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Title: The Kronstadt Uprising
Author: Crimethinc.
Language: en
Topics: Kronstadt, Russian Revolution, rebellion, anarchism, Russia
Source: Retrieved on March 9, 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2021/03/03/the-kronstadt-uprising-a-full-chronology-and-archive-including-a-view-from-within-the-revolt

Crimethinc.

The Kronstadt Uprising

In March 1921, an uprising on the island fortress of Kronstadt shook

Russia, starkly illustrating the conflicts within the Russian

revolution. To observe the 100-year anniversary of the revolt, we

present an overview of the questions that were at stake in the struggle,

following by a full chronology of the events, illustrated by selections

from contemporary historical documents—including the entire text of all

14 issues of the newspaper published by the Kronstadt rebels, the

Izvestia [news] of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors,

Soldiers, and Workers of the Town of Kronstadt.1 Though many different

factions have attempted to portray the Kronstadt uprising according to

many different ideological frameworks, this is a rare opportunity to see

the rebellion from the vantage point of the rebels themselves.

Electoral Democracy, Party Dictatorship, or Self-Determination?

While both anarchists and apologists for Lenin and Stalin often portray

the Kronstadt uprising as a conflict between anarchists and party

communists, this is a misunderstanding that has arisen as a result of

subsequent conflicts. Rather, the Kronstadt uprising represented the

final rupture between the autocratic dictatorship of the Russian

Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and every other communist and socialist

current in the country, as well as anarchists and other elements of the

working class—especially those to the left of the Bolsheviks, as the

Bolsheviks had adopted many right-wing policies by that time.

Essentially, the conflict among Russian anti-capitalist revolutionaries

was about whether power should be vested in a one-party dictatorship, in

representative electoral politics, or in horizontally organized workers’

councils [soviets].

From the perspective of Lenin and Trotsky, the great crime of the

Kronstadt rebels in 1921 was to call for “All power to the soviets, and

not to parties.” The soviets, as the Kronstadt rebels understood them,

were meant to be decentralized workers’ councils, through which people

could practice self-determination directly, rather than attempting to

express their agency indirectly by voting for representatives to

participate in the Constituent Assembly or simply carrying out the

orders of a Party-controlled Central Committee.

The conflict between these three political models went back decades. In

1903, at the second party congress of the Russian Social Democratic

Labor Party, the Party split in two as the consequence of a debate over

how to define party membership. The Bolsheviks (“majority,” though they

did not actually represent the majority of the participants in the

congress), headed by Vladimir Lenin, argued for a very strict definition

of the Party as a tight, centralized cadre. The Mensheviks (“minority”),

headed by Julius Martov, conceptualized the Party more broadly,

considering it to include everyone who identified with and supported its

program. Both saw the Party as the vehicle for revolutionary change, but

Lenin wished to build a tightly-controlled group capable of seizing

power, while Martov was more concerned with fostering a broad

working-class movement.

In 1904, following the division between the Bolsheviks and the

Mensheviks, Leon Trotsky warned that substituting “a ‘Party’ placed

above the proletariat (at least as Comrade Lenin and his supporters

understand the term Party)” for the working class as a whole would

ultimately lead to a dictator substituting himself for the Party:

“In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall

see, to the Party organization ‘substituting’ itself for the Party, the

Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organization, and

finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee.”

-Leon Trotsky, Our Political Tasks, 1904

This fundamental conflict was never resolved. In 1912, the Bolsheviks

formally excluded the Mensheviks, establishing their own distinct party.

After the revolution of February 1917 pushed the Tsar out of power and

established representative democracy under a Provisional Government with

an elected Constituent Assembly, Trotsky and Lenin returned to Russia

from exile and participated in overthrowing the Provisional Government

in October 1917, ostensibly for the sake of vesting all power in the

soviets (i.e., grassroots workers’ councils). Despite his earlier

criticisms, Trotsky ended up working with the Bolsheviks.

At the Second Pan-Russian Congress of Soviets in November 1917, the

Bolsheviks took advantage of a temporary majority to transform the

Central Executive Committee into a largely independent government organ

acting over the heads of the delegates from the actual soviets. Over the

following months, the Bolsheviks began to consolidate power via the

Central Committee. Gaining control of the Cheka (the secret police),

they had their opponents arrested, including a rival socialist delegate

to the Congress. In early 1918, after they failed to win a majority in

the Constituent Assembly, they shut it down, seeking to assert the

primacy of the political organs they controlled.

Some anarchists joined them in this effort; indeed, the anarchist

Anatoli Zhelezniakov led the actions that broke up the Provisional

Government in October 1917 and the Constituent Assembly in January 1918.

The anarchists opposed the Constituent Assembly because they objected to

the centralization of power in any government, even a government run by

representative democracy—not because they sought to create a centralized

one-party dictatorship, like the Bolsheviks. Collaborating with the

Bolsheviks turned out to be a mistake: the Bolsheviks turned on the

anarchists as their next target after the end of the Constituent

Assembly, taking advantage of bourgeois hostility towards anarchists to

arrest and kill large numbers of anarchists in Moscow and St. Petersburg

starting in April 1918.2 It is never a good idea for anarchists to make

cause with authoritarians, even in the name of fighting capitalism and

the institutions of the state.

“They [the Bolsheviks] have declared war on revolutionary anarchism. The

Bolsheviks want to purchase the good will of the bourgeoisie with the

heads of anarchists. The anarchists did not desire any clash. We

regarded you [Bolsheviks] as our revolutionary brothers. But you have

proved to be traitors. You are Cains—you have killed your brothers.”

-Burevestnik (“Stormy Petrel”), an anarchist publication in St.

Petersburg, April 13, 1918, responding to the raids of April 11; quoted

in Paul Avrich’s The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution

Throughout 1918 and 1919, the Bolsheviks concentrated more and more

power in their hands, suppressing other political parties and

organizations one after the other. In June 1918, Trotsky abolished

worker control in Russia’s Red Army, suppressing the proletarian

tradition in which soldiers elected their officers, restoring the

military hierarchies of the Tsarist era, and recruiting Tsarist officers

to rejoin the army. In August 1918 and again in 1919, the Bolsheviks

used the military to carry out mass executions of workers who continued

to protest over labor conditions.

From the Power of the Soviets to “Soviet Power”

In this context, Julius Martov, Lenin’s former friend and comrade in the

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, argued that by proclaiming

themselves the representatives of “soviet power” while sidelining the

actual soviets and abolishing the structures of representative

democracy, the Bolsheviks were retaining the authoritarian aspects of

the state while abolishing the desirable ones. In 1919, in

“Decomposition or Conquest of the State,” Martov argued—rightly or

wrongly!—that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had never intended for the

establishment of a one-party dictatorship availing itself of the

authoritarian structures of the state, but rather had called for the

proletariat to abolish “’the worst sides’ of the democratic State (for

example: the police, permanent army, the bureaucracy as an independent

entity, exaggerated centralization, etc.)” so that the democratic state

could replace the “military and bureaucratic state.”

By today’s standards, Martov comes across as something akin to a

democratic confederalist, calling for the abolition of the police and

standing bureaucracies but seeing direct democracy as a way to

rehabilitate the state. This is far from the anarchist position that all

forms of centralized power should be abolished—but it illustrates the

breadth of socialist and communist perspectives in Russia at the time,

showing that the Bolsheviks represented the most authoritarian end of a

wide spectrum of thought regarding whether power should be vested in the

institutions of representative democracy, in self-organized worker’s

councils, or in an autocratic one-party dictatorship.

In “The Ideology of ‘Sovietism,’” published the same year, Martov

elaborated his critique of the Bolsheviks. It’s worth quoting the

following passage at length, because it shows that the authoritarianism

that some pro-Bolshevik apologists later blamed on Stalin was essential

to the Bolsheviks’ program from the very beginning, recognized by former

colleagues who knew them intimately:

The “Soviet State” has not established in any instance electiveness and

recall of public officials and the commanding staff. It has not

suppressed the professional police. It has not assimilated the courts in

direct jurisdiction by the masses. It has not done away with social

hierarchy in production. It has not lessened the total subjection of the

local community to the power of the State. On the contrary, in

proportion to its evolution, the Soviet State shows a tendency in the

opposite direction. It shows a tendency toward intensified centralism of

the State, a tendency toward the utmost possible strengthening of the

principles of hierarchy and compulsion. It shows a tendency toward the

development of a more specialized apparatus of repression than before.

It shows a tendency toward the greater independence of the usually

elective functions and the annihilation of the control of these

functions by the elector masses. It shows a tendency toward the total

freedom of the executive organisms from the tutelage of the electors. In

the crucible of reality, the “power of the soviets” has become the

“soviet power,” a power that originally issued from the soviets but has

steadily become independent from the soviets.

We must believe that the Russian ideologists of the soviet system have

not renounced entirely their notion of a non-Statal social order, the

aim of the revolution. But as they see matters now, the road to this

non-Statal social order no longer lies in the progressive atrophy of the

functions and institutions that have been forged by the bourgeois State,

as they said they saw things in 1917. Now it appears that their way to a

social order that would be free from the State lies in the

hypertrophy—the excessive development—of these functions and in time

resurrection, under an altered aspect, of most State institutions

typicaI of the bourgeois era. The shrewd people continue to repudiate

democratic parliamentarism. But they no longer repudiate, at the same

time, those instruments of State power to which parliamentarism is a

counterweight within bourgeois society: bureaucracy, police, a permanent

army with commanding cadres that are independent of the soldiers, courts

that are above control by the community, etc.

In contrast to the bourgeois State, the State of the transitional

revolutionary period ought to be an apparatus for the “repression of the

minority by the majority.” Theoretically, it should be a governmental

apparatus resting in the hands of the majority. In reality, the Soviet

State continues to be, as the State of the past, a government apparatus

resting in the hands of a minority. (Of another minority, of course.)

Little by little, the “power of the soviets” is being replaced with the

power of a certain party. Little by little, the party becomes the

essential State institution, the framework and axis of the entire system

of “soviet republics.”

Later, Marxist-Leninists justified the Bolsheviks’ program by arguing

that it was necessary to force the abolition of capitalism upon the

capitalist class. On the contrary, we see here that the Bolsheviks’

program was to expand the repressive institutions of Tsarist Russia in

order to suppress other socialists and communists as well as Tsarists

and capitalists, while concentrating control of capital in the hands of

an unaccountable Central Committee. The word for this is state

capitalism.

