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An Anarchist FAQ - Was the country too exhausted to allow soviet democracy?
Trotskyists have, in general, two main lines of attack with regards the Kronstadt revolt. The main one is the claim that the garrison in 1921 was not of the same class composition as the one in 1917. This meant that the 1921 revolt expressed the peasant counter-revolution and had to be destroyed. We have indicated that, firstly, the garrison was essentially the same in 1921 as it had been in 1917 (see section 8). Secondly, we have shown that politically the ideas expressed in its program were the same as those in 1917 (see section 9). Thirdly, that this program had many of the same points as strikers resolutions in Petrograd and, indeed, were more socialist in many cases by clearly calling for soviet democracy rather the constituent assembly (see section 4).
Now we turn to the second excuse, namely that the country was too exhausted and the working class was decimated. In such circumstances, it is argued, objective conditions meant that soviet democracy was impossible and so the Bolsheviks had to maintain their dictatorship at all costs to defend what was left of the revolution. Leninist Pat Stack of the British SWP is typical of this approach. It is worth quoting him at length:
"Because anarchists dismiss the importance of material reality, events such as the 1921 Kronstadt rising against the Bolshevik government in Russia can become a rallying cry. The revolutionary Victor Serge was not uncritical of the Bolshevik handling of the rising, but he poured scorn on anarchist claims for it when he wrote, 'The third revolution it was called by certain anarchists whose heads were stuffed by infantile delusions.'"This third revolution, it was argued, would follow the first one in February 1917 and the second in October. The second had swept away the attempts to create capitalist power, had given land to the peasants and had extracted Russia from the horrible imperialist carnage of the First World War. The revolution had introduced a huge literacy programme, granted women abortion rights, introduced divorce and accepted the rights of the various Russian republics to self determination. It had done so, however, against a background of a bloody and horrendous civil war where the old order tried to regain power. Sixteen imperialist powers sent armies against the regime, and trade embargoes were enforced.
"The reality of such actions caused huge suffering throughout Russia. The regime was deprived of raw materials and fuel, transportation networks were destroyed, and the cities began running out of food. By 1919 the regime only had 10 percent of the fuel that was available in 1917, and the production of iron ore in the same year stood at 1.6 percent of that in 1914. By 1921 Petrograd had lost 57 percent of its population and Moscow 44.5 percent. Workers were either dead, on the frontline of the civil war, or were fleeing the starvation of the city. The force that had made the revolution possible was being decimated. . .
"The choice facing the regime in Russia was either to crush the uprising and save the revolution, or surrender to the rising and allow the forces of reaction to march in on their back. There was no material basis for a third way. A destroyed economy and infrastructure, a population faced with starvation and bloody war, and a hostile outside world were not circumstances in which the revolution could move forward. Great efforts would have to be made to solve these problems. There were no overnight solutions and preserving the revolutionary regime was crucial. Ultimately real solutions could only be found if the revolution were to spread internationally, but in the meantime to have any chance of success the regime had to survive. Only the right and the imperialist powers would have benefited from its destruction." ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246, November 2000]
Anarchists, in spite of Stack's assertions, were and are well aware of the problems facing the revolution. Alexander Berkman (who was in Petrograd at the time) pointed out the "[l]ong years of war, revolution, and civil struggle" which "had bled Russia to exhaustion and brought her people to the brink of despair." [The Russian Tragedy, p. 61] Like every worker, peasant, sailor and soldier in Russia, anarchists knew (and know) that reconstruction would not take place "overnight." The Kronstadters' recognised this in the first issue of their newspaper Izvestiia:
"Comrades and citizens, our country is passing through a tough time. For three years now, famine, cold and economic chaos have trapped us in a vice-like grip. The Communist Party which governs the country has drifted away from the masses and proved itself powerless to rescue them from a state of general ruination . . . All workers, sailors and Red soldiers today can clearly see that only concentrated efforts, only the concentrated determination of the people can afford the country bread, wood and coal, can clothe and shoe the people and rescue the Republic from the impasse in which it finds itself." [cited in No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 183]
In the Kronstadt Izvestiia of March 8 they wrote that it was "here in Kronstadt that the foundation stone was laid of the Third Revolution that will smash the last shackles on the toiler and open up before him the broad new avenue to socialist construction." They stress that the "new revolution will rouse the toiling masses of the Orient and Occident. For it will offer the example of fresh socialist construction as opposed to mechanical, governmental 'Communist' construction." [Op. Cit., p. 194] Clearly, the Kronstadt rebels knew that construction would take time and were arguing that the only means of rebuilding the country was via the participation of what of left of the working class and peasantry in free class organisations like freely elected soviets and unions.
