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An Anarchist FAQ - What lies did the Bolsheviks spread about Kronstadt?
From the start, the Bolsheviks lied about the uprising. Indeed, Kronstadt provides a classic example of how Lenin and Trotsky used slander against their political opponents. Both attempted to paint the revolt as being organised and lead by the Whites. At every stage in the rebellion, they stressed that it had been organised and run by White guard elements. As Paul Avrich notes, "every effort was made to discredit the rebels" and that the "chief object of Bolshevik propaganda was to show that the revolt was not a spontaneous outbreak of mass protest but a new counterrevolutionary conspiracy, following the pattern established during the Civil War. According to the Soviet press, the sailors, influenced by Mensheviks and SR's in their ranks, had shamelessly cast their lot with the 'White Guards,' led by a former tsarist general named Kozlovsky . . . This, in turn, was said to be part of a carefully laid plot hatched in Paris by Russian emigres in league with French counterintelligence." [Op. Cit., p. 88 and p. 95]
Lenin, for example, argued in a report to the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party on March 8th that "White Guard generals were very active over there. There is ample proof of this" and that it was "the work of Social Revolutionaries and White Guard emigres." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 44]
The first government statement on the Kronstadt events was entitled "The Revolt of Ex-General Kozlovsky and the Warship Petropavlovsk" and read, in part, that the revolt was "expected by, and undoubtedly prepared by, French counterintelligence." It continues by stating that on the morning of March 2 "the group around ex-General Kozlovsky . . . had openly appeared on the scene . . . [he] and three of his officers . . . have openly assumed the role of insurgents. Under their direction . . . a number of . . . responsible individuals, have been arrested. . . Behind the SRs again stands a tsarist general." [Op. Cit., pp. 65-6]
Victor Serge, a French anarchist turned Bolshevik, remembered that he was first told that "Kronstadt is in the hands of the Whites" and that "[s]mall posters stuck on the walls in the still empty streets proclaimed that the counter-revolutionary General Kozlovsky had seized Kronstadt through conspiracy and treason." Later the "truth seeped through little by little, past the smokescreen put out by the Press, which was positively berserk with lies" (indeed, he states that the Bolshevik press "lied systematically"). He found out that the Bolshevik's official line was "an atrocious lie" and that "the sailors had mutinied, it was a naval revolt led by the Soviet." However, the "worse of it all was that we were paralysed by the official falsehoods. It had never happened before that our Party should lie to us like this. 'It's necessary for the benefit of the public,' said some . . . the strike [in Petrograd] was now practically general" (we should note that Serge, a few pages previously, mentions "the strenuous calumnies put out by the Communist Press" about Nestor Makhno, "which went so far as to accuse him of signing pacts with the Whites at the very moment when he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle against them" which suggests that Kronstadt was hardly the first time the Party had lied to them). [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 124-6 and p. 122] (In the interests of honesty, it should be noted that Serge himself contributed to the Bolshevik lie machine about Kronstadt. For example, in March 1922 he happily repeated the Soviet regime's falsifications about the rebels. [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, pp. 18-9]).
Even Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's biographer said that the Bolsheviks "denounced the men of Kronstadt as counter-revolutionary mutineers, led by a White general. The denunciation appears to have been groundless." [The Prophet Armed, p. 511]
Thus the claim that the Kronstadt rebellion was the work of Whites and led by a White/Tzarist General was a lie -- a lie deliberately and consciously spread. This was concocted to weaken support for the rebellion in Petrograd and in the Red Army, to ensure that it did not spread. Lenin admitted as much on the 15th of March when he stated at the Tenth Party Conference that in Kronstadt "they did not want the White Guards, and they do not want our power either." [quoted by Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 129]
If you agree with Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci that "to tell the truth is a communist and revolutionary act" then its clear that the Bolsheviks in 1921 (and for a long time previously) were not communist or revolutionary (and as the subsequent Leninist accounts of Kronstadt show, Bolshevism is still neither). In stark contrast to the Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt paper Izvestiia published Bolshevik leaflets, paper articles and radio broadcasts so that the inhabitants of the island could see exactly what lies the Bolsheviks were telling about them.
