The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

crystallising and politicising the workers’ latent discontent, that had been growing for several months. The
political demands abolition of martial law; liberation of all those imprisoned; freedom of assembly, the press and
speech for the workers; free elections to strike committees and Soviets; all the demands directed against ‘the
dictatorship of the party’ and the Cheka showed the antagonism between the proletariat and the state, in which
the Bolsheviks were based. They were an appeal for workers’ democracy and the revitalisation of the Soviets
which had been absorbed by the State and the bolshevik party.
In the midst of this situation the sailors and workers of the Kronstadt repair yards sent delegations to the
Petrograd factories. The result was that the Kronstadt sailors and workers took up the demands of the Petrograd
workers and broadened them: re-election of the Soviets by secret ballot; organisation outside the Bolshevik Party
of a conference of workers, soldiers and sailors of the province; freedom of the press and organisation for
anarchists and left socialists. Sending Kalinin and Kuzmin, whose attitude was provocative, to Kronstadt could
only precipitate things. The result was the formation of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (PRC)
representing the whole population of the island, just as the workers of Petrograd went back to work, under the
effects of the terror.
The armed confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the Kronstadt sailors became inevitable. The latter were
described as counter-revolutionary ‘White Guards’, in the pay ‘of the French capitalists’ 527 , their families in
Petrograd were taken hostage; they themselves were threatened with being ‘shot down like partridges’. Finally
Trotsky who the insurgents called ‘Junker Trotsky’, or ‘blood thirsty Trotsky’ 528 gave the order to crush
Kronstadt on 7 th March, leaving no hope of survival to the sailors and workers: “I am giving the immediate order
to prepare to crush the revolt. The insurgents will be executed”. 529 With the slogan ‘victory or death’ the sailors
Kronshtadskaya tragediya 1921 goda. Dokumenty, 2 Vols. (Moscow: Rosspen, 1999); an impressive collection of
documents.
527 This claim that the Kronstadt insurgents were led by the ‘White Guard’ was based on the presence of an old Tsarist
general, who was serving in the fleet. But Tukhachevsky was also an old Tsarist officer. At the rid of 1919 the official
figures showed the integration of 100,000 Tsarist officers out of 500,000 in the Red Army. The Kronstadt insurgents refused
to follow the military advice of the old Tsarist general, Aleksandr Kozlovsky (1864-1940), who officially commanded the
artillery as a ‘military specialist’, and could escape to Finland after the defeat. It is certain, however, that the Whites did not
remain inactive. They attempted to offer their ‘services’ by sending emissaries. The insurgents removed the officers from
command during the revolt. Thus Bukharin said, not without Jesuitical manner, at the 3 rd Congress of the Komintern: “Who
said that Kronstadt was White? No-one. For our ideas, for the task which we have to fulfil, we have been forced to repress
the revolt of our misguided brothers. We cannot consider the sailors of Kronstadt as our enemies. We love them as real
brothers, our flesh and blood” (quoted by Avrich, op. cit., p. 132). [Paul Avrich (1931-2006) was a historian who for most
of his life was vital in preserving the history of the anarchist movement in Russia and the USA].
528 Kronstadt Izvestia, No. 5, 7 th March 1921: from the French translation by Bélibaste, Paris 1969. The Kronstadtians made
a clear distinction between Lenin and Trotsky. They believed that Lenin, being ill, had fallen under the influence of
Zinoviev and Trotsky. In No. 12, on 14 th March, the Kronstadtians acknowledged their disappointment in Lenin, when he
had declared at the 10 th congress of the Russian Communist Party that “the movement was for the Soviets but against the
dictatorship of the Bolsheviks” and that it was a “counterrevolution of a new kind”. They thought, like the Russian workers,
that “Lenin was different from Trotsky and Zinoviev ”. They still “trusted in him” (idem, No. 12, March 14). They
concluded from it that Lenin was finally led to “calumniate” them, like Trotsky and Zinoviev. But Lenin was “sincere”,
although sinking in “confusion”.
529 This radio message from Trotsky is taken from the 1969 Bélibaste translation. We have not been able to verify the
Russian text of Izvestia No. 5 of 7 th March. Ida Mett’s translation (in: La Commune de Kronstadt, Paris: Cahiers Spartacus),
indicates not that the insurgents would be ‘executed’, but ‘crushed by armed force’: At the same time I give the order to
prepare everything necessary to crush the revolt and the rebels by force of arms. The responsibility for the disasters which
will befall the Kominternvilian population lies entirely on the heads of the White Guard insurgents” (p. 47-48). Finally Paul
Avrich, gave the following translation of the ultimatum of Trotsky: – co-signed by Sergei Kamenev (1881-1936),
commander-in-chief of the Red Army and Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893-1937), both former tzarist officers who became
commanders in the red Army – “I give at the same time the order to prepare the crushing of the mutiny and the reduction of
the mutineers by armed force. The responsibility for the sufferings which could result from it for the peaceful population
falls down entirely on the head of the counter-revolutionary mutineers. This warning is the last.” (Avrich, op. cit., p. 141)
147