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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 4. 21st March 1973

Blood on Trotsky's Toga

page 11

Blood on Trotsky's Toga

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!

Cartoon of a man stabbing people

Was the Russian Revolution Betrayed?

The 18th of March must take its place in the anniversary book of all those at present wrestling with the standard-bearers of Marxism. Very few would today contest the fact that the Soviet Union has ceased to provide inspiration to world revolution, but just when this relapse took place is a matter of some debate. Numerous, and doubtless well-intentioned people pace the campus and streets, shouting the praises of one L.D. Trotsky; they at least have the sense to see through the thinly veiled lies sown abroad by Leon's adversary Joe Stalin; what they fail to understand is that the communist dream evaporated in the year 1921. There's a touch of irony to this particular year. Victor Serge, the rarest of Bolsheviks, in that he spoke the truth, related: "That dismal March 18! The morning papers had big headlines in honour of the proletarian anniversary of the Paris Commune. And each time the cannon fired at Kronstadt, the window-panes rattled in their frames. In the offices at Smolny, everyone felt uneasy".

Incredible though it may seem, it was on the very anniversary of the founding of the Paris Commune, acclaimed by Marx as the 'glorious harbinger of a new society, that the Bolshevik leadership directed the last troops into the shattered fortress of Kronstadt; a centre which Trotsky had proclaimed 'the cream of the Revolution', a mere three years before. The last shots were fired as night fell on the 18th.

The story of the Kronstadt Commune, as it has become known, can only be viewed in regard to the collapse of popular control over the events which followed the fall of the Kerensky Government. That Lenin's famous slogan 'all power to the soviets' was nothing more than a slogan, is obvious. Nestor Makhno, an anarchist fighter, whose victories over White Russian armies were rewarded with about as much kindness as that bestowed on the Kronstadters, provides an interesting insight into the fundamental dishonesty which has characterized the leadership of the Soviet Union to this day. Lenin asked what the Ukrainian peasants made of the slogan, and Makhno replied that they took it seriously. To this Lenin retorted, "then the peasants are infected with anarchism". The crime of the Kronstadters (and the Makhnovites, struggling a thousand miles to the south of the Baltic fortress) was that they believed in just such a slogan. That the feeling was widespread, was born out in a letter to Petrograd. Commissar for the northern sector, on the Kronstadt front, one Oublanov, wrote on March 8th: "I consider it my revolutionary duty to report on the morale of the troops. We had occupied Fort No. 7. But today we had to abandon it because of the dejection among the soldiers. I must report on their qualms: they want to know what the Kronstadters demand and they want to send their own delegates to them." Such was the 'dejection' in fact, that whole companies went over to the rebels and numerous reports speak of troops driven at gun-point across the ice towards Kronstadt; indeed the enthusiasm of the soldiers was such that the 10th Party Congress being held in Moscow, was postponed while 300 of the delegates raced to bolster the attacking forces. The myth of Leninism was stripped to the bone the dictatorship attacks its proletariat!

Despite the years of distortion which have followed the collapse of the Commune, and despite the hypocrisy of both Stalinist and Trotskyist alike, in acclaiming the Paris Commune while reviling the Kronstadters as counter-revolutionary, it is self-evident that the Commune at Kronstadt represented the death agony bf the working people.

In the interests of revolutionary demystification ... and more on Comrade Leon ... write to: Solidarity, P.O. Box 3255, WGTN