The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

attitude of the left communists. Goldstein gave a more exact appreciation of the proletarian meaning of
Kronstadt:
“The antagonism between the proletariat and the Soviet government has been sharpened since the outbreak of
food riots in Moscow and Petrograd: the Soviet government took very severe measures, which were no different
from those adopted by a capitalist state. I should add that the Kronstadt uprising ought to be interpreted as a
symptom of the antagonism between the proletariat and the Soviet government. The history of the Kronstadt
insurrection is not only that of foreign capital which played as a factor against the Soviet government, but also
the fact the great majority of the Russian proletariat were from the bottom of their hearts on the side of the
Kronstadt insurgents.” 537
This attitude of the KAPD organs was much clearer and better founded than that adopted by Gorter. The latter
was accused by Radek and Zinoviev at the 3 rd Congress of the Komintern of ‘supporting Kronstadt’. 538 While
noting that the Russian proletariat had risen against the Communist Party and that he would much prefer to have
“a dictatorship of the class instead of a dictatorship of the party”, Gorter found the measures taken by the
Bolsheviks with regard to Kronstadt “necessary”. They had crushed the “counter-revolution” and Gorter
implicitly envisaged that left communists would be lead to take such measures in the West if the counterrevolution
in a part of the proletariat were to be as strong:
“You can still when a part of the proletariat rises against you at Kronstadt and Petrograd repress the counterrevolution,
because there it is weak enough. But with us it would triumph, if a part of the proletariat rose against
us. For with us the counter-revolution is very powerful.” 539
This conception, strange on the part of a militant appealing for a “dictatorship of the class” in the form of the
councils (a demand which had been in part formulated at Kronstadt), is explained above all by the setting up of
the NEP (New Economic Policy) on 15 th March, at the time when the assault was made against Kronstadt. This
constituted, as Riazanov rightly emphasised, a veritable “peasant Brest-Litovsk”. The freedom for the peasants
to dispose of their surplus, the freedom to trade were all retreats before the forces of the petty-bourgeoisie. If this
concession was for Lenin a temporary retreat, it nevertheless heralded the famous ‘enrich yourselves’ addressed
by Bukharin to the kulaks. It is symptomatic that these measures, more than the repression, disarmed all attempt
at an insurrection of soldiers in favour of the Kronstadt mutiny.
Gorter, unlike the KAPD which had begun to build close relations with the Russian left communists and was
better informed saw in Kronstadt and the NEP the triumph of a peasant counter-revolution. 540 According to him,
“a little action by a group of peasants it is said that the crews of the warships were for the most part made up of
the sons of peasants would be sufficient” for “communism to fall at the slightest blow”. The Bolshevik Party
appeared then as the party of the peasantry and “the proletariat made to serve the peasantry”. 541
the organ of the opposition in Holland, De Kommunistiche Arbeider. The ‘Solidarity group’ published an English version in
September 1968.
537 Intervention at the extraordinary congress of the KAPD in Berlin, 11 th -14 th Sept. 1921. Reproduced in the proceedings:
Cl. Klockner (ed.), Protokoll des ausserordentichen Parteitages der KAPD vom 11. bis 14.9.1921 in Berlin (Darmstadt:
Verlag für wissenschaftliche Publikationen, 1986), pp. 58-59.
538 Cf. Protokoll des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale. Mokau vom 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921
(Hamburg: 1921) [reprint: Erlangen: Verlag Karl Liebknecht, 1973], pp. 90 and 342. Schwab [pseudonyms: Franz Sachs;
Sigrist), KAPD delegate to the 3 rd Congress had the same point of view as Gorter, declaring that: Gorter does not side with
the Kronstadt insurgents and it is the same for the KAPD [p. 621).
539 H. Gorter, Die Klassenkampf Organisation des Proletariats, Berlin, 1921, p. 245 of the collection by H.M. Bock, A.
Pannekoek, H. Gorter, Organisation und Taktik der proletarischen revolution, Frankfurt am Main, 1969.
540 The KAPD delegates in Moscow had more contact with the group of Efim Nikitich Ignatov (1890-1937?) in Moscow (cf.
KAZ No. 204) than with Alexandra Kollontai. The Ignatov group demanded the respect for workers’ democracy and the
struggle against the party bureaucracy. It also demanded, and this did not displease the KAPD, that the responsible organs
of the Bolshevik Party should be at least two thirds composed of workers. It was based on the Workers’ Opposition.
541 Cf. H. Gorter, Die Kommunistiche Arbeiter Internationale, Berlin, 1923 (reprint: Copenhagen: ‚Kommunismen’, 1972).
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