KRONSTADT UPRISING
IN DEFENSE OF THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
(Comments: tony.papard@btinternet.com)
(Click the Soviet Red Star to hear the Anthem of the USSR)
The young Soviet state faced many challenges to Bolshevik power. The Great October Socialist Revolution itself took place in 1917, when Russia was at war with Germany. Lenin agreed a peace treaty, but almost immediately the Civil War started, soon to be aided by troops from Britain, the USA, France and other capitalist countries determined to crush the Soviet experiment. This Civil War against the White counter-revolutionaries took a very heavy toll in both lives and in the fact that Soviet democracy was crushed before it had a chance to bloom, and terror quickly took its place. Not only terror, but privilege very quickly started to take hold among sections of the ruling Party elite. Famine and hardship swept the country, and coupled with war-weariness and apathy, the gains of the Great October Socialist Revolution were in danger of being lost even after the Red Army was victorious in the Civil War against the Whites.
The backbone of this Civil War were the Kronstadt sailors, who led the fight against the White armies. It was therefore ironic when these same sailors rebelled against the Soviet government in early 1921 from their island fortress near St Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad (the city has been known by all these names in the 20th Century). There were revolts and strikes all over the country, led by peasants and workers, but none worried the Soviet government more than the Kronstadt rebellion. The Revolution itself was started by a signal from the ship Aurora in St Petersburg, and now the sailors from the Kronstadt who helped defeat the White Armies were demanding that the Soviet government get back to the ideals and promises of the Great October Socialist Revolution four year earlier: All Power To The Soviets, to the People! They demanded, among other things, a multi-Party state, freedom of speech, an end to terror and privilege, and true Soviet democracy.
This was the acid test of the Revolution, of Marxism itself. This was the moment when true revolutionaries should have stood up to be counted. Stalin has been blamed for much of what went wrong with the Russian Revolution and the Communist experiment, but the rot had set in long before he came to power. As a British Communist Paty member I heard very little about the Kronstadt rebellion, and it mattered not whether you were a Stalinist or a Trotkyist, because both factions opposed the Kronstadt rebellion and denounced it as a counter-revolution. So you won't hear the various Trotkyist factions talking objectively about the Kronstadt rebellion either.
How could it be a counter-revolution when these very sailors were the ones who led the fight against the White Armies, and thereby consolidated Soviet power? The Kronstadt rebellion was, in fact, the last fight to defend the ideals of the Revolution. That Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Trotsky failed to recognize this and give their support to the sailors; that they failed to meet and negotiate with them, but instead sent the Red Army to defeat them, meant that the Revolution had already lost its way. It had started to devour its own supporters.
In order to be successful the young Soviet State had to be a true people's democracy with power wielded by the masses thru the Soviets, with freedom of speech and debate before decisions were taken democratically. Once the Party started losing touch with the masses, once it started awarding its officials privileges, and behaving more like the Tsars of Imperial Russia than Communists, then the rot had set in, and corruption and terror led to an oppressive dictatorship.
Stalin carried this to extreme levels, but Trotsky and Lenin must share the blame. Once the White Armies had been defeated, what was the excuse not to root out corruption and privilege amongst Party officials, and what was the excuse not to hand All Power To The Soviets as had been promised in the Revolution? Power had to be exercised from the bottom upwards, not the other way around. If those at the top had no authority from the people themselves, they became the people's oppressors.
Lenin, Trotsky and the other Soviet leaders should have met with the Kronstadt sailors and with the genuine workers' and peasants' representatives who had misgivings about the direction the young Soviet State was taking. At this early stage the rot could have been stopped in its tracks. Democratic safeguards could have been instituted, and the Socialist experiment would have stood much more chance of success.
As it was the experiment was badly flawed by corruption, privilege and the resultant inefficiency, shortages and oppression. Gains were made despite these serious flaws - the people enjoyed a high level of social security, full employment, good education, good health services, subsidized housing and cheap basic foodstuffs, good and cheap public transport, etc.. But so much more could have been achieved if corruption and privilege had been stamped on in the early years of the Revolution, and if democracy and freedom of speech had been allowed to flourish.
Once the Kronstadt sailors were defeated, nobody else dared to defy the Communist Party or the Soviet State. The few that did ended up shot or in the gulags. It is a pity the sailors and other genuine workers and peasants did not receive more widepread support from the masses, from within the Red Army, from Party members and from Lenin, Trotsky and other Soviet leaders. The end result could have been so different. We might now be living in a world where true Socialist democracy had taken hold over large swathes of the globe, instead of unrestrained capitalism causing wars and havoc everywhere.