Start in science. Kronstadt uprising (“rebellion”) (1921) Demand of participants in the Kronstadt uprising of 1921
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 Civil War over most of Russia has ended. 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, which Soviet authority 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.
95 years ago, Trotsky and Tukhachevsky drowned in blood the uprising of the Baltic sailors who stood up for the St. Petersburg workers
March 18, 1921 will forever go down as a black date in the history of Russia. Three and a half years after the proletarian revolution, which proclaimed the main values of the new state to be Freedom, Labor, Equality, Brotherhood, the Bolsheviks, with cruelty unprecedented under the tsarist regime, dealt with one of the first protests of workers for their social rights.
Kronstadt, which dared to demand re-election of the soviets - “due to the fact that real soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants” - was drenched in blood. As a result of a punitive expedition led by Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, more than a thousand military sailors were killed, and 2,103 people were shot without trial by special tribunals. What were the Kronstadters guilty of before their “native Soviet power”?
Hatred for the snickering bureaucracy
Not long ago, all archival materials related to the “case of the Kronstadt mutiny” were declassified. And although most of them were collected by the victorious side, an unbiased researcher will easily understand that protest sentiments in Kronstadt worsened to a large extent due to the outright lordliness and rudeness of the snickering party bureaucracy.
In 1921, the economic situation in the country was extremely difficult. The difficulties are clear - National economy destroyed by civil war and Western intervention. But the way the Bolsheviks began to fight them outraged the majority of workers and peasants, who had given so much for the dream of a social state. Instead of “partnerships,” the government began to create so-called Labor Armies, which became a new form of militarization and enslavement.
The transfer of workers and employees to the position of mobilized workers was complemented by the use of the Red Army in the economy, which was forced to participate in the restoration of transport, fuel extraction, loading and unloading operations and other activities. The policy of war communism reached its climax in agriculture, when the surplus appropriation system discouraged the peasant from growing a crop that would still be taken away completely. Villages were dying out, cities were emptying.
For example, the number of residents of Petrograd decreased from 2 million 400 thousand people at the end of 1917 to 500 thousand people by 1921. Number of workers per industrial enterprises over the same period it decreased from 300 thousand to 80 thousand. The phenomenon of labor desertion gained gigantic proportions. The IX Congress of the RCP (b) in April 1920 was even forced to call for the creation of penal work teams from captured deserters or to imprison them in concentration camps. But this practice only exacerbated social contradictions. Workers and peasants increasingly had cause for discontent: what were they fighting for?! If in 1917 a worker received 18 rubles a month from the “damned” tsarist regime, then in 1921 - only 21 kopecks. At the same time, the cost of bread increased several thousand times - to 2,625 rubles per 400 grams by 1921. True, workers received rations: 400 grams of bread per day for a worker and 50 grams for a representative of the intelligentsia. But in 1921, the number of such lucky ones sharply decreased: in St. Petersburg alone, 93 enterprises were closed, 30 thousand workers out of the 80 thousand available by that time were unemployed, and therefore doomed along with their families to starvation.
And nearby, the new “red bureaucracy” lived well-fed and cheerfully, having come up with special rations and special salaries, as modern bureaucrats now call it, bonuses for effective management. The sailors were especially outraged by the behavior of their “proletarian” Commander of the Baltic Fleet Fyodor Raskolnikov (real name Ilyin) and his young wife Larisa Reisner, who became the head of cultural education of the Baltic Fleet. “We are building a new state. People need us,” she declared frankly. “Our activity is creative, and therefore it would be hypocrisy to deny ourselves what always goes to people in power.”
Poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky recalled that when he came to Larisa Reisner in the apartment of the former naval minister Grigorovich, which she occupied, he was amazed by the abundance of objects and utensils - carpets, paintings, exotic fabrics, bronze Buddhas, majolica dishes, English books, bottles of French perfume. And the hostess herself was dressed in a robe stitched with heavy gold threads. The couple did not deny themselves anything - a car from the imperial garage, a wardrobe from the Mariinsky Theater, a whole staff of servants.
The permissiveness of the authorities especially disturbed workers and military personnel. At the end of February 1921, the largest plants and factories in Petrograd went on strike. The workers demanded not only bread and firewood, but also free elections to the Soviets. The demonstrations, by order of the then St. Petersburg leader Zinoviev, were immediately dispersed, but rumors of the events reached Kronstadt. The sailors sent delegates to Petrograd who were amazed by what they saw - factories and factories were surrounded by troops, activists were arrested.
On February 28, 1921, at a meeting of the battleship brigade in Kronstadt, sailors spoke out in defense of the Petrograd workers. The crews demanded freedom of labor and trade, freedom of speech and press, and free elections to the Soviets. Instead of the dictatorship of communists - democracy, instead of appointed commissars - judicial committees. Terror of the Cheka - stop. Let the communists remember who made the revolution, who gave them power. Now it's time to return power to the people.
"Silent" rebels
To maintain order in Kronstadt and organize the defense of the fortress, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (PRC) was created, headed by sailor Petrichenko, in addition to whom the committee included his deputy Yakovenko, Arkhipov (machine foreman), Tukin (master of the electromechanical plant) and Oreshin (head of the labor school).
From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (PRK) of Kronstadt: “Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have kept 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. With those worries that Lately took place in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses, it was not considered. 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.”
However, the Military Revolutionary Committee did not go further than this, hoping that the support of “the whole people” would itself solve all the problems. Kronstadt officers joined the uprising and advised to immediately attack Oranienbaum and Petrograd, capture the Krasnaya Gorka fort and the Sestroretsk area. But neither the members of the Revolutionary Committee nor the ordinary rebels were going to leave Kronstadt, where they felt safe behind the armor of the battleships and the concrete of the forts. Their passive position subsequently led to a quick defeat.
“Gift” to the X Congress
At first, the situation in Petrograd was almost hopeless. There is unrest in the city. The small garrison is demoralized. There is nothing to storm Kronstadt with. The chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Leon Trotsky, and the “victor of Kolchak,” Mikhail Tukhachevsky, urgently arrived in Petrograd. To storm Kronstadt, the 7th Army, which defeated Yudenich, was immediately restored. Its number is increased to 45 thousand people. The well-oiled propaganda machine is starting to work in full force.
