Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.
An Anarchist FAQ - What was the Kronstadt Programme?
It is rare for a Trotskyist to actually list the demands of the Kronstadt revolt in their entirety. For example, John Rees does not provide even a summary of the 15 point programme. He asserts that the "sailors represented the exasperated of the peasantry with the War Communism regime" while, rather lamely, noting that "no other peasant insurrection reproduced the Kronstadters demands." ["In Defence of October", pp. 3-82, International Socialism, no. 52, p. 63] Similarly, it is only the "Editorial Preface" in the Trotskyist work Kronstadt which presents even a summary of the demands. This summary states:
"The resolution demanded free elections in the soviets with the participation of anarchists and Left SRs, legalisation of the socialist parties and the anarchists, abolition of the Political Departments [in the fleet] and the Special Purpose Detachments, removal of the zagraditelnye ottyady [Armed troops used to prevent unauthorised trade], restoration of free trade, and the freeing of political prisoners." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, pp. 5-6]
They assert in the "Glossary" that it "demanded political and economic changes, many of which were soon realised with the adoption of the NEP." [Op. Cit., p. 148] Which, ironically enough, contradicts Trotsky who claimed that it was an "illusion" to think "it would have been sufficient to inform the sailors of the NEP decrees to pacify them." Moreover, the "insurgents did not have a conscious program, and they could not have had one because of the very nature of the petty bourgeoisie. They themselves did not clearly understand that their fathers and brothers needed first of all was free trade." [Op. Cit., p. 91-2]
So we have a uprising which was peasant in nature, but whose demands did not have anything in common with other peasant revolts. It apparently demanded free trade and did not demand it. It was similar to the NEP, but the NEP decrees would not have satisfied it. It produced a platform of political and economic demands but did not, apparently, have a "conscious program." The contradictions abound. Why these contradictions exist will become clear after we list the 15 demands.
The full list of demands are as follows:
"1. Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, solders and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political sections various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
8. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
9. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
10. The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
11. 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.
12. We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
13. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
14. We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it does not utilise wage labour." [quoted by Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Revolt, pp. 37-8]
This is the program described by the Soviet government as a "SR-Black Hundreds resolution"! This is the program which Trotsky maintains was drawn up by "a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 65 and p. 98] As can be seen, it was nothing of the kind. Indeed, this resolution is largely in the spirit of the political slogans of the Bolsheviks before they seized of power in the name of the soviets. Moreover, it reflected ideals expounded in 1917 and were formalised in the Soviet State's 1918 constitution. In the words of Paul Avrich, "[i]n effect, the Petropavlovsk resolution was an appeal to the Soviet government to live up to its own constitution, a bold statement of those very rights and freedom which Lenin himself had professed in 1917. In spirit, it was a throwback to October, evoking the old Leninist watchword of 'All power to the soviets.'" [Kronstadt 1921, pp. 75-6] Hardly an example of "reactionary" politics, unless the slogans of 1917 and the 1918 constitution of the U.S.S.R. are also "reactionary."
While these fifteen demands are central to the revolt, looking at the paper produced by the revolt helps us understand the nature of these demands and place them in a fuller political context. "The pages of Izvestiia," as Voline argued, "give abundant proof of th[e] general enthusiasm, which re-appeared once the masses felt they had regained, in the free Soviets, the true road to emancipation and the hope of achieving the real revolution." [Unknown Revolution, p. 495] For example, food rations were equalised, except for the sick and to children, who received a larger one. Left-wing political parties were legalised. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee was elected by a "Conference of Delegates" made up of over two hundred delegates from military units and workplaces. This body elected the Provisional Revolutionary Committee on March 2nd and enlarged it (again by election) on March 4th.
