In February Smolensk, Dokuchaev, adjutant to the commander of the Western Front, was looking for M. N. Tukhachevsky. They called from Moscow. Mikhail Nikolaevich was urgently called by the Chief of the General Staff. He was found, after a long search, leaving a local orphanage, which the military leader helped as best he could.
Riot in the stronghold of the revolution
The reason for the call was unrest in one of the strongholds of the October Revolution of 1917, the fortified city of Kronstadt. By that time, completely different people served there. Over three years, more than 40 thousand sailors of the Baltic Fleet went to the fronts of the civil war. These were the people most devoted to the “cause of the revolution.” Many died. Of the most significant figures, one can name Anatoly Zheleznyakov. Since 1918, the fleet began to be recruited on a voluntary basis. Most of the people who joined the crews were peasants. The village had already lost faith in the slogans that attracted the villagers to the side of the Bolsheviks. The country was in a difficult situation. “When you demand bread, you give nothing in return,” the peasants said, and they were right. Even more unreliable people joined parts of the Balfleet. These were the so-called “zhorzhiki” from Petrograd, members of various semi-criminal groups. Discipline fell, cases of desertion became more frequent. The grounds for discontent were: interruptions in food, fuel, and uniforms. All this facilitated the agitation of the Socialist Revolutionaries and agents of foreign powers. Under the cover of an American Red Cross worker, the former commander of the battleship Sevastopol, Vilken, arrived in Kronstadt. He organized the delivery of equipment and food to the fortress from Finland. It was this dreadnought, along with the Petropavlovsk and St. Andrew the First-Called, that became the stronghold of the rebellion.
The beginning of the Kronstadt uprising
Closer to the spring of 1921, V.P. was appointed head of the political department of the naval base. Gromov, an active participant in the October events of 1917. But it was already too late. Moreover, he did not feel support from the fleet commander F.F. Raskolnikov, who was more occupied with the ongoing controversy between V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky, in which he took the side of the latter. The situation was complicated by the introduction of a curfew in Petrograd on February 25. Two days later, a delegation consisting of part of the sailors of two battleships returned from the city. On the twenty-eighth the Kronstadters adopted a resolution. It was handed over to all military personnel of the garrison and ships. This day in 1921 can be considered the beginning of the uprising in Kronstadt.
Uprising in Kronstadt: slogan, rally
The day before, the head of the political department of the fleet, Battis, assured that the discontent was caused by delays in the supply of food and the refusal to provide leave. The demands, meanwhile, were mostly political. Re-election of the Soviets, elimination of commissars and political departments, freedom of activity of socialist parties, abolition of detachments. The influence of peasant replenishment was expressed in the provision of free trade and the abolition of surplus appropriation. The uprising of the sailors of Kronstadt took place under the slogan: “All power to the Soviets, not to the parties!” All attempts to prove that the political demands were inspired by the Social Revolutionaries and agents of the imperialist powers were unsuccessful. The rally on Yakornaya Square did not turn out in favor of the Bolsheviks. The uprising in Kronstadt occurred in March 1921.
Expectation
The suppression of the uprising of sailors and workers in Kronstadt was necessary not only for internal political reasons. The rebels, if they had succeeded in their plans, could have opened the passage to Kotlin for squadrons of hostile states. And this was the sea gate to Petrograd. The “Defense Headquarters” was headed by former Major General A. N. Kozlovsky and Captain E. V. Solovyanov, who served in the imperial army. They were subordinate to three battleships with twelve-inch guns, the minelayer Narva, the minesweeper Lovat, and the artillery, rifle and engineering units of the garrison. It was an impressive force: almost 29 thousand people, 134 heavy and 62 light guns, 24 anti-aircraft guns, and 126 machine guns. The uprising of the sailors of Kronstadt in March 1921 was not supported only by the southern forts. It must be taken into account that in its two hundred year history no one was able to take the sea fortress. Perhaps the excessive self-confidence of the rebels in Kronstadt failed them. Initially, there were not enough troops loyal to Soviet power in Petrograd. If they wanted, the Kronstadters could seize a bridgehead near Oranienbaum on March 1-2. But they waited, hoping to hold out until the ice broke up. Then the fortress would become truly impregnable.
Under siege
The uprising of sailors in Kronstadt (1921) came as a surprise to the authorities of the capital, although they were repeatedly informed about the unfavorable situation in the city. On the first, the leaders of the Kronstadt Soviet were arrested and a Provisional Revolutionary Committee was organized, headed by the Socialist Revolutionary Petrichenko. Of the 2,680 communists, 900 left the RCP (b). One hundred and fifty political workers left the city without hindrance, but arrests still took place. Hundreds of Bolsheviks ended up in prison. Only then did a reaction from Petrograd follow. Kozlovsky and the entire staff of the “Defense Headquarters” were declared outlaws, and Petrograd and the entire province were placed under a state of siege. The Baltic Fleet was headed by I.K. Kozhanov, who was more loyal to the authorities. On March 6, shelling of the island with heavy guns began. But the uprising in Kronstadt (1921) could only be liquidated by storm. There was a 10-kilometer march on the ice under the fire of guns and machine guns.
Hasty assault
Who commanded the suppression of the uprising in Kronstadt? In the capital, the 7th Army of the Petrograd Military District was hastily recreated. To command it, he was summoned from Smolensk, which was to suppress the uprising in Kronstadt in 1921. For reinforcement, he asked for the 27th Division, which was well known from the battles of the Civil War. But it had not yet arrived, and the troops at the commander’s disposal were almost ineffective. Nevertheless, the order had to be carried out, that is, to suppress the uprising of sailors in Kronstadt as soon as possible. He arrived on the 5th, and already on the night of March 7-8, the attack began. There was fog, then a snowstorm arose. It was impossible to use aviation and adjust the shooting. And what could field guns do against powerful, concrete fortifications? The Northern and Southern groups of troops were advancing under the command of E.S. Kazansky and A.I. Sedyakin. Although cadets from military schools managed to break into one of the forts, and special forces even penetrated the city, the morale of the soldiers was very low. Some of them went over to the side of the rebels. The first assault ended in failure. It is significant that some of the soldiers of the 7th Army, as it turned out, sympathized with the sailors' uprising in Kronstadt.