Tukhachevsky, 1927
On March 3, Petrograd and the province were declared under a state of siege. The uprising is declared to be a conspiracy of the undead tsarist generals. Appointed chief rebel General Kozlovsky- Chief of Kronstadt artillery. Hundreds of relatives of Kronstadt residents became hostages of the Cheka. From the family of General Kozlovsky alone, 27 people were captured, including his wife, five children, distant relatives and acquaintances. Almost everyone received camp sentences.
General Kozlovsky
Petrograd workers' rations were urgently increased, and the unrest in the city subsided.
On March 5, Mikhail Tukhachevsky is ordered to “suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible before the opening of the Tenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).” The 7th Army was reinforced with armored trains and air detachments. Not trusting the local regiments, Trotsky called the proven 27th Division from Gomel, setting the date for the assault - March 7.
Exactly on this day, artillery shelling of Kronstadt began, and on March 8, units of the Red Army launched an assault. The advancing Red Army soldiers were driven into the attack by barrage detachments, but they did not help either - having encountered the fire of the Kronstadt cannons, the troops turned back. One battalion immediately went over to the side of the rebels. But in the area of Zavodskaya Harbor, a small detachment of Reds managed to break through. They reached the Petrovsky Gate, but were immediately surrounded and taken prisoner. The first assault on Kronstadt failed.
Panic began among the party members. Hatred towards them swept the entire country. The uprising is blazing not only in Kronstadt - peasant and Cossack revolts are blowing up the Volga region, Siberia, Ukraine, and the North Caucasus. The rebels destroy food detachments, and the hated Bolshevik appointees are expelled or shot. Workers are on strike even in Moscow. At this time, Kronstadt became the center of the new Russian revolution.
Bloody assault
On March 8, Lenin made a closed report at the congress about the failure in Kronstadt, calling the rebellion a threat that in many ways exceeded the actions of both Yudenich and Kornilov combined. The leader proposed to send some of the delegates directly to Kronstadt. Of the 1,135 people who gathered for the congress in Moscow, 279 party workers, led by K. Voroshilov and I. Konev, left for battle formations on Kotlin Island. Also, a number of provincial committees of Central Russia sent their delegates and volunteers to Kronstadt.
But in a political sense, the performance of the Kronstadters has already brought important changes. At the Tenth Congress, Lenin announced the New Economic Policy - free trade and small private production were allowed, surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind, but the Bolsheviks were not going to share power with anyone.
Military echelons reached Petrograd from all over the country. But two regiments of the Omsk Rifle Division rebelled: “We don’t want to fight against our sailor brothers!” The Red Army soldiers abandoned their positions and rushed along the highway to Peterhof.
Red cadets from 16 Petrograd military universities were sent to suppress the rebellion. The fugitives were surrounded and forced to lay down their arms. To restore order, special departments in the troops were reinforced with Petrograd security officers. Special departments of the Southern Group of Forces worked tirelessly - unreliable units were disarmed, hundreds of Red Army soldiers were arrested. On March 14, 1921, another 40 Red Army soldiers were shot in front of the formation to intimidate, and on March 15, another 33. The rest were lined up and forced to shout “Give me Kronstadt!”
On March 16, the congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ended in Moscow, and Tukhachevsky’s artillery began artillery preparation. When it became completely dark, the shelling stopped, and at 2 o’clock in the morning the infantry, in complete silence, moved in marching columns along the ice of the bay. Following the first echelon, the second echelon followed at a regular interval, then the third, reserve one.
The Kronstadt garrison desperately defended itself - the streets were crossed with barbed wire and barricades. Targeted fire was conducted from the attics, and when the chains of Red Army soldiers came close, the machine guns in the basements came to life. Often the rebels launched counterattacks. By five o'clock in the evening on March 17, the attackers were driven out of the city. And then the last reserve of the assault was thrown across the ice - the cavalry, which chopped the sailors, intoxicated by the ghost of victory, into cabbages. On March 18, the rebel fortress fell.
Red troops entered Kronstadt as an enemy city. That same night, 400 people were shot without trial, and the next morning the revolutionary tribunals began working. The commandant of the fortress was the former Baltic sailor Dybenko. During his “reign,” 2,103 people were shot, and six and a half thousand were sent to camps. For this he received his first military award - the Order of the Red Banner. And a few years later he was shot by the same authorities for his connections with Trotsky and Tukhachevsky.
Features of the uprising
In fact, only a part of the sailors rebelled; later the garrisons of several forts and individual inhabitants from the city joined the rebels. There was no unity of sentiment; if the entire garrison had supported the rebels, it would have been much more difficult to suppress the uprising in the most powerful fortress and more blood would have been shed. The sailors of the Revolutionary Committee did not trust the garrisons of the forts, so over 900 people were sent to Fort “Reef”, 400 each to “Totleben” and “Obruchev”. Commandant of Fort “Totleben” Georgy Langemak, the future Chief Engineer RNII and one of the “fathers” of Katyusha, categorically refused to obey the Revolutionary Committee, for which he was arrested and sentenced to death.
The demands of the rebels were pure nonsense and could not be fulfilled in the conditions of the Civil War and Intervention that had just ended. Let’s say the slogan “Soviets without Communists”: Communists made up almost the entire State Apparatus, the backbone of the Red Army (400 thousand out of 5.5 million people), the command staff of the Red Army was 66% graduates of Kraskom courses from workers and peasants, appropriately processed by communist propaganda. Without this corps of managers, Russia would again have sunk into the abyss of a new Civil War and the Intervention of fragments of the white movement would have begun (only in Turkey the 60,000-strong Russian army of Baron Wrangel was stationed, consisting of experienced fighters who had nothing to lose). Along the borders were young states, Poland, Finland, Estonia, which were not averse to chopping off some light brown land. They would have been supported by Russia’s “allies” in the Entente.
Who will take power, who will lead the country and how, where will the food come from, etc. — it is impossible to find answers in the naive and irresponsible resolutions and demands of the rebels.