In 1920, after visiting Russia, Bertrand Russell published The Practice

and Theory of Bolshevism, arguing that the Bolsheviks had fulfilled the

dictatorship aspect of their promised proletarian dictatorship without

fulfilling their promise to put power in the hands of the proletariat:

Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as

merely a new form of representative government, in which only working

men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly

occupational, not geographical. They think that “proletariat” means

“proletariat,” but “dictatorship” does not quite mean “dictatorship.”

This is the opposite of the truth. When a Russian Communist speaks of

dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the

proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the

“class-conscious” part of the proletariat, i.e., the Communist Party. He

includes people by no means proletarian (such as Lenin and Tchicherin)

who have the right opinions, and he excludes such wage-earners as have

not the right opinions, whom he classifies as lackeys of the

bourgeoisie.

Another visitor, the Spanish anarchist Manuel Fernandez Alvar (aka

Vilkens), after meeting Lenin, briefly serving in the Red Army, and

spending some weeks in prison, summarized things thus in 1920:

“There may have been a day when the Bolsheviks represented revolutionary

aspirations, but today all that is finished. It would be wrong to

believe that the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks are the same

thing. The Communist Party and those it endows are walking rapidly

towards the establishment of a class with interests opposed to the

interests of the revolutionary masses. The proletarian dictatorship is

an instrument of oppression in the hands of a new class; this class is

not controlled by the proletariat and is antagonistic towards it.”

“The regime uses terror even more than the Tsarist regime,” he

continued, in an article that appeared in Le Libertaire on January 14,

1921, “because it finds it more difficult to suppress people who have

seen and recognized the light of revolution.”

This summarizes the substantive political differences within the Russian

revolution at the close of 1920. There were additional problems—famine,

social strife, and the repeated assaults of Tsarist forces backed by

capitalist nations—and the various factions of the anti-capitalist

movement had different proposals for how to respond to these (for

example, anarchists like Nestor Makhno played a significant role in

countering the invasions of the White Army). But the fundamental

conflict hinged upon how power should be structured. For many of the

sailors in Kronstadt, the concentration of power in the hands of

bureaucrats in the Party hierarchy reminded them too much of the

disparities of Tsarist society and bourgeois capitalism.

This is not to say that those who rebelled at Kronstadt in March 1921

shared an ideology or values. Rather, the rebellion showed that, after

three and a half years in power, the Bolsheviks had failed to convince a

wide range of socialists, communists, anarchists, and other workers that

their autocratic approach was the best solution for the problems of the

Russian working class. Indeed, in the year leading up to the revolt,

Bolshevik Party membership on Kronstadt declined “from 5630 party

members in March 1920 to 2228 by the end of the year,” according to

Israel Getzler’s Kronstadt 1917-1921, with many people simply quitting

the party outright.

“We’ll Be Our Own Thermidor”

If the uprising itself was limited to a single island, that was because

the Bolshevik government had already succeeded in crushing resistance

throughout the rest of the country—from the urban anarchist social

centers they had raided in 1918 to the massive movements in Siberia,

Ukraine, and elsewhere. The Kronstadt rebels hoped that their protest

could give rise to what they called a “third revolution”; they initiated

their revolt to express solidarity with workers in St. Petersburg

[Petrograd] who were protesting in response to Bolshevik crackdowns.

But the Bolshevik repressive apparatus had already outstripped the power

of the revolutionary movement. The crushing of the Kronstadt uprising

marked the definitive defeat of the Russian Revolution.

The Bolsheviks were assiduous students of previous revolutions. In the

original French Revolution, during the month of Thermidor (according to

the French revolutionary calendar), reactionary forces within the

revolutionary government took advantage of the excesses of Maximilien

Robespierre to arrest and execute the radicals. Likewise, in subsequent

revolutions, the victorious parties consolidated their success by

slaughtering the most radical participants. This was how the bourgeois

republics that came to power in February 1848 and September 1870 dealt

with the rebellious proletarians that revolted in June 1848 and March

1871.

“We’ll be our own Thermidor,” the ex-anarchist and Bolshevik apologist

Victor Serge recalls Lenin proclaiming as the Bolsheviks prepared to

butcher the rebels of Kronstadt. In other words, having crushed the

anarchists and everyone else to the left of them, the Bolsheviks would

survive the reaction by becoming the counterrevolution themselves.

A week after arranging the machine-gunning of the Kronstadt rebels,

Trotsky proclaimed that every socialist, communist, and anarchist who

did not toe the Bolshevik line was effectively in league with capitalist

imperialists:

“The counter-revolutionary scoundrels, the SR [Socialist-Revolutionary]

windbags and simpletons, the Menshevik foxes and the Anarchist hooligans

all, consciously or unconsciously, from cunning or from craziness,

perform one and the same historical role: they cooperate with all

attempts made to establish the unrestricted rule of the bandits of world

imperialism over the working people and over all natural wealth.

Economic, political, and national independence is possible for Russia

only under the dictatorship of the Soviets. The spine of this

dictatorship is the Communist Party. There is no other, nor can there

be.”

-Leon Trotsky, Pravda, March 23, 1921

Trotsky had come full circle, from arguing against substituting the

Central Committee for the proletariat as a whole to asserting that the

dictatorship of the Bolsheviks was identical with the revolution and

anyone who suggested otherwise was in the pocket of the imperialists.

This makes it clear enough that the Kronstadt uprising and the bloodshed

with which it was suppressed were fundamentally about the question of

autocracy.

Apologists for Dictatorship

The most common excuse for the attack on Kronstadt is exemplified by

Dwight McDonald’s article “Kronstadt Again” in New International.

McDonald cites the ex-anarchist Victor Serge as the author who convinced

him of the “necessity” of “many of the stern and undemocratic measures”

of the Bolsheviks, arguing:

“To see the Kronstadt uprising as flowing from the mistakes of War

Communism, and to criticize the severity with which the rebels were

punished—this is by no means to agree with the anarchists and the social

democrats that Kronstadt ‘exposes the fundamentally anti-democratic and

totalitarian nature of Bolshevism.’ I think Kronstadt was a bad mistake,

but a mistake explained and, to some extent, justified by the terrible

social and economic difficulties of those early years of the

revolution.”

In fact, as Trotsky and Lenin made clear in their statements at the

time—many of which are provided below—the Bolshevik leaders were opposed

to electoral democracy and all other proposals that could threaten their

own autocratic rule. Lenin explicitly stated that in his view, the only

options for Russia were the government of a Tsar or his own authority.

There should be no controversy regarding “the fundamentally

anti-democratic and totalitarian nature of Bolshevism.”

The notion that “the terrible social and economic difficulties” of the

time could justify the Bolshevik concentration of power is based in the

assumption that dictatorial rule is the structure best suited for

dealing with crises. But this is hardly a foregone conclusion. It may be

that dictatorial rule is the structure best suited to enabling the Party

or the state to weather crises, but considering that autocracy has been

one of the chief causes of human suffering throughout the past 100

years, it remains to be proven that it is a better solution for crisis

than the alternatives that the Bolsheviks worked so hard to suppress.

Did the concentration of power in the party dictatorship benefit the

people living under the Russian government, or just the structures of

state tyranny? To answer this question, we could begin by considering

the fates of those who oversaw and excused the butchering of the

Kronstadt rebels, ostensibly the chief beneficiaries of this

concentration of power.

Leon Trotsky, who oversaw the military defeat of the Kronstadt uprising,

was exiled from Russia less than eight years later. On August 20, 1940,

he was assassinated on orders from Josef Stalin.

Lenin lived just long enough to help oversee the imprisonment,

execution, and exile of the leaders of the other socialist parties,

including the Mensheviks and SRs (Socialist-Revolutionaries). Less than

three years after the Kronstadt uprising, he died of health

complications exacerbated by the stress of maintaining power—a merciful

fate compared to what awaited most Bolsheviks. In the years leading up

to his death, he unsuccessfully opposed Stalin’s efforts to gain

supremacy within the Party.

Grigory Zinoviev, the Bolshevik who suppressed the protests in St.

Petersburg that provoked the Kronstadt uprising and called for the

brutal suppression of the uprising, seemed poised to make out better at

first. After Lenin’s death, he formed a troika (triumvirate) with fellow

Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Josef Stalin to force Trotsky from power. But

Stalin ultimately got the upper hand; Zinoviev and Kamenev were

subjected to a show trial and executed in August 1936.

Tukhachevsky, Dybenko, and other Bolshevik leaders who participated in

crushing the Kronstadt uprising were also killed in the Great Purge.

Victor Serge, the former anarchist who made excuses for the Bolshevik

centralization of power and the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt, was

nonetheless eventually expelled from the party and spent several years

in prison. Although he ultimately managed to leave the Soviet Union, his

sister, his mother-in-law, and two of his brothers-in-law all died in

prison.

As the saying goes, if you love a Bolshevik, the best thing you can do

for him is to prevent his party from coming to power, since he is

certain to be next up against the wall after you. The price of autocracy

is a ceaselessly brutal struggle for domination.

Worse, the legacy of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union has discredited

the idea that there could be emancipatory alternatives to capitalism for

hundreds of millions of people. Reactionary politics are rampant

throughout the former Eastern Bloc as a consequence of the failures of

the party dictatorship model. In retrospect, the Kronstadt rebels were

trying to save the authoritarian communists from themselves and to

rescue the idea of a world without capitalism.

It is one of the ironies of history that anarchists have become the

chief advocates for an uprising that involved so many socialists and

communists, including members of the Bolshevik Party who only renounced

their membership when they found themselves on the receiving end of its

bullets, bombs, and disinformation.

Appendix: A Chronology of the Kronstadt Uprising, including the Text

of Their Daily Paper

Below, interspersed with the events of each day of the uprising and

other archival materials, we present the text of every issue of the

newspaper published by the Kronstadt rebels, the Izvestia [News] of the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Soldiers, and Workers of

the Town of Kronstadt, in order to offer a view of the events from the

rebels’ perspective. History is written by the victors; for seven

decades after the uprising, it was much easier to hear the official

narrative of the Bolsheviks who suppressed it than the voices of the

rebels who were killed, imprisoned, or driven into exile. We owe it to

ourselves to hear what the ordinary sailors, soldiers, and workers who

participated in the Kronstadt uprising had to say about what they were

doing and why.

---

“In February, 1921, the workers of several Petrograd factories went on

strike. The winter was an exceptionally hard one, and the people of the

capital suffered intensely from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. They asked

an increase of their food rations, some fuel and clothing. The

complaints of the strikers, ignored by the authorities, presently

assumed a political character. Here and there was also voiced a demand

for the Constituent Assembly and free trade. The attempted street

demonstration of the strikers was suppressed, the Government having

ordered out the military kursanti.”

