chance.

   Other questions arise from Rees' argument. He uses the figures of
   Communist Party membership in an attempt to prove that the class
   composition of Kronstadt had changed, favouring the peasantry over the
   workers. Yet this is illogical. Kronstadt was primarily a military base
   and so its "class composition" would be skewed accordingly. Since the
   Bolshevik military machine was made up mostly of peasants, can we be
   surprised that the Communist Party in Kronstadt had a higher percentage
   of peasants than the national average? Significantly, Rees does not
   ponder the fact that the percentage of workers in the Kronstadt
   Communist Party was around the national average (indeed, Fedotoff-White
   notes that it "compares favourably in that respect with some of the
   large industrial centres." [Op. Cit., p. 142]).

   Also, given that Rees acknowledges that by December 1920 only 1,313 new
   recruits had arrived in the Baltic Fleet, his pondering of the
   composition of the Communist organisation at Kronstadt smacks more of
   desperation than serious analysis. By arguing that we "do not know how
   many more new recruits arrived in the three months before Kronstadt
   erupted," Rees fails to see that this shows the irrelevance of his
   statistical analysis. [Op. Cit., p. 61] After all, how many of these
   "new recruits" would been allowed to join the Communist Party in the
   first place? Given that the Bolshevik membership had halved between
   August 1920 and March 1921, his analysis is simply pointless, a
   smokescreen to draw attention away from the weakness of his own case.

   Moreover, as evidence of changing class composition these figures are
   not very useful. This is because they do not compare the composition of
   the Kronstadt Bolsheviks in 1917 to those in 1921. Given that the
   Kronstadt base always had a high percentage of peasants in its ranks,
   it follows that in 1917 the percentage of Bolsheviks of peasant origin
   could have been higher than normal as well. If this was the case, then
   Rees argument falls. Simply put, he is not comparing the appropriate
   figures.

   It would have been very easy for Rees to inform his readers of the real
   facts concerning the changing composition of the Kronstadt garrison. He
   could quoted Getzler's work on this subject. As noted above, Getzler
   demonstrates that the crew of the battleships Petropavlovsk and
   Sevastopol, which formed the core of the rising, were recruited into
   the navy before 1917, only 6.9% having been recruited between 1918 and
   1921. These figures are on the same page as the earlier quotes Rees
   uses but are ignored by him. Unbelievably Rees even states "[w]e do not
   know how many new recruits arrived in the three months before Kronstadt
   erupted" in spite of quoting a source which indicates the composition
   of the two battleships which started the revolt! [Op. Cit., p. 61]

   Or, then again, he could have reported Samuel Farber's summary of
   Getzler's (and others) evidence. Rees rather lamely notes that Farber
   "does not look at the figures for the composition of the Bolsheviks"
   [Op. Cit., p. 62] Why should he when he has the appropriate figures for
   the sailors? Here is Farber's account of the facts:

     "this [Trotsky's class composition] interpretation has failed to
     meet the historical test of the growing and relatively recent
     scholarship on the Russian Revolution. . . . In fact, in 1921, a
     smaller proportion of Kronstadt sailors were of peasant social
     origin than was the case of the Red Army troops supporting the
     government . . . recently published data strongly suggest that the
     class composition of the ships and naval base had probably remained
     unchanged since before the Civil War. We now know that, given the
     war-time difficulties of training new people in the technical skills
     required in Russia's ultra-modern battleships, very few replacements
     had been sent to Kronstadt to take the place of the dead and injured
     sailors. Thus, at the end of the Civil War in late 1920, no less
     than 93.9 per cent of the members of the crews of the Petropavlovsk
     and the Sevastopol . . . were recruited into the navy before and
     during the 1917 revolutions. In fact, 59 per cent of these crews
     joined the navy in the years 1914-16, while only 6.8 per cent had
     been recruited in the years 1918-21 . . . of the approximately
     10,000 recruits who were supposed to be trained to replenish the
     Kronstadt garrison, only a few more than 1,000 had arrived by the
     end of 1920, and those had been stationed not in Kronstadt, but in
     Petrograd, where they were supposed to be trained." '[Before
     Stalinism, pp. 192-3]

   And Rees bemoans Farber for not looking at the Bolshevik membership
   figures! Yes, assumptions and "likely" conclusions drawn from
   assumptions are more important than hard statistical evidence!

   After stating "if, for the sake of argument, we accept Sam Farber's
   interpretation of the evidence" (evidence Rees refuses to inform the
   reader of) Rees then tries to save his case. He states Farber's "point
   only has any validity if we take the statistics in isolation. But in
   reality this change [!] in composition acted on a fleet whose ties with
   the peasantry had recently been strengthened in other ways. In
   particular, the Kronstadt sailors had recently been granted leave for
   the first time since the civil war. Many returned to their villages and
   came face to face with the condition of the countryside and the trials
   of the peasantry faced with food detachments." [Op. Cit., p. 62]

   Of course, such an argument has nothing to do with Rees original case.
   Let us not forget that he argued that the class composition of the
   garrison had changed, not that its political composition had changed.
   Faced with overwhelming evidence against his case, he not only does not
   inform his readers of it, he changes his original argument! Very
   impressive.

   So, what of this argument? Hardly an impressive one. Let us not forget
   that the revolt came about in response to the wave of strikes in
   Petrograd, not a peasant revolt. Moreover, the demands of the revolt
   predominantly reflected workers demands, not peasant ones (Rees himself
   acknowledges that the Kronstadt demands were not reproduced by any
   other "peasant" insurrection). The political aspects of these ideas
   reflected the political traditions of Kronstadt, which were not, in the
   main, Bolshevik. The sailors supported soviet power in 1917, not party
   power, and they again raised that demand in 1921 (see [48]section 9 for
   details). In other words, the political composition of the garrison was
   the same as in 1917. Rees is clearly clutching at straws.

   The fact that the class composition of the sailors was similar in 1917
   and in 1921 and that the bulk of the sailors at the heart of the revolt
   were veterans of 1917, means that Trotskyists can only fall back on
   their ideological definition of class. This perspective involves
   defining a specific "proletarian" political position (i.e. the politics
   of Bolshevism) and arguing that anyone who does not subscribe to that
   position is "petty-bourgeois" regardless of their actual position in
   society (i.e. their class position). As Ida Mett notes:

     "When Trotsky asserts that all those supporting the government were
     genuinely proletarian and progressive, whereas all others
     represented the peasant counterrevolution, we have a right to ask of
     him that he present us with a serious factual analysis in support of
     his contention." [Op. Cit., pp. 75-6]

   As we show in the [49]next section, the political composition of the
   Kronstadt rebels, like their class composition, was basically unchanged
   in 1921 when compared to that which pre-dominated in 1917.

9 Was Kronstadt different politically?

   As we proved in the [50]last section, the Kronstadt garrison had not
   fundamentally changed by 1921. On the two battleships which were the
   catalyst for the rebellion, over 90% of the sailors for whom years of
   enlistment are know had been there since 1917. However, given that most
   Leninists mean "support the party" by the term "class politics," it is
   useful to compare the political perspectives of Kronstadt in 1917 to
   that expressed in the 1921 revolt. As will soon become clear, the
   political ideas expressed in 1921 were essentially similar to those in
   1917. This similarly also proves the continuity between the Red sailors
   of 1917 and the rebels of 1921.

   Firstly, we must point out that Kronstadt in 1917 was never dominated
   by the Bolsheviks. At Kronstadt, the Bolsheviks were always a minority
   and a "radical populist coalition of Maximalists and Left SRs held
   sway, albeit precariously, within Kronstadt and its Soviet"
   ("externally Kronstadt was a loyal stronghold of the Bolshevik
   regime"). [I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 179] In 1917 Trotsky
   even stated that the Kronstadters "are anarchists." [quoted by Getzler,
   Op. Cit., p. 98] Kronstadt was in favour of soviet power and,
   unsurprisingly, supported those parties which claimed to support that
   goal.

   Politically, the climate in Kronstadt was "very close to the politics
   of the Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists, a left-wing split-off from
   the SR Party, politically located somewhere between the Left SRs and
   the Anarchists." [Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 194] In Kronstadt this
   group was led by Anatolii Lamanov and according to Getzler, "it
   rejected party factionalism" and "stood for pure sovietism". They
   sought an immediate agrarian and urban social revolution, calling for
   the "socialisation of power, of the land and of the factories" to be
   organised by a federation of soviets based on direct elections and
   instant recall, as a first step towards socialism. [Getzler, Op. Cit.,
   p. 135] The similarities with anarchism are clear.

   During the October revolution, the Bolsheviks did not prevail in the
   Kronstadt soviet. Instead, the majority was made up of SR Maximalists
   and Left SRs. Kronstadt's delegates to the third Congress of Soviets
   were an Left-SR (157 votes), a SR-Maximalist (147 votes) and a
   Bolshevik (109 votes). It was only in the January elections in 1918
   that the Bolsheviks improved their position, gaining 139 deputies
   compared to their previous 96. In spite of gaining their highest ever
   vote during the era of multi-party soviets the Bolsheviks only gained
   46 percent of seats in the soviet. Also elected at this time were 64
   SRs (21 percent), 56 Maximalists (19 percent), 21 non-party delegates
   (7 percent), 15 Anarchists (5 percent) and 6 Mensheviks (2 percent).
   The soviet elected a Left SR as its chairman and in March it elected
   its three delegates to the Fourth Congress of Soviets, with the
   Bolshevik delegate receiving the lowest vote (behind a Maximalist and
   an anarchist with 124, 95 and 79 votes respectively). [I. Getzler, Op.
   Cit., pp. 182-4]

   By the April 1918 elections, as in most of Russia, the Bolsheviks found
   their support had decreased. Only 53 Bolsheviks were elected (29 per
   cent) as compared to 41 SR Maximalists (22 percent), 39 Left SRs (21
   percent), 14 Menshevik Internationalists (8 percent), 10 Anarchists (5
   percent) and 24 non-party delegates (13 percent). Indeed, Bolshevik
   influence at Kronstadt was so weak that on April 18th, the Kronstadt
   soviet denounced the Bolsheviks attack against the anarchists in
   Moscow, April 12th by a vote of 81 to 57. The "Bolshevisation" of
   Kronstadt "and the destruction of its multi-party democracy was not due
   to internal developments and local Bolshevik strength, but decreed from
   outside and imposed by force." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 186]

   Thus the dominant political perspective in 1917 was one of "sovietism"
   -- namely, all power to the soviets and not to parties. This was the
   main demand of the 1921 uprising. Politically, Kronstadt had not
   changed.

   In addition to the soviet, there was the "general meetings in Anchor
   square, which were held nearly every day." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 57]
   The Kronstadt Soviet was itself constantly pressurised by mass
   meetings, generally held in Anchor Square. For example, on 25 May 1917,
   a large crowd, inspired by Bolshevik and anarchist speakers, marched to
   the Naval Assembly and forced the leaders of the Soviet to rescind
   their agreement with the more moderate Petrograd Soviet. In February
   1921, the Kronstadt rebels met in Anchor square to pass the
   Petropavlovsk resolution -- just as happened before in 1917. And as in
   1917, they elected a "conference of delegates" to manage the affairs of
   the Kronstadt. In other words, the sailors re-introduced exactly the
   same political forms they practised in 1917.

   These facts suggest that any claims that the majority of sailors,
   soldiers and workers in Kronstadt had changed ideas politically are
   unfounded. This, ironically enough, is confirmed by Trotsky.

   Trotsky's memory (which, after all, seems to be the basis of most of
   his and his followers arguments) does play tricks on him. He states
   that there "were no Mensheviks at all in Kronstadt." As for the
   anarchists, "most" of them "represented the city petty bourgeoisie and
   stood at a lower level than the SRs." The Left SRs "based themselves on
   the peasant part of the fleet and of the shore garrison." All in all,
   "in the days of the October insurrection the Bolsheviks constituted
   less than one-half of the Kronstadt soviet. The majority consisted of
   SRs and anarchists." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 86]

   So we have Trotsky arguing that the majority of the "pride and glory"
   of the revolution in 1917 voted for groups of a "lower level" than the
   Bolsheviks (and for a party, the Mensheviks, Trotsky said did not exist
   there!).

   Looking at the politics of these groups, we discover some strange
   inconsistencies which undermine the validity of Trotsky's claims.

   For example, in the beginning of 1918, "the working population of
   Kronstadt, after debating the subject at many meetings, decided to
   proceed to socialise dwelling places. . . A final monster meeting
   definitely instructed several members of the Soviet -- Left
   Social-Revolutionaries and Anarcho-Syndicalists -- to raise the
   question at the next [soviet] plenary session." While the Bolshevik
   delegates tried to postpone the decision (arguing in the soviet that
   the decision was too important and should be decided by the central
   government) the "Left Social-Revolutionaries, Maximalists and
   Anarcho-Syndicalists asked for an immediate discussion and carried the
   vote." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, pp. 460-1]

   This fits in exactly with the communist-anarchist programme of
   socialisation but it is hardly an expression of representatives of "the
   city petty bourgeoisie."

   Let us quote a "representative" of the "city petty bourgeoisie":

     "I am an anarchist because contemporary society is divided into two
     opposing classes: the impoverished and dispossessed workers and
     peasants . . . and the rich men, kings and presidents . . .

     "I am an anarchist because I scorn and detest all authority, since
     all authority is founded on injustice, exploitation and compulsion
     over the human personality. Authority dehumanises the individual and
     makes him a slave.

     "I am an opponent of private property when it is held by individual
     capitalist parasites, for private property is theft. . .

     "I am an anarchist because I believe only in the creative powers and
     independence of a united proletariat and not of the leaders of
     political parties of various kinds.

     "I am an anarchist because I believe that the present struggle
     between the classes will end only when the toiling masses, organised
     as a class, gain their true interests and conquer, by means of a
     violent social revolution, all the riches of the earth . . . having
     abolished all institutions of government and authority, the
     oppressed class must proclaim a society of free producers . . . The
     popular masses themselves will conduct their affairs on equal and
     communal lines in free communities."
     [N. Petrov, cited by Paul Avrich, Anarchists in the Russian
     Revolution, pp. 35-6]

   Very "petty bourgeois"! Of course Trotsky could argue that this
   represented the minority of "real revolutionaries," the "elements most
   closely linked to the Bolsheviks" among the anarchists, but such an
   analysis cannot be taken seriously considering the influence of the
   anarchists in Kronstadt. [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 86] For
   example, a member of the Petrograd Committee and the Helsingfors party
   organisation in 1917 recalled that the Anarchist-Communists had great
   influence in Kronstadt. Moreover, according to historian Alexander
   Rabinowitch, they had an "undeniable capacity to influence the course
   of events" and he speaks of "the influential Anarcho-Syndicalist
   Communists [of Kronstadt] under Iarchuk." Indeed, anarchists "played a
   significant role in starting the July uprising" in 1917. [Prelude to
   Revolution, p. 62, p. 63, p. 187 and p. 138] This confirms Paul
   Avrich's comments that the "influence of the anarchists . . . had
   always been strong within the fleet" and "the spirit of anarchism" had
   been "powerful in Kronstadt in 1917" (and "had by no means dissipated"
   in 1921). [Arvich, Op. Cit., p. 168 and p. 169]

   A similar analysis of the Maximalists would produce the same results
   for Trotsky's claims. Paul Avrich provides a useful summary of their
   politics. He notes the Maximalists occupied "a place in the
   revolutionary spectrum between the Left SR's and the anarchists while
   sharing elements of both." They "preached a doctrine of total
   revolution" and called for a "'toilers' soviet republic' founded on
   freely elected soviets, with a minimum of central state authority.
   Politically, this was identical with the objective of the Kronstadters
   [in 1921], and 'Power to the soviets but not the parties' had
   originally been a Maximalist rallying-cry." [Op. Cit., p. 171]

   Economically, the parallels "are no less striking." They denounced
   grain requisitioning and demanded that "all the land be turned over to
   the peasants." For industry they rejected the Bolshevik theory and
   practice of "workers' control" over bourgeois administrators in favour
   of the "social organisation of production and its systematic direction
   by representatives of the toiling people." Opposed to nationalisation
   and centralised state management in favour of socialisation and
   workers' self-management of production. Little wonder he states that
   the "political group closest to the rebels in temperament and outlook
   were the SR Maximalists." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 171-2]

   Indeed, "[o]n nearly every important point the Kronstadt program, as
   set forth in the rebel Izvestiia, coincided with that of the
   Maximalists." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 171] This can be quickly seen from
   reading both the Petropavlovsk resolution and the Kronstadt newspaper
   Izvestiia (see No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 183-204). The political
   continuity is striking between 1917 and 1921.

   As can be seen, the Maximalists were in advance of the Bolsheviks too.
   They argued for soviet power, not party power, as well as workers'
   self-management to replace the state capitalism of the Bolsheviks.