Communists to strengthen
The anti-Bolshevik uprising in Kronstadt occurred after the victory over Wrangel in Crimea. The Baltic countries and Finland signed peace treaties with the Soviet Union. The war was considered won. That's why it came as such a surprise. But the success of the rebels could completely change the balance of power. That’s why Vladimir Ilyich Lenin considered him a greater danger than “Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich combined.” It was necessary to put an end to the rebellion at all costs, and before the Baltic ice sheet broke up. The leadership of the suppression of the rebellion was taken over by the Central Committee of the RCP (b). The division loyal to Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky arrived. In addition, more than 300 delegates of the X Party Congress held in Moscow came to Petrograd. A group of Academy students also arrived. Among them were Voroshilov, Dybenko, Fabritius. The troops were reinforced with more than 2 thousand proven communists. Tukhachevsky scheduled the decisive assault for March 14. The deadline was adjusted by the thaw. The ice still held out, but the roads were muddy, making it difficult to transport ammunition. The attack was postponed to the 16th. Soviet troops on the Petrograd shore by that time had reached 45 thousand people. They had at their disposal 153 guns, 433 machine guns and 3 armored trains. The advancing units were provided with uniforms, camouflage robes and scissors for cutting barbed wire. To transport ammunition, machine guns and the wounded across the ice, sleds and sleds of the most varied designs were brought from all over the area.
Fall of the fortress
On the morning of March 16, 1921, artillery preparation began. The fortress and planes were bombed. Kronstadt responded by shelling the shores of the Gulf of Finland and Oranienbaum. The soldiers of the 7th Army set foot on the ice on the night of March 17. It was difficult to walk on the loose ice, and the darkness was illuminated by the rebels' searchlights. Every now and then I had to fall and press myself against the ice. Nevertheless, the attacking units were discovered only at 5 o’clock in the morning, when they were already almost in the “dead zone”, where the shells did not reach. But there were enough machine guns in the city. Multi-meter polynyas formed after shells exploded had to be crossed. It was especially difficult on the approach to Fort No. 6, where land mines were detonated. But the Red Army soldiers nevertheless captured the so-called Petrograd Gate and broke into Kronstadt. The fierce battle lasted the whole day. The forces of the attackers and defenders were running out, as was the ammunition. By 5 o'clock in the afternoon the Red Guards were pressed to the edge of the ice. The outcome of the case was decided by the 27th and the arriving detachments of the St. Petersburg communist activists. On the morning of October 18, 1921, the uprising in Kronstadt was finally suppressed. Many organizers of the uprising took advantage of the time while the fighting was going on near the coast. Almost all members of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee fled across the ice to Finland. In total, almost 8 thousand rebels managed to escape.
Repression
The first issue of the newspaper “Red Kronstadt” was published in less than a day. A journalist who also did not escape repression in the 1930s, Mikhail Koltsov glorified the victors and promised grief to “traitors and traitors.” Almost 2 thousand Red Army soldiers died during the assault. The rebels lost over 1 thousand people during the suppression of the uprising in Kronstadt. In addition, 2 thousand 100 people were sentenced to death, not counting those shot without any sentence. In Sestroretsk and Oranienbaum, many civilians died from bullets and shells. More than 6 thousand people were sentenced to prison. Many of those who did not participate in the leadership of the conspiracy were amnestied on the 5th anniversary of the October Revolution. There could have been more casualties, but the uprising in Kronstadt (1921) was not supported by the Mine Detachment. If the ice around the forts was full of mines, everything would have turned out differently. The workers of the Steamship Plant and some other enterprises also remained loyal to the Petrograd Soviet.
Kronstadt: results of the sailors' uprising in March 1921
Despite the defeat, the rebels achieved the fulfillment of some of their demands. The party's central committee drew conclusions from the bloody riot in the stronghold of the revolution. Lenin called this tragedy the other side of the plight of the country, primarily the peasants. This can be called one of the most important results of the uprising in Kronstadt (1921). The need to achieve stronger unity between workers and peasants was realized. To do this, it was necessary to improve the situation of the wealthy sections of the village population. The middle peasantry suffered the most significant losses from surplus appropriation. It was soon replaced by a tax in kind. A sharp turn away from war communism to a new economic policy began. It also implied some freedom of trade. V.I. Lenin himself called this one of the most important lessons of Kronstadt. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” was over, a new era was beginning.
We can talk about the cruelty of the era of “war communism” and many who implemented this policy. But it cannot be denied that the mutiny in the sea fortress would have been used not only to change the political course in Russia. Squadrons of many countries were ready to go to sea at the first news of the success of the mutiny. After the surrender of Kronstadt, Petrograd would become defenseless. The heroism of the Red Army soldiers during the assault is also undeniable. There was no shelter on the ice. Protecting their heads, the fighters placed machine gun boxes and sleds in front of them. If powerful searchlights had been used as they should, the Gulf of Finland would have become the grave of thousands of Red Army soldiers. It is known from memories how he behaved during the attack. Before the start of the decisive throw, everyone saw a man in a black Caucasian burka walking forward. With a Mauser, defenseless against hundreds of powerful guns, he, by his example, raised the infantry chains lying on the ice in a decisive attack. Feigin, the 19-year-old secretary of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk provincial committee of the Komsomol, died in approximately the same way. The opposite can be said about rebels. Not everyone was sure that their cause was right. No more than a quarter of the sailors and soldiers joined the uprising. The garrisons of the southern forts supported the advancing 7th Army with fire. All the naval units of Petrograd and the crews of the ships that spent the winter on the Neva remained loyal to Soviet power. The leadership of the uprising acted hesitantly, waiting for help after the ice disappeared. The composition of the “temporary revolutionary committee” was heterogeneous. Socialist-Revolutionary Petrichenko, who was once a Petliurite, is at the head, and includes a former gendarmerie officer, a large homeowner and Mensheviks. These people were unable to make any clear decisions.
The experience of underground work of many communists arrested on the island played a role. In conclusion, they managed to publish their handwritten newspaper, and in it they refuted the allegations about the collapse of the Bolsheviks, which filled the newspaper published on behalf of the Kronstadt “revolutionary committee”. During the first assault, V.P. Gromov, who commanded the special-purpose battalions, managed to get into the city in the chaos and agreed with the underground on further actions. The Kronstadt garrison found itself isolated and did not receive support from other military units. And this despite the fact that their leaders did not oppose Soviet power. They wanted to use the form of the Soviets to overthrow the government. Then, perhaps, the Soviets themselves would have been liquidated. The indecisiveness of the Petrograd authorities in the first days was caused not only by confusion. Revolts against the authorities were not uncommon. Tambov province, Western Siberia, the North Caucasus - these are just some of the regions where peasants met food detachments with weapons in their hands. But it was still not possible to feed the cities, dooming the peasants to hunger. The largest ration in the capital was 800 grams of bread. Detachments blocked roads and caught speculators, but secret trade still flourished in the city. Rallies and demonstrations of workers took place in the city until March 1921. Then there was no bloodshed or arrests, but discontent grew. And in the Petrograd Soviet there was a struggle for control of the fleet, already infected with the rebellious spirit. Trotsky and Zinoviev could not divide the powers between themselves.
