Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.
An Anarchist FAQ - Did the Kronstadt rebellion reflect "the exasperation of the peasantry"?
This is a common argument of Trotskyists. While rarely providing the Kronstadt demands, they always assert that (to use John Rees' words) that the sailors "represented the exasperation of the peasantry with the War Communist regime." ["In Defence of October", International Socialism no. 52, p. 63]
As for Trotsky, the ideas of the rebellion "were deeply reactionary" and "reflected the hostility of the backward peasantry toward the worker, the self-importance of the soldier or sailor in relation to 'civilian' Petrograd, the hatred of the petty bourgeois for revolutionary discipline." The revolt "represented the tendencies of the land-owning peasant, the small speculator, the kulak." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 80 and p. 81]
How true is this? Even a superficial analysis of the events of the revolt and of the Petropavlovsk resolution (see last section) can allow the reader to dismiss Trotsky's assertions.
Firstly, according to the definition of "kulak" proved by the Trotskyists' themselves, we discover that kulak refers to "well-to-do peasants who owned land and hired poor peasants to work it." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 146] Point 11 of the Kronstadt demands explicitly states their opposition to rural wage labour. How could Kronstadt represent "the kulak" when it called for the abolition of hired labour on the land? Clearly, the revolt did not represent the "small speculator, the kulak" as Trotsky asserted. Did it represent the land-owning peasant? We will return to this issue shortly.
Secondly, the Kronstadt revolt started after the sailors at Kronstadt sent delegates to investigate the plight of striking workers in Petrograd. Their actions were inspired by solidarity for these workers and civilians. This clearly shows that Trotsky's assertion that the revolt "reflected the hostility of the backward peasantry toward the worker, the self-importance of the soldier or sailor in relation to 'civilian' Petrograd" to be utter and total nonsense.
As for the being "deeply reactionary," the ideas that motivated the revolt clearly were not. They were the outcome of solidarity with striking workers and called for soviet democracy, free speech, assembly and organisation for workers and peasants. These express the demands of most, if not all, Marxist parties (including the Bolsheviks in 1917) before they take power. They simply repeat the demands and facts of the revolutionary period of 1917 and of the Soviet Constitution. As Anton Ciliga argues, these demands were "impregnated with the spirit of October; and no calumny in the world can cast a doubt on the intimate connection existing between this resolution and the sentiments which guided the expropriations of 1917." ["The Kronstadt Revolt", The Raven, no, 8, pp. 330-7, p. 333] If the ideas of the Kronstadt revolt are reactionary, then so is the slogan "all power to the soviets."
Not that the Kronstadters had not been smeared before by their opponents. The ex-Bolshevik turned Menshevik Vladimir Voitinsky who had visited the base in May 1917 later remembered them as being "degraded and demoralised" and "lack[ing] proletarian class-consciousness. It has the psychology of a Lumpenproletariat, a stratum that is a danger to a revolution rather than its support." They were "material suitable for a rebellion a la Bakunin." [quoted by I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 253]
So did the demands represent the interests of the (non-kulak) peasantry? To do so we must see whether the demands reflected those of industrial workers or not. If the demands do, in fact, match those of striking workers and other proletarian elements then we can easily dismiss this claim. After all, if the demands of the Kronstadt rebellion reflected those of proletarians then it is impossible to say that they simply reflected the needs of peasants (of course, Trotskyists will argue that these proletarians were also "backward" but, in effect, they are arguing that any worker who did not quietly follow Bolshevik orders was "backward" -- hardly a sound definition of the term!!).