The Trotskyist editors of Kronstadt show the same contempt for their readers as the Bolsheviks showed for the truth. They include an "Introduction" to their work by Pierre Frank in which he argues that the Bolsheviks merely "state that [White] generals, counterrevolutionaries, sought to manipulate the insurgents" and that anarchists "turn this into a claim that these generals had launched the rebellion and that 'Lenin, Trotsky and the whole Party leadership knew quite well that this was no mere 'generals' revolt.'" [quoting Ida Mett] This apparently shows how "[a]nything having to do with the facts" gets treated by such authors. He states that Mett and others "merely distort the Bolsheviks' positions." [Lenin and Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 22]
This is argued in the same work that quotes Lenin actually stating on March 8th, 1921, that "the familiar figures of White Guard generals" were "very quickly revealed," that "White generals were very active" there, that it was "quite clear that it is the work of Social Revolutionaries and White Guard emigres" and that Kronstadt was "bound up initially" with "the White Guards." Lenin is also quoted, on March 9th, arguing that "the Paris newspapers reported the events two weeks before they actually occurred, and a White general appeared on the scene. That is what actually happened." [Op. Cit., pp. 44-5 and p. 48] This is stated in spite of presenting the government statement we have quoted above in which the Bolshevik government clearly argued that two Communist leaders had been arrested under Kozlovsky's "direction" and he "stands" behind the right-SRs whose agitation had started the revolt (according to the Bolsheviks).
Nor can it be said that Ida Mett claims that the Lenin and Trotsky had said a general had "launched" the revolt. She quotes Moscow radio as stating that the revolt ("Just like other White Guard insurrections") was in fact "the mutiny of ex-General Kozlovsky and the crew of the battle ship 'Petropavlovsk'" had been organised by Entene spies, while Socialist Revolutionaries had "prepared" the ground and that their real master was a "Tsarist general" on the page before that quoted by Frank, so indicating who the Bolsheviks did claim had launched the revolt. [Mett, Op. Cit., p. 43] It seems strange that Frank complains that others "distort" the Bolsheviks position when, firstly, the person he quotes does not and, secondly, he distorts that persons' actual position.
Mett simply acknowledging the Bolshevik lies spewed out at the time. Then she said that "Lenin, Trotsky and the whole Party leadership knew quite well that this was no mere 'generals' revolt." [Op. Cit., p. 43] She then turns to General Kozlovsky whom the Bolsheviks indicated by name as the leader of the revolt and had outlawed in the statement of March 2nd quoted above. Who was he and what part did he play? Mett sums up the evidence:
"He was an artillery general, and had been one of the first to defect to the Bolsheviks. He seemed devoid of any capacity as a leader. At the time of the insurrection he happened to be in command of the artillery at Kronstadt. The communist commander of the fortress had defected. Kozlovsky, according to the rules prevailing in the fortress, had to replace him. He, in fact, refused, claiming that as the fortress was now under the jurisdiction of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, the old rules no longer applied. Kozlovsky remained, it is true, in Kronstadt, but only as an artillery specialist. Moreover, after the fall of Kronstadt, in certain interviews granted to the Finnish press, Kozlovsky accused the sailors of having wasted precious time on issues other than the defence of the fortress. He explained this in terms of their reluctance to resort to bloodshed. Later, other officers of the garrison were also to accuse the sailors of military incompetence, and of complete lack of confidence in their technical advisers. Kozlovsky was the only general to have been present at Kronstadt. This was enough for the Government to make use of his name. "The men of Kronstadt did, up to a point, make use of the military know how of certain officers in the fortress at the time. Some of these officers may have given the men advice out of sheer hostility to the Bolsheviks. But in their attack on Kronstadt, the Government forces were also making use of ex Tsarist officers. On the one side there were Kozlovsky, Salomianov, and Arkannihov; On the other, ex-Tsarist officers and specialists of the old regime, such as Toukhatchevsky. Kamenev, and Avrov. On neither side were these officers an independent force." [Op. Cit., p. 44]
Not that this is good enough for Trotskyists. Wright, for example, will have none of it. He quotes Alexander Berkman's statement that there was "a former general, Kozlovsky, in Kronstadt. It was Trotsky who had placed him there as an Artillery specialist. He played no role whatever in the Kronstadt events." [The Russian Tragedy, p. 69]
Wright protests that this is not true and, as evidence, quotes from an interview by Kozlovsky and states that "[f]rom the lips of the counterrevolutionary general himself . . . we get the unambiguous declaration that from the very first day, he and his colleagues had openly associated themselves with the mutiny, had elaborated the 'best' plans to capture Petrograd . . . If the plan failed it was only because Kozlovsky and his colleagues were unable to convince the 'political leaders', i.e. his SR allies [!], that the moment was propitious for exposing their true visage and program." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 119]
In other words, because the Provisional Revolutionary Committee failed to take the advice of the military specialists it proves that, in fact, they were in league! That is very impressive. We wonder if the Kronstadters had taken their advice then this would have proved that they were not, in fact, in league with them after all? Similarly, by failing to take over the command of the fortress Kozlovsky must have shown how he was leading the revolt as the Bolshevik radio said!