The Kronstadt sailors' uprising in March 1921 became the last and most powerful argument in favor of revising the policy of “war communism.” Already on March 14, the surplus appropriation system was cancelled. Instead of 70% of the grain, only 30% was taken from the peasants in the form of tax in kind. Private entrepreneurship, market relations, foreign capital in the Soviet economy - all this was a forced, largely improvisational measure. It was March of the first year of the second decade of the 20th century that became the time when the transition to a new economic policy was proclaimed. This became one of the most successful economic reforms in the history of the country. And the sailors of the country’s main naval fortress played an important role in this.
What is the Kronstadt rebellion? This is an armed uprising of sailors of the Baltic Fleet stationed in the Kronstadt fortress. The sailors spoke out against the power of the Bolsheviks, and their confrontation lasted from March 1 to March 18, 1921. The uprising was brutally suppressed by units of the Red Army. The arrested rioters were tried. 2,103 people were sentenced to death. At the same time, 8 thousand rebels managed to escape. They left Russia and went to Finland. What were the preconditions and course of this rebellion?
Prerequisites for the Kronstadt rebellion
By the end of 1920, the Civil War had ended in most of Russia. At the same time, industry and agriculture lay in ruins. The policy of war communism was rampant in the country, during which grain and flour were taken from the peasants by force. This provoked mass uprisings of the rural population in different provinces. It acquired the greatest strength in the Tambov province.
In the cities the situation was no better. The general decline in industrial production gave rise to total unemployment. Those who could fled to the village, hoping for a better life. Production workers received food rations, but they were extremely small. Many speculators appeared in city markets. And it was thanks to them that people somehow survived.
During war communism, the food situation was very difficult. People demonstrated to demand increased rations
The difficult situation with food gave rise to a workers' strike in Petrograd on February 24, 1921. And the next day the authorities introduced martial law in the city. At the same time, they arrested several hundred of the most active workers. After this, food rations were increased and canned meat was added. This calmed the residents of Petrograd for some time. But Kronstadt was nearby.
It was a powerful military fortress with many artificial islands and forts guarding the mouth of the Neva. It was not even a fortress, but an entire military city, which was the base of the Baltic Fleet. Military sailors and civilians lived in it. Any military base always has large supplies of food. However, by the end of 1919, all food supplies from Kronstadt were removed.
And therefore its population found itself on common grounds with the residents of the capital. Food began to be delivered to the fortress. But things were bad with them everywhere, and the military base was no exception. As a result of this, discontent began to grow among the sailors, and it was aggravated by unrest in Petrograd. On February 26, the residents of Kronstadt sent a delegation to the city. She was authorized to find out the political and economic situation in the capital.
Upon returning, the delegates said that the situation in the city was extremely tense. There are military patrols everywhere, factories are on strike and surrounded by troops. All this information got people excited. On February 28, a meeting was held at which demands for re-election of the Soviets were heard. This body of people's power at that time was a fiction. It was run by the Bolsheviks, controlled by the commissars.
General discontent and unrest resulted on March 1, 1921 in a rally of thousands on Anchor Square. The main slogan on it was “Soviets without communists.” Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin urgently arrived at the meeting.
His task was to defuse the situation, smooth out the intensity of passions, and calm people down. However, the speech of one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party was interrupted by indignant shouts. Kalinin was explicitly advised to get away. Then he declared that he would return, but not alone, but with the proletarians who would mercilessly destroy this hotbed of counter-revolution. After this, Mikhail Ivanovich left the square amid whistles and hoots.
The protesters adopted a Resolution, which included the following points:(not shown in full):
1. Conduct re-elections of the Soviets with preliminary free agitation of workers and peasants.
2. Freedom of speech and press for peasants, workers, anarchists and left socialist parties.
3. Convene, no later than March 10, a non-party conference of workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd province.
4. Abolish the Political Departments, since no party can enjoy privileges to propagate its ideas and receive funds for this from the state treasury.
5. Abolish combat communist detachments in military units, factories and factories. And if such detachments are needed, then they should be formed in military units from personnel, and in factories and factories at the discretion of the workers.
6. Give peasants the right to land without using hired labor.
7. We ask all military units and military cadets to join our Resolution.
The resolution was adopted by the brigade meeting unanimously with 2 abstentions. It was announced at a citywide meeting in the presence of 16 thousand citizens and adopted unanimously.
Kronstadt mutiny
The day after the rally, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (PRC) was formed. His headquarters was located on the battleship Petropavlovsk. This ship stood next to other military ships in the Kronstadt harbor. They were all frozen in the ice and, as combat units, were nothing of themselves in such conditions. The ships had heavy-duty cannons. But such guns are good for shooting at long distances at enemy warships with thick armor. And shooting at infantry is the same as shooting sparrows from a cannon.
The ships also had small and medium caliber guns and machine guns. But during the Civil War, most of the cartridges and shells were removed from the inactive ships and forts of Kronstadt. There were also not enough rifles, since a sailor was not entitled to a rifle. On military ships it is intended only for guard duty. Thus, the Kronstadt rebellion that began did not have a serious combat base. But the sailors did not plan to conduct hostilities. They only fought for their rights and tried to resolve all issues peacefully.
An ice-bound warship in Kronstadt Bay
The Military Revolutionary Committee was headed by Stepan Maksimovich Petrichenko. He served as a senior clerk on the battleship Petropavlovsk, and when he became the head of the committee, he did not show any special organizational talents. But he managed to organize the publication of the newspaper Izvestia VRK. The headquarters also took under protection all the strategic objects of the city, forts and ships. The latter had radio stations, and they broadcast messages about the uprising in Kronstadt and the Resolution adopted at the rally.
The rebel sailors called their mutiny the third revolution directed against the Bolshevik dictatorship. Agitators were sent to Petrograd, but most of them were arrested. Thus, the Bolshevik government made it clear that there would be no negotiations or concessions to the rebels. In response, they created a defense headquarters, which included specialists from the tsarist army and navy.
