Kronstadt, fortress, naval base and port town on the island of Kotlin in the Gulf of Finland, situated some twenty miles from Petersburg and protecting the capital from the sea, entered the Russian February revolution of 1917 with a population of some 82,000 (20,000 soldiers, 12,000 sailors and 50,000 civilian inhabitants) and a formidable reputation for severe regimentation, revolutionary unrest, mutiny and repression, and thorough disaffection.

While some revolutionary cells seem to have been active in the Torpedo and Gunnery Training Detachments there since 1902, Kronstadt's first major flare-up – the mutiny of October 1905 – was spontaneous, its riotous course and pogrom-like outcome reflecting its ‘elemental’ rather than political character.

True, in the background there loomed the shattering news of the Tsushima Straits disaster of 14 May 1905, when the larger part of the Baltic Fleet, sent to the Far East as the Second Pacific Squadron, was sunk by the Japanese with the loss of 4,500 men. Nearer home, there was the heroic example of the crew's revolutionary takeover of the battleship Potemkin in June and its spectacularly defiant eleven-day cruise in the Black Sea under the red flag. In the Baltic, the depots of the naval base of Libau rose on 15 June, while on 4 July there was unrest on the battleship Slava at Reval. But the long-standing and now seething discontent in Kronstadt was essentially non-political.

Bad food, maltreatment by officers who meted out savage beatings and harsh punishments for trifling misdemeanours, and humiliating prohibitions were the lot of the Kronstadt sailors.