-Emma Goldman, “My Further Disillusionment in Russia”

In response to Soviet crackdowns on labor organizing and peasants’

autonomy—in particular, the suppression of protests in neighboring

Petrograd (St. Petersburg)—the crews of two Russian battleships

stationed at the island naval fortress of Kronstadt, the Petropavlovsk

and the Sevastopol, held an emergency meeting. Some of these were the

same sailors who had been on the front lines of the revolution of 1917.

They agreed on fifteen demands. These later appeared in the first issue

of the Kronstadt Izvestia.

On March 1, between 15,000 and 16,000 sailors, soldiers, and workers

assembled at Kronstadt for an appearance by Kalinin, the President of

the Soviet Republic. The crowd shouted Kalinin down and seized the

rostrum, from which ordinary workers and sailors proclaimed their

grievances. In the end, the participants in the rally overwhelmingly

endorsed the fifteen demands, with the majority of rank-and-file

Communist Party members joining in. Only a few Bolshevik officials

objected. A conference of delegates from ships, military units,

workshops and trade unions met the next day, establishing a Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, and Kronstadt rose in revolt against the Soviet

authorities.

On March 2, the delegates of warships, military units, and unions met on

Kronstadt to prepare for reelection of the local soviet; they ended up

by electing a Provisional Revolutionary Committee over the objections

and threats of the Bolshevik leadership, three of whom they took

hostage. In the end, they arrested 326 Bolsheviks, roughly a fifth of

the total number of Bolsheviks on the island, the rest of whom were

permitted to remain at liberty.

At the same time, the Kremlin published allegations in Pravda that the

unrest at Kronstadt was a counterrevolutionary plot involving a

collaboration between a Tsarist general and the right wing of the

Socialist Revolutionary Party, claiming that the French press had given

the whole thing away by accidentally announcing the mutiny weeks ahead

of time:

Already on February 13, 1921 a telegram from Helsingfors, dated February

11, appeared in the Paris newspaper Le Matin, reporting that a sailors’

revolt against the Soviet power had broken out at Kronstadt. The French

counter-intelligence service [sic] had only slightly anticipated events.

Within a few days the events expected, and undoubtedly also prepared, by

the French counter-intelligence service actually began. White-Guard

leaflets appeared in Kronstadt and Petrograd. In the course of arrests

some notorious spies were detained. At the same time the Right SRs began

an intense agitation among the workers, exploiting the difficult

situation where food and fuel were concerned. On February 28,

disturbances began on the vessel Petropavlovsk, continued on March 1.

The same resolution was passed by a general meeting. On the morning of

March 2, the group of the former General Kozlovsky (commanding the

artillery) already appeared openly on the scene.

This was their excuse for declaring the city and province of Petrograd

to be placed under martial law.

It’s worth reprinting the actual text of the article from Le Matin in

full, since it was the linchpin of early Bolshevik efforts to brand the

uprising as a reactionary endeavor.

HELSINKI, February 11. It is reported from Petrograd that following the

recent mutiny by the sailors from Kronstadt, the Bolshevik military

authorities have taken a series of measures with a view to isolating

Kronstadt and forbidding access to Petrograd to the Red soldiers and the

sailors of the garrison of the island. The supplying of Kronstadt was

interrupted until further notice. Hundreds of sailors were arrested and

transferred to Moscow, presumably to be shot there.

If this telegram is supposed to be evidence that the March uprising was

a Tsarist plot, what sense would it have made to declare the uprising to

have been defeated two weeks before it got underway? It seems, rather,

like an example of inaccurate journalism, presumably prompted by the

tensions that were already simmering in Kronstadt weeks before the

revolt.

Meanwhile, the Kronstadt rebels were hastening into action:

“Acting with great dispatch, the [provisional revolutionary] committee

sent armed detachments to occupy the arsenals, telephone exchange, food

depots, water-pumping station, power plants, Cheka headquarters, and

other strategic points. By midnight, the city had been secured without

any resistance. Moreover, all the warships, forts, and batteries

recognized the authority of the Revolutionary Committee. Earlier in the

day, copies of the Petropavlovsk resolution had been taken by courier to

the mainland and distributed in Oranienbaum, Petrograd, and other towns

in the vicinity. That evening the Naval Air Squadron at Oranienbaum

recognized the Revolutionary Committee and sent representatives across

the ice to Kronstadt. The revolt had begun to spread.”

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

March 3

At Oranienbaum, a town on the coast of the gulf of Finland, across the

ice from Kronstadt,

“the rank and file of the First Naval Air Squadron held a meeting at

their club, unanimously endorsed the [15-point] resolution, and,

following Kronstadt’s example, proceeded to elect their own

Revolutionary Committee. Soon after this, they met again in a nearby

hangar and chose a three-man delegation to cross the ice and establish

direct contact with the Kronstadters. In the middle of the

night—apparently after the delegates from the Air Squadron arrived with

their offer to join the movement—the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee

sent a party of 250 men to Oranienbaum, but they were met by machine-gun

fire and forced to withdraw. The three envoys of the Air Squadron were

arrested by the Cheka while attempting to return to their base.

Meanwhile, the commissar of the Oranienbaum garrison, having learned of

the incipient mutiny, called Zinoviev’s Defense Committee with an urgent

request for reinforcements. All Communists at Oranienbaum were issued

arms and given extra rations to allay any discontent which they

themselves may have felt over the food situation. At 5 am on March 3, an

armored train with a detachment of kursanty and three batteries of light

artillery arrived from Petrograd. The barracks of the Air Squadron were

quickly surrounded and their occupants arrested. A few hours later,

after intensive questioning, 45 men were taken out and shot, among them

the chief of the Division of Red Naval Aviators and the chairman and

secretary of the newly formed Revolutionary Committee.

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Later that day, the first issue of the official newspaper of the

Kronstadt uprising appeared.

---

Kronstadt Izvestia 1: Wednesday, March 3, 1921

TO THE POPULACE OF THE FORTRESS AND TOWN OF KRONSTADT, COMRADES AND

CITIZENS!

Our country is enduring a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic

ruin have held us in an iron vice these three years already. The

Communist Party, which rules the country, has become separated from the

masses, and shown itself unable to lead her from her state of general

ruin. It has not faced the reality of the disturbances which in recent

times have occurred in Petrograd and Moscow. This unrest shows clearly

enough that the party has lost the faith of the working masses. Neither

has it recognized the demands presented by the workers. It considers

them plots of the counterrevolution. It is deeply mistaken.

This unrest, these demands, are the voice of the people in its entirety,

of all laborers. All workers, sailors, and soldiers see clearly at the

present moment that only through common effort, by the common will of

the laborers, is it possible to give the country bread, wood, and coal,

to dress the barefoot and naked, and to lead the Republic out of this

dead end.

This will of all laborers, soldiers and sailors was definitively

expressed at the Garrison Meeting of our town on Tuesday, March 1. At

that meeting, the resolution of ships’ crews of the 1st and 2nd Brigades

was passed unanimously. Among the decisions taken, it was decided to

immediately carry out new elections to the Soviet, for these elections

to be carried out on a fairer basis, and specifically, in such a way

that true representation of the laborers would be found in the Soviet,

and that the Soviet would be an active and energetic organ.

On March 2 of this year, delegates from all sailor, soldier and worker

organizations gathered in the House of Education. It was proposed to

form at this Conference a basis for new elections, in order to then

enter into peaceful work on redesigning the Soviet structure. But in

view of the fact that there were grounds to fear repression, and also

due to threatening speeches by the representatives of authority, the

Conference decided to form a Provisional Revolutionary Committee, to

which to give all authority in governing the town and fortress.

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee is located on the battleship

PETROPAVLOVSK.

Comrades and citizens! The Provisional Committee is deeply concerned

that there should not be spilled a single drop of blood. It has taken

emergency measures for the establishment of revolutionary order in the

town and fortress, and at the forts.

Comrades and citizens! Do not stop work. Workers, remain at your

machines, sailors and soldiers in your units and at the forts. All

Soviet workers and organizations must continue their work. The

Provisional Revolutionary Committee calls all workers’ organizations,

all naval and trade unions, and all naval and military units and

individual citizens to give it universal support and aid. The task of

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee is a general, comradely effort

to organize in the town and fortress means for proper and fair elections

to a new Soviet.

And so, comrades, to order, to calm, to restraint, and to a new

Socialist construction for the good of all laborers.

Kronstadt, March 2, 1921

battleship Petropavlovsk

PETRICHENKO, President of the Provional Revolutionary Committee

TUKIN, Secretary

---

RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL MEETING OF CREWS OF THE 1ST AND 2ND

BATTLESHIP BRIGADES, OCCURRING 1 MARCH, 1921

Having heard the report of the crew representatives, sent to the City of

Petrograd by the General Meeting of ships’ crews for clarification of

the situation there, we resolve:

• In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will

of the workers and peasants, to immediately hold new elections to the

Soviets by secret ballot, with freedom of pre-election agitation for all

workers and peasants.

• Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, anarchists and

left socialist parties.

• Freedom of assembly of both trade unions and peasant associations.

• To convene not later than March 10, 1921 a non-party Conference of

workers, soldiers, and sailors of the city of Petrograd, of Kronstadt,

and of Petrograd province.

• To free all political prisoners of socialist parties, and also all

workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors imprisoned in connection with

worker and peasant movements.

• To elect a Commission for the review of the cases of those held in

prisons and concentration camps.

• To abolish all POLITOTDELS [political sections in the armed forces],

since no single party should be able to have such privileges for the

propaganda of its ideas and receive from the state the means for these

ends. In their place must be established locally elected

cultural-educational commissions, for which the state must provide

resources.

• The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between

towns and countryside.

• To equalize the rations of all laborers, with the exception of those

in work injurious to health.

• To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all military units,

and also the various guards kept in factories and plants by the

communists, and if such guards or detachments are needed, they can be

chosen in military units from the companies, and in factories and plants

by the discretion of the workers.

• To give the peasants full control over their own land, to do as they

wish, and also to keep cattle, which must be maintained and managed by

their own strength, that is, without using hired labor.

• We appeal to all military units, and also to the comrade cadets to

lend their support to our resolution.

• We demand that all resolutions be widely publicized in the press.

• We demand the institution of mobile workers’ control groups.

• We demand that handicraft production be authorized, provided it does

not utilize wage labor.

The resolution was passed by the Brigade Meeting unanimously with two

abstentions.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Brigade Meeting

PEREPELKIN, Secretary

The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of the entire

Kronstadt garrison.