We can quickly note that demands echoed those raised during the Moscow and Petrograd strikes that preceded the Kronstadt revolt. For example, Paul Avrich records that the demands raised in the February strikes included "removal of roadblocks, permission to make foraging trips into the countryside and to trade freely with the villagers, [and] elimination of privileged rations for special categories of working men." The workers also "wanted the special guards of armed Bolsheviks, who carried out a purely police function, withdrawn from the factories" and raised "pleas for the restoration of political and civil rights." One manifesto which appeared (unsigned but bore earmarks of Menshevik origin) argued that "the workers and peasants need freedom. They do not want to live by the decrees of the Bolsheviks. They want to control their own destinies." It urged the strikers to demand the liberation of all arrested socialists and nonparty workers, abolition of martial law, freedom of speech, press and assembly for all who labour, free elections of factory committees, trade unions, and soviets. [Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, pp. 42-3]
In the strikes of 1921, according to Lashevich (a Bolshevik Commissar) the "basic demands are everywhere the same: free trade, free labour, freedom of movement, and so on." Two key demands raised in the strikes dated back to at least 1920. These were "for free trade and an end to privilege." In March 1919, "the Rechkin coach-building plant demanded equal rations for all workers" and that one of the "most characteristic demands of the striking workers at that time were for the free bringing-in of food." [Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 299 and p. 302]
As can be seen, these demands related almost directly to points 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13 of the Kronstadt demands. As Paul Avrich argues, the Kronstadt demands "echoed the discontents not only of the Baltic Fleet but of the mass of Russians in towns and villages throughout the country. Themselves of plebeian stock, the sailors wanted relief for their peasant and worker kinfolk. Indeed, of the resolution's 15 points, only one -- the abolition of the political departments in the fleet -- applied specifically to their own situation. The remainder . . . was a broadside aimed at the policies of War Communism, the justification of which, in the eyes of the sailors and of the population at large, had long since vanished." Avrich argues that many of the sailors had returned home on leave to see the plight of the villagers with their own eyes played at part in framing the resolution (particularly of point 11, the only peasant specific demand raised) but "[b]y the same token, the sailors' inspection tour of Petrograd's factories may account for their inclusion of the workingmen's chief demands -- the abolition of road-blocks, of privileged rations, and of armed factory squads -- in their program." [Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 74-5] Simply put, the Kronstadt resolution "merely reiterated long standing workers' demands." [V. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War, p. 395]
Which means, of course, that Ida Mett had been correct to argue that the "Kronstadt revolution had the merit of stating things openly and clearly. But it was breaking no new ground. Its main ideas were being discussed everywhere. For having, in one way or another, put forward precisely such ideas, workers and peasants were already filling the prisons and the recently set up concentration camps." [The Kronstadt Uprising, p. 39]
Nor can it be claimed that these workers were non-proletarians (as if class is determined by thought rather than social position). Rather than being those workers with the closest relations with the countryside who were protesting, the opposite was the case. By 1921 "[a]ll who had relatives in the country had rejoined them. The authentic proletariat remained till the end, having the most slender connections with the countryside." [Ida Mett, Op. Cit., p. 36]
Thus the claims that the Kronstadt demands reflected peasant needs is mistaken. They reflected the needs of the whole working population, including the urban working class who raised these demands continually throughout the Civil War period in their strikes. Simply put, the policies of the Bolsheviks as regards food were not only evil, they did not work and were counter-productive. As many of the Russian working class recognised from the start and took strike action over again and again.
Moreover, by focusing on the "free trade" issue, Leninists distort the real reasons for the revolt. As Ida Mett points out, the Kronstadt rebellion did not call for "free trade" as the Trotskyists argue, but rather something far more important:
"In the Kronstadt Isvestia of March 14th we find a characteristic passage on this subject. The rebels proclaimed that 'Kronstadt is not asking for freedom of trade but for genuine power to the Soviets.' The Petrograd strikers were also demanding the reopening of the markets and the abolition of the road blocks set up by the militia. But they too were stating that freedom of trade by itself would not solve their problems." [Op. Cit., p. 77]
Thus we have the Petrograd (and other) workers calling for "free trade" (and so, presumably, expressing their economic interests or those of their fathers and brothers) while the Kronstadt sailors were demanding first and foremost soviet power! Their programme called for the "granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour." This was point 11 of the 15 demands, which showed the importance it ranked in their eyes. This would have been the basis of trade between town and village, but trade between worker and peasant and not between worker and kulak. So rather than call for "free trade" in the abstract (as many of the workers were) the Kronstadters (while reflecting the needs of both workers and peasants) were calling for the free exchange of products between workers, not workers and rural capitalists (i.e. peasants who hired wage slaves). This indicates a level of political awareness, an awareness of the fact that wage labour is the essence of capitalism.
Thus Ante Ciliga:
"People often believe that Kronstadt forced the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) -- a profound error. The Kronstadt resolution pronounced in favour of the defence of the workers, not only against the bureaucratic capitalism of the State, but also against the restoration of private capitalism. This restoration was demanded -- in opposition to Kronstadt -- by the social democrats, who combined it with a regime of political democracy. And it was Lenin and Trotsky who to a great extent realised it (but without political democracy) in the form of the NEP. The Kronstadt resolution declared for the opposite since it declared itself against the employment of wage labour in agriculture and small industry. This resolution, and the movement underlying, sought for a revolutionary alliance of the proletarian and peasant workers with the poorest sections of the country labourers, in order that the revolution might develop towards socialism. The NEP, on the other hand, was a union of bureaucrats with the upper layers of the village against the proletariat; it was the alliance of State capitalism and private capitalism against socialism. The NEP is as much opposed to the Kronstadt demands as, for example, the revolutionary socialist programme of the vanguard of the European workers for the abolition of the Versailles system, is opposed to the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles achieved by Hitler." [Op. Cit., pp. 334-5]
Point 11 did, as Ida Mett noted, "reflected the demands of the peasants to whom the Kronstadt sailors had remained linked -- as had, as a matter of fact, the whole of the Russian proletariat . . . In their great majority, the Russian workers came directly from the peasantry. This must be stressed. The Baltic sailors of 1921 were, it is true, closely linked with the peasantry. But neither more nor less than had been the sailors of 1917." To ignore the peasantry in a country in which the vast majority were peasants would have been insane (as the Bolsheviks proved). Mett stresses this when she argued that a "workers and peasants' regime that did not wish to base itself exclusively on lies and terror, had to take account of the peasantry." [Op. Cit., p. 40]
Given that the Russian industrial working class were also calling for free trade (and often without the political, anti-capitalist, riders Kronstadt added) it seems dishonest to claim that the sailors purely expressed the interests of the peasantry. Perhaps this explains why point 11 becomes summarised as "restoration of free trade" by Trotskyists. ["Editorial Preface", Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 6] John Rees does not even mention any of the demands (which is amazing in a work which, in part, tries to analyse the rebellion).