   Clearly, the political outlook of the Kronstadt rebels had not changed
   dramatically. Heavily influenced by anarchist and semi-anarchists in
   1917, in 1921 the same political ideas came to the fore again once the
   sailors, soldiers and civilians had freed themselves from Bolshevik
   dictatorship and created the "conference of delegates."

   According to the logic of Trotsky's argument, the Kronstadt sailors
   were revolutionary simply because of the actions of the Bolshevik
   minority, as a "revolution is 'made' directly by a minority. The
   success of a revolution is possible, however, only where this minority
   finds more or less support . . . on the part of the majority. The shift
   in different stages of the revolution . . . is directly determined by
   changing political relations between the minority and the majority,
   between the vanguard and the class." It is this reason that
   necessitates "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as the level of the
   masses cannot be "equal" and of "extremely high development." Trotsky
   argued that the "political composition of the Kronstadt Soviet
   reflected the composition of the garrison and the crews." [Lenin and
   Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 85, p. 92 and p. 86]

   In other words, with the vanguard (the minority of Bolsheviks) gone,
   the majority of the Kronstadters fell back to their less developed
   ways. So, if the political composition of the revolt reflected the
   composition of the crews, then Trotsky's argument suggests that this
   composition was remarkably unchanged! It also suggests that this
   "composition" had changed in the early months of 1918 as the Bolsheviks
   saw their vote nearly half between late January and April 1918!

   Similarly, we find John Rees, in contradiction to his main argument,
   mentioning that the "ideology of the Kronstadt garrison was one factor"
   in the revolt because "in its heroic days the garrison had an
   ultra-left air." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 62] If, as he maintains, the
   sailors were new, how could they had time to be influenced by this
   ideology, the ideology of sailors he claims were not there? And if the
   new recruits he claims were there had been influenced by the sailors of
   1917 then it is hard to maintain that the revolt was alien to the
   spirit of 1917.

   This can also be seen from Rees' comment that while we did not know the
   composition of the sailors, we did "know about the composition of some
   of the other units based at Kronstadt, like the 2,5000 Ukrainians of
   the 160th Rifle Regiment, recruited from areas particularly friendly to
   the Makhno guerrillas and with less than 2 percent of Bolsheviks in its
   ranks." [Op. Cit., p. 61] In other words, we know the origin of one
   other unit at Kronstadt, not the class "composition" of "some of the
   other units" there. However, Rees does not see how this fact undermines
   his argument. Firstly, Rees does not think it important to note that
   Communists numbered less than 2 per cent of metal-workers in Petrograd
   and only 4 per cent of 2,200 employed in metal works in Moscow. [D.
   Fedotoff-White, The Growth of the Red Army, p. 132] As such the low
   figure for Communists in the 160th Rifle Regiment does not tell us much
   about its class composition. Secondly, as Fedotoff-White (the source of
   Rees' information) notes, while "the soldiers were also disaffected and
   had no love of the Communists and the commissars," they were "unable to
   formulate their grievances clearly and delineate the issues at stake .
   . . They did not have it in them to formulate a plan of action. All
   that was done at Kronstadt was the work of the bluejackets [the
   sailors], who were the backbone of the movement." [Op. Cit., p. 154]

   If, as Rees argues, that "new recruits" explain the uprising, then how
   can we explain the differences between the army and navy? We cannot.
   The difference can be explained only in terms of what Rees is at pains
   to deny, namely the existence and influence of sailors who had been
   there since 1917. As Fedotoff-White speculates, "the younger element
   among the seamen" would "easily [fall] under the spell of the . . .
   older men they served with on board ships" and of the "large number of
   old-ex-sea men, employed in the industrial enterprises of Kronstadt."
   He notes that "a good many" of the rebels "had had ample experience in
   organisational and political work since 1917. A number had
   long-standing associations with Anarchists and the Socialist
   Revolutionaries of the Left." Thus the "survival of the libertarian
   pattern of 1917 . . . made it possible for the bluejackets not only to
   formulate, but carry out a plan of action, no doubt under a certain
   amount of influence of the Anarchists, and those who had left the party
   in such great numbers during the September 1920 re-registration." [Op.
   Cit., p. 155] The political continuity of the Kronstadt rebellion is
   clear from the way the revolt developed and who took a leading role in
   it.

   All of which raises an interesting question. If revolutions are made by
   a minority who gain the support of the majority, what happens when the
   majority reject the vanguard? As we indicate in sections [51]13 and
   [52]15, Trotsky was not shy in providing the answer -- party
   dictatorship. In this he just followed the logic of Lenin's arguments.
   In 1905, Lenin argued (and using Engels as an authority) "the
   principle, 'only from below' is an anarchist principle." For Lenin,
   Marxists must be in favour of "From above as well as from below" and
   "renunciation of pressure also from above is anarchism." According to
   Lenin, "[p]ressure from below is pressure by the citizens on the
   revolutionary government. Pressure from above is pressure by the
   revolutionary government on the citizens." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
   Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 192, p. 196 and pp. 189-90]

   As Kronstadt shows, "pressure from above" has a slight advantage over
   "pressure from below" as it has the full power of the state apparatus
   to use against the citizens. In other words, the seeds for Bolshevik
   dictatorship and the repression of Kronstadt lie in Trotsky's argument
   and arguments like it (see [53]section 15 for further details).

   Simply put, the evidence shows that the political ideas dominant in
   Kronstadt, like the bulk of the personnel themselves, had not changed
   (indeed, it is these politics which visibly show the statistical
   evidence we present in the [54]last section). The revolt of 1921
   reflected the politics and aspirations of those active in 1917. It were
   these politics which had made Kronstadt the "pride and glory" of the
   revolution in 1917 and, four years later, made it so dangerous to the
   Bolsheviks.

10 Why did the Petrograd workers not support Kronstadt?

   For Trotskyists, the inaction of the Petrograd workers during the
   revolt is a significant factor in showing its "backward peasant"
   character. Trotsky, for example, argued that from "the class point of
   view" it is "extremely important to contrast the behaviour of Kronstadt
   to that of Petrograd in those critical days." He argues that the
   "uprising did not attract the Petrograd workers. It repelled them. The
   stratification proceeded along class lines. The workers immediately
   felt that the Kronstadt mutineers stood on the opposite side of the
   barricades -- and they supported the Soviet power. The political
   isolation of Kronstadt was the cause of its internal uncertainty and
   its military defeat." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, pp. 90-1]

   Firstly, it should be noted that Trotsky's claims in 1937 are at odds
   with his opinion during the crisis. In a cable dated March 5th, 1921,
   to a member of the Council of Labour and Defence Trotsky insisted that
   "only the seizure of Kronstadt will put an end to the political crisis
   in Petrograd." [quoted by Israel Getzler, "The Communist Leaders' Role
   in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently Published
   Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp. 24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1,
   June 2002, p. 32] Thus, in 1921, Trotsky was well aware of the links
   between the Kronstadt revolt and the Petrograd strikes, seeing the
   destruction of the former as a means to defeating the latter. Simply
   put, the crushing of Kronstadt would give the rebel workers in
   Petrograd a clear message of what to expect if they persisted in their
   protests.

   Secondly, needless to say, Trotsky's later arguments leave a lot to be
   desired. For example, he fails to note (to use Victor Serge's words --
   see [55]section 5) that the state and Communist Press "was positively
   berserk with lies." The press and radio campaign directed against
   Kronstadt stated that the revolt had been organised by foreign spies
   and was led by ex-Tsarist generals.

   On 5th March the Petrograd Defence Committee put out a call to the
   insurgents, inviting them to surrender. It stated:

     "You are being told fairy tales when they tell you that Petrograd is
     with you or that the Ukraine supports you. These are impertinent
     lies. The last sailor in Petrograd abandoned you when he learned
     that you were led by generals like Kozlovskv. Siberia and the
     Ukraine support the Soviet power. Red Petrograd laughs at the
     miserable efforts of a handful of White Guards and Socialist
     Revolutionaries." [cited by Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 50]

   These lies would, of course, alienate many workers in Petrograd. Two
   hundred emissaries were sent from Kronstadt to distribute their demands
   but only a few avoided capture. The Party had brought the full weight
   of its propaganda machine to bear, lying about the revolt and those
   taking part in it. The government also placed a "careful watch" on the
   "trains from Petrograd to mainland points in the direction of Kronstadt
   to prevent any contact with the insurgents." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 140
   and p. 141]

   Unsurprising, in such circumstances many workers, soldiers and sailors
   would have been loath to support Kronstadt. Isolated from the revolt,
   the Petrograd workers had to reply on official propaganda (i.e. lies)
   and rumours to base any judgement on what was happening there. However,
   while this is a factor in the lack of active support, it is by no means
   the key one. This factor, of course, was state repression. Emma Goldman
   indicates the situation in Petrograd at the time:

     "An exceptional state of martial law was imposed throughout the
     entire province of Petrograd, and no one except officials with
     special passes could leave the city now. The Bolshevik press
     launched a campaign of calumny and venom against Kronstadt,
     announcing that the sailors and soldiers had made common cause with
     the 'tsarist General Kozlovsky;' they were thereby declaring the
     Kronstadters outlaws." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 171]

   Given what everyone knew what happened to people outlawed by the
   Bolsheviks, is it surprising that many workers in Petrograd (even if
   they knew they were being lied to) did not act? Moreover, the threat
   made against Kronstadt could be seen on the streets of Petrograd:

     "On March 3 [the day after the revolt] the Petrograd Defence
     Committee, now vested with absolute power throughout the entire
     province, took stern measures to prevent any further disturbances.
     The city became a vast garrison, with troops patrolling in every
     quarter. Notices posted on the walls reminded the citizenry that all
     gatherings would be dispersed and those who resisted shot on the
     spot. During the day the streets were nearly deserted, and, with the
     curfew now set at 9 p.m., night life ceased altogether." [Avrich,
     Op. Cit., p. 142]

   Berkman, an eyewitness to the repression, states that:

     "The Petrograd committee of defence, directed by Zinoviev, its
     chairman, assumed full control of the city and Province of
     Petrograd. The whole Northern District was put under martial law and
     all meetings prohibited. Extraordinary precautions were taken to
     protect the Government institutions and machine guns were placed in
     the Astoria, the hotel occupied by Zinoviev and other high Bolshevik
     functionaries. The proclamations posted on the street bulletin
     boards ordered the immediate return of all strikers to the
     factories, prohibited suspension of work, and warned the people
     against congregating on the streets. 'In such cases', the order
     read, 'the soldiery will resort to arms. In case of resistance,
     shooting on the spot.'

     "The committee of defence took up the systematic 'cleaning of the
     city.' Numerous workers, soldiers and sailors suspected of
     sympathising with Kronstadt, placed under arrest. All Petrograd
     sailors and several Army regiments thought to be 'politically
     untrustworthy' were ordered to distant points, while the families of
     Kronstadt sailors living in Petrograd were taken into custody as
     hostages."
     [The Russian Tragedy, p. 71]

   However, part of the Petrograd proletariat continued to strike during
   the Kronstadt events. Strikes were continuing in the biggest factories
   of Petrograd: Poutilov, Baltisky, Oboukhov, Nievskaia Manoufactura,
   etc. However, the Bolsheviks acted quickly shut down some of the
   factories and started the re-registration of the workers. For workers
   to be locked out of a factory meant to be "automatically deprived of
   their rations." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 41]

   At the "Arsenal" factory, "the workers organised a mass meeting on 7th
   March, (the day the bombardment of Kronstadt began). This meeting
   adopted a resolution of the mutinous sailors! It elected a commission
   which was to go from factory to factory, agitating for a general
   strike." [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 52] The Cheka confirms this event,
   reporting to Zinoviev on March 8th that "[a]t a rally of workers of the
   Arsenal Plant a resolution was passed to join the Kronstadt uprising.
   The general meeting had elected a delegation to maintain contact with
   Kronstadt." This delegation had already been arrested. This was a
   common practice and during this period the Cheka concentrated its
   efforts on the leaders and on disrupting communication: all delegates
   to other workplaces, all Mensheviks and SRs who could be found, all
   speakers at rallies were being arrested day after day. On the day the
   Bolsheviks attacked Kronstadt (March 7th) the Cheka reported that it
   was launching "decisive actions against the workers." [quoted by
   Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War, p. 396]

   These "decisive actions" involved a "massive purge of Petrograd
   factories and plants." The Communists "suppressed the workers' uprising
   in Petrograd in the first days of March." Unlike the Kronstadt sailors,
   the workers did not have weapons and "were essentially defenceless
   vis-a-vis the Cheka." [Brovkin, Op. Cit., p. 396]

   The state of siege was finally lifted on the 22nd of March, five days
   after the crushing of Kronstadt.

   In these circumstances, is it surprising that the Petrograd workers did
   not join in the rebellion?

   Moreover, the Petrograd workers had just experienced the might of the
   Bolshevik state. As we noted in [56]section 2, the events in Kronstadt
   were in solidarity with the strike wave in Petrograd at the end of
   February. Then the Bolsheviks had repressed the workers with "arrests,
   the use of armed patrols in the streets and in the factories, and the
   closing and re-registration of an enterprise labour force." [Mary
   McAuley, Op. Cit., p. 409]

   A three-man Defence Committee was formed and Zinoviev "proclaimed
   martial law" on February 24th (this was later "vested with absolute
   power throughout the entire province" on March 3rd). [Avrich, Op. Cit.,
   p. 39 and p. 142] As part of this process, they had to rely on the
   kursanty (Communist officer cadets) as the local garrisons had been
   caught up the general ferment and could not be relied upon to carry out
   the government's orders. Hundreds of kursanty were called in from
   neighbouring military academies to patrol the city. "Overnight
   Petrograd became an armed camp. In every quarter pedestrians were
   stopped and their documents checked . . . the curfew [was] strictly
   enforced." The Petrograd Cheka made widespread arrests. [Avrich, Op.
   Cit., pp. 46-7]

   As can be seen, Trotsky is insulting the intelligence of his readers by
   arguing that the lack of support in Petrograd for Kronstadt reflected
   "class lines." Indeed, by failing to mention (to use Emma Goldman's
   words) "the campaign of slander, lies and calumny against the sailors"
   conducted by the Soviet Press (which "fairly oozed poison against the
   sailors") or that "Petrograd was put under martial law" Trotsky, quite
   clearly, "deliberately falsifies the facts." [Trotsky Protests Too
   Much]

   Ida Mett states the obvious:

     "Here again Trotsky is saying things which are quite untrue. Earlier
     on we showed how the wave of strikes had started in Petrograd and
     how Kronstadt had followed suit. It was against the strikers of
     Petrograd that the Government had to organise a special General
     Staff: the Committee of Defence. The repression was first directed
     against the Petrograd workers and against their demonstrations, by
     the despatch of armed detachments of Koursantys.

     "But the workers of Petrograd had no weapons. They could not defend
     themselves as could the Kronstadt sailors. The military repression
     directed against Kronstadt certainly intimidated the Petrograd
     workers. The demarcation did not take place 'along class lines' but
     according to the respective strengths of the organs of repression.
     The fact that the workers of Petrograd did not follow those of
     Kronstadt does not prove that they did not sympathise with them.
     Nor, at a later date, when the Russian proletariat failed to follow
     the various 'oppositions' did this prove that they were in agreement
     with Stalin! In such instances it was a question of the respective
     strengths of the forces confronting one another."
     [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 73]

   So, unlike the Kronstadt sailors, the Petrograd workers did not have
   arms and so could not take part in an "armed revolt" against the well
   armed Red Army unless part of that force sided with the strikers. The
   Communist leaders recognised this danger, with untrustworthy troops
   being confined to their barracks and in place of regular troops they
   had shipped in kursanty (they had obviously learned the lessons of the
   1917 February revolution!). Ultimately, the city was "appeased by
   concessions and cowed by the presence of troops." [Avrich, Op. Cit., p.
   200]

   Not that this was the first time Trotsky confused force with class. In
   his infamous work Terrorism and Communism he defended the fact of
   Communist Party dictatorship (i.e. "of having substituted for the
   dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party"). He argued
   that "it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the
   Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party"
   and that there is "no substitution at all" when the "power of the
   party" replaces that of the working class. The rule of the party "has
   afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from
   shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of
   labour." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 109] He continued by arguing:

     "But where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is
     just your party that expresses the interests of historical
     development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties,
     you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and
     consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of
     testing your line of action.

     "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course
     of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an
     open character, and the political struggle swiftly passes into a
     civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by
     which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation
     of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We
     have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S.R.s-and they have
     disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 109-10]

   An interesting criterion, to say the least. The faulty logic he
   displayed with regards to Petrograd and Kronstadt had a long history.
   By this logic Hitler expressed the "interests of historical
   development" when the German Communists and Trotskyists "disappeared"
   by leaps and bounds. Similarly, the Trotskyists in Russia "disappeared"
   under Stalin. Is this a Trotskyist justification of Stalinism? All it
   proves is the power of the repressive system -- just as the "passivity"
   of the Petrograd workers during the Kronstadt revolt indicates the
   power of the Bolshevik regime rather than the class basis of the
   Kronstadt uprising.