The experience of the revolt provides evidence that this analysis was far from "utopian." A Finish reporter at Kronstadt was struck by the "enthusiasm" of its inhabitants, by their renewed sense of purpose and mission. Avrich argues that for a "fleeting interval Kronstadt was shaken out if its listlessness and despair." [Kronstadt, p. 159] The sailors, soldiers and civilians sent their delegates to delegates, started to re-organise their trade unions and so on. Freedom and soviet democracy was allowing the masses to start to rebuild their society and they took the opportunity. The Kronstadter's faith in "direct mass democracy of and by the common people through free soviets" did seem to be justified in the response of the people of Kronstadt. This suggests that a similar policy implemented by the workers who had just organised general strikes, demonstrations and protest meetings all across Russia's industrial centres was not impossible or doomed to failure.
Indeed, this wave of strikes refutes Stack's claim that "[w]orkers were either dead, on the frontline of the civil war, or were fleeing the starvation of the city. The force that had made the revolution possible was being decimated." Clearly, a sizeable percentage of the workers were still working and so not dead, on the frontline or fleeing the cities. As we discuss below, approximately one-third of factory workers were still in Petrograd (the overall decrease of urban working people throughout Russia exceeded 50 percent [Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 24]). The working class, in other words, still existed and were able to organise strikes, meetings and mass demonstrations in the face of state repression. The fact, of course, is that the majority of what remained of the working class would not have voted Communist in free soviet elections. Thus political considerations have to be factored in when evaluating Stack's arguments.
The question for anarchists, as for the Kronstadt rebels, was what the necessary pre-conditions for this reconstruction were. Could Russia be re-built in a socialist way while being subject to a dictatorship which crushed every sign of working class protest and collective action? Surely the first step, as Kronstadt shows, would have to be the re-introduction of workers' democracy and power for only this would give allow expression to the creative powers of the masses and interest them in the reconstruction of the country. Continuing party dictatorship would never do this:
"by its very essence a dictatorship destroys the creative capacities of a people. . . The revolutionary conquest could only be deepened through a genuine participation of the masses. Any attempt to substitute an 'elite' for those masses could only be profoundly reactionary. "In 1921 the Russian Revolution stood at the cross roads. The democratic or the dictatorial way, that was the question. By lumping together bourgeois and proletarian democracy the Bolsheviks were in fact condemning both. They sought to build socialism from above, through skilful manoeuvres of the Revolutionary General Staff. While waiting for a world revolution that was not round the corner, they built a state capitalist society, where the working class no longer had the right to make the decisions most intimately concerning it." [Mett, Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]
The Russian revolution had faced economic crisis all through 1917 and 1918. Indeed, by the spring of 1918 Russia was living through an almost total economic collapse, with a general scarcity of all resources and mass unemployment. According to Tony Cliff (the leader of the SWP) in the spring of 1918 Russia's "[w]ar-damaged industry continued to run down. 'The bony hand of hunger' . . . gripped the whole population . . . One of the causes of the famine was the breakdown of transport. . . Industry was in a state of complete collapse. Not only was there no food to feed the factory workers; there was no raw materials or fuel for industry. The oilfields of the Baku, Grozny and Emba regions came to a standstill. The situation was the same in the coalfields. The production of raw materials was in no better a state . . . The collapse of industry meant unemployment for the workers." [Lenin: The Revolution Besieged, vol. 3, pp. 67-9] The industrial workforce dropped to 40% of its 1917 levels. The similarities to Stack's description of the situation in early 1921 is striking.
Does this mean that, for Leninists, soviet democracy was impossible in early 1918 (of course, the Bolsheviks in practice were making soviet democracy impossible by suppressing soviets that elected the wrong people)? After all, in the start of 1918 the Russian Revolution also faced a "destroyed economy and infrastructure, a population faced with starvation and bloody war, and a hostile outside world." If these "were not circumstances in which the revolution could move forward" then it also applied in 1918 as well as in 1921. And, if so, then this means admitting that soviet democracy is impossible during a revolution, marked as it will always be marked by exceptionally difficult circumstances. Which, of course, means to defend party power and not soviet power and promote the dictatorship of the party over the working class, positions Leninists deny holding.