On the deck of the battleship Petropavlovsk after the suppression of the mutiny. In the foreground is a hole from a large-caliber shell.
The rebels were mediocre commanders, militarily, and did not use all the opportunities for defense (probably, thank God - otherwise much more blood would have been shed). Thus, Major General Kozlovsky, commander of the Kronstadt artillery, and a number of other military experts immediately proposed to the Revolutionary Committee to attack Red Army units on both sides of the bay, in particular, to capture the Krasnaya Gorka fort and the Sestroretsk area. But neither the members of the Revolutionary Committee nor the ordinary rebels were going to leave Kronstadt, where they felt safe behind the armor of the battleships and the concrete of the forts. Their passive position led to a quick defeat.
During the fighting, the powerful artillery of the battleships and forts controlled by the rebels was not used to their full potential and did not inflict any significant losses on the Bolsheviks.
The military leadership of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, also did not act satisfactorily. If the rebels had been led by experienced commanders, the assault on the Fortress would have failed, and the attackers would have washed themselves in blood.
Both sides were not shy about lying. The rebels published the first issue of the News of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, where the main “news” was that “There is a general uprising in Petrograd.” In fact, in Petrograd, unrest in the factories began to subside; some ships stationed in Petrograd and part of the garrison hesitated and took a neutral position. The overwhelming majority of soldiers and sailors supported the government.
Zinoviev lied that White Guard and English agents penetrated Kronstadt and threw gold left and right, and General Kozlovsky started a rebellion.
- The “heroic” leadership of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, headed by Petrichenko, realizing that the jokes were over, at 5 o’clock in the morning on March 17, they left by car across the ice of the bay to Finland. A crowd of ordinary sailors and soldiers rushed after them.
The result was a weakening of the positions of Trotsky-Bronstein: the beginning of the New Economic Policy automatically relegated Trotsky’s positions to the background and completely discredited his plans for the militarization of the country’s economy. March 1921 was a turning point in our history. The restoration of statehood and the economy began, the attempt to plunge Russia into a new Time of Troubles was stopped.
Rehabilitation
In 1994, all participants in the Kronstadt uprising were rehabilitated, and a monument to them was erected on Anchor Square in the fortress city.
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 the local orphanage, whom 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. Baltic Fleet 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 began from war communism to a new economic policy. 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 in the composition - former officer gendarmerie, 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 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.
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Introduction
The events of October 1917 opened a new era in the history of mankind. These events stirred up gigantic masses of people. The cities and villages of the vast country seemed to be seething and seething with the frantic energy of awakened people.
A civil war broke out and became unusually violent and protracted. By the end of 1920, the civil war was over. Wrangel's troops were defeated. On November 15, the red flag was raised over Sevastopol Bay. A new period was beginning in the life of our country.
In history there is often confusion in information and facts. Some are distorted, others disappear and are lost forever. Most often this happens due to the fault of the authorities. Some things are considered outdated and unnecessary, while others are simply not profitable to preserve. The Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 is one of the most striking examples of this. Almost all information about these events has disappeared. By the end of the 40s, all witnesses to those events were exterminated.
When starting work on the project, I considered many different points of view, read documents and essays, and nowhere is there an unambiguous point of view on these events of 1921; there is always something left unsaid. Therefore, at the beginning of my work, I posed a question to myself, which became the goal of my work: what gave rise to the armed uprising of the sailors of the Kronstadt fortress against Soviet power, was it a counter-revolutionary rebellion or an expression of the people’s dissatisfaction with the power of the “Bolsheviks” led by V. I. Lenin ? The answer to this question will not be so easy and simple, given that over the past years, most authors have considered it their duty to at least embellish and sometimes distort the facts. Trying to assess events that lie so far in time from the moment where we live, I will have to try to give an objective assessment of the articles and documents that are at my disposal. Such an assessment of these events may not provide a guarantee of the truthfulness and reliability of the events in question, but it will help to consider some versions of the events of those days and will help to draw one’s own conclusions about the events in question. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to complete the following tasks:
1. Get to know in detail the events of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.
2. Consider points of view:
"Bolsheviks";
The instigators;
Historians of different periods;
Formulate your own point of view and answer the question posed by the topic;
3. Summarize the facts found and draw a conclusion whether the hypothesis of my work is correct.
Hypothesis: The Kronstadt mutiny of the Baltic Fleet was the apogee of popular discontent with the Bolshevik policies.
The object of the study is the uprising against Soviet power in the Kronstadt fortress in 1921, its causes, course, warring parties, outcome and consequences. As well as the points of view of contemporaries of the uprising, Soviet and modern Russian historians.
In my work, I used materials that I found in magazines stored in my home library and those that were given to me by my supervisor, as well as monographs found in the city library. In addition, I used materials from some Internet sites. I used the article by V. Voinov, “Kronstadt: rebellion or uprising?” published in the journal Science and Life in 1991, which describes the progress of the uprising; article by Shishkina I. Kronstadt rebellion of 1921: “unknown revolution”?, which was published in the magazine “Zvezda” in 1988 and tells about versions of these events. In the second half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s, with the beginning of “perestroika”, such unknown pages of history were just beginning to open in our country, so I turned to articles from other magazines, such as “Questions of History” for 1994 and Military -a historical magazine for 1991, where the articles were published: “The Kronstadt tragedy of 1921” and “Who provoked the Kronstadt rebellion?” The first simply outlines the events that took place, the second puts forward versions of the causes of these events. In addition, I became acquainted and used in my work the materials of the Central State Military Archive Navy, taken from the website of this archive (www.rgavmf.ru).
98 years ago, on March 18, 1921, the Kronstadt rebellion, which began under the slogan “For Soviets without Communists!” was suppressed. This was the first anti-Bolshevik uprising after the end of the Civil War. The crews of the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk demanded re-elections of the Soviets, abolition of commissars, granting freedom of activity to socialist parties and allowing free trade. It would seem, why now, in 2017, should we turn to events almost a century ago? But I believe that it is necessary to study such “forgotten” events of our history, since they can teach us to evaluate modernity from different positions. Events such as the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 will always be relevant for Russian citizens, as they form an integral part of our historical memory, our historical heritage.