Trotsky telegraphed from Petrograd to Kronstadt on March 4. He demanded immediate surrender. In response to this, a meeting was held in the fortress, at which the rebels decided to resist. Armed units with a total number of up to 15 thousand people were created. At the same time, there were also defectors. At least 500 people left the rebellious city before hostilities began.
For the Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt rebellion turned into a serious test. The uprising had to be suppressed urgently, as it could become a detonator and all of Russia could go up in flames. Therefore, all available command personnel and Red Army soldiers loyal to the regime were urgently pulled to the rebellious city. But they were not enough, and then the party sent delegates to the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), which was supposed to begin in Petrograd on March 8, to suppress the rebellion. Trotsky promised all these people medals.
Aspiring writers were also brought to the fortress, assuring that they would all be made classics. They also sent machine gun cadets to suppress the Kremlin and formed a Consolidated Division. The latter gathered those communists who at one time were guilty of something, got drunk, or stole. Many of them were expelled from the party, and now they were given a chance to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Soviet government. The division was headed by Pavel Dybenko.
By March 7, all these units entered the 7th Army under the command of Tukhachevsky. It consisted of 17.5 thousand fighters. The main striking force was considered the Consolidated Division, consisting of 4 brigades. The Omsk 27th Rifle Division also moved towards Kronstadt. In 1919, she took Omsk, freeing it from Kolchak’s troops, and now she had to help cleanse the rebellious fortress from counter-revolutionaries.
Looking ahead, it should be said that in total there were 2 assaults on Kronstadt. The first assault began on the evening of March 7, 1921. By order of Tukhachevsky, artillery fire was opened on the forts of the fortress. It was mainly conducted from the Krasnaya Gorka fort, which remained loyal to Soviet power. In response, guns from the battleship Sevastopol fired. The artillery duel continued throughout the evening, but this “exchange of pleasantries” did not cause any serious losses among the opposing sides.
Early in the morning of March 8, the troops of the 7th Army stormed Kronstadt. However, this attack was repulsed, and some of the attacking units went over to the side of the rebel sailors or refused to carry out the order to attack. At the same time, the shelling of the forts continued. The Bolsheviks even used aircraft to drop bombs on ships frozen in the ice. But all this did not help. By the end of the day, it became clear to the attackers that the assault, which went down in history as the first, had failed.
Red Army soldiers of the 7th Army storm Kronstadt
The Bolsheviks prepared much more thoroughly for the second assault. The Kronstadt rebellion became more and more popular among the people every day, and therefore the second failure could result in hundreds of similar revolts throughout the country. Additional troops were pulled into the area of Kotlin Island and the strength of the 7th Army increased to 42 thousand people.
The military units were diluted with police officers, criminal investigation officers, communists, security officers and deputies of the Tenth Congress. All this was supposed to increase the morale of ordinary Red Army soldiers, who were not very eager to fight against their own. Additional artillery pieces and machine guns arrived from distant garrisons.
The second assault on the rebellious Kronstadt began at 3 a.m. on March 17. This time the attackers acted more coherently and organizedly. They began to storm the forts and take them one by one. Some fortifications held out for several hours, while others surrendered immediately. This was due to the lack of ammunition among the defenders. Where there was very little ammunition, the rebel sailors did not even resist, but left across the ice to Finland.
The flagship battleship Petropavlovsk was subjected to an air raid. Members of the Military Revolutionary Committee were forced to abandon the ship. Some of them led the defense in the city itself, where the Red Army soldiers broke into after the fall of the forts, while others, led by Petrichenko, went to Finland. Street fighting continued until the early morning of March 18. And only by 7 o’clock in the morning the resistance of the rebel sailors in the city ceased.
The Kronstadters who remained on the ships initially decided to blow up all the floating craft so that they would not fall to the Bolsheviks. However, the leaders had already left the ships and gone to Finland, so disagreements began between the sailors. On some ships, the rebels were disarmed, arrested, and arrested communists were released from the holds. After this, the ships began to radio one after another that Soviet power had been restored. The last to surrender was the battleship Petropavlovsk. This was the end of the Kronstadt rebellion.
In total, the 7th Army suffered 532 killed and 3,305 wounded. Of these, 15 people turned out to be delegates to the X Congress. Of the rebels, 1 thousand people died and 2.5 thousand were wounded. About 3 thousand surrendered, and 8 thousand went to Finland. These data are not entirely accurate, since different sources give different numbers of killed and wounded. There is even an opinion that the 7th Army lost about 10 thousand people wounded and killed.
Conclusion
Was the Kronstadt rebellion a senseless meat grinder or did it have some political significance? It became the moment of truth that finally showed the Bolsheviks the futility and destructiveness of the policy of war communism. After the mutiny, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party had an instinct for self-preservation.
Lenin, Trotsky and Voroshilov with deputies of the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), who took part in the suppression of the rebellion in Kronstadt. Lenin in the center, Trotsky to his left, Voroshilov behind Lenin
We must pay tribute to Lenin. He had an extremely resourceful mind that quickly adapted to changing situations. Therefore, after the suppression of the rebellion, Vladimir Ilyich announced the beginning of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Thus, the Bolsheviks killed 2 birds with one stone. They reduced political tensions and stabilized the collapsing economy. Some experts consider the NEP to be the most successful economic project of the Soviet era. And he owed much to the Kronstadt rebellion, which shook the foundations of Soviet power.
Based on universal equal suffrage. Workers protested in the cities. Discontent also spread to the armed forces.
Beginning of the uprising on March 1-2
Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, ruling the country, broke away from the masses and was unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people.
Siege of the fortress March 3-6
Assault March 7-18
Results of the uprising
Most of the defenders of the fortress died in battle, another went to Finland (8 thousand), the rest surrendered (2,103 of them were shot according to the verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals).
The surviving participants in the Kronstadt events were later repeatedly repressed. They were rehabilitated in the 1990s.
Memory of the uprising
Literature
- Semanov S.N. Kronstadt rebellion /S. N. Semanov. - M.: EKSMO: Algorithm, 2003. - 254 p.
- Novikov A.P. Socialist Revolutionary leaders and the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 / A.P. Novikov // Domestic History. - 2007. - No. 4. - P.57 - 64.