Incredibly, Stack fails to even mention the power and privileges of the bureaucracy at the time. Officials got the best food, housing and so on. The lack of effective control or influence from below ensured that corruption was widespread. One of the leaders of the Workers' Opposition gives us an insight of the situation which existed at the start of 1921:
"The rank and file worker is observant. He sees that so far . . . the betterment of the workers' lot has occupied the last place in our policy . . . We all know that the housing problem cannot be solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty, its solution is faced with serious difficulties. But the facts of ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers, 'the frame-work of the dictatorship', breed and nourish the dissatisfaction. "The rank and file worker sees how the Soviet official and the practical man lives and how he lives . . . [It will be objected that] 'We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military front.' And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs to any of the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions, they were able to find both the materials and the labour." [Alexandra Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition, p. 10]
A few months earlier, the Communist Yoffe wrote to Trotsky expressing the same concerns. "There is enormous inequality," he wrote, "and one's material position largely depends on one's post in the party; you'll agree that this is a dangerous situation." [quoted by Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, p. 695] To talk about anarchists dismissing the importance of material reality and a "revolutionary regime" while ignoring the inequalities in power and wealth, and the bureaucratisation and despotism which were their root, is definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black!
Under the harsh material conditions facing Russia at the time, it goes without saying that the bureaucracy would utilise its position to gather the best resources around it. Indeed, part of the factors resulting in Kronstadt was "the privileges and abuses of commissars, senior party functionaries and trade union officials who received special rations, allocations and housing and . . . quite openly enjoying the good life." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 210] Stack fails to mention this and instead talks about the necessity of defending a "workers' state" in which workers had no power and where bureaucratic abuses were rampant. If anyone is denying reality, it is him! Thus Ciliga:
"The Soviet Government and the higher circles in the Communist Party applied their own solution [to the problems facing the revolution] of increasing the power of the bureaucracy. The attribution of powers to the 'Executive Committees' which had hitherto been vested in the soviets, the replacement of the dictatorship of the class by the dictatorship of the party, the shift of authority even within the party from its members to its cadres, the replacement of the double power of the bureaucracy and the workers in the factory by the sole power of the former - to do all this was to 'save the Revolution!' [. . .] The Bureaucracy prevented the bourgeois restoration . . . by eliminating the proletarian character of the revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 331]
Perhaps, in light of this, it is significant that, in his list of revolutionary gains from October 1917, Stack fails to mention what anarchists would consider the most important, namely workers' power, freedom, democracy and rights. But, then again, the Bolsheviks did not rate these gains highly either and were more than willing to sacrifice them to ensure their most important gain, state power (see section 15 for a fuller discussion of this issue). Again, the image of revolution gains a victory over its content!
When Stack argues that it was necessary to crush Kronstadt to "save the revolution" and "preserv[e] the revolutionary regime" we feel entitled to ask what was there left to save and preserve? The dictatorship and decrees of "Communist" leaders? In other words, party power. Yes, by suppressing Kronstadt Lenin and Trotsky saved the revolution, saved it for Stalin. Hardly something to be proud of.