   On this theme, we can see the depths which Trotskyists go to re-write
   history from Pierre Frank's "Introduction" to the work Kronstadt. He
   decides to quote Paul Avrich's work (after, of course, warning the
   reader that Avrich "is not a Bolshevik or a Trotskyist" and his
   "political features are blurred"). Frank states that Avrich "done his
   work conscientiously, without skipping over the facts." It is a shame
   that the same cannot be said of Frank! Frank states that Avrich
   "discusses the strikes in Petrograd preceding Kronstadt and comes to
   the following conclusion":

     "For many intellectuals and workers, moreover, the Bolsheviks, with
     all their faults, were still the most effective barrier to a White
     resurgence and the downfall of the revolution.

     "For these reasons, the strikes in Petrograd were fated to lead a
     brief existence. Indeed, they ended almost as suddenly as they had
     begun, never having reached the point of armed revolt against the
     regime."
     [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 24-35]

   It is the "moreover" in the first paragraph that gives the game away.
   Avrich lists a few more reasons than the one listed by Frank. Here is
   what Avrich actually lists as the reasons for the end of the strike
   wave:

     "after several days of tense excitement, the Petrograd disturbances
     petered out . . . The concessions had done their work, for more than
     anything else it was cold and hunger which had stimulated popular
     disaffection. Yet there is no denying that the application of
     military force and the widespread arrests, not to speak of the
     tireless propaganda waged by the authorities had been indispensable
     in restoring order. Particularly impressive in this regard was the
     discipline shown by the local party organisation. Setting aside
     their internal disputes, the Petrograd Bolsheviks swiftly closed
     ranks and proceeded to carry out the unpleasant task of repression
     with efficiency and dispatch . . .

     "Then, too, the collapse of the movement would not have come so soon
     but for the utter demoralisation of Petrograd's inhabitants. The
     workers were simply too exhausted to keep up any sustained political
     activity . . . What is more, they lacked effective leadership and a
     coherent program of action. In the past these had been supplied by
     the radical intelligentsia . . . [but they] were themselves in no
     condition to lend the workers any meaningful support, let alone
     active guidance . . . they now felt too weary and terrorised . . .
     to raise their voices in opposition. With most of their comrades in
     prison or exile, and some already executed, few of the survivors
     were willing to risk the same fate, especially when the odds against
     them were so overwhelming and when the slightest protest might
     deprive their families of their rations. For many intellectuals and
     workers, moreover, the Bolsheviks, with all their faults, were still
     the most effective barrier to a White resurgence and the downfall of
     the revolution.

     "For these reasons, the strikes in Petrograd were fated to lead a
     brief existence. Indeed, they ended almost as suddenly as they had
     begun, never having reached the point of armed revolt against the
     regime."
     [Paul Avrich, Kronstadt, pp. 49-51]

   As can be seen, Frank "skips over" most of Avrich's argument and the
   basis of his conclusion. Indeed, what Frank calls Avrich's "conclusion"
   cannot be understood by providing, as Frank does, the last reason
   Avrich gives for it.

   The dishonesty is clear, if not unexpected nor an isolated case. John
   Rees, to use another example, states that the revolt was "preceded by a
   wave of serious but quickly resolved strikes." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 61]
   No mention that the strikes were "resolved" by force nor that the
   Kronstadt revolt was not only "preceded" by the strikes but was
   directly inspired by them, was in solidarity with them and raised many
   of the same demands!

   Similarly, he argues that the Kronstadters' "insistence that they were
   fighting for a 'third revolution', freedom of expression and for
   'soviets without parties' [although, in fact, they never raised that
   slogan and so we have to wonder who Rees is quoting here] has convinced
   many historians that this revolt was fundamentally distinct from the
   White Rebellions." But this, apparently, is not the case as "one must
   be careful to analyse the difference between the conscious aims of the
   rebels and the possible outcome of their actions. The Bolshevik regime
   still rested on the shattered remnants of the working class. The
   Kronstadt sailors' appeals to the Petrograd workers had met with little
   or no response." [Op. Cit., p. 63]

   One has to wonder what planet Rees is on. After all, if the Bolsheviks
   had rested on the "shattered remnants of the working class" then they
   would not have had to turn Petrograd into an armed camp, repress the
   strikes, impose martial law and arrest militant workers. The Kronstadt
   sailors appeals "met with little or no response" due to the Bolshevik
   coercion exercised in those fateful days. To not mention the Bolshevik
   repression in Petrograd is to deliberately deceive the reader. That the
   Kronstadt demands would have met with strong response in Petrograd can
   be seen from the actions of the Bolsheviks (who did not rest upon the
   workers but rather arrested them). Given that the Kronstadt demands
   simply reflected those raised by the Petrograd strikers themselves we
   can safely say that Rees is talking nonsense (see [57]section 4).
   Moreover, the sailors' resolution had meet with strong support from the
   workers of Kronstadt. Thus Rees' "class analysis" of the Kronstadt
   revolt is pathetic and has no bearing to the reality of the situation
   in Petrograd nor to the history of the revolt itself.

   As can be seen, any attempt to use the relative inaction of the
   Petrograd workers as evidence of the class nature of the revolt has to
   do so by ignoring all the relevant facts of the situation. This can go
   so far as to selectively quote from academic accounts to present a
   radically false conclusion to that of the misused author's.

11 Were the Whites a threat during the Kronstadt revolt?

   The lack of foreign intervention during the Kronstadt revolt suggests
   more than just the fact that the revolt was not a "White conspiracy."
   It also suggests that the White forces were in no position to take
   advantage of the rebellion or even support it.

   This is significant simply because the Bolsheviks and their supporters
   argue that the revolt had to be repressed simply because the Soviet
   State was in danger of White and/or foreign intervention. How much
   danger was there? According to John Rees, a substantial amount:

     "The Whites, even though their armies had been beaten in the field,
     were still not finished -- as the emigre response to the Kronstadt
     rising shows . . . They had predicted a rising at Kronstadt and the
     White National Centre abroad raised a total of nearly 1 million
     French Francs, 2 million Finnish marks, 5000, $25,000 and 900 tons
     of flour in just two weeks; Indeed, the National Centre was already
     making plans for the forces of the French navy and those of General
     Wrangel, who still commanded 70,000 men in Turkey, to land in
     Kronstadt if the revolt were to succeed." [Op. Cit., pp. 63-4]

   To back up his argument, Rees references Paul Avrich's book. We, in
   turn, will consult that work to evaluate his argument.

   Firstly, the Kronstadt revolt broke out months after the end of the
   Civil War in Western Russia. Wrangel had fled from the Crimea in
   November 1920. The Bolsheviks were so afraid of White invasion that by
   early 1921 they demobilised half the Red Army (some 2,500,000 men).
   [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 13]

   Secondly, the Russian emigres "remained as divided and ineffectual as
   before, with no prospect of co-operation in sight." [Avrich, Op. Cit.,
   p. 219]

   Thirdly, as far as Wrangel, the last of the White Generals, goes, his
   forces were in no state to re-invade Russia. His troops were "dispersed
   and their moral sagging" and it would have taken "months . . . merely
   to mobilise his men and transport them from the Mediterranean to the
   Baltic." A second front in the south "would have meant almost certain
   disaster." Indeed, in a call issued by the Petrograd Defence Committee
   on March 5th, they asked the rebels: "Haven't you heard what happened
   to Wrangel's men, who are dying like flies, in their thousands of
   hunger and disease?" The call goes on to add "[t]his is the fate that
   awaits you, unless you surrender within 24 hours." [Avrich, Op. Cit.,
   p. 219, p. 146 and p. 105]

   Clearly, the prospect of a White invasion was slim. This leaves the
   question of capitalist governments. Avrich has this to say on this:

     "Apart from their own energetic fund-raising campaign, the emigres
     sought the assistance of the Entene powers. . . . the United States
     government, loath to resume the interventionist policies of the
     Civil War, turned a deaf ear to all such appeals. The prospects of
     British aid were even dimmer . . . The best hope of foreign support
     came from France . . . the French refused to interfere either
     politically or militarily in the crisis." [Op. Cit., pp. 117-9]

   The French government had also "withdrew its recognition of Wrangel's
   defunct government" in November 1920 "but continued to feed his troops
   on 'humane grounds,' meanwhile urging him to disband." [Op. Cit., p.
   105]

   Thus, the claim that foreign intervention was likely seems without
   basis. Indeed, the Communist radio was arguing that "the organisation
   of disturbances in Kronstadt have the sole purpose of influencing the
   new American President and changing his policy toward Russia. At the
   same time the London Conference is holding its sessions, and the
   spreading of similar rumours must influence also the Turkish delegation
   and make it more submissive to the demands of the Entente. The
   rebellion the Petropavlovsk crew is undoubtedly part of a great
   conspiracy to create trouble within Soviet Russia and to injure our
   international position." [quoted by Berkman, The Russian Tragedy, p.
   71] Lenin himself argued on March 16th that "the enemies" around the
   Bolshevik state were "no longer able to wage their war of intervention"
   and so were launching a press campaign "with the prime object of
   disrupting the negotiations for a trade agreement with Britain, and the
   forthcoming trade agreement with America." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op.
   Cit., p. 52] The demobilising of the Red Army seems to confirm this
   perspective.

   Moreover, these governments had to take into account of its own working
   class. It was doubtful that they would, after years of war, been able
   to intervene, particularly if there was a clearly socialist revolt
   coming from below. Their own working class, in such a situation, would
   have prevented intervention by foreign capitalist states (a fact Lenin
   acknowledged in July 1921 [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 62]).

   So in spite of massive social unrest and the revolt of a key fortress
   protecting Petrograd, the Western powers took no action. The Whites
   were disorganised and could only raise non-military supplies (none of
   which reached Kronstadt). Could this situation have changed if
   Kronstadt had spread to the mainland? It is doubtful simply because the
   Western governments, as Lenin argued, had to take into account the
   anti-interventionist position of their own working classes. The Whites
   had no military forces available (as the Bolsheviks themselves argued).
   Avrich notes it would have taken months for these forces to reach
   Kronstadt by which time soviet democracy would have been consolidated
   and ready to protect itself.

   Even if we assume that Kronstadt had survived until the ice melted
   while Petrograd remained under Bolshevik dictatorship it, again, is
   doubtful that it would have been the basis for renewed White attacks.
   Neither Wrangel's troops nor foreign government forces would have been
   welcomed by Red Kronstadt. While non-military aid would have been
   welcome (i.e. food supplies and so on), it is hard to believe that the
   Conference of Delegates would have allowed troops to arrive or pass
   them by to attack Petrograd. Simply put, the Kronstadters were fighting
   for soviet power and were well aware that others may try to support the
   revolt for their own, anti-revolutionary, reasons (see [58]section 7).

   So it seems that the possibility of foreign intervention was not a real
   threat at the time. The arguments of Lenin at the time, plus the
   demobilisation of the Red Army, points in that direction. Moreover, the
   total lack of response by Western governments during the revolt
   indicates that they were unlikely to take advantage of continuing
   unrest in Kronstadt, Petrograd and other towns and cities. Their
   working classes, sick of war and class consciousness enough to resist
   another intervention in Russia, would have been a factor in this
   apathetic response. Wrangel's troops, as the Bolsheviks were aware,
   were not a threat.

   The only real threat to Bolshevik power was internal -- from the
   workers and peasants the Bolsheviks claimed to be representing. Many of
   the ex-soldiers swelled the ranks of peasant guerrilla forces, fighting
   the repressive (and counter-productive) food collection squads. In the
   Ukraine, the Bolsheviks were fighting the remnants of the Makhnovist
   army (a fight, incidentally, brought upon the Bolsheviks by themselves
   as they had betrayed the agreements made with the anarchist forces and
   attacked them once Wrangel had been defeated).

   Thus the only potential danger facing the "soviet power" (i.e.
   Bolshevik power) was soviet democracy, a danger which had existed since
   the October revolution. As in 1918, when the Bolsheviks disbanded and
   repressed any soviet electorate which rejected their power, they met
   the danger of soviet democracy with violence. The Bolsheviks were
   convinced that their own dictatorship was equivalent to the revolution
   and that their power was identical to that of the working class. They
   considered themselves to be the embodiment of "soviet power" and it
   obviously did not bother them that the demand for free soviets can
   hardly be considered as actions against the power of the soviets.

   In such circumstances, the Bolshevik government viewed the Kronstadt
   revolt not as socialists should but rather as a ruling class. It was
   suppressed for "reasons of state" and not to defend a revolutionary
   regime (which was, by this stage, revolutionary in name only). As
   Bakunin had argued decades before, the "workers' state" would not
   remain controlled by the workers for long and would soon became a
   dictatorship over the proletariat by an elite which claimed to know the
   interests of the working class better than they did themselves (see
   [59]section 15).

   The only possible justification for maintaining the party dictatorship
   was the argument that soviet democracy would have lead to the defeat of
   the Communists at the polls (which would mean recognising it was a
   dictatorship over the proletariat and had been for some time). This
   would, it is argued, have resulted in (eventually) a return of the
   Whites and an anti-working class dictatorship that would have
   slaughtered the Russian workers and peasants en mass.

   Such a position is self-serving and could have been used by Stalin to
   justify his regime. Unsurprisingly enough, the Hungarian Stalinists
   argued after crushing the 1956 revolution that "the dictatorship of the
   proletariat, if overthrown, cannot be succeeded by any form of
   government other than fascist counter-revolution." [quoted by Andy
   Anderson, Hungary '56, p. 101] And, of course, an even more
   anti-working class dictatorship than Lenin's did appear which did
   slaughter the Russian workers and peasants en mass, namely Stalinism.
   No other option was possible, once party dictatorship was fully
   embraced in 1921 (repression against dissidents was more extreme after
   the end of the Civil War than during it). It is utopian in the extreme
   to believe that the good intentions of the dictators would have been
   enough to keep the regime within some kind of limits. Thus this
   argument is flawed as it seriously suggests that dictatorship and
   bureaucracy can reform itself (we discuss this in more detail in
   [60]section 13).

12 Was the country too exhausted to allow soviet democracy?

   Trotskyists have, in general, two main lines of attack with regards the
   Kronstadt revolt. The main one is the claim that the garrison in 1921
   was not of the same class composition as the one in 1917. This meant
   that the 1921 revolt expressed the peasant counter-revolution and had
   to be destroyed. We have indicated that, firstly, the garrison was
   essentially the same in 1921 as it had been in 1917 (see [61]section
   8). Secondly, we have shown that politically the ideas expressed in its
   program were the same as those in 1917 (see [62]section 9). Thirdly,
   that this program had many of the same points as strikers resolutions
   in Petrograd and, indeed, were more socialist in many cases by clearly
   calling for soviet democracy rather the constituent assembly (see
   [63]section 4).

   Now we turn to the second excuse, namely that the country was too
   exhausted and the working class was decimated. In such circumstances,
   it is argued, objective conditions meant that soviet democracy was
   impossible and so the Bolsheviks had to maintain their dictatorship at
   all costs to defend what was left of the revolution. Leninist Pat Stack
   of the British SWP is typical of this approach. It is worth quoting him
   at length:

     "Because anarchists dismiss the importance of material reality,
     events such as the 1921 Kronstadt rising against the Bolshevik
     government in Russia can become a rallying cry. The revolutionary
     Victor Serge was not uncritical of the Bolshevik handling of the
     rising, but he poured scorn on anarchist claims for it when he
     wrote, 'The third revolution it was called by certain anarchists
     whose heads were stuffed by infantile delusions.'

     "This third revolution, it was argued, would follow the first one in
     February 1917 and the second in October. The second had swept away
     the attempts to create capitalist power, had given land to the
     peasants and had extracted Russia from the horrible imperialist
     carnage of the First World War. The revolution had introduced a huge
     literacy programme, granted women abortion rights, introduced
     divorce and accepted the rights of the various Russian republics to
     self determination. It had done so, however, against a background of
     a bloody and horrendous civil war where the old order tried to
     regain power. Sixteen imperialist powers sent armies against the
     regime, and trade embargoes were enforced.

     "The reality of such actions caused huge suffering throughout
     Russia. The regime was deprived of raw materials and fuel,
     transportation networks were destroyed, and the cities began running
     out of food. By 1919 the regime only had 10 percent of the fuel that
     was available in 1917, and the production of iron ore in the same
     year stood at 1.6 percent of that in 1914. By 1921 Petrograd had
     lost 57 percent of its population and Moscow 44.5 percent. Workers
     were either dead, on the frontline of the civil war, or were fleeing
     the starvation of the city. The force that had made the revolution
     possible was being decimated. . .