The March 4th Conference of Delegates also "decided that all workers, without exception, should be armed and put in charge of guarding the interior of the city" and to organise re-elections for "the administrative commissions of all the unions and also of the Council of Unions" (which could "become the principle organ of the workers"). [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 494]
In the article "The Goals for Which We Fight," the rebels argue that "[w]ith the aid of state unions" the Communists have "chained the workers to the machines, and transformed work into a new slavery instead of making it pleasant." Moreover, to the "protests of the peasants, which have gone so far as spontaneous revolts, to the demands of the workers, compelled by the very conditions of their life to resort to strikes, they reply with mass shootings and a ferocity that the Tsarist generals might have envied." An "inevitable third revolution" was coming, shown by "increasing" workers' strikes, which will be "achieved by the labouring masses themselves." This would be based on "freely elected soviets" and the reorganisation of "the state unions into free associations of workers, peasants and intellectuals." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., pp. 507-8]
Thus the rebels saw clearly the real nature of nationalisation. Rather than being the basis of socialism, it simply produced more wage slavery, this time to the state ("From a slave of the capitalist the worker was transformed into a slave of state enterprises." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 518]). They clearly saw the need to replace wage slavery to the state (via nationalised property) with free associations of free workers and peasants. Such a transformation would come from the collective direct action and self-activity of working people, as expressed in the strikes which had so recently swept across the country.
This transformation from the bottom up was stressed elsewhere. The unions, Izvestiia argued, would "fulfil the great and urgent task of educating the masses for an economic and cultural renovation of the country. . . The Soviet Socialist Republic cannot be strong unless its administration be exercised by the working class, with the help of renovated unions." These should "become real representatives of the interests of the people." The current unions did "nothing" to promote "economic activity of a co-operative nature" or the "cultural education" of their members due centralised system imposed by the Communist regime. This would change with "true union activity by the working class." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 510] A strong syndicalist perspective clearly can be seen here, urging self-managed unions to be at the forefront of transforming the economy into a free association of producers. They opposed any "socialist" system in which the peasant "has been transformed into a serf in the 'soviet' economy," the worker "a simple wage-worker in the State factories" and those who protest are "thrown into the jails of the Cheka." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 512]
The rebels saw that soviet power cannot exist while a political party dominated the soviets. They argued that Russia was just "State Socialism with Soviets of functionaries who vote docilely what the authorities and their infallible commissars dictate to them." Without real working class power, without "the will of the worker" expressed in their free soviets, corruption had become rampant ("Communists . . . live in ease and the commissars get fat."). Rather than a "time of free labour in the fields, factories and workshops," where "power" was in "the hands of the workers," the "Communists ha[d] brought in the rule of the commissars, with all the despotism of personal power." [Izvestiia, quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 519, p. 518, p. 511 and p. 518]
In opposition to this, the rebels argued that "Revolutionary Kronstadt . . . fights for the true Soviet Republic of the workers in which the producer himself will be owner of the products of his labour and can dispose of them as he wishes." They desired "a life animated by free labour and the free development of the individual" and so proclaimed "All power to the Soviets and not to the parties" and "the power of the free soviets." [Izvestiia quoted by Voline, Op. Cit., p. 519]
As can be seen, while the 15 demands are the essence of the revolt, looking at Izvestiia confirms the revolutionary nature of the demands. The rebels of 1921, as in 1917, looked forward to a system of free soviets in which working people could transform their society into one based on free associations which would encourage individual freedom and be based on working class power. They looked to a combination of renewed and democratic soviets and unions to transform Russian society into a real socialist system rather than the system of state capitalism the Bolsheviks had imposed (see Maurice Brintin's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control for details of Lenin's commitment to building state capitalism in Russia from 1917 onwards).
Clearly, Kronstadt's political programme was deeply socialist in nature. It opposed the new wage slavery of the workers to the state and argued for free associations of free producers. It was based on the key slogan of 1917, "All power to the soviets" but built upon it by adding the rider "but not to parties." The sailors had learned the lesson of the October revolution, namely that if a party held power the soviets did not. The politics of the revolt were not dissimilar to those of libertarian socialists and, as we argue in section 9, identical to the dominant ideas of Kronstadt in 1917.
The question now arises, whose interests did these demands and politics represent. According to Trotskyists, it is the interests of the peasantry which motivated them. For anarchists, it is an expression of the interests of all working people (proletarian, peasant and artisan) against those who would exploit their labour and govern them (be it private capitalists or state bureaucrats). We discuss this issue in the next section.
