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The Kronstadt Revolt of 1921: a Study in the Dynamics of Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Robert V. Daniels
Robert V. Daniels*
Affiliation:
Russian Research Center, Harvard University
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Extract

Why the paradox of a revolt against the Communist regime in Russia in a place which had been a Bolshevik stronghold at the time of the October Revolution? Like many paradoxes, this one, when understood, leads to valuable insights. The effort to comprehend the causes and aims of the Kronstadt revolt sheds much additional light on the contemporary nature of the Soviet regime, the crisis which it was then experiencing, and the trend of its evolution. Conversely, the Kronstadt movement itself becomes much more intelligible when viewed in this broader context.

The revolt did not actually begin as such, but rather as a mass movement of protest, which was symptomatic of the general state of internal crisis in Soviet Russia. Military Communism had reached an impasse; violent intervention by the State into all aspects of economic life, particularly the requisitions from, the peasantry, together with the unemployment and shortages resulting from the general collapse of the nation's economy, had in many places brought large segments of the population to the verge of open revolt against the Soviet regime. In some instances, armed peasant uprisings had broken out, notably in Tambov gubernija.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1951 , pp. 241 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1951

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References

1 The preparation of this article was supported by the Russian Research Center of Harvard University, at which the author is a Research Fellow.

2 Cf. Protokoly s'ezdov i konferencij vsesojuznoj kommunističeskoj partii (b): Desjatyj s'ezd RKP (b) (Moscow, 1933), notes 97 and 98, p. 861. For a detailed firsthand account of the strike movement, see Emma, Goldman, Living My Life (New York, 1931), II, 873–77Google Scholar. On the role of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, see Pravda o Kronštadte (Prague, Volja Rossii, 1921), pp. 5-7.

3 Cf. “Hue and Cry over Kronstadt,” New International (April, 1938), pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

4 Pukhov, A. S., Kronšadtskij mjatež v 1921 g. (Leningrad, 1931), pp. 52–56 Google Scholar.

5 Pravda o Kronštadte, p. 8.

6 Text in the Izvestija of the Temporary Revolutionary Committee, March 3, 1921. This was the daily newspaper published by the rebels during the revolt. Its entire text was reprinted as an appendix in Pravda 0 Kronštadte.

7 The parallel with the measure recently enacted in Yugoslavia may be quite significant.

8 Pravda o Kronštadte, p. 10.

9 Ibid., p. 12.

10 Izvestija of the Temporary Revolutionary Committee, March 11, 1921.

11 Cf. Pravda o Kronštadte, p. 11.

12 Pravda, March 3, 1021. This is in reference to reports published several weeks earlier in the Paris press of an insurrection in Kronstadt. When the revolt actually broke, these reports were recalled, and it was alleged that they referred to the actual revolt, that the bourgeois press knew of the “plot” and could not restrain its eager anticipation. This interpretation is patently absurd. False stories based on rumors are nothing new in journalism. Possibly the reports were based on rumors arising out of unrest in Kronstadt or from the agitation in the fleet Party organization.

13 Berkman, A., The Bolshevik Myth (London, 1925), diary entry for March 5, 1921, pp. 300–301 Google Scholar.

14 Pravda, March 6, 1921.

15 Ibid.

16 Pravda, March 3, 1921.

17 Resolution “O edinstve partii,” Protokoly: Desjatyj s'ezd RKP (b), pp. 585–87Google Scholar.

18 From an interview with Kozlovskij after his escape to Finland, reported in the Socialističeskij Vestnik, April 5, 1921.

19 Pukhov, , op. cit., pp. 94–95 Google Scholar.

20 Izvestija of the Temporary Revolutionary Committee, March 10, 1921.

21 Ibid., March 5, 1921.

22 Ibid., March 6, 1921.

23 Ibid., March 12, 1921.

24 Ibid., March 13, 1921.

25 Ibid., March 14, 1921.

26 The subject of opposition within the Communist Party has been treated at length by the present author in a doctoral dissertation, “The Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party, to 1924” (Harvard University, unpublished, 1950)Google Scholar.

27 Fokin, S., “Perestrojtel'stvo sojuzov,” Izvesttfa of the Temporary Revolutionary Committee, March 9, 1921 Google Scholar.

28 Trotsky in his history of the Revolution speaks often of the phenomenon which occurs at certain points in the revolutionary process, when the masses in their revolutionary spirit get ahead of all parties, even the most radical.

29 All the foregoing, from Izvestija of the Temporary Revolutionary Committee, March 8, 1921.

30 Ibid., March 10, 1921.

31 “Etapy revoljucii,” ibid., March 12, 1921 Google Scholar.

32 Frotokoly: Desjatyj s'ezd, note 2, p. 829.

33 ‘Left-wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder (London, Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920), p. 30.

34 Engels, F., The Peasant War in Germany (New York, 1926), pp. 135–36Google Scholar.