     "The choice facing the regime in Russia was either to crush the
     uprising and save the revolution, or surrender to the rising and
     allow the forces of reaction to march in on their back. There was no
     material basis for a third way. A destroyed economy and
     infrastructure, a population faced with starvation and bloody war,
     and a hostile outside world were not circumstances in which the
     revolution could move forward. Great efforts would have to be made
     to solve these problems. There were no overnight solutions and
     preserving the revolutionary regime was crucial. Ultimately real
     solutions could only be found if the revolution were to spread
     internationally, but in the meantime to have any chance of success
     the regime had to survive. Only the right and the imperialist powers
     would have benefited from its destruction."
     ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246, November 2000]

   Anarchists, in spite of Stack's assertions, were and are well aware of
   the problems facing the revolution. Alexander Berkman (who was in
   Petrograd at the time) pointed out the "[l]ong years of war,
   revolution, and civil struggle" which "had bled Russia to exhaustion
   and brought her people to the brink of despair." [The Russian Tragedy,
   p. 61] Like every worker, peasant, sailor and soldier in Russia,
   anarchists knew (and know) that reconstruction would not take place
   "overnight." The Kronstadters' recognised this in the first issue of
   their newspaper Izvestiia:

     "Comrades and citizens, our country is passing through a tough time.
     For three years now, famine, cold and economic chaos have trapped us
     in a vice-like grip. The Communist Party which governs the country
     has drifted away from the masses and proved itself powerless to
     rescue them from a state of general ruination . . . All workers,
     sailors and Red soldiers today can clearly see that only
     concentrated efforts, only the concentrated determination of the
     people can afford the country bread, wood and coal, can clothe and
     shoe the people and rescue the Republic from the impasse in which it
     finds itself." [cited in No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 183]

   In the Kronstadt Izvestiia of March 8 they wrote that it was "here in
   Kronstadt that the foundation stone was laid of the Third Revolution
   that will smash the last shackles on the toiler and open up before him
   the broad new avenue to socialist construction." They stress that the
   "new revolution will rouse the toiling masses of the Orient and
   Occident. For it will offer the example of fresh socialist construction
   as opposed to mechanical, governmental 'Communist' construction." [Op.
   Cit., p. 194] Clearly, the Kronstadt rebels knew that construction
   would take time and were arguing that the only means of rebuilding the
   country was via the participation of what of left of the working class
   and peasantry in free class organisations like freely elected soviets
   and unions.

   The experience of the revolt provides evidence that this analysis was
   far from "utopian." A Finish reporter at Kronstadt was struck by the
   "enthusiasm" of its inhabitants, by their renewed sense of purpose and
   mission. Avrich argues that for a "fleeting interval Kronstadt was
   shaken out if its listlessness and despair." [Kronstadt, p. 159] The
   sailors, soldiers and civilians sent their delegates to delegates,
   started to re-organise their trade unions and so on. Freedom and soviet
   democracy was allowing the masses to start to rebuild their society and
   they took the opportunity. The Kronstadter's faith in "direct mass
   democracy of and by the common people through free soviets" did seem to
   be justified in the response of the people of Kronstadt. This suggests
   that a similar policy implemented by the workers who had just organised
   general strikes, demonstrations and protest meetings all across
   Russia's industrial centres was not impossible or doomed to failure.

   Indeed, this wave of strikes refutes Stack's claim that "[w]orkers were
   either dead, on the frontline of the civil war, or were fleeing the
   starvation of the city. The force that had made the revolution possible
   was being decimated." Clearly, a sizeable percentage of the workers
   were still working and so not dead, on the frontline or fleeing the
   cities. As we discuss below, approximately one-third of factory workers
   were still in Petrograd (the overall decrease of urban working people
   throughout Russia exceeded 50 percent [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 24]). The
   working class, in other words, still existed and were able to organise
   strikes, meetings and mass demonstrations in the face of state
   repression. The fact, of course, is that the majority of what remained
   of the working class would not have voted Communist in free soviet
   elections. Thus political considerations have to be factored in when
   evaluating Stack's arguments.

   The question for anarchists, as for the Kronstadt rebels, was what the
   necessary pre-conditions for this reconstruction were. Could Russia be
   re-built in a socialist way while being subject to a dictatorship which
   crushed every sign of working class protest and collective action?
   Surely the first step, as Kronstadt shows, would have to be the
   re-introduction of workers' democracy and power for only this would
   give allow expression to the creative powers of the masses and interest
   them in the reconstruction of the country. Continuing party
   dictatorship would never do this:

     "by its very essence a dictatorship destroys the creative capacities
     of a people. . . The revolutionary conquest could only be deepened
     through a genuine participation of the masses. Any attempt to
     substitute an 'elite' for those masses could only be profoundly
     reactionary.

     "In 1921 the Russian Revolution stood at the cross roads. The
     democratic or the dictatorial way, that was the question. By lumping
     together bourgeois and proletarian democracy the Bolsheviks were in
     fact condemning both. They sought to build socialism from above,
     through skilful manoeuvres of the Revolutionary General Staff. While
     waiting for a world revolution that was not round the corner, they
     built a state capitalist society, where the working class no longer
     had the right to make the decisions most intimately concerning it."
     [Mett, Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

   The Russian revolution had faced economic crisis all through 1917 and
   1918. Indeed, by the spring of 1918 Russia was living through an almost
   total economic collapse, with a general scarcity of all resources and
   mass unemployment. According to Tony Cliff (the leader of the SWP) in
   the spring of 1918 Russia's "[w]ar-damaged industry continued to run
   down. 'The bony hand of hunger' . . . gripped the whole population . .
   . One of the causes of the famine was the breakdown of transport. . .
   Industry was in a state of complete collapse. Not only was there no
   food to feed the factory workers; there was no raw materials or fuel
   for industry. The oilfields of the Baku, Grozny and Emba regions came
   to a standstill. The situation was the same in the coalfields. The
   production of raw materials was in no better a state . . . The collapse
   of industry meant unemployment for the workers." [Lenin: The Revolution
   Besieged, vol. 3, pp. 67-9] The industrial workforce dropped to 40% of
   its 1917 levels. The similarities to Stack's description of the
   situation in early 1921 is striking.

   Does this mean that, for Leninists, soviet democracy was impossible in
   early 1918 (of course, the Bolsheviks in practice were making soviet
   democracy impossible by suppressing soviets that elected the wrong
   people)? After all, in the start of 1918 the Russian Revolution also
   faced a "destroyed economy and infrastructure, a population faced with
   starvation and bloody war, and a hostile outside world." If these "were
   not circumstances in which the revolution could move forward" then it
   also applied in 1918 as well as in 1921. And, if so, then this means
   admitting that soviet democracy is impossible during a revolution,
   marked as it will always be marked by exceptionally difficult
   circumstances. Which, of course, means to defend party power and not
   soviet power and promote the dictatorship of the party over the working
   class, positions Leninists deny holding.

   Incredibly, Stack fails to even mention the power and privileges of the
   bureaucracy at the time. Officials got the best food, housing and so
   on. The lack of effective control or influence from below ensured that
   corruption was widespread. One of the leaders of the Workers'
   Opposition gives us an insight of the situation which existed at the
   start of 1921:

     "The rank and file worker is observant. He sees that so far . . .
     the betterment of the workers' lot has occupied the last place in
     our policy . . . We all know that the housing problem cannot be
     solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty, its
     solution is faced with serious difficulties. But the facts of
     ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups of the
     population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers, 'the
     frame-work of the dictatorship', breed and nourish the
     dissatisfaction.

     "The rank and file worker sees how the Soviet official and the
     practical man lives and how he lives . . . [It will be objected
     that] 'We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military
     front.' And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs to any of
     the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions, they were able to
     find both the materials and the labour."
     [Alexandra Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition, p. 10]

   A few months earlier, the Communist Yoffe wrote to Trotsky expressing
   the same concerns. "There is enormous inequality," he wrote, "and one's
   material position largely depends on one's post in the party; you'll
   agree that this is a dangerous situation." [quoted by Orlando Figes, A
   People's Tragedy, p. 695] To talk about anarchists dismissing the
   importance of material reality and a "revolutionary regime" while
   ignoring the inequalities in power and wealth, and the
   bureaucratisation and despotism which were their root, is definitely a
   case of the pot calling the kettle black!

   Under the harsh material conditions facing Russia at the time, it goes
   without saying that the bureaucracy would utilise its position to
   gather the best resources around it. Indeed, part of the factors
   resulting in Kronstadt was "the privileges and abuses of commissars,
   senior party functionaries and trade union officials who received
   special rations, allocations and housing and . . . quite openly
   enjoying the good life." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 210] Stack fails to
   mention this and instead talks about the necessity of defending a
   "workers' state" in which workers had no power and where bureaucratic
   abuses were rampant. If anyone is denying reality, it is him! Thus
   Ciliga:

     "The Soviet Government and the higher circles in the Communist Party
     applied their own solution [to the problems facing the revolution]
     of increasing the power of the bureaucracy. The attribution of
     powers to the 'Executive Committees' which had hitherto been vested
     in the soviets, the replacement of the dictatorship of the class by
     the dictatorship of the party, the shift of authority even within
     the party from its members to its cadres, the replacement of the
     double power of the bureaucracy and the workers in the factory by
     the sole power of the former - to do all this was to 'save the
     Revolution!' [. . .] The Bureaucracy prevented the bourgeois
     restoration . . . by eliminating the proletarian character of the
     revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 331]

   Perhaps, in light of this, it is significant that, in his list of
   revolutionary gains from October 1917, Stack fails to mention what
   anarchists would consider the most important, namely workers' power,
   freedom, democracy and rights. But, then again, the Bolsheviks did not
   rate these gains highly either and were more than willing to sacrifice
   them to ensure their most important gain, state power (see [64]section
   15 for a fuller discussion of this issue). Again, the image of
   revolution gains a victory over its content!

   When Stack argues that it was necessary to crush Kronstadt to "save the
   revolution" and "preserv[e] the revolutionary regime" we feel entitled
   to ask what was there left to save and preserve? The dictatorship and
   decrees of "Communist" leaders? In other words, party power. Yes, by
   suppressing Kronstadt Lenin and Trotsky saved the revolution, saved it
   for Stalin. Hardly something to be proud of.

   Ironically, given Stack's assertions that anarchists ignore "material
   reality", anarchists had predicted that a revolution would be marked by
   economic disruption. Kropotkin, for example, argued that it was
   "certain that the coming Revolution . . . will burst upon us in the
   middle of a great industrial crisis . . . There are millions of
   unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It will be worse when
   Revolution has burst upon us . . . The number of the out-of-works will
   be doubled as soon as barricades are erected in Europe and the United
   States . . . we know that in time of Revolution exchange and industry
   suffer most from the general upheaval . . . A Revolution in Europe
   means, then, the unavoidable stoppage of at least half the factories
   and workshops." He stressed that there would be "the complete
   disorganisation" of the capitalist economy and that during a revolution
   "[i]nternational commerce will come to a standstill" and "the
   circulation of commodities and of provisions will be paralysed." [The
   Conquest of Bread, pp. 69-70 and p. 191]

   Elsewhere, he argued that a revolution would "mean the stoppage of
   hundreds of manufactures and workshops, and the impossibility of
   reopening them. Thousands of workmen will find no employment . . . The
   present want of employment and misery will be increased tenfold." He
   stressed that "the reconstruction of Society in accordance with more
   equitable principles will necessitate a disturbed period" and argued
   that any revolution will be isolated to begin with and so (with regards
   to the UK) "the imports of foreign corn will decrease" as will "exports
   of manufactured wares." A revolution, he argued, "is not the work of
   one day. It means a whole period, mostly lasting for several years,
   during which the country is in a state of effervescence." To overcome
   these problems he stressed the importance of reconstruction from the
   bottom up, organised directly by working people, with local action
   being the basis of wider reconstruction. The "immense problem -- the
   re-organisation of production, redistribution of wealth and exchange,
   according to new principles -- cannot be solved by . . . any kind of
   government. It must be a natural growth resulting from the combined
   efforts of all interested in it, freed from the bonds of the present
   institutions. It must grow naturally, proceeding from the simplest up
   to complex federations; and it cannot be something schemed by a few men
   and ordered from above. In this last shape it surely would have no
   chance of living at all." [Act for Yourselves, pp. 71-2, p. 67, pp,
   72-3, pp. 25-6 and p. 26]

   Anarchists had predicted the problems facing the Russian Revolution
   decades previously and, given the lack of success of Bolshevik attempts
   to solve these problems via centralism, had also predicted the only way
   to solve them. Far from ignoring "material reality" it is clear that
   anarchists have long been aware of the difficulties a revolution would
   face and had organised our politics around them. In contrast, Stack is
   arguing that these inevitable effects of a revolution create
   "circumstances" in which the revolution cannot "move forward"! If this
   is so, then revolution is an impossibility as it will always face
   economic disruption and isolation at some stage in its development, for
   a longer or shorter period. If we base our politics on the "best-case
   scenario" then they will soon be proven to be lacking.

   Ultimately, Stack's arguments (and those like it) are the ones which
   ignore "material reality" by arguing that Lenin's state was a
   "revolutionary regime" and reconstruction could be anything but to the
   advantage of the bureaucracy without the active participation of what
   was left of the working class. Indeed, the logic of his argument would
   mean rejecting the idea of socialist revolution as such as the problems
   he lists will affect every revolution and had affected the Russian
   Revolution from the start.

   The problems facing the Russian working class were difficult in the
   extreme in 1921 (some of which, incidentally, were due to the results
   of Bolshevik economic policies which compounded economic chaos via
   centralisation), but they could never be solved by someone else bar the
   thousands of workers taking strike action all across Russia at the
   time: "And if the proletariat was that exhausted how come it was still
   capable of waging virtually total general strikes in the largest and
   most heavily industrialised cities?" [Ida Mett, Op. Cit., p. 81]

   So, as far as "material reality" goes, it is clear that it is Stack who
   ignores it, not anarchists or the Kronstadt rebels. Both anarchists and
   Kronstadters recognised that the country was in dire straits and that a
   huge effort was required for reconstruction. The material basis at the
   time offered two possibilities for reconstruction -- either from above
   or from below. Such a reconstruction could only be socialist in nature
   if it involved the direct participation of the working masses in
   determining what was needed and how to do it. In other words, the
   process had to start from below and no central committee utilising a
   fraction of the creative powers of the country could achieve it. Such a
   bureaucratic, top-down re-construction would rebuild the society in a
   way which benefited a few. Which, of course, was what happened.

   John Rees joins his fellow party member by arguing that the working
   class base of the workers' state had "disintegrated" by 1921. The
   working class was reduced "to an atomised, individualised mass, a
   fraction of its former size, and no longer able to exercise the
   collective power that it had done in 1917." The "bureaucracy of the
   workers' state was left suspended in mid-air, its class base eroded and
   demoralised." He argues that Kronstadt was "utopian" as "they looked
   back to the institutions of 1917 when the class which made such
   institutions possible no longer had the collective capacity to direct
   political life." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 65 and p. 70]

   There are two problems with this kind of argument. Firstly, there are
   factual problems with it. Second, there are ideological problems with
   it. We will discuss each in turn.

   The factual problems are clear. All across Russia in February 1921 the
   Russian working class were going on strike, organising meetings and
   demonstrations. In other words, taking collective action based on
   demands collectively agreed in workplace meetings. One factory would
   send delegates to others, urging them to join the movement which soon
   became a general strike in Petrograd and Moscow. In Kronstadt, workers,
   soldiers and sailors went the next step and organised a delegate
   conference. In other places they tried to do so, with various degrees
   of success. During the strikes in Petrograd "workers from various
   plants elected delegates to the Petrograd Assembly of
   Plenipotentiaries" which raised similar demands as that of Kronstadt.
   Its activities and other attempts to organise collectively were
   obviously hindered by the fact the Cheka arrested "all delegates to
   other enterprises" the strikers sent. Brovkin states that following the
   example of Petrograd, "workers in some cities set up assemblies of
   plenipotentiaries" as well. In Saratov "such a council grew out of a
   strike co-ordination committee." [V. Brovkin, Behind the Lines of the
   Russian Civil War, p. 393, p. 396 and p. 398]

   Any claim that the Russian working class had no capacity for collective
   action seems invalidated by such events. Not that Rees is not unaware
   of these strikes. He notes that the Kronstadt revolt was "preceded by a
   wave of serious but quickly resolved strikes." [Op. Cit., p. 61] An
   "atomised, individualised mass" which was "no longer able to exercise
   the collective power" being able to conduct a "wave of serious . . .
   strikes" all across Russia? That hardly fits. Nor does he mention the
   repression which "quickly resolved" the strikes and which, by its very
   nature, atomised and individualised the masses in order to break the
   collective action being practised.

   The fact that these strikes did not last longer of course suggests that
   the strikers could not sustain this activity indefinitely. However,
   this was more a product of state repression and the lack of rations
   while on strike than any objectively predetermined impossibility of
   collective decision making. The workers may have been too exhausted to
   wage indefinite general strikes against a repressive state but that
   does not imply they could not practice continual collective decision
   making in less extreme circumstances in a soviet democracy.