Ironically, given Stack's assertions that anarchists ignore "material reality", anarchists had predicted that a revolution would be marked by economic disruption. Kropotkin, for example, argued that it was "certain that the coming Revolution . . . will burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial crisis . . . There are millions of unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It will be worse when Revolution has burst upon us . . . The number of the out-of-works will be doubled as soon as barricades are erected in Europe and the United States . . . we know that in time of Revolution exchange and industry suffer most from the general upheaval . . . A Revolution in Europe means, then, the unavoidable stoppage of at least half the factories and workshops." He stressed that there would be "the complete disorganisation" of the capitalist economy and that during a revolution "[i]nternational commerce will come to a standstill" and "the circulation of commodities and of provisions will be paralysed." [The Conquest of Bread, pp. 69-70 and p. 191]
Elsewhere, he argued that a revolution would "mean the stoppage of hundreds of manufactures and workshops, and the impossibility of reopening them. Thousands of workmen will find no employment . . . The present want of employment and misery will be increased tenfold." He stressed that "the reconstruction of Society in accordance with more equitable principles will necessitate a disturbed period" and argued that any revolution will be isolated to begin with and so (with regards to the UK) "the imports of foreign corn will decrease" as will "exports of manufactured wares." A revolution, he argued, "is not the work of one day. It means a whole period, mostly lasting for several years, during which the country is in a state of effervescence." To overcome these problems he stressed the importance of reconstruction from the bottom up, organised directly by working people, with local action being the basis of wider reconstruction. The "immense problem -- the re-organisation of production, redistribution of wealth and exchange, according to new principles -- cannot be solved by . . . any kind of government. It must be a natural growth resulting from the combined efforts of all interested in it, freed from the bonds of the present institutions. It must grow naturally, proceeding from the simplest up to complex federations; and it cannot be something schemed by a few men and ordered from above. In this last shape it surely would have no chance of living at all." [Act for Yourselves, pp. 71-2, p. 67, pp, 72-3, pp. 25-6 and p. 26]
Anarchists had predicted the problems facing the Russian Revolution decades previously and, given the lack of success of Bolshevik attempts to solve these problems via centralism, had also predicted the only way to solve them. Far from ignoring "material reality" it is clear that anarchists have long been aware of the difficulties a revolution would face and had organised our politics around them. In contrast, Stack is arguing that these inevitable effects of a revolution create "circumstances" in which the revolution cannot "move forward"! If this is so, then revolution is an impossibility as it will always face economic disruption and isolation at some stage in its development, for a longer or shorter period. If we base our politics on the "best-case scenario" then they will soon be proven to be lacking.
Ultimately, Stack's arguments (and those like it) are the ones which ignore "material reality" by arguing that Lenin's state was a "revolutionary regime" and reconstruction could be anything but to the advantage of the bureaucracy without the active participation of what was left of the working class. Indeed, the logic of his argument would mean rejecting the idea of socialist revolution as such as the problems he lists will affect every revolution and had affected the Russian Revolution from the start.
The problems facing the Russian working class were difficult in the extreme in 1921 (some of which, incidentally, were due to the results of Bolshevik economic policies which compounded economic chaos via centralisation), but they could never be solved by someone else bar the thousands of workers taking strike action all across Russia at the time: "And if the proletariat was that exhausted how come it was still capable of waging virtually total general strikes in the largest and most heavily industrialised cities?" [Ida Mett, Op. Cit., p. 81]
So, as far as "material reality" goes, it is clear that it is Stack who ignores it, not anarchists or the Kronstadt rebels. Both anarchists and Kronstadters recognised that the country was in dire straits and that a huge effort was required for reconstruction. The material basis at the time offered two possibilities for reconstruction -- either from above or from below. Such a reconstruction could only be socialist in nature if it involved the direct participation of the working masses in determining what was needed and how to do it. In other words, the process had to start from below and no central committee utilising a fraction of the creative powers of the country could achieve it. Such a bureaucratic, top-down re-construction would rebuild the society in a way which benefited a few. Which, of course, was what happened.
John Rees joins his fellow party member by arguing that the working class base of the workers' state had "disintegrated" by 1921. The working class was reduced "to an atomised, individualised mass, a fraction of its former size, and no longer able to exercise the collective power that it had done in 1917." The "bureaucracy of the workers' state was left suspended in mid-air, its class base eroded and demoralised." He argues that Kronstadt was "utopian" as "they looked back to the institutions of 1917 when the class which made such institutions possible no longer had the collective capacity to direct political life." [Rees, Op. Cit., p. 65 and p. 70]
There are two problems with this kind of argument. Firstly, there are factual problems with it. Second, there are ideological problems with it. We will discuss each in turn.
