> On Jan 11, 2025, at 9:50 AM, duen filan via groups.io
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Mark - "the Bolshevik leadership also supported the violent suppression of
> the Kronstadt rebellion"
>
> marxist.org Leon Trotsky, Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt (1938)
>
> "How can the Kronstadt rebellion cause such heartburn to anarchists,
> Mensheviks, and "liberal" counter-revolutionists all at the same time?"
>
Trotsky added that "Only an entirely superficial person can see in ... the
Kronstadt revolt a struggle between the abstract principles of Anarchism and
'state socialism.' Actually these movements were convulsions of the peasant
petty bourgeoisie which desired, of course, to liberate itself from capital but
which at the same time did not consent to subordinate itself to the
dictatorship of the proletariat."
But Trotsky also wrote specifically about the "sailors of the Baltic Fleet."
"In their social ingredients they are far closer to the workers than the
infantry are. There are a good many Petrograd workers among them. The political
level of the sailors is incomparably higher than that of the soldiers. In
distinction from the none too belligerent reserves who have forgotten all about
rifles, these sailors have never stopped actual service."
So did Trotsky's Red Army put down a rebellion of the petty bourgeois against
the "dictatorship of the proletariat," or did they snuff out the leading voices
of a new generation of Russian workers? I could quote from Trotsky's book,
"1905," on the revolutionary mettle of Russian sailors in the 1905 revolution,
but here is what they demanded in 1921 as found in Wikipedia and other sources.
" - In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of
the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot,
the pre-election campaign to have full freedom of agitation among the workers
and peasants;
- To establish freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for
Anarchists and left Socialist parties;
- To secure freedom of assembly for labor unions and peasant organizations;
- To call a nonpartisan Conference of the workers, Red Army soldiers and
sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and of Petrograd Province, no later than March
10, 1921;
- To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well as all
workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors imprisoned in connection with the
labor and peasant movements;
- To elect a Commission to review the cases of those held in prisons and
concentration camps;
- To abolish all politotdeli (political bureaus) because no party should be
given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or receive the
financial support of the Government for such purposes. Instead there should be
established educational and cultural commissions, locally elected and financed
by the Government;
- To abolish immediately all zagryaditelniye otryadi (Bolshevik units armed
to suppress traffic and confiscate foodstuffs);
- To equalize the rations of all who work, with the exception of those
employed in trades detrimental to health;
- To abolish the Bolshevik fighting detachments in all branches of the
Army, as well as the Bolshevik guards kept on duty in mills and factories.
Should such guards or military detachments be found necessary, they are to be
appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in the factories according to the
judgment of the workers;
- To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and
also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their
own means; that is, without employing hired labor;
- To request all branches of the Army, as well as our comrades the military
kursanti, to concur in our resolutions;
- To demand that the press give the fullest publicity to our resolutions;
- To appoint a Traveling Commission of Control;
- To permit free kustarnoye (individual small scale) production by one's
own efforts."[74]
This is what they demanded or requested, but the Bolsheviks refused to
negotiate and demanded unconditional surrender.
Mark
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