   Of course, these striking workers would have been unlikely to voted
   Communist en mass if free soviet elections were organised (in
   Kronstadt, Communists made up one-third of the conference of
   delegates). Thus there were pressing political reasons to deny free
   elections rather than an objective impossibility. Moreover, the actions
   of the Soviet state were designed to break the collective resistance of
   the working force. The use of armed patrols on the streets and in the
   factories, and the closing and re-registration of an enterprise labour
   force were designed to break the strike and atomise the workforce.
   These actions would not have been needed if the Russian working class
   was, in fact, atomised and incapable of collective action and decision
   making.

   The size of the working class in 1921 was smaller in 1921 than it was
   in 1917. However, the figures for May 1918 and 1920 were nearly
   identical. In 1920, the number of factory workers in Petrograd was
   148,289 (which was 34% of the population and 36% of the number of
   workers in 1910). [Mary McAuley, Op. Cit., p. 398] In January 1917, the
   number was 351,010 and in April 1918, it was 148,710. [S.A. Smith, Red
   Petrograd, p. 245] Thus factory worker numbers were about 40% of the
   pre-Civil War number and remained so throughout the Civil War. A
   proletarian core remained in every industrial town or city in Russia.

   Nor was this work force incapable of collective action or decision
   making. All through the civil war they organised strikes and protests
   for specific demands (and faced Bolshevik repression for so doing). In
   March 1919, for example, tens of thousands of workers went on strike in
   Petrograd. The strikes were broken by troops. Strikes regularly
   occurred throughout 1919 and 1920 (and, again, usually met with state
   repression). In 1921, the strike wave resurfaced and became near
   general strikes in many cities, including Petrograd and Moscow (see
   [65]section 2). If the workers could organise strikes (and near general
   strikes in 1921), protest meetings and committees to co-ordinate their
   struggles, what could stop them starting to manage their own destinies?
   Does soviet democracy become invalid once a certain number of workers
   is reached?

   Given that Rees gets the key slogan of Kronstadt wrong (they called for
   all power to the soviets and not to parties rather than Rees' "soviets
   without parties") it is hard to evaluate whether Rees claims that
   without Bolshevik dictatorship the Whites would inevitably have taken
   power. After all, the Kronstadt delegate meeting had one-third
   Communists in it. Ultimately, he is arguing that working people cannot
   manage their own fates themselves without it resulting in a
   counter-revolution!

   In addition, the logic of Rees' argument smacks of double-think. On the
   one hand, he argues that the Bolsheviks represented the "dictatorship
   of the proletariat." On the other hand, he argues that free soviet
   elections would have seen the Bolsheviks replaced by "moderate
   socialists" (and eventually the Whites). In other words, the Bolsheviks
   did not, in fact, represent the Russian working class and their
   dictatorship was over, not of, the proletariat. The basic assumption,
   therefore, is flawed. Rees and his fellow Trotskyists seriously want us
   to believe that a dictatorship will not become corrupt and
   bureaucratic, that it can govern in the interests of its subjects and,
   moreover, reform itself. And he calls the Kronstadters "utopians"!

   Given these factors, perhaps the real reason for the lack of soviet
   democracy and political freedom and rights was that the Bolsheviks knew
   they would lose any free elections that would be held? As we noted in
   [66]section 2, they had not been shy in disbanding soviets with
   non-Bolshevik majorities before the start of the civil war nor in
   suppressing strikes and workers' protests before, during and after the
   Civil War. In effect, the Bolsheviks would exercise the dictatorship of
   the proletariat over and above the wishes of that proletariat if need
   be (as Trotsky made clear in 1921 at the Tenth Party Congress). Thus
   the major factor restricting soviet democracy was Bolshevik power --
   this repressed working class collective action which promoted
   atomisation in the working class and the unaccountability of the
   Bolshevik leadership. The bureaucracy was "left suspended in mid-air"
   simply because the majority of the workers and peasants did not support
   it and when they protested against the party dictatorship they were
   repressed.

   Simply put, objective factors do not tell the whole story.

   Now we turn to these objective factors, the economic breakdown
   affecting Russia in 1921. This is the basis for the ideological problem
   with Rees' argument.

   The ideological problem with this argument is that both Lenin and
   Trotsky had argued that revolution inevitably implied civil war,
   "exceptional circumstances" and economic crisis. For example, in
   Terrorism and Communism Trotsky argued that "[a]ll periods of
   transition have been characterised by . . . tragic features" of an
   "economic depression" such as exhaustion, poverty and hunger. Every
   class society "is violently swept off [the arena] by an intense
   struggle, which immediately brings to its participants even greater
   privations and sufferings than those against which they rose." He gave
   the example of the French Revolution "which attained its titanic
   dimensions under the pressure of the masses exhausted with suffering,
   itself deepened and rendered more acute their misfortunes for a
   prolonged period and to an extraordinary extent." He asked: "Can it be
   otherwise?" [Terrorism and Communism, p. 7]

   Indeed, he stressed that "revolutions which drag into their whirlpool
   millions of workers" automatically affect the "economic life of the
   country." By "[d]ragging the mass of the people away from labour,
   drawing them for a prolonged period into the struggle, thereby
   destroying their connection with production, the revolution in all
   these ways strikes deadly blows at economic life, and inevitably lowers
   the standard which it found at its birth." This affects the socialist
   revolution as the "more perfect the revolution, the greater are the
   masses it draws in; and the longer it is prolonged, the greater is the
   destruction it achieves in the apparatus of production, and the more
   terrible inroads does it make upon public resources. From this there
   follows merely the conclusion which did not require proof -- that a
   civil war is harmful to economic life." [Ibid.]

   Lenin in 1917 argued the similarly, mocking those who argued that
   revolution was out of the question because "the circumstances are
   exceptionally complicated." He noting that any revolution, "in its
   development, would give rise to exceptionally complicated
   circumstances" and that it was "the sharpest, most furious, desperate
   class war and civil war. Not a single great revolution in history has
   escaped civil war. No one who does not live in a shell could imagine
   that civil war is conceivable without exceptionally complicated
   circumstances. If there were no exceptionally complicated circumstances
   there would be no revolution." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p.
   80 and p. 81]

   A few months early, Lenin argues that "[w]hen unavoidable disaster is
   approaching, the most useful and indispensable task confronting the
   people is that of organisation. Marvels of proletarian organisation --
   this is our slogan at the present, and shall become our slogan and our
   demand to an even greater extent, when the proletariat is in power. . .
   There are many such talents [i.e. organisers] among the people. These
   forces lie dormant in the peasantry and the proletariat, for lack of
   application. They must be mobilised from below, by practical work . .
   ." [The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it, pp. 49-50]

   The problem in 1921 (as during the war), of course, was that when the
   proletariat did organise itself, it was repressed as
   counterrevolutionary by the Bolsheviks. The reconstruction from below,
   the organisation of the proletariat, automatically came into conflict
   with party power. The workers and peasants could not act because soviet
   and trade union democracy would have ended Bolshevik dictatorship.

   Therefore, Rees' and Stack's arguments fail to convince. As noted,
   their ideological gurus clearly argued that revolution without civil
   war and economic exhaustion was impossible. Sadly, the means to
   mitigate the problems of Civil War and economic crisis (namely workers'
   self-management and power) inevitably came into conflict with party
   power and could not be encouraged. If Bolshevism cannot meet the
   inevitable problems of revolution and maintain the principles it pays
   lip-service to (i.e. soviet democracy and workers' power) then it
   clearly does not work and should be avoided.

   Stack's and Rees' argument, in other words, represents the bankruptcy
   of Bolshevik ideology rather than a serious argument against the
   Kronstadt revolt.

13 Was there a real alternative to Kronstadt's "third revolution"?

   Another Trotskyist argument against Kronstadt and in favour of the
   Bolshevik repression is related to the country was exhausted argument
   we discussed in the [67]last section. It finds its clearest expression
   in Victor Serge's argument:

     "the country was exhausted, and production practically at a
     standstill; there was no reserves of any kind, not even reserves of
     stamina in the hearts of the masses. The working-class elite that
     had been moulded in the struggle against the old regime was
     literally decimated. The Party, swollen by the influx of
     power-seekers, inspired little confidence . . . Soviet democracy
     lacked leadership, institutions and inspiration . . .

     "The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for
     freely-elected soviets into one for 'Soviets without Communists.' If
     the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos,
     and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the
     Communists, the return of the emigres, and in the end, through the
     sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time
     anti-proletarian."
     [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 128-9]

   Serge supported the Bolsheviks, considering them as the only possible
   means of defending the revolution. Some modern day Leninists follow
   this line of reasoning and want us to believe that the Bolsheviks were
   defending the remaining gains of the revolution. What gains, exactly?
   The only gains that remained were Bolshevik power and nationalised
   industry -- both of which excluded the real gains of the Russian
   Revolution (namely soviet power, the right to independent unions and to
   strike, freedom of assembly, association and speech for working people,
   the beginnings of workers' self-management of production and so on).
   Indeed, both "gains" were the basis for the Stalinist bureaucracy's
   power.

   Anarchists and libertarian Marxists who defend the Kronstadt revolt and
   oppose the actions of the Bolsheviks are not foolish enough to argue
   that Kronstadt's "third revolution" would have definitely succeeded.
   Every revolution is a gamble and may fail. As Ante Ciliga correctly
   argues:

     "Let us consider, finally, one last accusation which is commonly
     circulated: that action such as that at Kronstadt could have
     indirectly let loose the forces of the counter-revolution. It is
     possible indeed that even by placing itself on a footing of workers'
     democracy the revolution might have been overthrown; but what is
     certain is that it has perished, and that it has perished on account
     of the policy of its leaders. The repression of Kronstadt, the
     suppression of the democracy of workers and soviets by the Russian
     Communist party, the elimination of the proletariat from the
     management of industry, and the introduction of the NEP, already
     signified the death of the Revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 335]

   No revolution is guaranteed to succeed. The same with Kronstadt's
   "Third Revolution." Its call for soviet power may have lead to defeat
   via renewed intervention. That is possible -- just as it was possible
   in 1917. One thing is sure, by maintaining the Bolshevik dictatorship
   the Russian Revolution was crushed.

   The only alternative to the "third revolution" would have been
   self-reform of the party dictatorship and, therefore, of the soviet
   state. Such an attempt was made after 1923 by the Left Opposition
   (named "Trotskyist" by the Stalinists because Trotsky was its main
   leader). John Rees discusses the Left Opposition, arguing that "without
   a revival of struggle in Russia or successful revolution elsewhere" it
   "was doomed to failure." [Op. Cit., p. 68] Given the logic of Serge's
   arguments, this is the only option left for Leninists.

   How viable was this alternative? Could the soviet dictatorship reform
   itself? Was soviet democracy more of a danger than the uncontrolled
   dictatorship of a party within a state marked by already serious levels
   of corruption, bureaucracy and despotism? History provides the answer
   with the rise of Stalin.

   Unfortunately for the Left Opposition, the bureaucracy had gained
   experience in repressing struggle in breaking the wave of strikes in
   1921 and crushing the Kronstadt rebellion. Indeed, Rees incredulously
   notes that by 1923 "the well-head of renewal and thorough reform -- the
   activity of the workers -- had dried to a trickle" and yet does not see
   that this decline was aided by the example of what had happened to
   Kronstadt and the repression of the 1921 strike wave. The Left
   Opposition received the crop that Lenin and Trotsky sowed the seeds of
   in 1921.

   Ironically, Rees argues that the Stalinist bureaucracy could betray the
   revolution without "an armed counter-revolutionary seizure of power"
   (and so "no martial law, no curfew or street battles") because of "the
   atomisation of the working class." However, the atomisation was a
   product of the armed counter-revolutionary activities of Lenin and
   Trotsky in 1921 when they broke the strikes and crushed Kronstadt by
   means of martial law, curfew and street battles. The workers had no
   interest in which branch of the bureaucracy would govern and exploit
   them and so remained passive. Rees fails to see that the Stalinist coup
   simply built upon the initial counter-revolution of Lenin. There was
   martial law, curfew and street battles but they occurred in 1921, not
   1928. The rise of Stalinism was the victory of one side of the new
   bureaucratic class over another but that class had defeated the working
   class in March 1921.

   As for the idea that an external revolution could have regenerated the
   Soviet bureaucracy, this too was fundamentally utopian. In the words of
   Ida Mett:

     "Some claim that the Bolsheviks allowed themselves such actions (as
     the suppression of Kronstadt) in the hope of a forthcoming world
     revolution, of which they considered themselves the vanguard. But
     would not a revolution in another country have been influenced by
     the spirit of the Russian Revolution? When one considers the
     enormous moral authority of the Russian Revolution throughout the
     world one may ask oneself whether the deviations of this Revolution
     would not eventually have left an imprint on other countries. Many
     historical facts allow such a judgement. One may recognise the
     impossibility of genuine socialist construction in a single country,
     yet have doubts as to whether the bureaucratic deformations of the
     Bolshevik regime would have been straightened out by the winds
     coming from revolutions in other countries." [Op. Cit., p. 82]

   The Bolsheviks had already been manipulating foreign Communist Parties
   in the interests of their state for a number of years. That is part of
   the reason why the Left-Communists around Pannekoek and Gorter broke
   with the Third International later in 1921. Just as the influence of
   Lenin had been a key factor in fighting the anti-Parliamentarian and
   libertarian communist tendencies in Communist Parties all across the
   world, so the example and influence of the Bolsheviks would have made
   its impact on any foreign revolution. The successful revolutionaries
   would have applied such "lessons" of October such as the dictatorship
   of the proletariat being impossible without the dictatorship of the
   communist party, centralism, militarisation of labour and so on. This
   would have distorted any revolution from the start (given how
   obediently the Communist Parties around the world followed the insane
   policies of Stalinism, can we doubt this conclusion?).

   Not that the Left Opposition's political platform could have saved the
   revolution. After all, it was utopian in that it urged the party and
   state bureaucracy to reform itself as well as contradictory. It did not
   get at the root of the problem, namely Bolshevik ideology. The
   theoretical limitations of the "Left Opposition" can be found in more
   detail in [68]section 3 of the appendix on [69]"Were any of the
   Bolshevik oppositions a real alternative?". Here we will restrict
   ourselves to looking at The Platform of the Opposition written in 1927
   (unless otherwise specified all quotes come from this document).

   It urged a "consistent development of a workers' democracy in the
   party, the trade unions, and the soviets" and to "convert the urban
   soviets into real institutions of proletarian power." It states that
   "Lenin, as long ago as in the revolution of 1905, advanced the slogan
   of soviets as organs of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
   and the peasants." The Kronstadt sailors argued the same, of course,
   and were branded "White Guardists" and "counter-revolutionary". At the
   same time as this call for democracy, we find affirmation of the
   "Leninist principle" ("inviolable for every Bolshevik") that "the
   dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
   dictatorship of the party." It repeats the principle by mentioning that
   "the dictatorship of the proletariat demands a single and united
   proletarian party as the leader of the working masses and the poor
   peasantry." It stresses that a "split in our party, the formation of
   two parties, would represent an enormous danger to the revolution."
   This was because:

     "Nobody who sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the
     idea of 'two parties' or play with the suggestion of a split. Only
     those who desire to replace Lenin's course with some other can
     advocate a split or a movement along the two-party road.

     "We will fight with all our power against the idea of two parties,
     because the dictatorship of the proletariat demands as its very core
     a single proletarian party. It demands a single party. It demands a
     proletarian party -- that is, a party whose policy is determined by
     the interests of the proletariat and carried out by a proletarian
     nucleus. Correction of the line of our party, improvement of its
     social composition -- that is not the two-party road, but the
     strengthening and guaranteeing of its unity as a revolutionary party
     of the proletariat."

   We can note, in passing, the interesting notion of party (and so
   "proletarian" state) policy "determined by the interests of the
   proletariat and carried out by a proletarian nucleus" but which is not
   determined by the proletariat itself. Which means that the policy of
   the "workers' state" must be determined by some other (unspecified)
   group and not by the workers. What possibility can exist that this
   other group actually knows what is in the interests of the proletariat?
   None, of course, as any form of democratic decision can be ignored when
   those who determine the policy consider the protests of the proletariat
   to be not "in the interests of the proletariat."

   This was the opinion of Trotsky, who argued against the Workers'
   Opposition faction of the Communist Party who urged re-introducing some
   elements of democracy at the Tenth Party Conference at the time of the
   Kronstadt uprising (while, of course, keeping the Communist Party
   dictatorship intact). As he put it, they "have come out with dangerous
   slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have
   placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As
   if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that
   dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!"
   He continued by stating that the "Party is obliged to maintain its
   dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the
   working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every
   moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by M.
   Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 78]

   Thus the call for democracy is totally annulled by other arguments in
   the Platform, arguments which logically eliminates democracy and
   results in such acts as the repression of Kronstadt (see [70]section
   15).