The factual problems are clear. All across Russia in February 1921 the Russian working class were going on strike, organising meetings and demonstrations. In other words, taking collective action based on demands collectively agreed in workplace meetings. One factory would send delegates to others, urging them to join the movement which soon became a general strike in Petrograd and Moscow. In Kronstadt, workers, soldiers and sailors went the next step and organised a delegate conference. In other places they tried to do so, with various degrees of success. During the strikes in Petrograd "workers from various plants elected delegates to the Petrograd Assembly of Plenipotentiaries" which raised similar demands as that of Kronstadt. Its activities and other attempts to organise collectively were obviously hindered by the fact the Cheka arrested "all delegates to other enterprises" the strikers sent. Brovkin states that following the example of Petrograd, "workers in some cities set up assemblies of plenipotentiaries" as well. In Saratov "such a council grew out of a strike co-ordination committee." [V. Brovkin, Behind the Lines of the Russian Civil War, p. 393, p. 396 and p. 398]
Any claim that the Russian working class had no capacity for collective action seems invalidated by such events. Not that Rees is not unaware of these strikes. He notes that the Kronstadt revolt was "preceded by a wave of serious but quickly resolved strikes." [Op. Cit., p. 61] An "atomised, individualised mass" which was "no longer able to exercise the collective power" being able to conduct a "wave of serious . . . strikes" all across Russia? That hardly fits. Nor does he mention the repression which "quickly resolved" the strikes and which, by its very nature, atomised and individualised the masses in order to break the collective action being practised.
The fact that these strikes did not last longer of course suggests that the strikers could not sustain this activity indefinitely. However, this was more a product of state repression and the lack of rations while on strike than any objectively predetermined impossibility of collective decision making. The workers may have been too exhausted to wage indefinite general strikes against a repressive state but that does not imply they could not practice continual collective decision making in less extreme circumstances in a soviet democracy.
Of course, these striking workers would have been unlikely to voted Communist en mass if free soviet elections were organised (in Kronstadt, Communists made up one-third of the conference of delegates). Thus there were pressing political reasons to deny free elections rather than an objective impossibility. Moreover, the actions of the Soviet state were designed to break the collective resistance of the working force. The use of armed patrols on the streets and in the factories, and the closing and re-registration of an enterprise labour force were designed to break the strike and atomise the workforce. These actions would not have been needed if the Russian working class was, in fact, atomised and incapable of collective action and decision making.
The size of the working class in 1921 was smaller in 1921 than it was in 1917. However, the figures for May 1918 and 1920 were nearly identical. In 1920, the number of factory workers in Petrograd was 148,289 (which was 34% of the population and 36% of the number of workers in 1910). [Mary McAuley, Op. Cit., p. 398] In January 1917, the number was 351,010 and in April 1918, it was 148,710. [S.A. Smith, Red Petrograd, p. 245] Thus factory worker numbers were about 40% of the pre-Civil War number and remained so throughout the Civil War. A proletarian core remained in every industrial town or city in Russia.
Nor was this work force incapable of collective action or decision making. All through the civil war they organised strikes and protests for specific demands (and faced Bolshevik repression for so doing). In March 1919, for example, tens of thousands of workers went on strike in Petrograd. The strikes were broken by troops. Strikes regularly occurred throughout 1919 and 1920 (and, again, usually met with state repression). In 1921, the strike wave resurfaced and became near general strikes in many cities, including Petrograd and Moscow (see section 2). If the workers could organise strikes (and near general strikes in 1921), protest meetings and committees to co-ordinate their struggles, what could stop them starting to manage their own destinies? Does soviet democracy become invalid once a certain number of workers is reached?
Given that Rees gets the key slogan of Kronstadt wrong (they called for all power to the soviets and not to parties rather than Rees' "soviets without parties") it is hard to evaluate whether Rees claims that without Bolshevik dictatorship the Whites would inevitably have taken power. After all, the Kronstadt delegate meeting had one-third Communists in it. Ultimately, he is arguing that working people cannot manage their own fates themselves without it resulting in a counter-revolution!
In addition, the logic of Rees' argument smacks of double-think. On the one hand, he argues that the Bolsheviks represented the "dictatorship of the proletariat." On the other hand, he argues that free soviet elections would have seen the Bolsheviks replaced by "moderate socialists" (and eventually the Whites). In other words, the Bolsheviks did not, in fact, represent the Russian working class and their dictatorship was over, not of, the proletariat. The basic assumption, therefore, is flawed. Rees and his fellow Trotskyists seriously want us to believe that a dictatorship will not become corrupt and bureaucratic, that it can govern in the interests of its subjects and, moreover, reform itself. And he calls the Kronstadters "utopians"!