- Evrich P. Uprising in Kronstadt. 1921 / P.Evrich; Per. Igorevsky L. A. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007. - 237 p.
see also
Links
- L. Trotsky. Mutiny of the former General Kozlovsky and the ship "Petropavlovsk" (Government message) March 2, 1921
- Caio Brendel Kronstadt - proletarian scion of the Russian Revolution
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
- Kronstadt
- Kronstadt Bay
See what the “Kronstadt rebellion” is in other dictionaries:
Kronstadt mutiny- (Kronstadt Mutiny) (1921), performance of sailors of the Kronstadt garrison against the Bolshevik rule of Russia. The sailors of Kronstadt enthusiastically supported the Bolsheviks in 1917, but in March 1921 they rebelled against the order they considered com... ... The World History
Kronstadt mutiny- Kronsht hell mint hedgehog (1921) ... Russian spelling dictionary
Kronstadt mutiny 1921- armed uprising of the Kronstadt garrison and the crews of some ships of the Baltic Fleet on March 18, 1921, directed against the policies of Soviet power; manifestation of the political crisis of the spring of 1921. Discontent was reflected in the K. m. ... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)
Kronstadt mutiny 1921- Kronstadt mutiny of 1921, an armed uprising of the Kronstadt garrison and the crews of some ships of the Baltic Fleet on March 118, 1921, directed against the policies of Soviet power; manifestation of the political crisis of the spring of 1921. In ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"
REBELLION- REBELLION, mutiny, husband. An armed uprising resulting from a conspiracy against state power. Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. Fascist rebellion of General Frank in Spain in 1936. “The beginning of Peter’s glorious deeds was darkened by riots and executions.” Pushkin... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
Mutiny- Rebellion is a group (mass) armed uprising against the current government, more often reflecting the interests of conservative and even reactionary circles of society (for example, the Frankist rebellion). Contents 1 Application of the term 2 Rebellions of the Ancient World ... Wikipedia
Kronstadt anti-Soviet rebellion 1921- a counter-revolutionary action by the Kronstadt garrison and the crews of some ships of the Baltic Fleet in March 1921, organized by the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and White Guards with the support of foreign imperialists. Was one of... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Kronstadt district of St. Petersburg- City of Kronstadt Coat of Arms ... Wikipedia
KRONSTADT ANTI-SOVIET REBELLION 1921- counter-revolutionary performance of part of the Kronstadt garrison and the crews of the Baltic ships. fleet in the spring of 1921, organized by the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, anarchists and White Guards with the support of foreigners. imperialists. By the end of 1920, in conditions of extremely difficult... Soviet historical encyclopedia
By the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921, things were becoming more and more alarming in the cities. Due to the decrease in bread supplies, the already meager rations were reduced. Due to lack of fuel, 64 large factories stopped operating in Petrograd. The number of workers in Moscow has been reduced by half. Strikes became regular. In Petrograd, rallies and strikes were suppressed by cadets, not troops, due to the unreliability of the army. On February 24, 1921, a state of siege was introduced in the city, and security officers began making mass arrests.
Unrest from Petrograd spread to Kronstadt. Here the crews of the battleships "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" rebelled - the support of the Bolsheviks in 1917. At a crowded meeting of sailors and residents of the fortress on March 1, 1921, a resolution was adopted demanding re-election of the Soviets by secret ballot, freedom of speech "for workers, peasants, anarchists and left socialist parties,” the removal of barrage detachments, “full rights of peasants over the land,” etc. After the arrest of the delegation of Kronstadters sent to Petrograd to familiarize the workers with this resolution, an uprising began in the fortress. The rebels elected a Military Revolutionary Committee of sailors and workers, headed by the senior clerk of the battleship Petropavlovsk Stepan Petrichenko. There were no representatives of the Bolshevik Party in it. The appeal of the Military Revolutionary Committee “to all peasants, workers, sailors and Red Guards” said that “from the bitter experience of the three-year rule of the communists, we have become convinced of what party dictatorship leads to” and therefore we oppose “counter-revolution on the left and right”, we put forward the slogan of the “third revolution” , in order to convince workers in Russia and abroad that “everything that has been done up to now by the will of the workers and peasants was not socialism.”
At least 20 thousand sailors, soldiers and workers took part in the uprising. About a third of the Kronstadt communists joined them, more than one third declared themselves neutral and were arrested, the rest left the fortress. On March 2, 1921, Lenin and Trotsky signed a resolution of the Council of Labor and Defense, which qualified the Kronstadt events as a rebellion prepared by French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the adopted resolution as “Black Hundred-SR.” Kozlovsky and his associates were declared outlaws, and the authorities were ordered to “quickly and decisively” suppress the rebellion. However, no matter how hard the Cheka tried, it did not find any evidence of the participation of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, foreign agents and generals in organizing the uprising.
Lenin demanded the most energetic measures to suppress the rebellion. The operation was led by Commander-in-Chief S. Kamenev, Commander of the Western Front Tukhachevsky and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council Trotsky, who arrived in Petrograd. On March 7, 1921, artillery shelling of Kronstadt and its forts began. The first assault on the fortress from the mainland by the rebels was repulsed. On the night of March 17-18, the Reds began an offensive on the ice of the bay, which ended with the capture of the fortress. Both sides fought desperately. A lot of blood was shed. But if the rebels at one time limited themselves to only arresting communists, the “winners” carried out brutal reprisals. On March 20, the “extraordinary troika” ordered the execution of 167 sailors of the battleship Petropavlovsk who appeared before it. By the summer of 1921, 2,103 people were sentenced to death and 6,459 people to prison.
Kronstadt “like lightning” highlighted the deepest political crisis in Soviet Russia, expressed not only in the discontent of the peasants, but also the workers and soldiers. Realizing that the “petty-bourgeois element” could overthrow the power of the communists, the Bolsheviks abandoned “war communism” and switched to a new economic policy. The civil war was over.
Reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the civil war
The Bolsheviks, despite all the kinks, miscalculations and failures in their policies, still managed to win. One of the main reasons for the end of the civil war in favor of Soviet power was the energetic and consistent actions of the ruling party to build a new statehood. Having created a powerful, ramified and centralized state apparatus, the Bolsheviks skillfully used it to mobilize economic and human resources for the needs of the front, to achieve fragile and relative, but still stability in the rear. The white movement, on the contrary, having become fully involved in the fighting, had little success in forming a mechanism of its own power. A. Denikin said that not a single one of the anti-Bolshevik governments “was able to create a flexible and strong apparatus that could quickly and quickly overtake, coerce, and act. The Bolsheviks also did not become a national phenomenon, but they were infinitely ahead of us in the pace of their actions, in energy, mobility and ability to coerce. We, with our old techniques, old psychology, old vices of the military and civil bureaucracy, with Peter’s table of ranks, could not keep up with them...” The characterization is generally correct. One thing we cannot agree with Denikin is that the Bolsheviks, like the Whites, “did not capture the people’s soul.” On the contrary, millions of Russians enthusiastically embraced the ideas of social justice, overthrowing the power of masters and creating a state for working people. The slogans under which the revolution took place were close, understandable and desirable for them. The energetic organizational, propaganda and ideological work of the Bolsheviks among the masses confirmed the well-known truth that in political, and especially in military struggle, it is not enough to have bright, lofty ideas: it is necessary that these ideas become the property of millions of people, organized and ready to go into battle for them.
“For the sake of defending the revolution,” the Italian historian D. Boffa rightly writes, “which proclaimed great and simple slogans, the masses endured unprecedented torment and showed true heroism.” Indeed, hundreds of thousands, and by the end of the Civil War, millions of Red Army soldiers went into battle not only for the “Red Army ration” or under the threat of “decimation” and the machine guns of the detachments, but also attracted by the prospects of a new life, free from the exploitation of the propertied classes, based on the principles of equality, justice, on ideas that echoed the Christian commandments preached for centuries by the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Bolsheviks were able to convince huge masses of people that! they are the only defenders of Russia's national independence, and this played a decisive role in their victory over the White movement. Contemporaries of the events, of varying political orientations, spoke and wrote about this with bitterness. Thus, one of the ideologists of “Smenovekhism,” N. Ustryalov, wrote that “the anti-Bolshevik movement... tied itself too closely with foreign elements and therefore surrounded Bolshevism with a certain national aura, essentially alien to its nature.” Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (cousin of Nicholas 11), who rejected the change of leadership, a monarchist by birth and by conviction, noted in his memoirs that the leaders of the White movement, “pretending that they did not notice the intrigues of the allies,” themselves brought matters to the point that “None other than the internationalist Lenin stood guard over Russian national interests, who in his constant speeches spared no effort to protest against the division of the former Russian Empire...” History would have it so that the Bolsheviks, indifferent to the idea of a united Russia, essentially did not allow the country to disintegrate. The famous politician V. Shulgin believed that the Bolsheviks raised the banner of Russian unity by unconsciously submitting to the “White Thought,” which, “crept across the front, conquered their subconscious.” Just as the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk at the initial stage of the civil war alienated millions of people who were offended in their patriotic feelings from the Bolsheviks, so the allied relations of the White Guards with the interventionists alienated ever larger sections of the population from them.
There was no unity in the anti-Bolshevik movement. It was weakened by contradictions between leaders, disagreements with the Entente and the national outskirts. A united anti-Bolshevik front did not work out, and the white generals, being good tacticians, but, as it turned out, weak politicians, were unable to unite all the forces that fought against Soviet power. The Bolsheviks, on the contrary, acted as a single united force, ideologically and organizationally subordinate to iron discipline, inspired by an unshakable determination to win.
The civil war cost Russia dearly. Fighting, red and white terror, famine, epidemics and other disasters reduced the country's population by 13 million people by 1923, and taking into account the sharp decline in the birth rate, the country lost 23 million human lives compared to 1917. Cities and villages were filled with millions of cripples, orphans, homeless people, people who had lost their homes and families. In Soviet historiography, the civil war was presented as a chronicle of exploits, dedication, heroism and other manifestations of the human spirit of revolutionaries. The Russian writer M. Osorgin, who found himself in exile, described with remarkable accuracy the complexity and drama of the era of the civil war: “Two fraternal armies stood against the wall, and each had its own truth and its own honor. The truth of those who considered both the Motherland and the revolution to be desecrated by a new despotism and a new, only repainted in a different color, violence - and the truth of those who understood the Motherland differently and understood the revolution differently and who saw their desecration not in an obscene peace with the Germans, but in deception of people's hopes... There were heroes here and there; and pure hearts too, and sacrifices, and exploits, and bitterness, and lofty, out-of-the-book humanity - and animal brutality, and fear, and disappointment, and strength, and weakness, and terrible despair. It would be too simple for living people, and for history, if there was only one truth and fought only with lies: but there were two truths and two honors, and the battlefield was littered with the corpses of the best and most honest.” Yes, all this happened, but on both sides and for different reasons. The civil war is not only a class war, but above all a fratricidal war. This is a tragedy of the people, bursting into every Russian family with the pain of irrevocable loved ones and relatives, grief, deprivation and suffering.
At the end of 1920-1921, completely exhausted from the Bolshevik dictatorship, the most “revolutionary” areas, the support of the communists in previous years, began to rebel. They rose to the Don " Mironovsky» Ust-Medveditsky and Khopersky districts. In the Voronezh province - Bogucharsky district, where troops were usually formed to fight the Don Cossacks. Perm and Motovilikha, led by an ultra-revolutionary, were seething in the Urals Myasnikov, who shot the Grand Duke in 1918 Mikhail Alexandrovich and buried Archbishop Andronik alive. In Siberia, the partisan regions turned against the Reds, brutally killing surplus appropriation agents. In Crimea, “Bolshevik” villages, which under Wrangel were bases for underground fighters, after the first raid food detachments They began to shelter the surviving officers and transport them to the mountains to the “greens”.
Those who allowed themselves to be stupefied by the illusions of a communist paradise rebelled. The deception of these illusions now began to be revealed more and more clearly. However, the fatal circumstance was the fragmentation of the popular movement against the Leninists. Tracing the geography of anti-Bolshevik protests in 1918-1921, we will see that almost all regions of the country rebelled, but not at the same time. Some areas were suppressed earlier, in others the protest broke out only at the end civil war. The resourcefulness of their policy, the principle of “divide and conquer,” also made it possible to maintain the dominance of the Bolsheviks. To pacify the Bogucharians, in 1921 they abandoned the Don Cossacks, whom these Bogucharians themselves had suppressed before.
Lenin demanded that airplanes and armored cars be used against peasant “gangs.” In the Tambov region, riot participants were poisoned with asphyxiating gases.