Every non-Leninist account agrees that Kozlovsky played no part in the revolt. Paul Avrich notes that when trouble erupted "the Bolsheviks at once denounced him as the evil genius of the movement," "outlawed" him and seized his family as hostages. He confirms that the military specialists "threw themselves into the task of planning military operations on behalf of the insurrection" and that Kozlovsky had refused to succeed as the commander of the fortress after the old one had fled to the mainland (as demanded by military rules). He stresses that "the officers remained in a purely advisory capacity throughout the rebellion. They had no share, as far as one can tell, in initiating or directing the revolt, or in framing its political program, which was alien to their way of thinking." Their role "was confined to providing technical advice, just as it had been under the Bolsheviks." The Provisional Revolutionary Committee "showed its distrust of the specialists by repeatedly rejecting their counsel, however sound and appropriate it might be." And, of course, we should mention that "[f]or all the government's accusations that Kronstadt was a conspiracy of White Guard generals, ex-tsarist officers played a much more prominent role in the attacking force than among the defenders." [Op. Cit., p. 99, p. 100, p. 101 and p. 203]
Indeed, Kozlovsky "had served the Bolsheviks so loyally that on 20 October 1920 the chief commander of the Baltic Fleet . . . had awarded him a watch 'for courage and feat of arms in the battle against Yudenich'" [I. Getzler, Kronstadt 1917-1921, p. 219] This was simply officially confirming the award made on the 3rd of December, 1919, by the Petrograd Soviet "for military feats and energetic activities during the attack of the Yudenich bands on Petrograd." Indeed, he was one of the first generals who entered into service of the Bolsheviks and the Kronstadt soviet had elected him Chief-of-Staff of the fortress in the wake of the February revolution. All this did not stop the Bolsheviks claiming on March 3rd, 1921, that Kozlovsky was a "supporter of Yudenich and Kolchak"! [quoted by Israel Getzler, "The Communist Leaders' Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently Published Archival Documents", Revolutionary Russia, pp. 24-44, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2002, p. 43 and p. 31]
Berkman was clearly correct. Kozlovsky took no role in the revolt. What he did do was offer his expertise to the Kronstadt rebels (just as he had to the Bolsheviks) and make plans which were rejected. If associating yourself with an event and making plans which are rejected by those involved equals a role in that event then Trotsky's role in the Spanish revolution equalled that of Durruti's!
Finally, it should be noted that Victor Serge reported that it "was probably [the leading Bolshevik] Kalinin who, on his return to Petrograd [from attending the initial rebel meetings at Kronstadt], invented 'the White General Kozlovsky.'" [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 127] The ironic thing is, if the Kronstadt rebels had been following Kozlovsky and the other Bolshevik appointed "military specialists" then the defences of Kronstadt would have been strengthened considerably. However, as Kozlovsky later explained, the sailors refused to co-operate because of their congenital mistrust of officers. [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 138-9]
It is hard to find a Leninist who subscribes to this particular Bolshevik lie about Kronstadt. It has, for the main, been long abandoned by those who follow those who created it, despite the fact it was the cornerstone of the official Bolshevik account of the rebellion. As the obvious falseness of the claims became more and more well-known, Trotsky and his followers turned to other arguments to slander the uprising. The most famous is the assertion that the "Kronstadt sailors were quite a different group from the revolutionary heroes of 1917." [Wright, Op. Cit., p. 129] We turn to this question in the section 8 and indicate that research as refuted it (and how Trotskyists have misused this research to present a drastically false picture of the facts). However, first we must discuss whether the Kronstadt revolt was, in fact, a White conspiracy (the next section) and its real relationship to the Whites (section 7).