Given these factors, perhaps the real reason for the lack of soviet democracy and political freedom and rights was that the Bolsheviks knew they would lose any free elections that would be held? As we noted in section 2, they had not been shy in disbanding soviets with non-Bolshevik majorities before the start of the civil war nor in suppressing strikes and workers' protests before, during and after the Civil War. In effect, the Bolsheviks would exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat over and above the wishes of that proletariat if need be (as Trotsky made clear in 1921 at the Tenth Party Congress). Thus the major factor restricting soviet democracy was Bolshevik power -- this repressed working class collective action which promoted atomisation in the working class and the unaccountability of the Bolshevik leadership. The bureaucracy was "left suspended in mid-air" simply because the majority of the workers and peasants did not support it and when they protested against the party dictatorship they were repressed.
Simply put, objective factors do not tell the whole story.
Now we turn to these objective factors, the economic breakdown affecting Russia in 1921. This is the basis for the ideological problem with Rees' argument.
The ideological problem with this argument is that both Lenin and Trotsky had argued that revolution inevitably implied civil war, "exceptional circumstances" and economic crisis. For example, in Terrorism and Communism Trotsky argued that "[a]ll periods of transition have been characterised by . . . tragic features" of an "economic depression" such as exhaustion, poverty and hunger. Every class society "is violently swept off [the arena] by an intense struggle, which immediately brings to its participants even greater privations and sufferings than those against which they rose." He gave the example of the French Revolution "which attained its titanic dimensions under the pressure of the masses exhausted with suffering, itself deepened and rendered more acute their misfortunes for a prolonged period and to an extraordinary extent." He asked: "Can it be otherwise?" [Terrorism and Communism, p. 7]
Indeed, he stressed that "revolutions which drag into their whirlpool millions of workers" automatically affect the "economic life of the country." By "[d]ragging the mass of the people away from labour, drawing them for a prolonged period into the struggle, thereby destroying their connection with production, the revolution in all these ways strikes deadly blows at economic life, and inevitably lowers the standard which it found at its birth." This affects the socialist revolution as the "more perfect the revolution, the greater are the masses it draws in; and the longer it is prolonged, the greater is the destruction it achieves in the apparatus of production, and the more terrible inroads does it make upon public resources. From this there follows merely the conclusion which did not require proof -- that a civil war is harmful to economic life." [Ibid.]
Lenin in 1917 argued the similarly, mocking those who argued that revolution was out of the question because "the circumstances are exceptionally complicated." He noting that any revolution, "in its development, would give rise to exceptionally complicated circumstances" and that it was "the sharpest, most furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a single great revolution in history has escaped civil war. No one who does not live in a shell could imagine that civil war is conceivable without exceptionally complicated circumstances. If there were no exceptionally complicated circumstances there would be no revolution." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p. 80 and p. 81]
A few months early, Lenin argues that "[w]hen unavoidable disaster is approaching, the most useful and indispensable task confronting the people is that of organisation. Marvels of proletarian organisation -- this is our slogan at the present, and shall become our slogan and our demand to an even greater extent, when the proletariat is in power. . . There are many such talents [i.e. organisers] among the people. These forces lie dormant in the peasantry and the proletariat, for lack of application. They must be mobilised from below, by practical work . . ." [The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it, pp. 49-50]
The problem in 1921 (as during the war), of course, was that when the proletariat did organise itself, it was repressed as counterrevolutionary by the Bolsheviks. The reconstruction from below, the organisation of the proletariat, automatically came into conflict with party power. The workers and peasants could not act because soviet and trade union democracy would have ended Bolshevik dictatorship.
Therefore, Rees' and Stack's arguments fail to convince. As noted, their ideological gurus clearly argued that revolution without civil war and economic exhaustion was impossible. Sadly, the means to mitigate the problems of Civil War and economic crisis (namely workers' self-management and power) inevitably came into conflict with party power and could not be encouraged. If Bolshevism cannot meet the inevitable problems of revolution and maintain the principles it pays lip-service to (i.e. soviet democracy and workers' power) then it clearly does not work and should be avoided.
Stack's and Rees' argument, in other words, represents the bankruptcy of Bolshevik ideology rather than a serious argument against the Kronstadt revolt.