VASILIEV, President

Together with Comrade Kalinin, Vasiliev votes against the resolution.

---

By 9 pm on March 2, the majority of forts and all army units of the

fortress had given their support to the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee. All organizations and the Communications Service are occupied

by guards from the Revolutionary Committee. From Oranienbaum have

arrived representatives, who declared that the Oranienbaum garrison has

also given its support to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

---

THERE IS A GENERAL UPRISING IN PETROGRAD.

Comrade Ia. Ilyin was called by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee,

and appointed to continue work on the provision of food to the populace.

The produce apparatus will work without break. Today, bread is issued

for two days, that is, for March 3 and 4.

---

The Oranienbaum Air Division has given its support to the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, and is sending delegates. Our resolution was

sent to Petrograd. We await an answer.

---

At Fort Totleben, Novikov, Commissar of the Fortress, who had been

making his way toward the Finnish border on horseback, was restrained by

the crew of the 6th Battery.

---

March 4

Emma Goldman attended the March 4 meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, which

voted to accept Bolshevik Party boss Zinoviev’s proposal to force the

surrender of Krondstadt sailors upon penalty of death. Nonetheless, she

did not get the impression that Zinoviev believed his own narrative

about the sailors being led astray by an old Tsarist general.

“When the meeting was opened for discussion, a workingman from the

Petrograd Arsenal demanded to be heard. He spoke with deep emotion and,

ignoring the constant interruptions, he fearlessly declared that the

workers had been driven to strike because of the Government’s

indifference to their complaints; the Kronstadt sailors, far from being

counter-revolutionists, were devoted to the Revolution. Facing Zinoviev

he reminded him that the Bolshevik authorities were now acting toward

the workers and sailors just as the Kerensky Government had acted toward

the Bolsheviki. ‘Then you were denounced as counter-revolutionists and

German agents,’ he said; ‘we, the workers and sailors, protected you and

helped you to power. Now you denounce us and are ready to attack us with

arms. Remember, you are playing with fire.’

“Then a sailor spoke. He referred to the glorious revolutionary past of

Kronstadt, appealed to the Communists not to engage in fratricide, and

read the Kronstadt resolution to prove the peaceful attitude of the

sailors. But the voice of these sons of the people fell on deaf ears.

The Petro-Soviet, its passions roused by Bolshevik demagoguery, passed

the Zinoviev resolution ordering Kronstadt to surrender on pain of

extermination.

-Emma Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia

Meanwhile, at Kronstadt, another meeting took place, with a very

different atmosphere:

“During the session of 4 March, at which 202 delegates were present (had

the Communist delegates present on 2 March been asked to stay away?), it

was decided at the suggestion of Petrichenko to enlarge the

Revolutionary Committee to fifteen members, and ten new members were

then elected by an overwhelming majority from among twenty who stood for

election. Petrichenko went on to report on the activities of the

Revolutionary Committee, the state of military preparedness of the

ships’ crews and the garrison, the high morale of the population, and

the satisfactory state of food and fuel reserves (which he certainly

assessed too optimistically). The Conference then resolved that all

workers be armed and assume responsibility for the security and defense

of the inner town, so that sailors and soldiers could be free to man the

outer defenses. It was also decided that elections should be held within

three days to the governing bodies of the trade unions and to a newly

founded Council of Trade Unions. Next came reports from sailors who had

managed to break through the blockade and to return from Petrograd,

Strelnyi, Peterhof, and Oranienbaum, all of them unanimous in saying

that the local population ‘is kept by the Communists in complete

ignorance of what is happening in Kronstadt,’ while rumors were being

spread that ‘a gang of White Guards and generals’ was in control. This

sad news is reported to have ‘provoked general laughter’ in the audience

and a back-bencher’s sarcastic comment: ‘We have only one general here -

the commissar of the Baltic Fleet Kuzmin — and he has been arrested.’ On

adjourning, the Conference adopted the watchword ‘To Win or Die’, which

is reported to have characterized the general mood.”

-Kronstadt 1917-21: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, by Israel Getzler

Kronstadt already had a garrison of 13,000. In addition to this, 2000

more civilian volunteers joined up.

---

Kronstadt Izvestia 2: Friday, March 4, 1921

---

ORDERS OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN OF

KRONSTADT

No 1

March 3, 1921, battleship PETROPAVLOVSK

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Town of Kronstadt orders

all organizations in the town and fortress to strictly carry out all

decrees of the Committee. All heads of organizations and their workers

are to remain in their places and continue work.

No 2

March 3, 1921, battleship PETROPAVLOVSK

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Town of Kronstadt forbids

leaving the town. In exceptional cases, apply to the Commander of the

Town. The Department of Fleet Staff Registration in Kronstadt is

instructed to halt any and all leaves.

No 3

March 3, 1921

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee forbids any and all arbitrary

searches in the town, and brings to the general attention that

certificates for the right of search are issued with the signature of

the President and Secretary of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee,

and are invalid without the seal of the battleship Petropavlovsk. It is

ordered that during searches of organizations, of whatever party,

nothing is to be removed, nor stolen. All must be preserved entire, as

the people’s property.

No 4

March 3, 1921, battleship PETROPAVLOVSK

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Town of Kronstadt, in

view of the the events currently being endured, forewarns all citizens,

seamen, and soldiers that, after 11 pm, any and all movement about the

town is absolutely forbidden without special documents issued by the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee

KILGAST, for the Secretary

---

FROM THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee considers it necessary to refute

all rumors that the arrested Communists are threatened with violence.

The arrested Communists are located in complete security.

Many of them were arrested, and a part then released. A member of the

Communist Party will take part in the commission for investigation of

the reasons for the Communists’ arrest. To Comrades Ilyin, Kabanov, and

Pervushin, who appeared before the Revolutionary Committee, was given

the right to see those located under arrest on the Petropavlovsk, and

they, with their signatures, personally affirm that declared above.

Ilyin, Kabanov, Pervushin.

Certified true:

N. ARKHIPOV, authorized member of the Prov. Rev. Com.

P. BOGDANOV, for the Secretary

---

Finally, the Communists themselves have admitted that it is necessary to

restructure life, and that it does not follow to hold power by force

which falls from your hands by the will of the laboring masses. Evidence

of this is the appeal of the Provisional Bureau of the Kronstadt

Organization of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia], printed below.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Revolutionary Committee

---

APPEAL OF THE PROVISIONAL BUREAU OF THE KRONSTADT ORGANIZATION OF

THE RCP [Communist Party of Russia]

Comrade Communists, working in all Soviet departments, trade

organizations, and factory committees, all economic organs, and also in

the military units of the garrison, the PROVISIONAL BUREAU OF THE RCP

addresses you with a comradely appeal and urgent call of the following

substance:

The moment currently being endured demands of us special caution,

restraint and tact. Our party has not betrayed, and is not betraying,

the working class, in the defense of which it has stood for many years.

The historic course of political events requires us, in the interests of

all laborers, to be at our places, and to carry on our daily work

without any stoppages. We must remember that the smallest weakening or

break in work, in any section of our economic life, brings about worse

living conditions for the working class and peasantry.

May every comrade of our party be imbued with an understanding of the

moment being endured. Do not believe the absurd rumors that Communist

leaders are supposedly being shot, and that Communists are preparing for

armed action in Kronstadt. They are spread by a clearly provocative

element, which wishes to provoke bloodshed. These are lies and

absurdities, and it is on such as these that the agents of the Entente,

working to achieve the overthrow of Soviet power, wish to play.

We openly declare that our party, with weapon in hand, has and will

defend all the achievements of the working class against the open and

secret White Guards who wish the destruction of the Soviet power of

workers and peasants.

The Provisional Bureau of the RCP recognizes new elections to the Soviet

as necessary, and calls on all members of the R.C.P to take part in

these new elections.

The Provisional Bureau of the RCP calls on all members of the party to

be at their places, and not to cause any obstruction to the measures

being carried out by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. Restraint,

discipline, calm and unity are the price of victory for the workers and

peasants of the entire world against all the secret and open plots of

the Entente.

Long live Soviet power!

Long live the Worldwide Union of Laborers!

Provisional Bureau of the Kronst. Organ. of the RCP.

IA. ILYIN, F. PERVUSHIN, A. KABANOV

---

TO THE POPULACE OF THE TOWN OF KRONSTADT CITIZENS!

Kronstadt is now enduring a moment of tense struggle for freedom. An

attack by the Communists can be expected any minute, with the goal of

seizing Kronstadt, and again fastening us to their authority, which

brings us only to hunger, cold and ruin. We all, to the last man, will

staunchly defend the freedom achieved by us. We shall not allow them to

seize Kronstadt, and if they should attempt to do so by force of arms,

we will give them a worthy repulse.

Therefore, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee forewarns citizens

not to give in to panic and fear if it becomes necessary to hear

shooting. Only calm and restraint will give us victory.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

A BROADCAST FROM MOSCOW

We print the following, broadcast on Rosta from Moscow, full of blatant

lies and deceptions by the Communist Party, which calls itself the

Soviet Government. The broadcast was picked up by the radio station on

the Petropavlovsk.

Several sections weren’t picked up, as another station interfered. This

broadcast does not require commentary. The laborers of Kronstadt will

understand its provocative nature.

Broadcast. To all, To all, To all.

Radio messenger Rosta Moscow, March 3.

“To Battle With White Guard Conspiracy.”

That the mutiny by former General Kozlovsky and the ship Petropavlovsk

was prepared by the spies of the Entente, like so many earlier White

Guard rebellions, is visible from the report of the bourgeois French

newspaper Matin, which two weeks before the mutiny printed a telegram

from Helsingfors of the following substance.

“Of Petrograd they report that as a result of a recent revolt in

Kronstadt, Bolshevik military authorities have taken a whole set of

measures to isolate Kronstadt, and to forbid the soldiers and sailors of

the Kronstadt garrison access to Petrograd. Supply of provisions to

Kronstadt is forbidden in the future, until special decree. It is clear

that the mutiny in Kronstadt was directed by Paris… and that French

counterintelligence is mixed up here.”

The same old story is repeated. The SRs, led from Paris, prepared the

soil for a rebellion against Soviet Power, and just when they’d gotten

it ready, the real boss, a tsarist general, appeared from cover behind

their backs. The story of Kolchak, establishing his power in exchange

for that of the SRs, is now repeated. All enemies of the laborers, from

tsarist generals to SRs inclusive, try to speculate on hunger and cold.