In my work I will try to understand, consider different points view, compare facts and hypotheses and draw conclusions. Of course, professional historians are also pondering the question that is the purpose of my work, and it would be very arrogant for me to compete with them; in addition, the scope of the research project is too small for a comprehensive consideration of these events. But still, in my work I will try to figure it out, consider different points of view, compare facts and hypotheses and draw my own conclusions based on these facts.
Chapter 1. Kronstadt uprising of 1921
Causes of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921
Let us consider the economic and political situation in the country on the eve of the rebellion in Kronstadt.
The bulk of Russia's industrial potential was disabled, economic ties were severed, and there was a shortage of raw materials and fuel. The country produced only 2% of the pre-war amount of pig iron, 3% of sugar, 5-6% of cotton fabrics, etc.
The industrial crisis gave rise to social collisions: unemployment, dispersal and declassification of the ruling class - the proletariat. Russia remained a petty-bourgeois country, 85% of its social structure was accounted for by the peasantry, exhausted by wars, revolutions, and surplus appropriation. Life for the vast majority of the population has turned into a continuous struggle for survival.[No.4.P.321-323]
At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921, armed uprisings engulfed Western Siberia, Tambov, Voronezh provinces, the Middle Volga region, Don, and Kuban. Big number anti-Bolshevik peasant formations operated in Ukraine. In Central Asia, the creation of armed nationalist detachments was increasingly unfolding. By the spring of 1921, uprisings were raging throughout the country.[No. 10.P.23]
Having traced the geography of anti-Bolshevik protests in 1918-1921, I saw that almost all regions of the country rebelled, but not at the same time. Some areas were suppressed earlier, while in others protest broke out only at the end of the civil war. The resourcefulness of their policy, the principle of “divide and conquer,” also made it possible to maintain the dominance of the Bolsheviks. Lenin demanded that airplanes and armored cars be used against peasant “gangs.” In the Tambov region, riot participants were poisoned with asphyxiating gases.
Lenin said about this period: “... in 1921, after we overcame the most important stage of the civil war, and overcame it victoriously, we stumbled upon a big - I believe, the biggest - internal political crisis of Soviet Russia. This internal crisis revealed discontent not only of a significant part of the peasantry, but also of the workers. This was the first and, I hope, the last time in the history of Soviet Russia when large masses of the peasantry, not consciously, but instinctively, were against us in mood." [No.6.P.14]
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.”
As the movement grew in Petrograd, discontent began to grow rapidly in Kronstadt, a military fortress whose garrison numbered almost 27 thousand people. 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 model of 1917, elected a 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, serfdom commissardom and 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.” [No. 11.P.15]
Progress of the uprising
The total number of ship crews, military sailors of coastal units, as well as ground forces stationed in Kronstadt and at the forts, was 26,887 people on February 13, 1921 - 1,455 commanders, the rest privates. [No. 15.P.31]
They were worried about news from home, mainly from the village - there was no food, no textiles, no basic necessities. Especially many complaints about this situation came from sailors to the Complaints Bureau of the Political Department of the Baltic Fleet in the winter of 1921.
On the afternoon of March 1, a rally took place on the anchor square of Kronstadt, attracting about 16 thousand people. The leaders of the Kronstadt naval base hoped that during the rally they would be able to change the mood of the sailors and soldiers of the garrison. They tried to convince those gathered to abandon their political demands. However, the participants supported the resolution by a majority of votes battleships"Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol". [No.5.P.34]
Petrichenko: “By carrying out the October Revolution in 1917, the workers of Russia hoped to achieve their complete emancipation and pinned their hopes on the Communist Party, which promised a lot. What did the Communist Party, led by Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and others, give in 3.5 years? In three and a half years of their existence, the communists did not give emancipation, but the complete enslavement of the human personality. Instead of police-gendarmerie monarchism, they received the every-minute fear of ending up in the dungeons of the Cheka, whose horrors many times surpassed the gendarmerie administration of the tsarist regime."[No. 6.P.14]
The demands of the Kronstadters, in the resolution adopted on March 1, posed a serious threat not to the Soviets, but to the Bolshevik monopoly on political power. This resolution was, in essence, an appeal to the government to respect the rights and freedoms proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.
News of the events in Kronstadt caused a sharp reaction from the Soviet leadership. A delegation of Kronstadters, who arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested. On March 4, the Council of Labor and Defense approved the text of the government report on the events in Kronstadt, published on March 2 in newspapers. The movement in Kronstadt was declared a “rebellion” organized by French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the resolution adopted by the Kronstadtites was declared “Black Hundred-SR.” [No.14.P.7]
On March 3, Petrograd and the Petrograd province were declared in a state of siege. This measure is directed more against the anti-Bolshevik demonstrations of St. Petersburg workers than against the Kronstadt sailors.
The Kronstadters sought open and transparent negotiations with the authorities, but the latter’s position from the very beginning of the events was clear: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must be severely punished. Parliamentarians who were sent by the rebels were arrested. The proposal to exchange representatives from Kronstadt and Petrograd remained unanswered. A wide propaganda campaign was launched in the press, distorting the essence of the events taking place, in every possible way instilling the idea that the uprising was the work of the tsarist generals, officers and Black Hundreds. There were calls to “disarm a handful of bandits” entrenched in Kronstadt.
On March 4, in connection with direct threats from the authorities to deal with the Kronstadters by force, the Military Revolutionary Committee turned to military specialists - headquarters officers - with a request to help organize the defense of the fortress. On March 5, an agreement was reached. Military experts suggested, without expecting an assault on the fortress, to go on the offensive themselves. They insisted on capturing Oranienbaum and Sestroetsk in order to expand the base of the uprising. However, the Military Revolutionary Committee responded with a decisive refusal to all proposals to be the first to begin military operations. They suggested, without expecting an assault on the fortress, to go on the offensive themselves. They insisted on capturing Oranienbaum and Sestroetsk in order to expand the base of the uprising. However, the Military Revolutionary Committee responded with a decisive refusal to all proposals to be the first to begin military operations.
On March 5, an order was given for prompt measures to eliminate the “rebellion.” The 7th Army was restored, under the command of Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to prepare an operational plan for the assault and “to suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible.” The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8.
