Kronstadt Uprising: Revolt Against the Bolshevik's Revolutionary System in Russia

Michael Streich

October 3, 2009

 

In March 1921 the sailors at Russia’s Kronstadt naval base rose in revolt against the Bolshevik-led government of V. I. Lenin. Kronstadt sailors had played a significant role in the October 1917 revolution and one historian characterized them as Lenin’s “praetorian guard.” Yet by early 1921, conditions in Russia had deteriorated, notably in the rural areas where many of the new recruits were from.

 

They felt betrayed by the revolution and attempted to return to the original ideals of the 1917 revolution which included “all power to the Soviets.” Historian Paul Avrich writes that the Kronstadt Revolt was the “proletariat rising up against the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

 

Causes of the Kronstadt Uprising

 

Lenin’s policy of War Communism was felt keenly in the cities and the countryside as requisition squads removed foodstuffs into the cities to keep the factories running. Although the Whites were becoming less of a threat to the Communist government, the on-going effects of the Civil War were everywhere. In Petrograd, severe food shortages as well as the dwindling supply of heating fuel posed serious problems.

 

The Kronstadt garrison reacted to these events with threats of militancy, forming committees to draft demands that included freedom of speech and the press. The sailors represented a variety of political ideologies but none of these were remotely in sympathy with the Whites or royalist tendencies. Despite this, Lenin branded them the tools of the “White Guard generals” and labeled their movement as “petty-bougeois counterrevolution…”

 

Response of the Bolsheviks

 

Tensions escalated as both sides refused compromise. Prominent leaders of the revolution and the government, men like Kalinin and Zinoviev, went to Kotlin Island to speak to the dissidents, only to be drowned in criticism and threats. The men once referred to as “the pride and glory of the revolution” by Trotsky, became the greatest single threat to Communist rule.

 

Under the leadership of S. M. Petrichenko, the revolting garrison was confident that their movement would spread beyond the walls of Kronstadt. This “expectation,” as stated by Leonard Shapiro, was sparked by the harsh treatment of the people of Petrograd where factories were bring forcibly closed, worker strikes and demonstrations responded to violently, and steep increases in food costs that left most inhabitants on the threshold of starvation.

 

The winter ice still shielded Petrograd from the heavy guns of the Baltic Fleet, notably the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastapol. Kronstadt was surrounded by smaller fortresses and initial attempts to take them had not been successful. The Bolsheviks brought in forces from other cities, hard-core supporters who would have no empathy with the Kronstadt defenders. The strategy worked, despite adverse weather conditions, and the naval base fell. Those that were not shot were sent to penal camps. Petrichenko, along with a few fortunate survivors, fled to Finland.

 

Results of the Kronstadt Revolt

 

Some revolutionaries like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman who were in Petrograd in March 1921 and left an account of events, were genuinely shaken. The Bolshevik leadership characterized the uprising as inspired by help from the West and by forces seeking to undo their power.

 

Without a doubt the uprising represented a serious threat and Lenin was forced to deal with it in the harshest possible way. Portraying the dissidents as counterrevolutionaries and White Guard tools mollified the average Russian. At the same time, Lenin phased out War Communism in favor of his New Economic Policy. The Kronstadt Revolt was soon to lose the very reasons for its inception.

 

Sources:

 

Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974)

George F. Kennan, Russia and the West (New York: New American Library, 1961)

W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989)

Leonard Shapiro, The Russian Revolutions of 1917 (New York: Basic Books, 1984)

Adam Ulam, The Unfinished Revolution (New York: Random House, 1984)

[Copyright owned by Michael Streich; any republishing requires written permission. Article first published in Suite101]