One of the most important events of the popular anti-communist movement was the Kronstadt uprising (in Soviet literature - the Kronstadt rebellion). It also broke out in one of the main centers of past “revolutionism.” At the turn of 1920-21, Russian cities were in hunger and poverty. There was a shortage of fuel everywhere, even Baku was without kerosene. Petrograd workers received only a quarter of a pound of bread a day - malnutrition assumed almost the same proportions as during the later German blockade of the city. At the end of February 1921, a wide strike began in Petrograd. Military cadets were deployed against the workers, and martial law and a curfew were introduced in the city. Cheka began mass arrests, but the unrest did not stop. For a whole week, Soviet newspapers remained deathly silent about them, and then the Bolshevik scribblers began to blame the discontent on “White Guards, Black Hundred gangs, spies, England-France-Poland,” on “chatterboxes and whisperers.” It was seriously said that hunger and cold in Petrograd were “prepared by the destructive work Social Revolutionaries And Mensheviks" Citizens were encouraged to “report suspicious persons to the Military Council of the Fortified Area.”
From Petrograd, strikes spread to Moscow factories. Workers tried to organize demonstrations in front of the Red Army barracks. The administration began to close factories, and armed guards were created from members of the RCP in order to prevent possible mass protests. The Moscow Soviet agitated heart-rendingly: “Down with the Entente provocateurs! Only united work will lead us out of poverty. No whisperers will seduce the working class from the path of socialist revolution!”
The beginning of the Kronstadt "rebellion"
Was going to Moscow X Communist Party Congress, and the workers of the largest cities just these days loudly demanded the abolition of war communism, the convening Constituent Assembly, multi-party system and coalition government. As the movement grew in Petrograd, discontent began to grow rapidly in Kronstadt, a military fortress whose garrison numbered almost 27 thousand people. The Local Council, led by the Communists, did not enjoy any authority among the Kronstadters, but they did not allow it to be re-elected. The movement here began with a meeting of the crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol on February 28, 1921. The sailors supported the demands of the Petrograd workers and, following the example of 1917, elected Military Revolutionary Committee. It was led by sailor Stepan Petrichenko. The main demands of the “rebels” were: “The councils must become non-partisan and represent the working people; Down with the carefree life of the bureaucracy, down with the bayonets and bullets of the guardsmen, the serfdom of the commissar state and the state-owned trade unions!” The fact of the Kronstadt uprising was hidden by the Bolsheviks for three days, and when it became impossible to remain silent, it was declared a mutiny of one staff general (Kozlovsky), allegedly prepared by French counterintelligence. The Bolsheviks inspired that with the hands of Kronstadt “the White Guards and Black Hundreds want to strangle the revolution.” Trotsky declared: the uprising was raised with the aim of disrupting our peace with Poland and a trade agreement with England.
Stepan Petrichenko - head of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt
The sailor "mutiny" was not accompanied by severe cruelty. The Kronstadters did not kill their communists, but only arrested them, and even then a smaller part - 327 out of 1116. But the Bolshevik bosses were terribly frightened. Kronstadt protected access to Petrograd from outside invasion. The Kronstadt garrison was previously among the troops most loyal to communism, and others could follow it. A large army of rebels (much more than they had Yudenich!) near the “cradle of the revolution”, with powerful fortress and naval artillery, was very dangerous. The Leninists immediately arrested the families of the rebels in Petrograd as hostages, but the frightened communist Council of Labor and Defense hastened to issue a decree on the purchase of food for workers abroad for 10 million. “Reliable” troops were hastily drawn to the scene of events, and unreliable ones were withdrawn further away. Several thousand sailors stationed in Petrograd were sent in trains to Sevastopol, which did not accept them, fearing anti-Soviet sentiments. The trains stopped in Aleksandrovsk (Zaporozhye), where the sailors wandered around the city, loudly cursing the communists. Ferment began among local workers, and trains were sent to Melitopol. They were driven throughout the south until the “rebellion” was suppressed.
An attempt was made to calm the Kronstadters with persuasion. But the sailors could tear apart the hated head of Petrograd, the Jew Zinoviev. The seemingly simple-minded Russian Kalinin was sent to persuade them. However, his speech to the rebels on Anchor Square on March 1, 1921 failed. Kalinin barely left for home.
The main mistake of the rebels was indecision. The insurgent Kronstadt held a meeting without taking active actions, “so as not to shed unnecessary blood,” and the Petrograd factories hesitated to raise their weapons until the armed Kronstadters arrived. The Communists, taking advantage of this hitch, quickly pulled up artillery and created two military groups - at Oranienbaum and Lisiy Nos. However, in Oranienbaum, a regiment of Red Army soldiers refused to move against the rebels, and every fifth one in it was ordered to be shot.
Arrived in Petrograd Trotsky And Stalin. Tukhachevsky was sent to directly command the troops. On March 5, 1921, the Bolshevik elite presented an ultimatum to Kronstadt: to lay down arms without any conditions, otherwise there will be a merciless defeat. Leaflets of this ultimatum were scattered over Kronstadt by a special airplane. The fortress, which had a lot of weapons, was vulnerable because it did not have supplies of food and fuel. The Russian emigration began collecting funds to purchase food for the Kronstadt residents. Alexander Guchkov from Paris appealed to the US President with a request to urgently transfer 6 thousand tons of food from Finland from the warehouses of the Hoover organization to Kronstadt, but this was not done.
A famous Socialist Revolutionary arrived in Revel Chernov, planning to create three detachments of 300 people from Yudenich’s remaining White Guards in Estonia, which would become the organizing cores for the attack on Yamburg, Pskov and Gdov. Representatives also came here Savinkova, Wrangel, Tchaikovsky. But the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow, out of socialist solidarity with the communists, hastened to dissociate itself from its foreign leaders. The Kronstadt residents also avoided Chernov’s offers to help. The Bolshevik press assured that Wrangel intended to transfer his entire army, recently evacuated from Crimea, to Petrograd. But these rumors were a shameless lie: the White movement, left without funds, did not have the capabilities for such an operation. Russia's former allies in the Entente, on whom concrete steps depended, were inactive. The Anglo-French squadron in Copenhagen (14 ships) was put on alert, but never moved. And it consisted of small ships and was not intended for serious action.
On March 7, hostilities began. Over two days, more than 5 thousand shells were fired. On the night of March 8, 1921, an assault followed. The Red Army soldiers were thrown into battle crawling through the ice, but they were repulsed by the fire of the fortress and ships.
Demands of the rebels of Kronstadt
After the assault, an appeal was drawn up from the residents of Kronstadt and the fortress garrison to the Soviet population. It said:
Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken.