Of course, this general/SR revolt will be put down very quickly, and

General Kozlovsky and his associates risk the fate of Kolchak.

But the Entente’s spy net is undoubtably spread not only in Kronstadt

alone. Workers and soldiers, tear apart that net, and fish out informers

and provocateurs! Composure, restraint, vigilance and unity are needed.

Remember that we will leave these temporary, if difficult, food and

heating problems with tight, comradely labor, and not by the path of

insane exhibitions which can only increase the hunger still more, and

play into the hands of the damned enemies of laborers.

radio station Moskva

---

PRODUCE

From Gorkommuna3

Today salted butter is issued from the meat stores: for letter A, 3/4

lb. and letter B, 1/2 lb. for produce coupon No 2. Table butter for

children of series A, 1 pound for produce coupon No 3, series B, 1/2 lb.

for produce coupon No 3, and series C, 1/2 lb. for produce coupon No 2.

Salt is issued from all stores to adults for produce coupon No 3, to

children of series B for produce coupon No 4 and series C for produce

coupon No 3, at 1 lb. for all.

Coffee: to boarders and non-boarders for bread coupon No 5, to children

of series B for bread coupon No 53 and series C for bread coupon No 5,

at 1/4 lb. for all.

2 boxes of matches are issued from all stores, by adult cards for bread

coupon No 6, the same for boarders and non-boarders.

1 pound of dried potatoes is issued to children of series B for produce

coupon No 6 and series C for produce coupon No 5.

Today 1/2 pound of first grade tobacco is issued from the writing paper

store (formerly of Rakovskaya) and the store (formerly of Molchanov) by

registered tobacco cards, with the cutting of coupon No 4.

The responsible clerks in the stores are instructed to cut control

coupon No 1 on the tobacco cards.

---

Today kerosine is issued by cards up to No 7000.

In accordance with People’s Commisariat of Social Security circular No

2495 of September 8, 1920, the Administration of Gorkommuna instructs

Uchkoms [District Election Committees] and Building Representatives, on

their own responsibility, not later than March 5th to take “Red Star”

cards from childless wives of soldiers and sailors who are occupied with

work and service in organizations and who therefore receive produce card

letter A-reserved.

Fruit drops are issued by children’s cafeteria cards of series C for

bread coupon No 54 from the same stores as to non-boarders, and in the

same quantity.

CHASNOV, Member of the Administration for Distribution

ANNOUNCEMENT

All military units, workers’ associations, and organizations may receive

“Izvestiia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee” and pamphlets at

Sevtsentropechat [North Central Publishing], in accordance with the set

norm.

---

March 5

On March 5, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and others sent a letter of

protest to Zinoviev, proposing a commission to settle the dispute with

the Krondstadt sailors peacefully:

To The Petrograd Soviet of Labour and Defense, Chairman Zinoviev:

To remain silent now is impossible, even criminal. Recent events impel

us Anarchists to speak out and to declare our attitude in the present

situation.

The spirit of ferment and dissatisfaction manifest among the workers and

sailors is the result of causes that demand our serious attention. Cold

and hunger have produced dissatisfaction, and the absence of any

opportunity for discussion and criticism is forcing the workers and

sailors to air their grievances in the open.

White-guardist bands wish and may try to exploit this dissatisfaction in

their own class interests. Hiding behind the workers and sailors they

throw out slogans of the Constituent Assembly, of free trade, and

similar demands.

We Anarchists have long since exposed the fiction of these slogans, and

we declare to the whole world that we will fight with arms against any

counter-revolutionary attempt, in cooperation with all friends of the

Social Revolution and hand in hand with the Bolsheviki.

Concerning the conflict between the Soviet Government and the workers

and sailors, we hold that it must be settled not by force of arms but by

means of comradely, fraternal revolutionary agreement. Resort to

bloodshed on the part of the Soviet Government will not—in the given

situation—intimidate or quiet the workers. On the contrary, it will

serve only to aggravate matters and will strengthen the bands of the

Entente and of internal counter-revolution.

More important still, the use of force by the Workers’ and Peasants’

Government against workers and sailors will have a reactionary effect

upon the international revolutionary movement and will everywhere result

in incalculable harm to the Social Revolution.

Comrades Bolsheviki, bethink yourselves before it is too late. Do not

play with fire: you are about to make a most serious and decisive step.

We hereby submit to you the following proposition: Let a Commission he

selected to consist of five persons, inclusive of two Anarchists. The

Commission is to go to Kronstadt to settle the dispute by peaceful

means. In the given situation this is the most radical method. It will

be of international revolutionary significance.

Petrograd, March 5, 1921.

Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Perkus, Petrovsky.

Meanwhile, Trotsky sent a last warning to the rebels:

A Last Warning to the Garrison and Inhabitants of Kronstadt and the

Mutinous Forts

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government has decreed that Kronstadt and the

mutinous ships must immediately submit to the authority of the Soviet

Republic.

I therefore order all who have lifted their hands against the socialist

fatherland to lay down their arms at once. Those who resist will be

disarmed and turned over to the Soviet authorities. The arrested

commissars and other representatives of the Government must be released

forthwith.

Only those who surrender unconditionally may count on the mercy of the

Soviet Republic.

At the same time I am giving orders for everything to be made ready for

crushing the mutiny and the mutineers by armed force.

Responsibility for the harm that may consequently be suffered by the

peaceful population will fall entirely upon the heads of the

counter-revolutionary mutineers.

This warning is final.

March 5, 1921, 1400 hours

Petrograd

Kronstadt Izvestia 3: Saturday, March 5, 1921

ANNOUNCEMENT

It is brought to the general attention that the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee has moved from the battleship Petropavlovsk to

quarters in the “House of the People,” Lenin Prospekt No 39 (fourth

floor), and it is instructed to apply there for all certificates and

instructions.

SPITE OF THE POWERLESS

It is three days since Kronstadt threw from itself the nightmarish power

of the Communists, just as 4 years ago it threw off the power of the

Tsar, and of the tsarist generals. For three days, the citizens of

Kronstadt have breathed free of the party dictatorship. The Kronstadt

Communists’ “great leaders” ran away disgracefully, like guilty little

children. They saved their skins from the danger that the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee would resort to that beloved means of

extremists, the firing squad.

It was a vain fear. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee takes

revenge against no one, threatens no one. All the Kronstadt Communists

are at liberty, and are unthreatened by any danger. Only those are

restrained who tried to flee and were taken by the patrols. But even

they are located in complete security, in a security which guarantees

them against revenge by the populace for the “red terror.” The

Communists’ families are inviolate, just as all citizens are inviolate.

And how have the Communists answered this? From the leaflets which they

threw from an airplane yesterday, it is seen that a whole group of

people, completely non-participant in the Kronstadt events, have been

arrested in Petrograd. Moreover, their families have also been arrested.

“The Defense Committee,” it says in the leaflet, “declares all those

arrested to be hostages for those comrades restrained by the mutineers

in Kronstadt, and in particular for N. N. Kuzmin, Commissar of Baltflot,

for Comrade Vasiliev, President of the Kronstadt Soviet, and for other

Communists. If even one hair falls from the heads of the restrained

comrades, the named hostages will answer for it with their heads.”

Thus does the Defense Committee end its proclamation. This is the spite

of the powerless… Jeering over innocent families will not add new

laurels to the comrade Communists. Certainly, in any case, not by this

path will they hold on to the power which is being torn from their hands

by the workers, sailors, and soldiers of Kronstadt.

VICTORY OR DEATH (A Conference of Delegates)

Yesterday, March 4, at 6 pm, an assembly of the Conference of Delegates

from military units of the garrison and from trade unions took place at

the Garrison Club. Its purpose was to hold by-elections to the

membership of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, to hear reports

on the current moment from various locations, etc. 202 delegates took

part in the Conference, the majority arriving straight from work.

The sailor Petrichenko, President of the Conference, announced that the

Prov. Rev. Com. was overloaded with work, and that it was necessary to

add to its forces. The addition of at least ten more people to the five

current members of the Committee was required. Twenty candidates were

nominated, and the Conference elected the following comrades by an

overwhelming majority of votes: Vershinin, Perepelkin, Kupolov, Ososov,

Valk, Romanenko, Pavlov, Boikov, Patrushev and Kilgast. After the

election, the new members of the Committee took places in the Presidium.

After this, the Conference heard the detailed report of the President of

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, the sailor Petrichenko, on the

Committee’s actions from the moment of its election up to the previous

day. Comrade Petrichenko underscored the full battle readiness of the

entire garrison of the fortress, and of the ships, and the enthusiasm

which filled all together and each individually, from the workers to the

soldiers and sailors. The meeting greeted the newly elected members of

the Committee and the President’s concluding words with stormy applause.

Moving on to business, the Conference considered first of all the

question of produce and heating material. It was made clear that the

town and garrison are fully provided for both produce and heating

material.

On the question of arming the workers, the Conference mandated the

arming of the working masses. This was completed to the loud approval of

the workers themselves, and cries of “victory or death.” The workers

were assigned the internal guard of the town, since the sailors and

soldiers are bursting for active work in the combat detachments.

Further, it was decided to newly elect within three days the

administrations of all unions, and also the Soviet of Unions. This is

the leading organ of the workers, and will be in constant contact with

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

Then reports from various places were given by comrade sailors who had

broken through to Kronstadt from Petrograd, Strelna, Peterhof, and

Oranienbaum. From their information it is seen that the populace and

workers of these towns are being kept by the Communists in total

unawareness of what is being done in Kronstadt. Provocative rumors are

being let out to the effect that some kind of gang of White Guards and

generals is running things in Kronstadt.

This last information called forth the general laughter of the sailors

and workers at the assembly. It reached an even more comical mood during

the reading of a “Communist manifesto,” tossed on Kronstadt from an

airplane.

“We just have one general, Kuzmin, Commissar of Baltflot,” and “Yeah,

and he’s under arrest,” were heard from the back rows.

The assembly ended with a number of greetings, wishes, and an expression

of full and single-hearted preparedness for victory or death.

The entire assembly took place under this slogan, “Victory or Death.”

GREETINGS TO THE KRONSTADT GARRISON

The radio station of the battleship Petropavlovsk received a broadcast

from Reval [Tallinn, Estonia], sent to the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee. “Greetings to the valiant garrison of revolutionary

Kronstadt, which has overthrown the tyrants’ power.”

ZINOVIEV AT KRASNAYA GORKA

Zinoviev arrived in Oranienbaum on a special train, and has just now

come to Krasnaya Gorka. His visit is due to unrest among the local

garrison, which has spoken out at spontaneous meetings in favor of

giving support to the Kronstadt movement.

