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| Review of "Kronstadt 1917-1921" by Israel Getzler |
"Red Kronstadt," a town and naval base outside St. Petersburg (aka Petrograd, Leningrad), was a center of revolutionary activity throughout the Russian Revolution. In February 1917 its workers, sailors and soldiers overthrew its Tsarist authorities and invested power in a revolutionary Soviet. In July 1917 a delegation of Kronstadters traveled to Petrograd to join the "July Days" demonstrations in an unsuccessful attempt to force the Petrograd Soviet to take power as the Kronstadt Soviet had. Kronstadters took part in the October 1917 coup that brought the Bolsheviks to power. In January 1918 Kronstadters shut down the Constituent Assembly on Lenin's orders. And, most famously, in March 1921, the Kronstadters rebelled against Lenin's Bolshevik dictatorship, proclaiming that it had betrayed the Revolution and degenerated into a tyrannical despotism.
Much has been written about the 1921 Kronstadt mutiny and its brutal suppression by the Bolsheviks. However, not much was written about Kronstadt itself, about the new society that the revolutionaries tried to create in 1917, until Israel Getzler's Kronstadt 1917 - 1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy was first published twenty years ago. Unlike most books about Kronstadt, which focus on the 1921 mutiny, Getzler concentrates on Kronstadt's "golden age" from February 1917 to the early months of 1918. He investigates in great detail the events at the base and in Petrograd in that year, and takes a long look at the new social and political order constructed by the Kronstadters after February.
In brief, Getzler presents a vibrant multi-party Soviet democracy, which flourished in Red Kronstadt from the February Revolution until it was strangled by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Readers will find his lengthy and detailed descriptions of Soviet elections and sessions either tedious or fascinating; I definitely felt the latter. Getzler's account of the Civil War years (1918 - 1920) and Kronstadt's "Third Revolution" are much shorter than his analysis of its golden age. During the civil war, the Kronstadters were willing to go along with the Bolsheviks and their dictatorship in order to defeat the Counterrevolutionary White armies. After the end of the Civil War, however, the Kronstadters judged the Bolshevik dictatorship on its own merits, resulting in their catastrophic 1921 revolt.
Getzler describes this revolt as the Kronstadters' desperate attempt to restore their Socialist democracy of 1917. His analysis of the continuity between the 1917 Revolution and the 1921 mutiny (both in terms of ideology and personnel) demolishes the Bolsheviks' dogmatic interpretations of the revolt and their claims that the Kronstadt of 1917 - the 'pride and glory of the Russian Revolution' - was not the same as the 'traitorous and counterrevolutionary' Kronstadt of 1921. Those who are looking for a more detailed history of the mutiny itself would do well to consult Paul Avrich's Kronstadt, 1921.
In the preface to the 1983 edition, Getzler complains that his research was hampered by the unwillingness of the Soviet authorities to grant him access to their archives. I don't know whether the new 2002 edition of this book includes additional research. It would be wonderful if Getzler has been able to improve this book with new resources, but even if this is not the case, Kronstadt 1917 - 1921 remains by far the best analysis of Kronstadt's period of multi-party Soviet Socialist democracy in existence. It should thrill all those who are interested in Socialism or the Russian Revolution.
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on July 16 2008 19:21:20
I must disagree strongly with the book's claim that the 1921 Kronstadt uprising was a fight to regain Socialism after Bolshevik oppression. Historians, such as Victor Serge in his work "Once More: Kronstadt" admit that although the tactics of the Bolsheviks were mostly brutal, there is proof that the leaders of the 1921 uprising were cooperating with White Forces, who had no intent to see a Socialist government in Russia. |
on July 22 2008 07:23:49
Victor Serge wrote "Once More: Kronstadt" in the late 1930s. Needless to say, far more (and better) information has come to light in the seventy years since then. For what it's worth, Serge himself later described the story that the Kronstadt revolt was the work of Whites as "an atrocious lie... The worst of it all was that we were paralyzed by official falsehoods. It had never happened before that our own [Bolshevik] Party should lie to us like this. 'It's necessary for the benefit of the people,' said some, who were nonetheless horror-stricken at it all." This is in Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1944, the 1963 edition, page 124.
To my knowledge, the best evidence that Whites had anything to do with the Kronstadt uprising is a letter found by Paul Avrich, and discussed in his Kronstadt 1921. This was a letter from one exiled White to another, and merely predicted a revolt at Kronstadt in general terms. Given that the counter-revolutionary exiles had a habit of predicting anti-Bolshevik revolts pretty much everywhere and at all times, this is very weak evidence of any sort of conniving, communication, or cooperation.
A telling factoid is that the Kronstadters were so keen to avoid any potential association or cooperation with counter-revolutionary forces that they did not even accept shipments of food or medicine from the Red Cross -- let alone any sort of aid, military or otherwise, from Whites.
But the issue is largely irrelevant in any case, because the Kronstadt leaders were not nearly as significant in the uprising as the rank and file (including the Kronstadt Bolsheviks, who made up about a third of the insurgent Soviet, including its chairman), who were the base of the uprising and supported it overwhelmingly, with the goal of restoring socialism, not otherthrowing it. Indeed, they initially did not expect such a violent response from the Bolshevik authorities, welcoming visiting Bolshevik leaders with "music, banners, and a military guard of honor" (Avrich, page 77).
I strongly recommend you read this work before dismissing its conclusions (not merely "claims") out of hand. Getzler provides by far the most logical and consistent explanation of the origins and motives of the Kronstadt revolt, in addition to far more interesting information on the actual construction and functioning of a soviet democracy during the revolutionary period of 1917.
I discuss the 1921 uprising itself in more detail in http://daschaich.homelinux.net/writings/serious/kronstadt1921.pdf. |
on July 26 2008 05:04:58
I read the link, and it is intriguing. Honestly, I've been reading pamphlets from Trotskyist groups, particularly the International Bolshevik Tendency, who still hold claim that Kronstadt was a White plot. Your argument is well founded, and I must say it baffles me a bit...... |
on January 11 2010 20:29:59
This one is tough.. How can we really definitively prove what happened exactly? If the Bolsheviks went on to spark a world revolution, I'd say their perhaps brutal suppression was justified. Still, thats not how the story ends... I don't know. |
on January 17 2010 00:42:52
The prospects for world revolution were pretty much dead by 1921, and the suppression of Kronstadt helped put another nail in that coffin. Nor do I think the facts are in much doubt, even though they were obfuscated for many years by attempts to unconditionally defend the Soviet Union.
It's an important point, often overlooked, that the Kronstadters were not counter-revolutionary or even anti-Bolshevik. (Indeed, most of the island's Bolsheviks took part in the "uprising".) Their goal was to return the Russian Revolution to its initial promises and practices, now that the emergencies of the civil war were lifting.
Getzler illustrates this nicely by focusing on the period 1917-1918, unlike most books about Kronstadt, which focus on the 1921 "uprising".
I've taken to using scare-quotes with "uprising" to emphasize how surprisingly non-confrontational it was. Many people think of Kronstadt as a valiant charge against totalitarianism, but the Kronstadters seem to have expected their proposed reforms (the "Petropavlovsk Resolution") to be well-received, and were surprised at the violent response they encountered from the authorities. |
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