Meanwhile, unrest in military units intensified. The Red Army soldiers refused to storm Kronstadt. It was decided to begin sending “unreliable” sailors to serve in other waters of the country, away from Kronstadt. Until March 12, 6 trains with sailors were sent. [No. 13.P.88-94]
To force military units to attack, the Soviet command had to resort not only to agitation, but also to threats. A powerful repressive mechanism is being created, designed to change the mood of the Red Army soldiers. Unreliable units were disarmed and sent to the rear, the instigators were shot. Sentences to capital punishment “for refusal to carry out a combat mission” and “for desertion” followed one after another. They were carried out immediately. For moral intimidation they were shot in public.
On the night of March 17, after intense artillery shelling of the fortress, a new assault began. When it became clear that further resistance was useless and would lead to nothing except additional casualties, at the suggestion of the fortress defense headquarters, its defenders decided to leave Kronstadt. They asked the Finnish government if it could accept the garrison of the fortress. After receiving a positive response, the retreat to the Finnish coast began, provided by specially formed cover detachments. About 8 thousand people left for Finland, among them the entire headquarters of the fortress, 12 of the 15 members of the “revolutionary committee” and many of the most active participants in the rebellion. Of the members of the "revolutionary committee" only Perepelkin, Vershinin and Valk were detained.
By the morning of March 18, the fortress was in the hands of the Red Army. The authorities hid the number of dead, missing, and wounded.[№5.С.7]
Results of the uprising and its consequences
The massacre of the Kronstadt garrison began. The very stay in the fortress during the uprising was considered a crime. All sailors and Red Army soldiers went through the tribunal. The sailors of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol were dealt with especially cruelly. Just being on them was enough to get shot.
By the summer of 1921, 10,001 people had passed through the tribunal: 2,103 were sentenced to death, 6,447 were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and 1,451, although they were released, the charges against them were not dropped.
In the spring of 1922, the mass eviction of Kronstadt residents began. On February 1, the evacuation commission began work. Until April 1, 1923, it registered 2,756 people, of which 2,048 were “crown rebels” and members of their families, 516 were not associated with their activities with the fortress. The first batch of 315 people was expelled in March 1922. In total, during the specified time, 2,514 people were expelled, of which 1,963 - as “crown rebels” and members of their families, 388 - as not connected with the fortress. [No. 7.P.91] Chapter 2. Diversity of points of view on the Kronstadt uprising of 1921
2.1. The Bolshevik point of view
Lenin, in his speech at the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), said: “Two weeks before the Kronstadt events, it was already published in Parisian newspapers that there was an uprising in Kronstadt. It is absolutely clear that this is the work of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and foreign White Guards, and at the same time this movement has been reduced to a petty-bourgeois counter-revolution, to a petty-bourgeois anarchist element. Here a petty-bourgeois, anarchic element appeared, with slogans of free trade and always directed against the dictatorship of the proletariat. And this mood affected the proletariat very widely. It affected the enterprises of Moscow, it affected the enterprises in a number of places in the province. This petty-bourgeois counter-revolution is undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich and Kolchak put together, because we are dealing with a country where the proletariat is a minority, we are dealing with a country in which ruin has manifested itself in peasant property, and in addition, we We also have such a thing as the demobilization of the army, which gave the rebel element in incredible numbers.”
This explains the position of the Bolsheviks, but at the same time shows that the deep contradictions that arose between the people, even those who were very pro-Bolshevik during the October Revolution, were not made public even at the party congress, although they were understood by V.I. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.
The most thoughtful of them understood that something was wrong in the relations between the party and the people. I will give the speech of Alexandra Kollontai : “I would say frankly that, despite all our personal attitude towards Vladimir Ilyich, we cannot help but say that his report satisfied few people... We expected that in the party environment Vladimir Ilyich would open up, show the whole essence, say what measures The Central Committee ensures that these events do not happen again. Vladimir Ilyich bypassed the question of Kronstadt and the question of St. Petersburg and Moscow.” [No. 11.S. 101-106] Lenin deliberately downplayed the significance of the uprising. In his interview with the New York Times, he said: “Believe me, there are only two possible governments in Russia: the Tsarist or the Soviet. The uprising in Kronstadt is really a completely insignificant incident, which poses a much lesser threat to Soviet power than the Irish troops did to the British Empire. [No. 11, pp. 101-106] Materials relating to the period under review say that few of the communists wanted to shed blood sailors who gave power to Lenin and Trotsky. And then the party sends its commanders to suppress. Here are Trotsky, and Tukhachevsky, and Yakir, and Fedko, and Voroshilov with Khmelnitsky, Sedyakin, Kazansky, Putna, Fabricius. But red commanders alone are not enough. And then the party sends delegates to its Tenth Congress and major party members. Here are Kalinin, Bubnov, and Zatonsky. A Consolidated Division is being formed... At the head of the Consolidated Division, Comrade Dybenko, who fled the battlefield and was expelled from the party for cowardice, was appointed. On March 10, Tukhachevsky reported to Lenin: “If the matter boiled down to a revolt of sailors, it would be simpler, but what makes it worse is that the workers in Petrograd are definitely not reliable.” To suppress the uprising, the Bolsheviks were ready to do anything. A real fratricide was taking place, thousands of sailors fled across the ice to the Finnish border. The Soviets in Kronstadt were dispersed, and instead the military commandant and the “revolutionary troika” began to manage all affairs. The rebel ships received new names. Thus, “Petropavlovsk” became “Marat”, and “Sevastopol” became the “Paris Commune”. Finally, to put the finishing touches on the “Kronstadt Assembly” case, the victors also punished Anchor Square, where the rebels gathered, renaming it Revolution Square. [No. 15.P.31]
2.2. The point of view of the “instigators”
The point of view of the “instigators” of the uprising is most clearly demonstrated by their appeal to the people. From an appeal from the population of the fortress and Kronstadt:
“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 detached 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 deadlock. 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 decisions taken It was decided to carry out immediate re-elections to the Council. 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. [№14.С.18] Is there anything to add to the position of the “instigators”? In my opinion, everything here is extremely clear and does not require explanation. Only despair and hopelessness raised these people to fight with those. Whom they elevated to the pinnacle of power, for the sake of whose ideas they destroyed their former state and hoped to build a new and fair one in its place.