MOVEMENT OF TRAINS TO ORANIENBAUM HALTED

By order of the Defense Committee of Petrograd, movement of trains to

Oranienbaum has been halted. Trains set out in exceptional cases, and

with the special allowance of the Defense Committee. There are increased

guards of railroad police and cadets at all stations.

ARREST OF THE HEAD OF PUBALT

From Sestroretsk

Batis, head of the Politotdel of Baltflot, was restrained by our patrol

while attempting to break through to fort Totleben, and was returned to

Kronstadt. Several other Communists were restrained along with him.

“THE COMMUNIST WAY”

Mass worker arrests have been carried out at the Sestroretsk Weapons

Factory. Heartbreaking scenes are being played out in the town. The

wives and children of the workers appear sobbing in the streets and

demand freedom for their husbands and fathers.

IN PETROGRAD

According to reports, meetings are being held at all factories in

Petrograd, at which the events in Kronstadt are discussed. The workers’

attitude is on the side of Revolutionary Kronstadt, and they are trying

in every way to make contact with us. The Communists are preventing

this, throwing all their forces into observation of and spying on the

workers, soldiers, and sailors.

The course of arrests has intensified, especially among the sailors.

Sailors are forbidden to be absent from the ships. Commissars and

Communists are occupied with intensified spying. Street gatherings are

broken up by armed detachments of Communists.

The bread ration for the populace has been decreased; 3/4 pound is

issued for two days.

LATEST NEWS FROM PETROGRAD

—Just now, there has been report that the gigantic Brick Plant No 1 has

gone on strike.

—The workers of the Baltic Factory have refused to come to work.

—Increased guards of Communist combat detachments and cadets have been

placed near the moorages of the battleships Gangut and Poltava.

—Sailors who succeed in breaking through to Oranienbaum are arrested at

the station.

—All sailors living in private apartments are ordered to move to the

vessels.

NORMAL LIFE IN THE TOWN

There is complete order in Kronstadt, unbroken since the moment of the

transfer of power to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. All

organizations are working normally, and there has not been a single hour

of work stoppage. The streets are lively. In all three days not a single

round has been fired. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee, in order

to be closer to the populace, has moved from the Petropavlovsk to the

“House of the People.”

FLIGHT FROM THE PARTY

The following declaration arrived at the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee:

“I recognize that the policy of the Communist Party has led the country

to a dead end because the party has become bureaucratized, learned

nothing, and not wanted to learn and to listen to the voice of the

masses, whom it has tried to tie to its own will. We remember the at

least 150 million peasantry, that freedom of speech, and an expanded

call to construction of the country by means of changed electoral

methods will bring the country from hibernation, they entirely give

their support at the present critical moment when the future of the

reconstruction of Russia which has been begun by the Revolutionary

Soviet depends only on its vigilance and energy, and I no longer

consider myself a member of the RCP, but entirely give my support to the

resolution taken at the general town meeting of the 1st of March, and

ask that my strength and knowledge be used.

“I ask that the present be published in the local newspaper.”

GERMAN KANAEV, red commander, son of a political exile in the Matter of

the 193, 3/3-21 [“The Trial of the 193” was a well-known trial of

Narodniks in 1877-78.]

II

At the end of 1919, official reports were published in “Izvestiia of the

Central Executive Committee” that Maximalists participated in organizing

the blowing up of the Moscow Department of the R.C.P., and in armed

expropriations in the South, including the murder of collective farmers.

I, considering terror against Socialist Parties to be unacceptable, left

the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Maximalists because of these

reports.

Recently I received information from a completely trustworthy source

that this was all one of the means of party struggle by the Communists,

and that the court was forced to acquit the Maximalists. The press,

located in the partisan hands of the Communists, was studiously silent

about this.

In strength of the above, I ask that I no longer be considered a

candidate member of the Communist Party. I am returning to the ranks of

the Union of SR-Maximalists, the slogan of which has always been, is and

shall be, “Power to Soviets, and not Parties.”

A. LAMANOV

March 4, 1921

III

I, a soldier of the 4th Artillery Division, was deluded and became a

sympathizer with the Communist Party. Now I am leaving that delusion,

and giving my support to the mass. I do this in order to move ahead hand

in hand with the Revolutionary Committee.

DONAT SEMENOVICH VAG

March 4, 1921

ANNOUNCEMENT

All military units, workers associations and organizations may receive

“Izvestiia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee” and pamphlets at

Sevtsentropechat, in accordance with the set norm.

March 6

“On March 6th, Trotsky completed the preparations for the attack. The

most loyal divisions were brought from all the fronts, the regiments of

kursanti, the detachments of the Cheka, and the military units composed

of Communists were concentrated in the forts of Sestroretsk, Lissy Noss,

and Krasnaia Gorka, as well as in nearby fortified positions. The best

military technicians were sent to the theater of operations to work out

the plans for the blockade and attack on Kronstadt. Tuchachevsky was

designated commander-in-chief of the troops.”

-Voline, “The Unknown Revolution”

Kronstadt Izvestia 4: Sunday, March 6, 1921

“SIRS” OR “COMRADES”

The Kronstadt seamen, and the workers with their toil-hardened hands,

have torn the helm from the hands of the Communists, and taken their

place at the wheel. With assurance and good cheer, they will lead the

ship of Soviet power to Petrograd, whence the power of toil-hardened

hands must surely capture long-suffering Russia.

But be on guard comrades. Increase your vigilance tenfold, for the path

leading you to the clear channel is strewn with submerged rocks. One

careless turn of the wheel, and the ship, with its cargo of social

construction which you value so greatly, may founder on the cliffs.

Guard the helmsman’s bridge vigilantly, comrades, for enemies already

skulk near. A single negligence by you, and they will tear the wheel

away. The Soviet ship may go to the bottom, to the malicious laughter of

tsarist lackeys and servitors of the bourgeoisie.

You, comrades, now celebrate a great and bloodless victory over the

Communist dictatorship, and your enemies celebrate with you. But your

motives for joy and theirs are completely opposed. You are inspired with

a burning desire to build true Soviet power, and by the noble hope of

granting the worker freedom of labor, and the peasant the right to

control his own land and the produce of his work. They are driven by the

hope of raising anew the tsarist whip, and the privilege of generals.

Your interests are not the same, and you and they do not walk the same

path. You needed to overthrow Communist authority for the goal of

peaceful construction, and for constructive work. They need this for the

enslavement of the workers and peasants. You search for freedom; they

wish to once again throw onto you the chains of slavery. Be vigilant. Do

not allow wolves in sheep’s clothing close to the helmsman’s bridge.

COWARDS AND SLANDERERS

Below, we print word for word the text of a proclamation thrown out of

an airplane over Kronstadt by the Communists.

The citizens regard this provocative slander with total contempt. The

people of Kronstadt know how, and by whom, the hated power of the

Communists was overturned. They know that at the head of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee stand elected, selfless martyrs, the best sons

of the laboring people: soldiers, sailors, and workers. They will not

allow anyone to seat himself on their neck. Much less will they allow

tsarist generals or White Guards. The Communists issue the threat, “A

few more hours will pass, and you will be forced to surrender.”

Despicable hypocrites! Who do you want to deceive?

The Kronstadt garrison did not surrender to tsarist admirals, and will

not surrender to Bolshevist generals. Do not lie and attempt to deceive

the people, cowards! You know our strength, and our readiness to either

be victorious, or to die with honor. You know that we will never bolt,

like your commissars, loaded down with “tsarist” money, and gold

extracted by the blood of the workers.

YOU’VE GOTTEN WHAT YOU ASKED FOR

To the Deceived People of Kronstadt

Now do you see where the scoundrels have led you? You’ve gotten what you

asked for! From behind the cover of the SRs and Mensheviks, former

tsarist generals have already peered out with bared teeth. Kozlovsky,

the tsarist general, Captain Burkser, Kostromitinov, Shirkanovsky [sic],

and other notorious White Guards control all these Petrichenkos and

Turins [sic] like puppets on strings. They are deceiving you! They have

told you that you are struggling for “democracy.” Not even two days have

passed and you see that, in fact, you struggle not for democracy, but

for tsarist generals. You have placed a new Viren on your own necks.

They tell you fairy tales, speaking as if Petrograd stood behind you, as

if Siberia and the Ukraine supported you. All this is a shameless lie!

In Petrograd the last sailor turned from you when it became known that

tsarist General Kozlovsky was running things. Siberia and the Ukraine

stand firmly for Soviet power. Red Petrograd laughs at the pathetic

labors of a little bunch of SRs and White Guards.

You are completely surrounded. A few more hours will pass, and you will

be forced to surrender. There is no bread and no heat in Kronstadt. If

you are stubborn, you will be shot down like grouse. All these General

Kozlovskys and Burksers, all these scoundrel Petrichenkos and Turins,

will run away at the last minute, of course. And you, the deceived rank

and file sailors and soldiers, where will you go? If they promise that

Finland will feed you, then they are deceiving you! Can you really have

not heard how they took the former soldiers of Wrangel away to

Constantinople, and how they died there from disease by the thousands,

like flies? Just such a fate awaits you too, if you do not come to your

senses right now!

Surrender now, not losing a single minute!

Lay down your weapons, and come over to us!

Disarm and arrest the criminal ring leaders, and especially the tsarist

generals!

The one who surrenders immediately will be forgiven his guilt.

Surrender immediately!

THE PETROGRAD DEFENSE COMMITTEE

The broadcast below, received by the radio station of the Petropavlovsk,

confirms yet again that the Communists continue to deceive not only

workers and soldiers, but also the members of the Petrograd Soviet.

But they will not succeed in deceiving the revolutionary garrison of

Kronstadt and its workers.

ADDRESS TO THE WORKERS, SAILORS, AND SOLDIERS OF KRONSTADT

Passed at an expanded session of the Petrograd Soviet, with the

attendance, besides the members of the Soviet, of representatives from

factory-plant committees and from the administrations of all trade

unions. With the attendance, also, of commissions and delegations

elected at factories and plants, among whom were hundreds of non-party

workingmen, workingwomen, sailors, and soldiers.

A little bunch of adventurers and counter-revolutionaries has led

Kronstadt astray. Under cover of the Petropavlovsk sailors, spies sent

by French counterintelligence have unquestionably been active. They tell

the sailors that the whole matter is a struggle for “democracy,” that

they do not want the shedding of blood, and that the mutiny is passing

without a single shot, for some kind of “democracy.” French capitalists’

spies, tsarist generals, and their faithful helpers the Mensheviks and

SRs can struggle for such democracy.