Similarly, the working class nature of the resolution can be seen from who agreed to it. The resolution passed by the sailors on the battleships was ratified by a mass meeting and then a delegate meeting of workers, soldiers and sailors. In other words, by workers and peasants.
J.G. Wright, following his guru Trotsky without question (and using him as the sole reference for his "facts"), stated that "the incontestable facts" were the "sailors composed the bulk of the insurgent forces" and "the garrison and the civil population remained passive." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 123] This, apparently, is evidence of the peasant nature of the revolt. Let us contest these "incontestable facts" (i.e. assertions by Trotsky).
The first fact we should mention is that the meeting of 1st March in Anchor Square involved "some fifteen to sixteen thousand sailors, soldiers and civilians." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 215] This represented over 30% of Kronstadt's total population. This hardly points to a "passive" attitude on behalf of the civilians and soldiers.
The second fact is that the conference of delegates had a "membership that fluctuated between which two and three hundred sailors, soldiers, and working men." This body remained in existence during the whole revolt as the equivalent of the 1917 soviet and, like that soviet, had delegates from Kronstadt's "factories and military units." It was, in effect, a "prototype of the 'free soviets' for which the insurgents had risen in revolt." In addition, a new Trade Union Council was created, free from Communist domination. [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 159 and p. 157] Trotsky expects us to believe that the soldiers and civilians who elected these delegates were "passive"? The very act of electing these delegates would have involved discussion and decision making and so active participation. It is extremely doubtful that the soldiers and civilians would have so apathetic and apolitical to not have taken an active part in the revolt.
Thirdly, the declarations by sailors, soldiers and workers printed in Izvestiia which expressed their support for the revolt and those which announced they had left the Communist Party also present evidence which clearly contests Trotsky's and Wright's "incontestable facts." One declaration of the "soldiers of the Red Army from the fort Krasnoarmeietz" stated they were "body and soul with the Revolutionary Committee." [quoted by Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 500]
Lastly, given that the Red Army troops manned the main bastion and the outlying forts and gun emplacements at Kronstadt and that the Bolshevik troops had to take these forts by force, we can safely argue that the Red Army soldiers did not play a "passive" role during the rebellion. [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 54 and pp. 205-6]
This is confirmed by later historians. Based on such facts, Paul Avrich states that the townspeople "offered their active support" and the Red Army troops "soon fell into line." [Op. Cit., p. 159] Fedotoff-White notes that the "local land forces of the Kronstadt garrison . . . fell in and joined the seamen." [The Growth of the Red Army, p. 154] Getzler notes that elections were held for the Council of Trade Unions on the 7th and 8th of March and this was a "Council committee consisting of representatives from all trade unions." He also notes that the Conference of Delegates "had been elected by Kronstadt's body politic at their places of work, in army units, factories, workshops and Soviet institutions." He adds that the revolutionary troikas (the equivalent of the commissions of the Executive Committee of the Soviet in 1917) were also "elected by the base organisations." Likewise, "the secretariats of the trade unions and the newly founded Council of Trade Unions were both elected by the entire membership of trade unions." [Op. Cit., pp. 238-9 and p. 240]
That is a lot of activity for "passive" people.
In other words, the Petropavlovsk resolution not only reflected the demands of proletarians in Petrograd, it gained the support of proletarians in Kronstadt in the fleet, the army and the civilian workforce. Thus the claim that the Kronstadt resolution purely reflected the interests of the peasantry is, yet again, refuted.