   The question, of course, arises as to how democracy can be introduced
   in the soviets and unions when party dictatorship is essential for the
   "realisation" of the "proletarian" dictatorship and there can only be
   one party? What happens if the proletariat vote for someone else (as
   they did in Kronstadt)? If "proletarian" dictatorship is impossible
   without the dictatorship of the party then, clearly, proletarian
   democracy becomes meaningless. All the workers would be allowed to do
   would be to vote for members of the same party, all of whom would be
   bound by party discipline to carry out the orders of the party
   leadership. Power would rest in the party hierarchy and definitively
   not in the working class, its unions or its soviets (both of which
   would remain mere fig-leafs for party rule). Ultimately, the only
   guarantee that the party dictatorship would govern in the interests of
   the proletariat would be the good intentions of the party. However,
   being unaccountable to the masses, such a guarantee would be worthless
   -- as history shows.

   Kronstadt is the obvious end result of such politics. The starting
   point was the disbanding of soviets which had been elected with a
   majority of "wrong" parties (as the Bolsheviks did in early 1918,
   before the start of the civil war). While the Platform may be useful as
   an expression of the usual Leninist double-think on the "workers'
   state", its practical suggestions are useless. Unlike the Kronstadt
   Platform, it was doomed to failure from the start. The new bureaucratic
   class could only be removed by a "third revolution" and while this,
   possibly, could have resulted in a bourgeois counter-revolution the
   alternative of maintaining Bolshevik dictatorship would inevitably have
   resulted in Stalinism. When supporters of Bolshevism argue that
   Kronstadt would have opened the gate to counter-revolution, they do not
   understand that the Bolsheviks were the counter-revolution in 1921 and
   that by suppressing Kronstadt the Bolsheviks not only opened the gate
   to Stalinism but invited it in and gave it the keys to the house.

   The Platform, moreover, smacks of the re-writing of history Trotsky
   correctly accused Stalinism of.

   It argues, for example, that the urban soviets "in recent years have
   been losing importance. This undoubtedly reflects a shift in the
   relation of class forces to the disadvantage of the proletariat." In
   fact, the soviets had lost their importance since the October
   revolution (see [71]section 2 for details). The "shift" in the relation
   of class forces started immediately after the October revolution, when
   the real gains of 1917 (i.e. soviet democracy, workers' rights and
   freedom) were slowly and surely eliminated by the bureaucratic class
   forming around the new state -- a class who could justify their actions
   by claiming it was in the "interests" of the masses whose wishes they
   were ignoring.

   As regards the Communist Party itself, it argues for introducing ("in
   deeds and not words") "a democratic regime. Do away with administrative
   pressure tactics. Stop the persecution and expulsion of those who hold
   independent opinions about party questions." No mention, of course,
   that these tactics were used by Lenin and Trotsky against Left-wing
   dissidents after the October revolution.

   The Left-Communists in early 1918 were subject to such pressure. For
   example, they were ousted from leading positions in the Supreme
   Economic Council in March 1918. After their views were denounced by
   Lenin a "campaign was whipped up in Leningrad which compelled Kommunist
   [their paper] to transfer publication to Moscow . . . After the
   appearance of the first issue of the paper a hastily convened Leningrad
   Party Conference produced a majority for Lenin and 'demanded that the
   adherents of Kommunist cease their separate organisational existence.'"
   The paper lasted four issues, with the last having to be published as a
   private factional paper. The issue had been settled by a high pressure
   campaign in the Party organisation, backed by a barrage of violent
   invective in the Party press and in the pronouncements of the Party
   leaders. [Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., pp. 39-40]

   Similarly, the Workers' Opposition three years later also experienced
   them. At the Tenth Party congress, A. Kollontai (author of their
   platform) stated that the circulation of her pamphlet had been
   deliberately impeded. "So irregular were some of these that the Moscow
   Party Committee at one stage voted a resolution publicly censuring the
   Petrograd organisation 'for not observing the rules of proper
   controversy.'" The success of the Leninist faction in getting control
   of the party machine was such that "there is serious doubt as to
   whether they were not achieved by fraud." [Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 75 and
   p. 77] Victor Serge witnessed the rigging of an election to ensure
   Lenin's victory in the trade union debate. [Memoirs of a Revolutionary,
   p. 123] Kollontai herself mentions (in early 1921) that comrades "who
   dare to disagree with decrees from above are still being persecuted."
   [our emphasis, The Workers' Opposition, p. 22]

   The Platform states that "the dying out of inner-party democracy leads
   to a dying out of workers' democracy in general -- in the trade unions,
   and in all other nonparty mass organisations." In fact, the opposite
   causation is correct. The dying out of workers' democracy in general
   leads to a dying out of inner-party democracy. The dictatorship of the
   party by necessity clashes with the "democratic dictatorship of the
   working masses and the poor peasantry." As the party dictatorship
   replaces the working masses, eliminating democracy by the dictatorship
   of a single party, democracy in that party must wither. If the workers
   can join that party and influence its policies then the same problems
   that arose in the soviets and unions appear in the party (i.e. voting
   for the wrong policies and people). This necessitates a corresponding
   centralisation in power within the party as occurred in the soviets and
   unions, all to the detriment of rank and file power and control.

   As Ida Mett argued:

     "There is no doubt that the discussion taking place within the
     [Communist] Party at this time [in early 1921] had profound effects
     on the masses. It overflowed the narrow limits the Party sought to
     impose on it. It spread to the working class as a whole, to the
     solders and to the sailors. Heated local criticism acted as a
     general catalyst. The proletariat had reasoned quite logically: if
     discussion and criticism were permitted to Party members, why should
     they not be permitted to the masses themselves who had endured all
     the hardships of the Civil War?

     "In his speech to the Tenth Congress -- published in the Congress
     Proceedings -- Lenin voiced his regret at having 'permitted' such a
     discussion. 'We have certainly committed an error,' he said, 'in
     having authorised this debate. Such a discussion was harmful just
     before the Spring months that would be loaded with such
     difficulties.'"
     [The Kronstadt Uprising, pp. 34-5]

   Unsurprisingly, the Tenth Congress voted to ban factions within the
   Party. The elimination of discussion in the working class led to its
   ban in the party. Having the rank-and-file of the Party discuss issues
   would give false hopes to the working class as a whole who may attempt
   to influence policy by joining the party (and, of course, vote for the
   wrong people or policies).

   Thus the only alternative to Kronstadt's "Third Revolution" and free
   soviets was doomed to failure.

   Lastly, we should draw some parallels between the fates of the
   Kronstadt sailors and the Left Opposition.

   John Rees argues that the Left Opposition had "the whole vast
   propaganda machine of the bureaucracy . . . turned against them," a
   machine used by Trotsky and Lenin in 1921 against Kronstadt.
   Ultimately, the Left Opposition "were exiled, imprisoned and shot,"
   again like the Kronstadters and a host of revolutionaries who defended
   the revolution but opposed the Bolshevik dictatorship. [Op. Cit., p.
   68]

   As Murray Bookchin argued:

     "All the conditions for Stalinism were prepared for by the defeat of
     the Kronstadt sailors and Petrograd strikers." ["Introduction", Ida
     Mett, The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 13]

   Thus, the argument that Kronstadt was "utopian" is false. The third
   revolution was the only real alternative in Bolshevik Russia. Any
   struggle from below post-1921 would have raised the same problems of
   soviet democracy and party dictatorship which Kronstadt raised. Given
   that the Left Opposition subscribed to the "Leninist principle" of "the
   dictatorship of the party," they could not appeal to the masses as they
   would not vote for them. The arguments raised against Kronstadt that
   soviet democracy would lead to counter-revolution are equally
   applicable to movements which appealed, as Rees desires, to the Russian
   working class post-Kronstadt.

   In summary, the claim that Kronstadt would inevitably have lead to an
   anti-proletarian dictatorship fails. Yes, it might have but the
   Bolshevik dictatorship itself was anti-proletarian (it had repressed
   proletarian protest, organisation, freedom and rights on numerous
   occasions) and it could never be reformed from within by the very logic
   of its "Leninist principle" of "the dictatorship of the party." The
   rise of Stalinism was inevitable after the crushing of Kronstadt.

14 How do modern day Trotskyists misrepresent Kronstadt?

   We have discussed how Trotskyists have followed their heroes Lenin and
   Trotsky in abusing the facts about the Kronstadt sailors and uprising
   in previous sections. In [72]section 8, we have indicated how they have
   selectively quoted from academic accounts of the uprising and
   suppressed evidence which contradicts their claims. In [73]section 7 we
   have shown how they have selectively quoted from Paul Avrich's book on
   the revolt to paint a false picture of the connections between the
   Kronstadt sailors and the Whites. Here we summarise some of the other
   misrepresentations of Trotskyists about the revolt.

   John Rees, for example, asserts that the Kronstadters were fighting for
   "soviets without parties." Indeed, he makes the assertion twice on one
   page. [Op. Cit., p. 63] Pat Stack goes one further and asserts that the
   "central demand of the Kronstadt rising though was 'soviets without
   Bolsheviks', in other words, the utter destruction of the workers'
   state." ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246, November
   2000] Both authors quote from Paul Avrich's book Kronstadt 1921 in
   their articles. Let us turn to that source:

     "'Soviets without Communists' was not, as is often maintained by
     both Soviet and non-Soviet writers, a Kronstadt slogan." [Kronstadt
     1921, p. 181]

   Nor did they agitate under the banner "soviets without parties." They
   argued for "all power to the soviets and not to parties." Political
   parties were not to be excluded from the soviets, simply stopped from
   dominating them and substituting themselves for them. As Avrich notes,
   the Kronstadt program "did allow a place for the Bolsheviks in the
   soviets, alongside the other left-wing organisations . . . Communists .
   . . participated in strength in the elected conference of delegate,
   which was the closest thing Kronstadt ever had to the free soviets of
   its dreams." [Ibid.] The index for Avrich's work handily includes this
   page in it, under the helpful entry "soviets: 'without Communists.'"

   The central demand of the uprising was simply soviet democracy and a
   return to the principles that the workers and peasants had been
   fighting the whites for. In other words, both Leninists have
   misrepresented the Kronstadt revolt's demands and so misrepresented its
   aims.

   Rees goes one step further and tries to blame the Bolshevik massacre on
   the sailors themselves. He argues "in Petrograd Zinoviev had already
   essentially withdrawn the most detested aspects of War Communism in
   response to the strikes." Needless to say, Zinoviev did not withdraw
   the political aspects of War Communism, just some of the economic ones
   and, as the Kronstadt revolt was mainly political, these concessions
   were not enough (indeed, the repression directed against workers rights
   and opposition socialist and anarchist groups increased). He then
   states the Kronstadters "response [to these concessions] was contained
   in their What We Are Fighting For" and quotes it as follows:

     "there is no middle ground in the struggle against the Communists .
     . . They give the appearance of making concessions: in Petrograd
     province road-block detachments have been removed and 10 million
     roubles have been allotted for the purchase of foodstuffs. . . But
     one must not be deceived . . . No there can be no middle ground.
     Victory or death!"

   What Rees fails to inform the reader is that this was written on March
   8th, while the Bolsheviks had started military operations on the
   previous evening. Moreover, the fact the "response" clearly stated
   "[w]ithout a single shot, without a drop of blood, the first step has
   been taken [of the "Third Revolution"]. The toilers do not need blood.
   They will shed it only at a moment of self-defence" is not mentioned.
   [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 243] In other words, the Kronstadt sailors
   reaffirmed their commitment to non-violent revolt. Any violence on
   their part was in self-defence against Bolshevik actions. Not that you
   would know that from Rees' work. Indeed, as one of Rees' sources
   indicates, the rebels "had refrained from taking any communist lives.
   The Soviet Government, on the other hand, as early as March 3, already
   had executed forty-five seamen at Oranienbaum -- a quite heavy
   proportion of the total personnel of the men at the Naval Aviation
   Detachment. These men had voted for the Kronstadt resolution, but did
   not take arms against the government. This mass execution was merely a
   prelude to those that took place after the defeat of the mutineers."
   These executions at Oranienbaum, it should be noted, exceeded the total
   of 36 seamen who had paid with their lives for the two large rebellions
   of the 1905 revolution at Kronstadt and Sveaborg. [D. Fedotoff-White,
   The Growth of the Red Army, p. 156]

   Ted Grant, of the UK's Socialist Appeal re-writes history significantly
   in his work Russia: From revolution to counter-revolution. For example,
   he claims (without providing any references) that the "first lie" of
   anti-Bolshevik writers on the subject "is to identify the Kronstadt
   mutineers of 1921 with the heroic Red sailors of 1917." As we have
   indicated in [74]section 8, research has proven that over 90% of the
   sailors on the two battleships which started the revolt had been
   recruited before and during the 1917 revolution and at least
   three-quarters of the sailors were old hands who had served in the navy
   through war and revolution. So was the majority of the Provisional
   Revolutionary Committee. Grant asserts that the sailors in 1917 and
   1921 "had nothing in common" because those "of 1917 were workers and
   Bolsheviks." In fact, as we indicated [75]section 9, the Bolsheviks
   were a minority in Kronstadt during 1917 (a fact even Trotsky admitted
   in 1938). Moreover, the demands raised in the revolt matched the
   politics dominant in 1917.

   Grant then claims that "almost the entire Kronstadt garrison
   volunteered to fight in the ranks of the Red Army during the civil
   war." Are we to believe that the Bolshevik commanders left Kronstadt
   (and so Petrograd) defenceless during the Civil War? Or drafted the
   skilled and trained (and so difficult to replace) sailors away from
   their ships, so leaving them unusable? Of course not. Common sense
   refutes Grant's argument (and statistical evidence supports this common
   sense position -- on 1st January, 1921, at least 75.5% of the Baltic
   Fleet was likely to have been drafted before 1918 and over 80% were
   from Great Russian areas and some 10% from the Ukraine. [Gelzter, Op.
   Cit., p. 208]).

   Not to be outdone, he then states that the "Kronstadt garrison of 1921
   was composed mainly of raw peasant levies from the Black Sea Fleet. A
   cursory glance at the surnames of the mutineers immediately shows that
   they were almost all Ukrainians." According to Paul Avrich, "[s]ome
   three or four hundred names appear in the journal of the rebel movement
   . . . So far as one can judge from these surnames alone . . . Great
   Russians are in the overwhelming majority." Of the 15 person
   Provisional Revolutionary Committee, "three . . . bore patently
   Ukrainian names and two others. . . Germanic names." [Paul Avrich, Op.
   Cit., pp. 92-3] Of the three Ukrainians, two were sailors of long
   standing and "had fought on the barricades in 1917." [Avrich, Op. Cit.,
   p. 91] So much for a "cursory glance at the surnames of the mutineers."
   To top it off, he states: "That there were actual counter-revolutionary
   elements among the sailors was shown by the slogan 'Soviets without
   Bolsheviks'." Which, of course, the Kronstadt sailors never raised as a
   slogan!

   And Grant talks about the "[m]any falsifications. . . written about
   this event," that it "has been virtually turned into a myth" and that
   "these allegations bear no relation to the truth." Truly amazing. As
   can be seen, his words apply to his own inventions.

   Another SWP member, Abbie Bakan, asserts that, for example, "more than
   three quarters of the sailors" at Kronstadt "were recent recruits of
   peasant origin" but refuses to provide a source for this claim. ["A
   Tragic Necessity", Socialist Worker Review, no. 136, November 1990, pp.
   18-21] As noted in [76]section 8, such a claim is false. The likely
   source for the assertion is Paul Avrich, who noted that more than
   three-quarters of the sailors were of peasant origin but Avrich does
   not say they were all recent recruits. While stating that there could
   be "little doubt" that the Civil War produced a "high turnover" and
   that "many" old-timers had been replaced by conscripts from rural
   areas, he does not indicate that all the sailors from peasant
   backgrounds were new recruits. He also notes that "there had always
   been a large and unruly peasant element among the sailors." [Op. Cit.,
   pp. 89-90]

   Bakan asserts that anti-semitism "was vicious and rampant" yet fails to
   provide any official Kronstadt proclamations expressing this
   perspective. Rather, we are to generalise from the memoirs of one
   sailor and the anti-semitic remark of Vershinin, a member of the
   Revolutionary Committee. Let us not forget that the opinions of these
   sailors and others like them were irrelevant to the Bolsheviks when
   they drafted them in the first place. And, more importantly, this
   "vicious and rampant" anti-semitism failed to mark the demands raised
   nor the Kronstadt rebels' newspaper or radio broadcasts. Nor did the
   Bolsheviks mention it at the time.