If it had ever been fated for them to achieve success, the exploits of

this gang of thieves and traitors would inescapably have led to the

reestablishment of bourgeois power, and to bloody reprisal against the

workers and peasants.

The Mensheviks and SRs, pointing to the difficult economic situation of

the Soviet Republic, say that the Communists have been incapable of

economic construction. But who, for three years, did not allow the

Russian workers and peasants the possibility of peaceful economic

construction?

If anyone worked to create hunger and economic ruin, then it was the

Mensheviks and SRs. They have supported every counterrevolutionary

rebellion, tirelessly fanned the flames of civil war in the name of

re-establishing the power of landlords and capitalists, and directed

international imperialists against Soviet Russia.

The leaders of the conspiracy say that they captured power in Kronstadt

without a shot. But this occurred only because Soviet power wished to

overcome this conflict by peaceful means. It cannot continue thus. The

international bourgeoisie is raising its head. There is exultation in

the camp of the enemies of the working class, exultation which may any

day pour out in a new campaign against Soviet Russia.

This danger threatens all our attainments. The adventurers yell that the

Communists cannot handle economic construction. With this they are

pushing Soviet Russia into the embrace of a new war.

The Petrograd Soviet and central Soviet power cannot, and do not have

the right to, allow things to come to that. The work of the

counterrevolutionaries who have been planted in Kronstadt is hopeless.

They are powerless in a dispute with Soviet Russia. The mutiny must be

liquidated in the very shortest period.

Comrade workers, sailors, and soldiers, understand that you are

deceived. Understand that on you depends the bloody outcome of the

adventurism into which the White Guards have drawn you. On you depends

whether these White Guard scribblers escape their deserved punishment.

Comrades, immediately arrest the ringleaders of the

counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Immediately reestablish the Kronstadt

Soviet. Soviet power is able to distinguish unknowing, mistaken toilers

from intentional counterrevolutionaries.

Comrades, once again the Petrograd Soviet states that on you depends

whether fraternal blood does or does not spill. By the base will of

enemies of the working class, their bloody scheme will collapse on the

heads of the working class alone.

This is our last warning; time does not wait. Decide immediately, either

you are with us against the common enemy, or you will perish shamefully

and infamously together with the counterrevolutionaries.

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Deputies

Radio station Novaia Golandiia

BROADCAST BY THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

To all… To all… To all…

Comrade workers, soldiers, and sailors! We in Kronstadt know very well

how you and your half starved children and wives suffer under the yoke

of the Communist dictatorship. We have overthrown the Communist Soviet

here. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee is currently preparing to

carry out new elections, to a new, freely elected Soviet, which will

express the will of the entire laboring populace and garrison, and not

of a little bunch of insane Communists.

Our struggle is rightful. We stand for power of Soviets, and not

parties. We stand for freely elected representatives of laborers. The

current Soviets, seized and subverted by the Communists, have always

been deaf to all our needs and demands. In answer we received only

executions. Now, when the limit to the laborers’ patience has been

reached, they want to shut your mouths with miserable pittances. By

Zinoviev’s decree, anti-profiteer roadblock detachments in Petrograd

Province are being removed. Moscow is assigning ten million in gold for

the purchase abroad of provisions and items of the first necessity. But

we know that you cannot buy the Peter proletariat with these pittances.

We extend the hand of fraternal aid to you from Revolutionary Kronstadt,

past the heads of the Communists.

Comrades! They not only deceive you, but purposely obscure the truth,

resorting to base slander. Comrades, do not be taken in! All entirety of

power in Kronstadt is in the hands of revolutionary sailors, soldiers,

and workers alone, and not of White Guards with some General Kozlovsky

at head, as the slanderous broadcasts from Moscow would have you

believe.

COMPOSITION OF AND DIVISION OF DUTIES AMONG THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE

PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

The following comrades are included in the composition of the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee: Arkhipov, Boikov, Valk, Vershinin,

Kilgast, Kupolov, Oreshin, Ososov, Pavlov, Patrushev, Perepelkin,

Petrichenko, Romanenko, Tukin, and Yakimenko [sic].

From them were chosen: Comrade Petrichenko as President of the Prov.

Rev. Com., Comrades Yakimenko and Arkhipov as Comrades of the President,

Comrade Kilgast as Secretary of the Prov. Rev. Com. (he was also

appointed the management of information); the management of civilian

matters was appointed to Comrades Valk and Romanenko, of transport

resources to Comrade Boikov, of the Investigative Unit to Comrade

Pavlov, and of the Produce Department to Comrade Tukin.

KRONSTADT’S DELEGATES IN PETROGRAD

A special courier from Petrograd has now arrived in Kronstadt with

notification that the delegation sent by Kronstadt organizations arrived

there safely. The delegation informed the capitol’s workers and sailors

of the events in Kronstadt, distributed the orders and leaflets issued

by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and departed for other

missions, in a direction which it knows.

RESOLUTION OF THE SOLDIERS OF FORT RIF

We, soldiers of fort Rif, have heard the report of representatives of

the comrade sailors, regarding the current moment, about events in

Kronstadt, and have resolved: to express full faith in the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, and to stay at our posts and fight until there

isn’t a single soldier left in the fort.

Long live the freedom of the workers and peasants.

Long live the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

RIABOV, President of the Assembly

ANDREEV, Secretary

APPEAL TO ALL HONEST COMMUNARDS

Comrade rank and file Communists, look about, and you will see that we

have entered a terrible swamp, led by a little bunch of Communist

bureaucrats. Under a Communist mask, they have built warm nests for

themselves in our Republic. I, as a Communist, call on you to drive from

us those false Communists who incite us to fratricide. We rank and file

Communists, in no way guilty, suffer the rebukes of our comrade

non-party workers and peasants because of them. I look with horror on

the situation which has been created.

Will the blood of our brothers really be spilled for the interests of

those Communist bureaucrats? Comrades, come to your senses, and do not

submit to the provocations of those Communist bureaucrats who push us to

slaughter. Drive them away, for a true Communist must not limit his

ideas. He must walk hand in hand with the entire laboring mass.

ROZHKALI [sic] of the minelayer Narov, member of the RCP (Bolsheviks)

ORDER OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE—TO THE REVTROIKA OF

THE BUREAU OF TRADE UNIONS

In accord with the resolution of the General Conference of

representatives of seamen, soldiers, and workers of March 4, the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee instructs the Revtroika

[Revolutionary Tribunal] of the Bureau of Unions to carry out not later

than Monday new elections to Raikoms [Regional Committees] and union

administrations, and on Tuesday the 8th to carry out new elections to

the Soviet of Trade Unions.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

Do not delay, comrades. Lend your support, and enter into firm contact

with us. Demand that your non-party representatives be allowed through

to Kronstadt. Only they will tell you the entire truth, and dispel the

provocative rumors of bread from Finland and plots by the Entente.

Long live the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry!

Long live the power of freely elected Soviets!”

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF KRONSTADT

March 6, 1921, radio station of the battleship Petropavlovsk

March 7

On March 7, Trotsky ordered the artillery bombardment of Krondstadt.

“Military operations began on March 7. At 6:45 in the evening, the

Communist batteries at Sestroretsk and Lisy Nos on the northern shore

opened fire on Kronstadt. The barrage, directed chiefly at the outlying

forts, was intended to soften up the rebel defenses for an infantry

assault. When the forts replied in kind, the cannon of Krasnaya Gorka on

the opposite coast chimed in, answered in turn by the 12-inch guns of

the Sevastopol. A full-scale artillery duel was under way. In Petrograd,

Alexander Berkman was crossing the Nevsky Prospect when he heard the

distant rumble of gunfire rolling towards him. Kronstadt was under

attack! The sounds had a shattering effect on the anarchist leader,

destroying the last remnants of his faith in the Bolshevik regime. ‘Days

of anguish and cannonading,’ he recorded in his diary. ‘My heart is numb

with despair; something has died within me. The people on the street

look bowed with grief, bewildered. No one trusts himself to speak. The

thunder of heavy guns rends the air.’”

-Paul Avrich, “Kronstadt 1921”

“On March 7, 1921, at 6:45 pm, a storm of artillery fire was unleashed

against Kronstadt. As was only natural and inevitable, Kronstadt fought

back. Fought back, not just on behalf of their demands, but also on

behalf of the other toilers of the country who were struggling from

their revolutionary rights, arbitrarily trampled underfoot by the

Bolshevik authorities.”

-Nestor Makhno, writing in Delo Truda, March 1926

“March 7—Distant rumbling reaches my ears as I cross the Nevsky. It

sounds again, stronger and nearer, as if rolling toward me. All at once

I realize that artillery is being fired. It is 6 pm. Kronstadt has been

attacked!”

-Alexander Berkman, diary

Kronstadt Izvestia 5: Monday, March 7, 1921

ALL POWER TO SOVIETS, AND NOT PARTIES

“DON’T SPARE THE BULLETS”

Field marshal Trotsky is issuing threats against Free Kronstadt, risen

up against the three year autocracy of Communist commissars. This newly

appeared Trepov threatens the toilers who have thrown off the shameful

yoke of the Communist Party’s dictatorship with armed destruction. He

threatens the murder of the peaceful populace of Kronstadt. He gives the

order “don’t spare the bullets.”

But he will not have enough of them for the revolutionary sailors,

soldiers, and workers.

Naturally, he, dictator of a Russia raped by the Communists, does not

care what becomes of the laboring masses, so long as power is in the

hands of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia]. He has the shamelessness

to speak in the name of long-suffering Russia, and promise mercy. This

is he, bloodthirsty Trotsky, Marshal of the Communist oprichnina,

extinguisher of the spirit of freedom, spiller of rivers of blood for

the autocracy of the RCP, who dares speak so to those who are strongly

and boldly holding aloft the red banner of Kronstadt.

The Communists hope to renew their despotic rule at the price of the

blood of toilers, and of the sufferings of their arrested families. They

hope to force the sailors, soldiers, and workers to again profer their

neck so that the Communists may seat themselves the better. With this

they hope to continue their stinking policies, which have plunged all

Laboring Russia into the abyss of total destruction, hunger and cold.

Enough! You will deceive the laborers no more! Your hopes are futile,

Communists, and your threats powerless.

The ninth wave [according to tradition, the ninth wave was held to be

the highest in a series] of the Laborers’ Revolution has arisen, and

will wash the stinking slanderers and tyrants, with the defilement

brought by their actions, from the face of Soviet Russia. We will not be

needing your mercy, Lord Trotsky!