As can be seen, the Kronstadters' (like the Petrograd workers) raised economic and political demands in 1921 just as they had four years earlier when they overthrew the Tsar. Which, again, refutes the logic of defenders of Bolshevism. For example, Wright excelled himself when he argued the following:
"The supposition that the soldiers and sailors could venture upon an insurrection under an abstract political slogan of 'free soviets' is absurd in itself. It is doubly absurd in the view of the fact [!] that the rest of the Kronstadt garrison consisted of backward and passive people who could not be used in the civil war. These people could have been moved to an insurrection only by profound economic needs and interests. These were the needs and interests of the fathers and brothers of these sailors and soldiers, that is, of peasants as traders in food products and raw materials. In other words the mutiny was the expression of the petty bourgeoisie's reaction against the difficulties and privations imposed by the proletarian revolution. Nobody can deny this class character of the two camps." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 111-2]
Of course, no worker or peasant could possibly reach beyond a trade union consciousness by their own efforts, as Lenin so thoughtfully argued in What is to be Done?. Neither could the experience of two revolutions have an impact on anyone, nor the extensive political agitation and propaganda of years of struggle. Indeed, the sailors were so backward that they had no "profound economic needs and interests" of their own but rather fought for their fathers and brothers interests! Indeed, according to Trotsky they did not even understand that ("They themselves did not clearly understand that what their fathers and brothers needed first of all was free trade." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 92])! And these were the sailors the Bolsheviks desired to man some of the most advanced warships in the world?
Sadly for Wright's assertions history has proven him wrong time and time again. Working people have constantly raised political demands which were far in advance of those of the "professional" revolutionaries (a certain German and the Paris Commune springs to mind, never mind a certain Russian and the soviets). The fact that the Kronstadt sailors not only "venture[d] upon an insurrection under an abstract political slogan of 'free soviets'" but actually created one (the conference of delegates) goes unmentioned. Moreover, as we prove in section 8, the majority of sailors in 1921 had been there in 1917. This was due to the fact that the sailors could not be quickly or easily replaced due to the technology required to operate Kronstadt's defences and battleships.
Given that the "a smaller proportion of the Kronstadt sailors were of peasant origin than was the case of the Red Army troops supporting the government," perhaps we will discover Trotskyists arguing that because "ordinary Red Army soldiers . . . were reluctant and unreliable fighters against Red Kronstadt, although driven at gunpoint onto the ice and into battle" that also proves the peasant nature of the revolt? [Sam Farber, Op. Cit., p. 192; Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 243] Given the quality of the previous arguments presented, it is only a matter of time before this one appears!
Indeed, Trotskyists also note this non-peasant nature of the Kronstadt demands (as indicated in the last section). Thus was have John Rees pathetically noting that "no other peasant insurrection reproduced the Kronstadters' demands." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 63] As we have indicated above, proletarian strikes, resolutions and activists all produced demands similar or identical to the Kronstadt demands. These facts, in themselves, indicate the truth of Trotskyist assertions on this matter. Rees mentions the strikes in passing, but fails to indicate that Kronstadt's demands were raised after a delegation of sailors had returned from visiting Petrograd. Rather than their "motivation" being "much closer to that of the peasantry" that to the "dissatisfaction of the urban working class" the facts suggest the opposite (as can be seen from the demands raised). [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 61] The motivation for the resolution was a product of the strikes in Petrograd and it also, naturally enough, included the dissatisfaction of the peasantry (in point 11). For the Kronstadters, it was a case of the needs of all the toilers and so their resolution reflected the needs and demands of both.
Unfortunately for Rees, another revolt did reproduce the Kronstadt demands and it was by urban workers, not peasants. This revolt took place in Ekaterinoslavl (in the Ukraine) in May, 1921. It started in the railway workshops and became "quickly politicised," with the strike committee raising a "series of political ultimatums that were very similar in content to the demands of the Kronstadt rebels." Indeed, many of the resolutions put to the meeting almost completely coincided with the Kronstadt demands. The strike "spread to the other workshops" and on June 1st the main large Ekaterinoslavl factories joined the strike. The strike was spread via the use of trains and telegraph and soon an area up to fifty miles around the town was affected. The strike was finally ended by the use of the Cheka, using mass arrests and shootings. Unsurprisingly, the local communists called the revolt a little Kronstadt." [Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin, pp. 171-3]
Therefore to claim that Kronstadt solely reflected the plight or interests of the peasantry is nonsense. Nor were the economic demands of Kronstadt alarming to the Bolshevik authories. After all, Zinovioev was about to grant the removal of the roadblock detachments (point 8) and the government was drafting what was to become known as the New Economic Policy (NEP) which would satisfy point 11 partially (the NEP, unlike the Kronstadters, did not end wage labour and so, ironically, represented the interests of the Kulaks!). It was the political demands which were the problem. They represented a clear challenge to Bolshevik power and their claims at being the "soviet power."