2.3. The point of view of Soviet and modern Russian historians
The first work that opens the bibliography of this topic is a special issue of the Red Army magazine “Military Knowledge”, which appeared less than six months after the capture of the rebellious fortress. The small but very informative articles by M. N. Tukhachevsky, P. E. Dybenko and other participants in the assault provided extensive factual material, both documentary and memoir in nature. This collection has not lost its value to this day. It should be especially emphasized that military specialists of the Red Army immediately appreciated how important it was to study the experience of the unique offensive operation near Kronstadt. In the late 30s and early 40s, several more small books and articles appeared in scientific periodicals about the Kronstadt rebellion. In the post-war period, until the beginning of the 60s, the study of the Kronstadt rebellion received virtually no continuation. The only exception was the book by I. Rotin, which appeared in the late 50s. The storming of the rebellious fortress is one of the most interesting pages in the annals of the Red Army - in connection with the accepted periodization of the history of the USSR, it went beyond the chronological framework of the civil war, and even in the most complete publication on this topic in our historiography - the five-volume “History of the Civil War in the USSR” - there is no mention of the battles near Kronstadt. This, of course, is a gap in the historiography of the civil war in the USSR. [No. 6.P.324] And those few and fragmentary information that is found in Soviet historiography clearly call the events of February - March 1921 an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary rebellion, quite rightly suppressed by the Soviet government, since it was directed against the people's power and the workers' and peasants' party . [No. 10.S. 47]. The fact that the truth about the Kronstadt mutiny was hidden in Soviet times is understandable, but it is not in great demand and New Russia. I was unable to find a coherent assessment of this event by modern authors. Is it possible that in N. Starikov’s book “Russian Troubles of the 20th Century” the Kronstadt rebellion is mentioned in passing...
Chapter 3. Conclusions: The Kronstadt uprising of 1921: counter-revolutionary rebellion or popular discontent?
The Red Army soldiers of Kronstadt, the largest naval base of the Baltic Fleet, which was called the “key to Petrograd,” rose up against the policy of “war communism” with arms in hand. On February 28, 1921, the crew of the battleship Petropavlovsk adopted a resolution calling for a “third revolution” that would drive out the usurpers and put an end to the commissar regime.”
The Kronstadt sailors of the Baltic Fleet were the vanguard and striking force of the Bolsheviks: they participated in the October Revolution, suppressed the uprising of the cadets of the military schools of Petrograd, stormed the Moscow Kremlin and established Soviet power in various cities of Russia. And it was these people who were outraged by the fact that the Bolsheviks (whom they believed) brought the country to the brink of a national catastrophe, there was devastation in the country, 20% of the country's population was starving, and in some regions there was even cannibalism. Based on the researched sources and literature, I made an unambiguous conclusion for myself: the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 cannot be called a counter-revolutionary rebellion, it was definitely the highest point of people’s dissatisfaction with the then existing government of the “Bolsheviks”, their policy of “war communism” and surplus appropriation, which led to the monstrous impoverishment of the population. The Kronstadt uprising, together with the uprisings of workers and peasants in other regions of the country, testified to a deep economic and social crisis and the failure of the policy of “war communism.” It became clear to the Bolsheviks that in order to save power, it was necessary to introduce a new domestic political course aimed at meeting the demands of the bulk of the population - the peasantry. Few people know the truth about the Kronstadt uprising, although the very fact that the rebellion against the Bolsheviks was raised by their own guards - the sailors of the Baltic Fleet - should have attracted attention. In the end, these were the same people who had previously taken the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government, then, with arms in hand, established Bolshevik power in Moscow and dispersed the Constituent Assembly, and then, as commissars, carried out the party line on all fronts of the civil war . Until 1921, Leon Trotsky called the Kronstadt sailors “the pride and glory of the Russian revolution.”
Conclusion
For many decades, the Kronstadt events were interpreted as a rebellion prepared by the White Guards, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists, who relied on the active support of the imperialists. It was alleged that the actions of the Kronstadters were aimed at overthrowing Soviet power, and that sailors from individual ships and part of the garrison located in the fortress took part in the mutiny. As for the leaders of the party and state, they allegedly did everything to avoid bloodshed, and only after appeals to the soldiers and sailors of the fortress with an offer to renounce their demands remained unanswered, it was decided to use violence. The fortress was taken by storm. At the same time, the winners remained in highest degree humane to the vanquished. The events, documents and articles we have examined allow us to give a different perspective on the Kronstadt events. The Soviet leadership knew about the nature of the Kronstadt movement, its goals, its leaders, and that neither the Socialist Revolutionaries, nor the Mensheviks, nor the imperialists took any active part in it. However, objective information was carefully hidden from the population and instead a falsified version was offered that the Kronstadt events were the work of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, White Guards and international imperialism, although the Cheka could not find any data on this matter. The demands of the Kronstadters are much higher value had a call for the elimination of the monopoly power of the Bolsheviks. The punitive action against Kronstadt was supposed to show that any political reforms would not affect the foundations of this monopoly. The party leadership understood the need for concessions, including replacing surplus appropriation with a tax in kind and allowing trade. It was these questions that were the main demand of the Kronstadters. It seemed that the basis for negotiations had emerged. However, the Soviet government rejected this possibility. If the X Congress of the RCP(b) had opened on March 6, that is, on the previously appointed day, the turn in economic policy announced at it could have changed the situation in Kronstadt and influenced the mood of the sailors: they were waiting for Lenin’s speech at the congress. Then perhaps the assault would not have been necessary. However, the Kremlin did not want such a development of events. Kronstadt also became for Lenin an instrument with which he gave credibility to the demands to eliminate all internal party struggles, ensure the unity of the RCP (b) and adherence to strict internal party discipline. A few months after the Kronstadt events, he will say: “It is now necessary to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance” [No. 9. P. 57]
List of used literature
1. Voinov V. Kronstadt: rebellion or uprising? // Science and life.-1991.-No. 6.
2. Voroshilov K.E. From the history of the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion. // "Military Historical Journal", No. 3, 1961.