   Moreover, it is true that the "worse venom of the Kronstadt rebels was
   levelled against Trotsky and Zinoviev" but it was not because, as Bakan
   asserts, they were "treated as Jewish scapegoats." Their ethnical
   background was not mentioned by the Kronstadt sailors. Rather, they
   were strong political reasons for attacking them. As Paul Avrich
   argues, "Trotsky in particular was the living symbol of War Communism,
   of everything the sailors had rebelled against. His name was associated
   with centralisation and militarisation, with iron discipline and
   regimentation." As for Zinoviev, he had "incurred the sailors' loathing
   as the party boss who had suppressed the striking workers and who had
   stooped to taking their own families as hostages." Good reasons to
   attack them and nothing to do with them being Jewish. [Op. Cit., p. 178
   and p. 176]

   Bakan states that the "demands of the Kronstadt sailors reflected the
   ideas of the most backward section of the peasantry." As can be seen
   from [77]section 3, such a comment cannot be matched with the actual
   demands of the revolt (which, of course, he does not provide). So what
   ideas did these demands of the "most backward section of the peasantry"
   state? Free elections to the Soviets, freedom of speech and of the
   press for workers and peasants, right of assembly, freedom for trade
   union and peasant organisations, a conference of workers, soldiers and
   sailors, liberation of all political, worker and peasant prisoners,
   equalisation of rations, freedom for peasants as long as they do not
   employ hired labour, and so on. What would, in other words, be included
   in most socialist parties programmes and was, in fact, key elements of
   Bolshevik rhetoric in 1917. And, of course, all of the political
   aspects of the Kronstadt demands reflected key aspects of the Soviet
   Constitution.

   How "backward" can you get! Indeed, these "backward" peasants send a
   radio message marking International Woman's Day, hoping that women
   would "soon accomplish" their "liberation from every form of violence
   and oppression." [quoted by Alexander Berkman, The Russian Tragedy, p.
   85]

   Bakan pathetically acknowledges that their demands included "calls for
   greater freedoms" yet looks at the "main economic target" (not
   mentioning they were points 8, 10 and 11 of the 15 demands, the bulk of
   the rest are political). These, apparently, were aimed at "the
   programme of forced requisitioning of peasant produce and the roadblock
   detachments that halted the black market in grain." Given that he
   admits that the Bolsheviks were "already discussing" the end of these
   features (due to their lack of success) it must be the case that the
   Bolsheviks also "reflected the ideas of the most backward section of
   the peasantry"! Moreover, the demand to end the roadblocks was also
   raised by the Petrograd and Moscow workers during their strikes, as
   were most of the other demands raised by Kronstadt. [Paul Avrich, Op.
   Cit., p. 42] Surely the "most backward section of the peasantry" was
   getting around in those days, appearing as they were in the higher
   reaches of the Bolshevik party bureaucracy and the factories of
   Petrograd and other major cities!

   In reality, of course, the opposition to the forced requisitioning of
   food was a combination of ethical and practical considerations -- it
   was evil and it was counterproductive. You did not have to be a peasant
   to see and know this (as the striking workers show). Similarly, the
   roadblocks were also a failure. Victor Serge, for example, recollected
   he would "have died without the sordid manipulations of the black
   market." [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p.79] He was a government
   official. Think how much worse it would have been for an ordinary
   worker. The use of roadblock detachments harmed the industrial workers
   -- little wonder they struck for their end and little wonder the
   sailors expressed solidarity with them and included it in their
   demands. Therefore, nothing can be drawn from these demands about the
   class nature of the revolt.

   In an interesting example of double-think, Bakan then states that the
   sailors "called for the abolition of Bolshevik authority in the army,
   factories and mills." What the resolution demanded was, in fact, "the
   abolition Party combat detachments in all military groups" as well as
   "Party guards in factories and enterprises" (point 10). In other words,
   to end the intimidation of workers and soldiers by armed communist
   units in their amidst! When Bakan states that "the real character of
   the rebellion" can be seen from the opening declaration that "the
   present soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants" he
   could not have made a truer comment. The Kronstadt revolt was a revolt
   for soviet democracy and against party dictatorship. And soviet
   democracy would only abolish "Bolshevik authority" if the existing
   soviets, as the resolution argued, did not express the will of their
   electors!

   Similarly, he asserts that the Provisional Revolutionary Committee was
   "non-elected" and so contradicts every historian who acknowledges it
   was elected by the conference of delegates on March 2nd and expanded by
   the next conference a few days later. He even considers the fact the
   delegate meeting's "denial of party members' usual role in chairing the
   proceedings" as one of many "irregularities" while, of course, the real
   irregularity was the fact that one party (the government party) had
   such a "usual role" in the first place! Moreover, given that that
   Petrograd soviet meeting to discuss the revolt had Cheka guards
   (Lenin's political police) on it, his notion that sailors guarded the
   conference of delegates meeting (a meeting held in opposition to the
   ruling party) was "irregular" seems ironic.

   Lastly, he raises the issue of the "Memorandum" of the White "National
   Centre" and uses it as evidence that "Lenin's suspicion of an
   international conspiracy linked up with the Kronstadt events has been
   vindicated." Needless to say, he fails to mention that the historian
   who discovered the document rejected the notion that it proved that
   Kronstadt was linked to such a conspiracy (see [78]section 6 for a full
   discussion). Ironically, he mentions that "[t]wo weeks after the
   Kronstadt rebellion the ice was due to melt." Two weeks after the
   rebellion was crushed, of course, and he fails to mention that the
   "Memorandum" he uses as evidence assumes that the revolt would break
   out after the ice had melted, not before. While he claims that
   "[h]olding out until the ice melted was identified as critical in the
   memorandum," this is not true. The Memorandum in fact, as Paul Avrich
   notes, "assumes that the rising will occur after the ice has melted."
   [Op. Cit., p. 237f] No other interpretation can be gathered from the
   document.

   Altogether, Bakan's article shows how deeply the supporters of Leninism
   will sink to when attempting to discuss the Kronstadt rebellion. Sadly,
   as we have indicated many, many times, this is not an isolated
   occurrence.

15 What does Kronstadt tell us about Bolshevism?

   The rationales used by Lenin, Trotsky and their followers are
   significant aids to getting to the core of the Bolshevik Myth. These
   rationales and activities allow us to understand the limitations of
   Bolshevik theory and how it contributed to the degeneration of the
   revolution.

   Trotsky stated that the "Kronstadt slogan" was "soviets without
   Communists." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 90] This, of course, is
   factually incorrect. The Kronstadt slogan was "all power to the soviets
   but not to the parties" (or "free soviets"). From this incorrect
   assertion, Trotsky argued as follows:

     "to free the soviets from the leadership [!] of the Bolsheviks would
     have meant within a short time to demolish the soviets themselves.
     The experience of the Russian soviets during the period of Menshevik
     and SR domination and, even more clearly, the experience of the
     German and Austrian soviets under the domination of the Social
     Democrats, proved this. Social Revolutionary-anarchist soviets could
     only serve as a bridge from the proletarian dictatorship. They could
     play no other role, regardless of the 'ideas' of their participants.
     The Kronstadt uprising thus had a counterrevolutionary character."
     [Op. Cit., p. 90]

   Interesting logic. Let us assume that the result of free elections
   would have been the end of Bolshevik "leadership" (i.e. dictatorship),
   as seems likely. What Trotsky is arguing is that to allow workers to
   vote for their representatives would "only serve as a bridge from the
   proletarian dictatorship"! This argument was made (in 1938) as a
   general point and is not phrased in terms of the problems facing the
   Russian Revolution in 1921. In other words Trotsky is clearly arguing
   for the dictatorship of the party and contrasting it to soviet
   democracy. So much for "All Power to the Soviets" or "workers' power"!

   Indeed, Trotsky was not shy in explicitly stating this on occasion. As
   we noted in [79]section 13, the Left Opposition based itself on
   "Leninist principle" ("inviolable for every Bolshevik") that "the
   dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
   dictatorship of the party." Trotsky stressed ten years later that the
   whole working class cannot determine policy in the so-called "workers'
   state" (as well as indicating his belief that one-party dictatorship is
   an inevitable stage in a "proletarian" revolution):

     "The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not
     a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective
     necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class
     struggle, the heterogeneity oof the revolutionary class, the
     necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory.
     The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as
     does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which
     can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history. . . The
     revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship
     surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly
     speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be
     replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without
     any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political
     development among the masses that it can never be achieved under
     capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the
     circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the
     moral development of the masses." [Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, pp.
     513-4]

   This is the very essence of Bolshevism. Trotsky is clearly arguing that
   the working class, as a class, is incapable of making a revolution or
   managing society itself -- hence the party must step in on its behalf
   and, if necessary, ignore the wishes of the people the party claims to
   represent. To re-quote Trotsky's comments against the Workers'
   Opposition at the Tenth Party Congress in early 1921: "They have made a
   fetish of democratic principles! They have placed the workers' right to
   elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not
   entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed
   with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!" He stressed that the
   "Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of
   temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship
   does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a
   workers' democracy." [quoted by M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers'
   Control, p. 78]

   In 1957, after crushing the 1956 workers' revolution, the Hungarian
   Stalinists argued along exactly the same lines as Trotsky had after the
   Bolsheviks had crushed Kronstadt. The leader of the Hungarian Stalinist
   dictatorship argued that "the regime is aware that the people do not
   always know what is good for them. It is therefore the duty of the
   leadership to act, not according to the will of the people, but
   according to what the leadership knows to be in the best interests of
   the people." [quoted by Andy Anderson, Hungary '56, p. 101]

   Little wonder, then, that Samuel Farber notes that "there is no
   evidence indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik
   leaders lamented the loss of workers' control or of democracy in the
   soviets, or at least referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin
   declared with the replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921." [Before
   Stalinism, p. 44]

   Such a perspective cannot help have disastrous consequences for a
   revolution (and explains why the Bolsheviks failed to pursue a peaceful
   resolution to the Kronstadt revolt). The logic of this argument clearly
   implies that when the party suppressed Kronstadt, when it disbanded
   non-Bolshevik soviets in early 1918 and robbed the workers and soviets
   of their power, the Bolsheviks were acting in the best interests of
   masses! The notion that Leninism is a revolutionary theory is
   invalidated by Trotsky's arguments. Rather than aim for a society based
   on workers' power, they aim for a "workers' state" in which workers
   delegate their power to the leaders of the party. Which confirmed
   Bakunin's argument that Marxism meant "the highly despotic government
   of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended
   scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated from
   the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd."
   [Statism and Anarchy, pp. 178-9]

   Such an approach is doomed to failure -- it cannot produce a socialist
   society as such a society (as Bakunin stressed) can only be built from
   below by the working class itself.

   As Vernon Richards argues:

     "The distinction between the libertarian and authoritarian
     revolutionary movements in their struggle to establish the free
     society, is the means which each proposes should be used to this
     end. The libertarian maintains that the initiative must come from
     below, that the free society must be the result of the will to
     freedom of a large section of the population. The authoritarian . .
     . believes that the will to freedom can only emerge once the
     existing economic and political system has be replaced by a
     dictatorship of the proletariat [as expressed by the dictatorship of
     the party, according to Trotsky] which, as the awareness and sense
     of responsibility of the people grows, will wither away and the free
     society emerge.

     "There can be no common ground between such approaches. For the
     authoritarian argues that the libertarian approach is noble but
     'utopian' and doomed to failure from the start, while the
     libertarian argues on the evidence of history, that the
     authoritarian methods will simply replace one coercive state by
     another, equally despotic and remote from the people, and which will
     no more 'wither away' than its capitalist predecessor."
     [Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, p. 206]

   Modern day Leninists follow Trotsky's arguments (although they rarely
   acknowledge where they logically led or that their heroes explicitly
   acknowledged this conclusion and justified it). They do not state this
   position as honestly as did Trotsky.

   Chris Bambery of the British SWP, for example, argues in his article
   "Leninism in the 21st century" that "in Lenin's concept of the party,
   democracy is balanced by centralism" and the first of three reasons for
   this is:

     "The working class is fragmented. There are always those who wish to
     fight, those who will scab and those in between. Even in the soviets
     those divisions will be apparent. Revolutionary organisation does
     not aspire to represent the working class as a whole. It bases
     itself on those workers who want to challenge capitalism, and seeks
     to organise those to win the majority of workers to the need to take
     power." [Socialist Review, no. 248, January 2001]

   This, of course, has exactly the same basis of Trotsky's defence of the
   need of party dictatorship and why Kronstadt was counterrevolutionary.
   Bambery notes that even "in the soviets" there will be "divisions."
   Thus we have the basic assumption which, combined with centralisation,
   vanguardism and other aspects of Bolshevism, leads to events like
   Kronstadt and the destruction of soviet power by party power. The
   arguments for centralisation mean, in practice, the concentration of
   power in the centre, in the hands of the party leaders, as the working
   masses cannot be trusted to make the correct ("revolutionary")
   decisions. This centralised power is then used to impose the will of
   the leaders, who use state power against the very class they claim to
   represent:

     "Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies
     of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to break down the
     resistance of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary
     coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable
     elements among the masses themselves." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol.
     42, p. 170]

   In other words, whoever protests against the dictatorship of the party.

   Of course, it will be replied that the Bolshevik dictatorship used its
   power to crush the resistance of the bosses (and "backward workers").
   Sadly, this is not the case. First, we must stress that anarchists are
   not against defending a revolution or expropriating the power and
   wealth of the ruling class, quite the reverse as this is about how a
   revolution does this. Lenin's argument is flawed as it confuses the
   defence of the revolution with the defence of the party in power. These
   are two totally different things.

   The "revolutionary coercion" Lenin speaks of is, apparently, directed
   against one part of the working class. However, this will also
   intimidate the rest (just as bourgeois repression not only intimidates
   those who strike but those who may think of striking). As a policy, it
   can have but one effect -- to eliminate all workers' power and freedom.
   It is the violence of an oppressive minority against the oppressed
   majority, not vice versa. Ending free speech harmed working class
   people. Militarisation of labour did not affect the bourgeoisie.
   Neither did eliminating soviet democracy or union independence. As the
   dissident (working class) Communist Gavriii Miasnokov argued in 1921
   (in reply to Lenin):

     "The trouble is that, while you raise your hand against the
     capitalist, you deal a blow to the worker. You know very well that
     for such words as I am now uttering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
     workers are languishing in prison. That I myself remain at liberty
     is only because I am a veteran Communist, have suffered for my
     beliefs, and am known among the mass of workers. Were it not for
     this, were I just an ordinary mechanic from the same factory, where
     would I be now? In a Cheka prison or, more likely, made to 'escape,'
     just as I made Mikhail Romanov 'escape.' Once more I say: You raise
     your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it is I who am spitting
     blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are being cracked."
     [quoted by Paul Avrich, G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers' Group]

   This can be seen from the make-up of Bolshevik prisoners. Of the 17 000
   camp detainees on whom statistical information was available on 1
   November 1920, peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at
   39% and 34% respectively. Similarly, of the 40 913 prisoners held in
   December 1921 (of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84%
   were illiterate or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either
   peasants of workers. [George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political
   Police, p. 178] Unsurprisingly, Miasnikov refused to denounce the
   Kronstadt insurgents nor would he have participated in their
   suppression had he been called upon to do so.

   Thus, the ideas of centralisation supported by Leninists are harmful to
   the real gains of a revolution, namely working class freedom and power
   (as we noted in [80]section 12, some of them do not even mention these
   when indicating the gains of 1917). Indeed, this can be seen all
   through the history of Bolshevism.

   Bambery states (correctly) that "Lenin and the Bolsheviks initially
   opposed" the spontaneously formed soviets of 1905. Incredulously,
   however, he assigns this opposition to the assertion that their "model
   of revolution was still shaped by that of the greatest previous
   revolution in France in 1789." [Ibid.] In reality, it was because they
   considered, to quote a leading Bolshevik, that "only a strong party
   along class lines can guide the proletarian political movement and
   preserve the integrity of its program, rather than a political mixture
   of this kind, an indeterminate and vacillating political organisation
   such as the workers council represents and cannot help but represent."
   [P. N. Gvozdev, quoted by, Oskar Anweilier, The Soviets, p. 77]

   The soviet, in other words, could not represent the interests of the
   working class because it was elected by them! Trotsky repeated this
   argument almost word for word in 1920 when he argued that "it can be
   said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became
   possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party" and that there
   is "no substitution at all" when the "power of the party" replaces that
   of the working class. The party, he stressed, "has afforded to the
   Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless
   parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour."
   [Communism and Terrorism] How labour could express this "supremacy"
   when it could not even vote for its delegates (never mind manage
   society) is never explained.

   In 1905, the Bolsheviks saw the soviets as a rival to their party and
   demanded it either accept their political program or simply become a
   trade-union like organisation. They feared that it pushed aside the
   party committee and thus led to the "subordination of consciousness to
   spontaneity." [Oskar Anweilier, Op. Cit., p. 78] This was following
   Lenin in What is to be Done?, where he had argued that the "spontaneous
   development of the labour movement leads to it being subordinated to
   bourgeois ideology." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 82] This perspective
   is at the root of all Bolshevik justifications for party power after
   the October revolution.