These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end. This will of all workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors was definitely carried out at the garrison meeting of our city on Tuesday, March 1st. At this meeting, the resolution of the naval commands of the 1st and 2nd brigades was unanimously adopted. Among the decisions taken was the decision to immediately hold re-elections to the Council. To conduct these elections on fairer grounds, namely, so that the workers find true representation in the Council, so that the Council is an active, energetic body.
March 2 p.m. Delegates from all maritime, Red Army and workers' organizations gathered in the House of Education. At this meeting it was proposed to work out the basis for new elections in order to then begin the peaceful work of rebuilding the Soviet system. But due to the fact that there were reasons to fear reprisals, as well as due to the threatening speeches of government officials, the meeting decided to form a Provisional Revolutionary Committee, to which it would transfer all powers to govern the city and the fortress.
The Temporary Committee has a stay on the battleship Petropavlovsk.
Comrades and citizens! The Provisional Committee is concerned that not a single drop of blood will be shed. He took emergency measures to organize revolutionary order in the city, fortresses and forts.
Comrades and citizens! Don't interrupt your work. Workers! Stay at your machines, sailors and Red Army soldiers in their units and at the forts. All Soviet workers and institutions continue their work. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee calls on all workers' organizations, all workshops, all trade unions, all military and naval units and individual citizens to provide it with all possible support and assistance. The task of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, through friendly and common efforts, is to organize in the city and fortress the conditions for correct and fair elections to the new Council.
So, comrades, to order, to calm, to restraint, to new, honest socialist construction for the benefit of all working people.
Chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee: Petrichenko
Secretary: Tukin
Suppression of the Kronstadt uprising
Fearing that many of their units would go over to the rebels, the Bolsheviks strengthened party influence in them. The panic-stricken Tenth Congress even sent a third of the delegates (more than 300 people), all military, to suppress the uprising. On March 16, a new artillery duel followed, and on the night of March 17, a second assault. Shock groups from Oranienbaum and Lisiy Nos in camouflage suits began secretly moving across the ice. They were discovered too late. Despite heavy losses, they broke into Kronstadt. 25 Bolshevik airplanes raided the battleship Petropavlovsk. After brutal hand-to-hand fighting, the uprising was suppressed. The lack of unity among the “rebels” had an effect. Some fought to the death, for some others the Reds still remained “theirs.” The lack of discipline and good command also had an effect - otherwise would they have defeated so quickly a garrison that was numerically larger than Wrangel’s entire Crimean army and settled in a fortress much stronger than Perekop? Some of the rebels crossed the ice to Finland, while others surrendered. On March 18, the Bolsheviks occupied Kronstadt completely.
Red Army soldiers in camouflage suits attack across the ice against the rebel Kronstadt (March 1921)
The Bolsheviks punished the Kronstadters with their usual bestial cruelty. Only on the first day after the capture of the fortress, about 300 “rebels” were shot, not counting those killed in battle. It is not known exactly how many were executed later, how many hostages died. According to official data, more than 2,100 people were sentenced to death. However, in St. Petersburg, one of the streets still bears the “honorary” name of the security officer V. Trefolev, the chairman of the revolutionary tribunal that tried the Kronstadters. In the fortress itself, since 1984, an eternal flame has been burning over the grave of the punishers who died during the assault.
During the days of the Kronshadt uprising, the famous “flexibility” of Lenin’s policy manifested itself. Seeing that the popular movement was taking on dangerous proportions, the Soviet leader literally changed his party course within a week. On March 8, 1921, at the X Congress, he also stated:
“Free trade will immediately lead to White Guard rule, to the victory of capitalism, to its complete restoration,”
and Pravda then wrote that free trade would lead to “hunger for the working masses and gluttony for the bourgeoisie.” But by the end of the congress, Lenin had already convinced the delegates that there was nothing wrong with free trade, since “power remains with the working class.” The “Kronstadt rebellion” and other popular uprisings forced the Bolsheviks to break with the popularly cursed “war communism” and, reluctantly, to proclaim a policy at the same X Congress NEP. This concession was designed not only for the Kronstadters, but to pacify Petrograd, to ensure that the rebellion did not cause a new powerful peasant explosion, to calm the Red Army, which consisted of the same peasants. The real introduction of the NEP, the replacement of the surplus appropriation system tax in kind, then tightened it in every possible way. In the former “white” regions, even in 1921, surplus appropriation was collected under the pretext of their “debts.”
The claims of Soviet scribblers about a “conspiracy” in Kronstadt do not stand up to criticism. The Kronstadt movement was purely spontaneous. What sane conspirator would start an uprising in early March, instead of waiting a couple of weeks? The melting ice of the Gulf of Finland would have made the fortress impregnable for many months, and the rebels themselves would have had complete freedom of action, having the entire fleet at their disposal. That is why emigrants cared about food aid.
But the communists could not openly admit that “the beauty and pride of the revolution,” the sailors, themselves rebelled against their party. Another explanation was required - an insidious conspiracy. In March 1921 Central Committee of the RCP(b) And SNK They set the security officers the task of “exposing the real organizers of the Kronstadt rebellion.” And so the case of “ Tagantsev conspiracy" The security officers involved in it stated that they had allegedly uncovered the “Petrograd Combat Organization” with extensive foreign connections and plans to overthrow Soviet power throughout Russia.
The exaggeration of this case is obvious. There were only 36 military personnel in the “organization” - and with such weak professional forces, it allegedly intended to capture Petrograd, Bologoe, Staraya Russa, Rybinsk, and Dno in the fall. On August 24, 1921, 61 people – “active participants” in the conspiracy – were shot. Even in the KGB case, their guilt was indicated: “was present”, “knew”, “delivered letters”, “delivered information about information to organizations for transfer abroad” museum affairs"... Who became the victims? Professors V.N. Tagantsev, M.M. Tikhvinsky, N.I. Lazarevsky - geologist, chemist, lawyer. Famous poet N. S. Gumilev. Sculptor S. A. Ukhtomsky. Officers V. G. Shvedov, Yu. P. German, P. P. Ivanov. Factory electrician A. S. Vekk. 16 women aged from 20 to 60 years - of which 4 were “accomplices in the case” husbands»...
Arrests in the “Tagantsev case” continued until November, they were directed personally by Lenin. Prominent people were caught in the meat grinder. Many petitions were sent to Lenin on their behalf, but he invariably rejected these requests. The Kronstadt uprising was used as a pretext for a new terrible blow to the flower of the Russian intelligentsia.