3. Civil war in the USSR (in 2 vols.) / coll. authors, editors N. N. Azovtsev. Volume 2. M., Military Publishing House, 1986.
4. Kronstadt tragedy of 1921 // Questions of history. - 1994. No. 4-7
5. Kronstadt tragedy of 1921: documents (in 2 vols.) / comp. I. I. Kudryavtsev. Volume I. M., ROSSPEN, 1999.
6. Kronstadt 1921. Documents. / Russia XX century. M., 1997
7. Kronstadt mutiny. Chronos - Internet encyclopedia;
8. Kuznetsov M. Rebel general to the slaughter. // " Russian newspaper"from 01.08.1997.
9. Safonov V.N. Who provoked the Kronstadt rebellion? // Military historical magazine. - 1991. - No. 7.
10. Semanov S. N. Kronstadt rebellion. M., 2003.
11. Soviet military encyclopedia. T. 4.
12. Trifonov N., Suvenirov O. The defeat of the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt rebellion // Military Historical Journal, No. 3, 1971.
13. Shishkina I. Kronstadt revolt of 1921: “unknown revolution”? // Star. 1988. - No. 6.
Encyclopedia “Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR” (2nd ed.) / editorial coll., ch. ed. S. S. Khromov. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1987.
Internet resources:
www.bibliotekar.ru
www.erudition.ru
www.mybiblioteka.su/tom2/8-84005.html
www.otherreferats.allbest.ru/history..
The Kronstadt mutiny March 1-18, 1921 - a speech by sailors of the Kronstadt garrison against the Bolshevik government.
The Kronstadt sailors enthusiastically supported the Bolsheviks in 1917, but in March 1921 they rebelled against an order they considered a communist dictatorship.
The Kronstadt uprising was brutally suppressed by Lenin, but it led to a partial reassessment of plans economic development in a more progressive direction: in 1921, Lenin developed the principles of the New Economic Policy (NEP).
...Youth took us on a saber campaign, Youth threw us onto the Kronstadt ice...
In the relatively recent past, the poem, the lines from which are given above, was included in the compulsory curriculum for Russian literature in high school. Even making allowances for revolutionary romance, it must be admitted that the poet is clearly exaggerating regarding the fatal role of “youth.” Those who “threw people onto the Kronstadt ice” had very specific names and positions. However, first things first.
Opening access to archival documents kept under seven seals makes it possible for us to answer questions in a new way about the cause of the Kronstadt rebellion, its goals and consequences.
Prerequisites. Reasons for the rebellion
By the early 1920s, the internal situation Soviet state remained extremely difficult. The shortage of workers, agricultural implements, seed funds and, most importantly, the surplus appropriation policy was extremely Negative consequences. Compared to 1916, sown areas were reduced by 25%, and the gross harvest of agricultural products decreased by 40-45% compared to 1913. All this became one of the main reasons for the famine in 1921, which struck about 20% of the population.
The situation in industry was no less difficult, where the decline in production resulted in the closure of factories and mass unemployment. The situation was especially difficult in large industrial centers, primarily in Moscow and Petrograd. In just one day, February 11, 1921, 93 Petrograd enterprises were announced to be closed until March 1, among them such giants as the Putilov Plant, the Sestroretsk Arms Plant, and the Triangle rubber factory. About 27 thousand people were thrown onto the street. At the same time, bread distribution standards were reduced and some types of food rations were abolished. The threat of famine was approaching the cities. The fuel crisis has worsened.
The rebellion in Kronstadt was far from the only one. Armed uprisings against the Bolsheviks swept across Western Siberia, Tambov, Voronezh and Saratov provinces, the North Caucasus, Belarus, the Altai Mountains, Central Asia, the Don, and Ukraine. All of them were suppressed by force of arms.
The unrest in Petrograd and protests in other cities and regions of the state could not go unnoticed by the sailors, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt. 1917, October - Kronstadt sailors acted as the main force of the coup. Now those in power were taking measures to ensure that a wave of discontent did not engulf the fortress, in which there were about 27 thousand armed sailors and soldiers. An extensive intelligence service was created in the garrison. By the end of February, the total number of informants reached 176 people. Based on their denunciations, 2,554 people were suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.
But this could not prevent an explosion of discontent. On February 28, the sailors of the battleships “Petropavlovsk” (after the suppression of the Kronstadt mutiny, renamed “Marat”) and “Sevastopol” (renamed “Paris Commune”) adopted a resolution, in the text of which the sailors outlined their goal as establishing truly popular power, and not a party dictatorship . A resolution calling on the government to respect the rights and freedoms that were proclaimed in October 1917. The resolution was approved by the majority of the crews of other ships. On March 1, a rally took place on one of the Kronstadt squares, which the command of the Kronstadt naval base tried to use to change the mood of the sailors and soldiers. Chairman of the Kronstadt Council D. Vasiliev, Commissioner of the Baltic Fleet N. Kuzmin and the head Soviet government M. Kalinin. But those present overwhelmingly supported the resolution of the sailors of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol.
The beginning of the uprising
Lacking the required number of loyal troops, the authorities did not dare to act aggressively at that time. Kalinin left for Petrograd to begin preparations for repression. At that time, a meeting of delegates from various military units by a majority vote expressed no confidence in Kuzmin and Vasiliev. To maintain order in Kronstadt, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (PRC) was created. Power in the city passed into his hands without firing a shot.
Members of the Military Revolutionary Committee sincerely believed in the support of their workers in Petrograd and the whole country. Meanwhile, the attitude of the workers of Petrograd to the events in Kronstadt was far from unambiguous. Some of them, under the influence of false information, negatively perceived the actions of the Kronstadters. To a certain extent, rumors did their job that the “rebels” were headed by a tsarist general, and the sailors were just puppets in the hands of the White Guard counter-revolution. The fear of “purges” by the Cheka also played an important role. There were also many who sympathized with the uprising and called for support for it. This kind of sentiment was characteristic primarily of the workers of the Baltic shipbuilding, cable, pipe factories and other city enterprises. However, the largest group was made up of those indifferent to the Kronstadt events.