   Such a combination of political assumptions inevitably leads to such
   events as Kronstadt. With the perception that spontaneous developments
   inevitably leads to bourgeois domination, any attempt to revoke
   Bolshevik delegates and elect others to soviets must represent
   counter-revolutionary tendencies. As the working class is divided and
   subject to "vacillations" due to "wavering and unstable elements among
   the masses themselves," working class people simply cannot manage
   society themselves. Hence the need for "the Leninist principle" of "the
   dictatorship of the party." And, equally logically, to events like
   Kronstadt.

   Thus Cornellius Castoriadis:

     "To manage the work of others -- this is the beginning and the end
     of the whole cycle of exploitation. The 'need' for a specific social
     category to manage the work of others in production (and the
     activity of others in politics and in society), the 'need' for a
     separate business management and for a Party to rule the State --
     this is what Bolshevism proclaimed as soon as it seized power, and
     this is what it zealously laboured to impose. We know that it
     achieved its ends. Insofar as ideas play a role in the development
     of history -- and, in the final analysis, they play an enormous role
     -- the Bolshevik ideology (and with it, the Marxist ideology lying
     behind it) was a decisive factor in the birth of the Russian
     bureaucracy." [Political and Social Writings, vol. 3, p. 104]

   Moreover, the logic of the Bolshevik argument is flawed:

     "if you consider these worthy electors as unable to look after their
     own interests themselves, how is it that they will know how to
     choose for themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how
     will they be able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of
     producing a genius from the votes of a mass of fools? And what will
     happen to the minorities which are still the most intelligent, most
     active and radical part of a society?" [Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 53]

   Hence the need for soviet democracy and self-management, of the demands
   of the Kronstadt revolt. As Malatesta put it, "[o]nly freedom or the
   struggle for freedom can be the school for freedom." [Life and Ideas,
   p. 59] The "epic of Kronstadt" proves "conclusively that what belongs
   really to the workers and peasants can be neither governmental nor
   statist, and what is governmental and statist can belong neither to the
   workers nor the peasants." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 503]

   Anarchists are well aware that differences in political perspective
   exists within the working class. We are also aware of the importance of
   revolutionaries organising together to influence the class struggle,
   raising the need for revolution and the creation of working class
   organisations which can smash and replace the state with a system of
   self-managed communes and workers' councils. However, we reject the
   Bolshevik conclusion for centralised power (i.e. power delegated to the
   centre) as doomed to failure. Rather, we agree with Bakunin who argued
   that revolutionary groups must "not seek anything for themselves,
   neither privilege nor honour nor power" and reject "any idea of
   dictatorship and custodial control." The "revolution everywhere must be
   created by the people, and supreme control must always belong to the
   people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial
   associations . . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of
   revolutionary delegations . . . [who] will set out to administer public
   services, not to rule over peoples." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
   Writings, p. 172]

   Anarchists seek to influence working people directly, via their natural
   influence in working class organisations like workers' councils, unions
   and so on. Only by discussion, debate and self-activity can the
   political perspectives of working class people develop and change. This
   is impossible in a centralised system based on party dictatorship.
   Debate and discussion are pointless if they have no effect on the
   process of the revolution nor if working people cannot elect their own
   delegates. Nor can self-activity be developed if the government uses
   "revolutionary coercion" against "waving or unstable elements" (i.e.
   those who do not unquestioningly follow the orders of the government or
   practice initiative).

   In other words, the fact Bolshevism uses to justify its support for
   party power is, in fact, the strongest argument against it. By
   concentrating power in the hands of a few, the political development of
   the bulk of the population is hindered. No longer in control of their
   fate, of their revolution, they will become pray to
   counter-revolutionary tendencies.

   Nor was the libertarian approach impossible to implement during a
   revolution or civil war. Anarchists applied their ideas very
   successfully in the Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine. In the areas
   they protected, the Makhnovists refused to dictate to the workers and
   peasants what to do:

     "The freedom of the peasants and workers, said the Makhnovists,
     resides in the peasants and workers themselves and may not be
     restricted. In all fields of their lives it is up to the workers and
     peasants to construct whatever they consider necessary. As for the
     Makhnovists -- they can only assist them with advice, by putting at
     their disposal the intellectual or military forced they need, but
     under no circumstances can the Makhnovists prescribe for them in
     advance." [Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement,
     p. 148]

   The Makhnovists urged workers to form free soviets and labour unions
   and to use them to manage their own fates. They organised numerous
   conferences of workers' and peasants' delegates to discuss political
   and military developments as well as to decide how to re-organise
   society from the bottom up in a self-managed manner. After they had
   liberated Aleksandrovsk, for example, they "invited the working
   population to participant in a general conference of the workers of the
   city . . . and it was proposed that the workers organise the life in
   the city and the functioning of the factories with their own forces and
   their own organisations." [Op. Cit., p. 149] In contrast, the
   Bolsheviks tried to ban congresses of workers', peasants' and soldiers'
   delegates organised by the Makhnovists (once by Dybenko and once by
   Trotsky). [Op. Cit., pp. 98-104 and 120-5]

   The Makhnovists replied by holding the conferences anyway, asking
   "[c]an there exist laws made by a few people who call themselves
   revolutionaries, which permit them to outlaw a whole people who are
   more revolutionary than they are themselves?" and "[w]hose interests
   should the revolution defend: those of the Party or those of the people
   who set the revolution in motion with their blood?" Makhno himself
   stated that he "consider[ed] it an inviolable right of the workers and
   peasants, a right won by the revolution, to call conferences on their
   own account, to discuss their affairs." [Op. Cit., p. 103 and p. 129]

   These actions by the Bolsheviks should make the reader ponder if the
   elimination of workers' democracy during the civil war can be fully
   explained by the objective conditions facing Lenin's government or
   whether Leninist ideology played an important role in it. Indeed, the
   Kronstadt revolt occurred, in part, because in February 1921 the
   administration of the Baltic Fleet and the Communist Party organisation
   had collapsed, so allowing "unauthorised meetings of ships' crews . . .
   [to] tak[e] place behind the backs of their commissars, there being too
   few loyal rank and file party members left to nip them in the bud." [I.
   Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 212]

   Thus, the anarchist argument is no utopian plan. Rather, it is one
   which has been applied successfully in the same circumstances which
   Trotskyists argue forced the Bolsheviks to act as they did. As can be
   seen, a viable alternative approach existed and was applied (see the
   appendix on [81]"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an
   alternative to Bolshevism?" for more on the Makhnovists).

   The terrible objective circumstances facing the revolution obviously
   played a key role in the degeneration of the revolution. However, this
   is not the whole story. The ideas of the Bolsheviks played a key role
   as well. The circumstances the Bolsheviks faced may have shaped certain
   aspects of their actions, but it cannot be denied that the impulse for
   these actions were rooted in Bolshevik theory.

   In regards to this type of analysis, the Trotskyist Pierre Frank argues
   that anarchists think that bureaucratic conceptions "beget bureaucracy"
   and that "it is ideas, or deviations from them, that determine the
   character of revolutions. The most simplistic kind of philosophical
   idealism has laid low historical materialism." This means, apparently,
   that anarchists ignore objective factors in the rise of the bureaucracy
   such as "the country's backwardness, low cultural level, and the
   isolation of the revolution." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, pp. 22-3]

   Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. What anarchists
   argue (like Lenin before the October revolution) is that every
   revolution will suffer from isolation, uneven political development,
   economic problems and so on (i.e. "exceptional circumstances," see
   [82]section 12). The question is whether your revolution can survive
   them and whether your political ideas can meet these challenges without
   aiding bureaucratic deformations. As can be seen from the Russian
   Revolution, Leninism fails that test.

   Moreover, Frank is being incredulous. If we take his argument seriously
   then we have to conclude that Bolshevik ideology played no role in how
   the revolution developed. In other words, he subscribes to the
   contradictory position that Bolshevik politics were essential to the
   success of the revolution and yet played no role in its outcome.

   The facts of the matter is that people are faced with choices, choices
   that arise from the objective conditions they face. What decisions they
   make will be influenced by the ideas they hold -- they will not occur
   automatically, as if people were on auto-pilot -- and their ideas are
   shaped by the social relationships they experience. Thus, someone
   placed into a position of power over others will act in certain ways,
   have a certain world view, which would be alien to someone subject to
   egalitarian social relations.

   So, obviously "ideas" matter, particularly during a revolution. Someone
   in favour of centralisation, centralised power and who equates party
   rule with class rule (like Lenin and Trotsky), will act in ways (and
   create structures) totally different from someone who believes in
   decentralisation and federalism. In other words, political ideas do
   matter in society. Nor do anarchists leave our analysis at this obvious
   fact, we also argue that the types of organisation people create and
   work in shapes the way they think and act. This is because specific
   kinds of organisation have specific authority relations and so generate
   specific social relationships. These obviously affect those subject to
   them -- a centralised, hierarchical system will create authoritarian
   social relationships which shape those within it in totally different
   ways than a decentralised, egalitarian system. That Frank denies this
   obvious fact suggests he knows nothing of materialist philosophy and
   subscribes to the distinctly lobotomised (and bourgeois) "historical
   materialism" of Lenin (see Anton Pannekoek's Lenin as Philosopher for
   details).

   The attitude of Leninists to the Kronstadt event shows quite clearly
   that, for all their lip-service to history from below, they are just as
   fixated with leaders as is bourgeois history. As Cornellius Castoriadis
   argues:

     "Now, we should point out that it is not workers who write history.
     It is always the others. And these others, whoever they may be, have
     a historical existence only insofar as the masses are passive, or
     active simply to support them, and this is precisely what 'the
     others' will tell us at every opportunity. Most of the time these
     others will not even possess eyes to see and ears to hear the
     gestures and utterances that express people's autonomous activity.
     In the best of instances, they will sing the praises of this
     activity so long as it miraculously coincides with their own line,
     but they will radically condemn it, and impute to it the basest
     motives, as soon as it strays therefrom. Thus Trotsky describes in
     grandiose terms the anonymous workers of Petrograd moving ahead of
     the Bolshevik party or mobilising themselves during the Civil War,
     but later on he was to characterise the Kronstadt rebels as 'stool
     pigeons' and 'hirelings of the French High Command.' They lack the
     categories of thought -- the brain cells, we might dare say --
     necessary to understand, or even to record, this activity as it
     really occurs: to them, an activity that is not instituted, that has
     neither boss nor program, has no status; it is not even clearly
     perceivable, except perhaps in the mode of 'disorder' and
     'troubles.' The autonomous activity of the masses belongs by
     definition to what is repressed in history." [Op. Cit., p. 91]

   The Trotskyist accounts of the Kronstadt revolt, with their continual
   attempts to portray it as a White conspiracy, proves this analysis is
   correct. Indeed, the possibility that the revolt was a spontaneous mass
   revolt with political aims was dismissed by one of them as "absurd" and
   instead was labelled the work of "backward peasants" being mislead by
   SRs and spies. Like the capitalist who considers a strike the work of
   "outside agitators" and "communists" misleading their workers, the
   Trotskyists present an analysis of Kronstadt reeking of elitism and
   ideological incomprehension. Independence on behalf of the working
   class is dismissed as "backward" and to be corrected by the
   "proletarian dictatorship." Clearly Bolshevik ideology played a key
   role in the rise of Stalinism.

   Lastly, the supporters of Bolshevism argue that in suppressing the
   revolt "the Bolsheviks only did their duty. They defended the conquests
   of the revolution against the assaults of the counterrevolution."
   [Wright, Op. Cit., p. 123] In other words, we can expect more
   Kronstadts if these "revolutionaries" gain power. The "temporary
   vacillations" of future revolutions will, like Kronstadt, be rectified
   by bullets when the Party "assert[s] its dictatorship even if its
   dictatorship clashes even with the passing moods of the workers'
   democracy." [Trotsky, quoted by M. Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78] No clearer
   condemnation of Bolshevism as a socialist current is required.

   And, we must ask, what, exactly, were these "conquests" of the
   revolution that must be defended? The suppression of strikes,
   independent political and labour organisations, elimination of freedom
   of speech, assembly and press and, of course, the elimination of soviet
   and union democracy in favour of part dictatorship? Which, of course,
   for all Leninists, is the real revolutionary conquest. Any one who
   attacks that is, of course, a counter-revolutionary (even if they are
   workers). Thus:

     "Attitudes to the Kronstadt events, expressed . . . years after the
     event often provide deep insight into the political thinking of
     contemporary revolutionaries. They may in fact provide a deeper
     insight into their conscious or unconscious aims than many a learned
     discussion about economics, or philosophy or about other episodes of
     revolutionary history.

     "It is a question of one's basic attitude as to what socialism is
     all about. what are epitomised in the Kronstadt events are some of
     the most difficult problems of revolutionary strategy and
     revolutionary ethics: the problems of ends and means, of the
     relations between Party and masses, in fact whether a Party is
     necessary at all. Can the working class by itself only develop a
     trade union consciousness? . . .

     "Or can the working class develop a deeper consciousness and
     understanding of its interests than can any organisations allegedly
     acting on its behalf? When Stalinists or Trotskyists speak of
     Kronstadt as 'an essential action against the class enemy' when some
     more 'sophisticated' revolutionaries refer to it as a 'tragic
     necessity,' one is entitled to pause for thought. One is entitled to
     ask how seriously they accept Marx's dictum that 'the emancipation
     of the working class is the task of the working class itself.' Do
     they take this seriously or do they pay mere lip service to the
     words? Do they identify socialism with the autonomy (organisational
     and ideological) of the working class? Or do they see themselves,
     with their wisdom as to the 'historic interests' of others, and with
     their judgements as to what should be 'permitted,' as the leadership
     around which the future elite will crystallise and develop? One is
     entitled not only to ask . . . but also to suggest the answer!"
     ["Preface", Ida Mett's The Kronstadt Uprising, pp. 26-7]

   The issue is simple -- either socialism means the self-emancipation of
   the working class or it does not. Leninist justifications for the
   suppression of the Kronstadt revolt simply means that for the followers
   of Bolshevism, when necessary, the party will paternalistically repress
   the working class for their own good. The clear implication of this
   Leninist support of the suppression of Kronstadt is that, for Leninism,
   it is dangerous to allow working class people to manage society and
   transform it as they see fit as they will make wrong decisions (like
   vote for the wrong party). If the party leaders decide a decision by
   the masses is incorrect, then the masses are overridden (and
   repressed). So much for "all power to the soviets" or "workers' power."

   Ultimately, Wright's comments (and those like it) show that
   Bolshevism's commitment to workers' power and democracy is
   non-existent. What is there left of workers' self-emancipation, power
   or democracy when the "workers state" represses the workers for trying
   to practice these essential features of any real form of socialism? It
   is the experience of Bolshevism in power that best refutes the Marxist
   claim that the workers' state "will be democratic and participatory."
   The suppression of Kronstadt was just one of a series of actions by the
   Bolsheviks which began, before the start of the Civil War, with them
   abolishing soviets which elected non-Bolshevik majorities, abolishing
   elected officers and soldiers soviets in the Red Army and Navy and
   replacing workers' self-management of production by state-appointed
   managers with "dictatorial" powers (see sections [83]H.4 and [84]2 for
   details).

   As Bakunin predicted, the "workers' state" did not, could not, be
   "participatory" as it was still a state. Kronstadt is part of the
   empirical evidence which proves Bakunin's predictions on the
   authoritarian nature of Marxism. These words by Bakunin were confirmed
   by the Kronstadt rebellion and the justifications made at the time and
   afterwards by the supporters of Bolshevism:

     "What does it mean, 'the proletariat raised to a governing class?'
     Will the entire proletariat head the government? The Germans number
     about 40 million. Will all 40 million be members of the government?
     The entire nation will rule, but no one would be ruled. Then there
     will be no government, there will be no state; but if there is a
     state, there will also be those who are ruled, there will be slaves.

     "In the Marxists' theory this dilemma is resolved in a simple
     fashion. By popular government they mean government of the people by
     a small number of representatives elected by the people. So-called
     popular representatives and rulers of the state elected by the
     entire nation on the basis of universal suffrage -- the last word of
     the Marxists, as well as the democratic school -- is a lie behind
     which the despotism of a ruling minority is concealed, a lie all the
     more dangerous in that it represents itself as the expression of a
     sham popular will.

     "So . . . it always comes down to the same dismal result: government
     of the vast majority of the people by a privileged minority. But
     this minority, the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes,
     perhaps, of former workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or
     representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will
     begin to look upon the whole workers' world from the heights of the
     state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and
     their own pretensions to govern the people. . .

     "They say that this state yoke, this dictatorship, is a necessary
     transitional device for achieving the total liberation of the
     people: anarchy, or freedom, is the goal, and the state, or
     dictatorship, the means. Thus, for the masses to be liberated they
     must first be enslaved. . . . They claim that only a dictatorship
     (theirs, of course) can create popular freedom. We reply that no
     dictatorship can have any other objective than to perpetuate itself,
     and that it can engender and nurture only slavery in the people who
     endure it. Liberty can only be created by liberty, by an
     insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organisation of the
     workers from below upward."
     [Statism and Anarchy, pp. 178-9]

References

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