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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 4. 21st March 1973
After the Revolution
After the Revolution
On the 18th of March 1871 the Paris Commune was founded by the people of that city in opposition to the French Government. Louis Napoleon ruthlessly crushed the commune which has been remembered by Marxists ever since as a heroic example of working class struggle. 50 years Utter the Soviet government of Russia put down an uprising of sailors and workers at Kronstadt, at the same time as it was celebrating the anniversary of the Paris Commune.
Today anarchist opponents of communism see the Kronstadt uprising, and its suppression, as proving that the Bolshevik regime in Russia was rotten from the beginning. In the article below Graham Rua, a former law student and now a construction worker, argues that Kronstadt represented "the death agony of the working people".
The three years of civil war which followed the overthrow of the Kerensky government in October 1917, created immense suffering throughout the fledgling Soviet Union. The 'Kronstadters', detachments of sailors from the Baltic naval base of Kronstadt, played a decisive role in the eventual defeat of the White Guards and their allied forces. Indeed, Leon Trotsky, Commissar of War from 1918, had referred to them thus: "Red Kronstadt has once again shown itself to be the champion of the proletarian cause. Long live Red Kronstadt, the pride and glory of the revolution".
By December 1920, the last of the White Russian armies had been smashed, and the only fighting to continue was confined to the Ukraine. There fighting raged between the anarchist Makhno's guerilla forces and his former Bolshevik allies. Makhno's forces were eventually dispersed in August 1921.
The immediate result of the ending of hostilities was the widespread desire among the revolutionary workers and peasants for some evidence from the Bolsheviks (soon to be known as the Communists) that the rank and file would in fact exercise control. Repression of several other 'soviet parties' (those also claiming to seek control by workers and peasants councils) had built up since 1918. By February 1921 the Bolsheviks headed by Lenin and Trotsky had succeeded in tightening state control over industry and land. The only possibility of genuine workers' management lay in the call for a third revolution.
Large strikes broke out in Petrograd some 17 miles from Kronstadt, and the sailors and workers of Kronstadt announced the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Committee to run the fortress-city. Strikes also broke out in Moscow and other large centres. The reaction of the Bolshevik Central Commit tee was pitiless. Trotsky issued an immediate ultimatum, warning that the rebels would be 'shot like partridges' unless they surrendered immediately. Complete censorship was clamped over the uprising. There could never be any compromise, and in fact the Kronstadters never surrendered. Such was the feeling within the city itself, that local Bolsheviks joined the rebels en masse. The Kronstadt Commune lasted nearly three weeks, appealing all the time over Radio Kronstadt that theirs was not a counter-revolution. It was to no avail, and the final Government assault swept an estimated 18,000 to their deaths. Countless survivors disappearing into the secret police dungeons. Within days of the defeat factions were outlawed within the Bolshevik party and the course was set for the eventual clash of Stalin and Trotsky; the potential dictators!
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