Who did not remain indifferent to the unrest was the leadership of the Bolsheviks. A delegation of Kronstadters, who arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested. On March 2, the Council of Labor and Defense declared the uprising a “rebellion” organized by French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the resolution adopted by the Kronstadters was declared “Black Hundred-SR.” Lenin and company were quite effectively able to use the anti-monarchist sentiments of the masses to discredit the rebels. To prevent possible solidarity of the Petrograd workers with the Kronstadters, on March 3 a state of siege was introduced in Petrograd and the Petrograd province. In addition, repressions followed against the relatives of the “rebels”, who were taken as hostages.
Progress of the uprising
In Kronstad they insisted on open and transparent negotiations with the authorities, but the latter’s position from the very beginning of the events was clear: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must be punished. Parliamentarians sent by the rebels were arrested. On March 4, Kronstadt was presented with an ultimatum. The Military Revolutionary Committee rejected him and decided to defend himself. For help in organizing the defense of the fortress, they turned to military specialists - headquarters officers. They suggested that, without expecting an assault on the fortress, they themselves should go on the offensive. In order to expand the base of the uprising, they considered it necessary to capture Oranienbaum and Sestroretsk. But the proposal to speak first was resolutely rejected by the Military Revolutionary Committee.
Meanwhile, those in power were actively preparing to suppress the “rebellion.” First of all, Kronstadt was isolated from the outside world. 300 delegates of the Congress began to prepare for a punitive campaign on the rebellious island. In order not to walk across the ice alone, they set about rebuilding the recently disbanded 7th Army under the command of M. Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to prepare an operational plan for the assault and “suppress the rebellion in Kronstadt as soon as possible.” The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8. The date was not chosen by chance. It was on this day that, after several postponements, the X Congress of the RCP (b) was supposed to open. Lenin understood the need for reforms, including replacing surplus appropriation with a tax in kind and allowing trade. On the eve of the congress, relevant documents were prepared in order to submit them for discussion.
Meanwhile, these very issues were among the main ones in the demands of the Kronstadters. Thus, the prospect of a peaceful resolution of the conflict could arise, which was not part of the plans of the Bolshevik elite. They needed demonstrative reprisals against those who had the audacity to openly oppose their power, so that others would be discouraged. That is why, precisely on the opening day of the congress, when Lenin was supposed to announce a turn in economic policy, it was planned to deal a merciless blow to Kronstadt. Many historians believe that from this time the Communist Party began its tragic path to dictatorship through mass repression.
First assault
It was not possible to take the fortress right away. Suffering heavy losses, the punitive troops retreated to their original lines. One of the reasons for this was the mood of the Red Army soldiers, some of whom showed open disobedience and even supported the rebels. With great effort, it was possible to force even a detachment of Petrograd cadets, considered one of the most combat-ready units, to advance.
Unrest in military units created the danger of the uprising spreading to the entire Baltic Fleet. Therefore, it was decided to send “unreliable” sailors to serve in other fleets. For example, in one week, six trains with sailors from the Baltic crews were sent to the Black Sea, who, in the opinion of the command, were an “undesirable element.” To prevent a possible mutiny among sailors along the route, the Red government strengthened the security of railways and stations.
The last assault. Emigration
In order to increase discipline among the troops, the Bolsheviks used the usual methods: selective executions, barrage detachments and accompanying artillery fire. The second assault began on the night of March 16. This time the punitive units were better prepared. The attackers were dressed in winter camouflage, and they were able to covertly approach the rebel positions across the ice. There was no artillery bombardment; it was more trouble than it was worth; ice holes formed that did not freeze, but were only covered with a thin crust of ice, which was immediately covered with snow. So the attack took place in silence. The attackers covered the 10-kilometer distance by the pre-dawn hour, after which their presence was discovered. A battle began that lasted almost a day.
1921, March 18 - the headquarters of the rebels decided to destroy the battleships (along with the captured communists who were in the holds) and break through the ice of the bay to Finland. They gave the order to plant several pounds of explosives under the gun turrets, but this order caused outrage (because the leaders of the rebellion had already moved to Finland). On the Sevastopol, the “old” sailors disarmed and arrested the rebels, after which they released the communists from the holds and radioed that Soviet power had been restored on the ship. After some time, after the start of the artillery shelling, Petropavlovsk (which had already been abandoned by the majority of the rebels) also surrendered.
Results and consequences
On the morning of March 18, the fortress fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks. The exact number of victims among those who stormed is unknown to this day. The only guide can be the data contained in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Actions and Military Conflicts.” According to them, 1912 people were killed and 1208 people were wounded. There is no reliable information about the number of casualties among the defenders of Kronstadt. Many who died on the Baltic ice were not even buried. With the melting of the ice, there is a danger of contamination of the waters of the Gulf of Finland. At the end of March in Sestroretsk, at a meeting of representatives of Finland and Soviet Russia, the issue of cleaning up the corpses remaining in the Gulf of Finland after the battles was decided.
Several dozen open trials were held of those who took part in the “rebellion.” The testimony of witnesses was falsified, and the witnesses themselves were often selected from among former criminals. Performers of the roles of Socialist Revolutionary instigators and “entente spies” were also discovered. The executioners were upset because of the failure to capture the former general Kozlovsky, who was supposed to provide a “White Guard trace” in the uprising.
Noteworthy is the fact that the guilt of the majority of those in the dock was their presence in Kronstadt during the uprising. This is explained by the fact that the “rebels” who were captured with weapons in their hands were shot on the spot. With particular predilection, the punitive authorities pursued those who left the RCP(b) during the Kronstadt events. The sailors of the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk were dealt with extremely cruelly. The number of executed crew members of these ships exceeded 200 people. In total, 2,103 people were sentenced to capital punishment, and 6,459 people were sentenced to various terms of punishment.
There were so many convicts that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) had to take up the issue of creating new concentration camps. In addition, in the spring of 1922, the mass eviction of Kronstadt residents began. A total of 2,514 people were expelled, of which 1,963 were “crown rebels” and members of their families, while 388 people were not associated with the fortress.
Yu. Temirov