THEY CONTINUE TO SLANDER

The Communists have well mastered the old Jesuit tactic, “slander and

slander, and with luck something will stick.”

And they slander.

In powerless spite, pathetic and confused, they spread the most

outlandish rumors about events in Kronstadt among the workers and

soldiers of Petrograd. At work here, as radio messenger Rosta would have

you believe, are the Entente, and French spies, and White Guards, and

tsarist generals, and Mensheviks, and SR’s, and the Estonian

bourgeoisie, and Finnish bankers, and the Entente’s counterintelligence.

In a word, the entire world has taken up arms against the poor

Communists. Moreover, they assure the Petrograd workers that “French

agents and former tsarist officers sneaked into Kronstadt, and, using

gold, corrupted elements lacking class consciousness.”

Well imagine that! And we, the Kronstadters, didn’t know a thing about

it!

And just in case these “facts” didn’t convince the Peter workers, Rosta

reports such horrors. “By coincidence at the very moment when a new

Republican government is coming into administration in America, and

displaying a bent to enter into trade relations with Soviet Russia, the

spread of provocative rumors and rigging of disorders in Kronstadt

clearly works toward influencing the new American President, and

preventing change in American policy relative to Russia. At the same

time, the London Conference is conferring, and these provocative rumors

must certainly act on the Turkish delegation, making it obedient to the

Entente’s demands.”

This then is what the Communists, confused by an unexpected blow, agreed

upon: French agents brought gold to Kronstadt, in order to influence the

American President and the pliability of the Turkish delegation! This

document of Communist idiocy is so comical, that we print it in full

below. This will give the people of Kronstadt a few minutes of comedy.

And how can you relate the, “rigging of disorders in Kronstadt,” on the

one hand, and the nervousness which has driven the Communists to

threaten the shoot the people of Kronstadt “like grouse?” Why so

nervous, when all is calm in Kronstadt, and the only thing happening is

“rigging of disorders?”

We print the following broadcast, which was received by our station.

(radio messenger Rosta)

The French newspaper Matin reported, from the words of its Helsingfors

correspondent, that an uprising against Soviet power had begun in

Kronstadt. On February 14, there was report of a rebellion in the Baltic

Fleet, and of the arrest of the commissars of the Baltic Fleet. The

Soviet Government supposed, based on previous experience, that agents of

French capitalists in league with former tsarist generals were preparing

a mutiny in Kronstadt.

As has now become clear, French agents and former tsarist officers

sneaked into Kronstadt, and, using gold, corrupted elements lacking

class consciousness. The fantastic reports by counterintelligence,

spreading legends three weeks ago about an uprising in Kronstadt, were

simply ahead of events. Recently, White Guard leaflets have appeared in

Kronstadt and Petrograd, and known French spies have been captured

during the arrests. At the same time, the SRs began an increased

agitation among the workers and sailors in Kronstadt and Petrograd,

using the difficult situation with produce and heat.

On February 28, a reactionary resolution was passed on the ship

Petropavlovsk. However, by demand of the sailors it was reworked, and

passed on the following day in a new edition. In this was included the

demand for new elections to the Soviet. Our comrades did not object, and

proposed to form a Commission of sailors’ and workers’ representatives

at the House of Education, to decide the question finally. Elections

began, but counterrevolutionary elements decided to ruin this

Commission, and demanded before all else that it take place on the

Petropavlovsk.

On March 2, open action against Soviet power was already occurring on

the Petropavlovsk, with the participation of Mensheviks and SRs, who hid

under the non-party banner. The official president of the mutineers’

organization is the former clerk Petrichenko, and the secretary is

Tukin, a sailor, but in fact everything is run by Captain Burkser, and

General Kozlovsky is a prominent figure among the former tsarist

officers. The tsarist officers Kostromitinov and Shimanovsky [sic] also

appeared as leaders of the movement.

On March 2, the Soviet of Labor and Defense, decided to declare former

general Kozlovsky and his co-conspirators outlawed, to declare the city

of Petrograd and Petrograd province under martial law, and to hand over

all power in the Petrograd consolidated region to the Defense Committee

of the City of Petrograd.

The following day, demoralization began to show among the supporters of

the mutinous organization on the Petropavlovsk. The organization’s

leaders, in order to raise the spirits of their supporters, announced

that in the end it would be possible to leave for the Finnish shore. At

the same time, the White Guard press spread lying reports, talking as if

the Estonian bourgeoisie supported the insurgents.

On March 4, at an expanded session of the Petrograd Soviet, Comrade

Zinoviev gave a thorough report on the events in Kronstadt, after which

the meeting unanimously passed an appeal to the workers, sailors, and

soldiers of Kronstadt. [This appeal appears in full in the previous

issue of the Kronstadt Izvestia, #4.]. This exposed the dirty work of

the spies sent by French counterintelligence, and of the Mensheviks and

SRs who had worked on the events which were occurring. The appeal notes

that Soviet Power is able to differentiate unknowing, mistaken toilers

from intentional counterrevolutionaries. In a military sense, Kronstadt

does not present a danger to Petrograd, for the fort of Krasnaya Gorka

has command over Kronstadt, and can crush it at any moment. The entire

Krasnaya Gorka garrison curses the mutineers, and is bursting for

battle.

There is complete calm in Petrograd, and even those small factories

where gatherings with attacks on Soviet power by individuals occurred

earlier, have recognized the provocation. They have understood what the

agents of the Entente and counterrevolution are pushing them to do. An 8

thousand person meeting of Peter seamen unanimously passed a resolution

supporting Soviet power, and the Petrograd garrison has not wavered for

a moment. Demoralization grows among the sailors, and a meaningful

number of the sailors have a dislike for General Kozlovsky and the

officers. The number of those deserting to us grows.

Radiograms and newspapers received from abroad show that, simultaneous

with the events in Kronstadt, the enemies of Soviet Russia are spreading

the most fantastic fabrications abroad, saying that there are disorders

in Russia. They say that the Soviet Government has supposedly fled to

the Crimea, that Moscow supposedly is in the hands of the rebels, that

blood pours in torrents through the streets of Petrograd, and so on.

The SR organization abroad has received from somewhere a huge quantity

of tsarist banknotes, and is letting out rumors in order, among other

reasons, to raise the rate for tsarist money, and dump it more

profitably.

By coincidence at the very moment when a new Republican government is

coming into administration in America, and displaying a bent to enter

into trade relations with Soviet Russia, the spread of provocative

rumors and rigging of disorders in Kronstadt clearly works toward

influencing the new American President, and preventing change in

American policy relative to Russia. At the same time, the London

Conference is conferring, and these provocative rumors must certainly

act on the Turkish delegation, making it obedient to the Entente’s

demands.

There is no doubt that the actions taking place on the Petropavlovsk are

merely a component part of a grandiose plan of provocation. This plan,

besides creating internal difficulties for Soviet Russia, is intended to

shatter her international standing.

Before us in the case at hand is the provocation work of the world

reaction of Entente stockbrokers, and of agents of Entente

counterintelligence agencies working by their orders. In Russia itself,

the main figures carrying out these policies are a tsarist general and

former officers, whose activities are supported by Mensheviks and SRs.

No 373 radio station Novaia Golandiia

EXECUTIONS IN ORANIENBAUM

By order of Commissar of the Oranienbaum garrison Sergeev, the following

have been executed: Kolesov, Commander of the Division of Red Naval

Pilots, and President of the recently formed Oranienbaum Provisional

Revolutionary Committee; Balabanov, Secretary of the Committee;

Committee members Romanov, Vladimirov, and others.

Damnation to the murderers, and eternal glory to the combatants for the

true freedom of the people.

THE RAVENS ARE GATHERING

The Communist ravens, Trotsky, Dybenko, Gribov, and others, have

gathered in Krasnaya Gorka.

LATEST NEWS FROM PETROGRAD

—In Petrograd and Petrograd Province, a state of emergency/seige has

been introduced. Movement in the streets is allowed only until 7 pm.

—Mass arrests and executions of workers and seamen continue.

—The situation is very uneasy. All the laboring masses expect a

revolution at any minute.

—There are continuous meetings of the Defense Committee.

—All theatrical entertainments and assemblies are forbidden.

—Passenger trains are stopped. Only military trains are moving.

—The Petrograd newspapers do not print our broadcasts.

KRONSTADT DEMANDS LIBERATION OF HOSTAGES

The following broadcast was sent to the Petrosoviet [Petrograd Soviet].

In the name of the Kronstadt garrison, the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee of Kronstadt demands that all families of workers, soldiers,

and sailors imprisoned as hostages by the Petrosoviet be freed within 24

hours. The Kronstadt garrison states that Communists in Kronstadt enjoy

complete freedom, and their families absolute inviolability. It does not

wish to take an example from the Petrosoviet, since it considers that

such methods, even if in desperate anger, are the most shameful and base

whatever your beliefs. History has never seen such methods.

seaman PETRICHENKO, President of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee

KILGAST, Secretary

TROTSKY THREATENS DEFEAT

A curious order by Trotsky was broadcast by radio to the Kronstadt

populace, and the garrison of the mutinied fronts.

“The Worker-Peasant Government has resolved to immediately return

Kronstadt and the mutinous vessels to the command of the Soviet

Republic. Therefore, I order all who have raised their hands against the

Socialist Fatherland to immediately lay down their arms. Disarm those

who resist, and give them into the hands of the Soviet authorities. Free

the arrested commissars and other representatives of authority

immediately. Only those surrendering unconditionally may count on the

mercy of the Soviet Republic. Simultaneously, I am giving the order to

prepare for the defeat of the mutiny, and the mutineers, by armed force.

Responsibility for the distress which this has brought down on a

peaceful populace lies wholly on the heads of the White Guard mutineers.

The present warning is the last.”

TROTSKY, President of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic

KAMENEV, for the Chief Directorate

NEGOTIATIONS ON THE DISPATCH OF DELEGATES

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee received the following

radiotelegram from Petrograd.

“Send a broadcast to Petrograd, is it possible to send from Petrograd

several persons from the Soviet, non-party and party, to Kronstadt, to

find out what is what.”

That broadcast was immediately followed by this answer from the Prov.

Rev. Com.

“Having received the broadcast from the Petrosoviet, ‘is it possible to

send from Petrograd several persons from the Soviet, non-party and

party, to Kronstadt, to find out what is what,’ we inform you that we do

not trust the non-party status of your non-party delegates. We propose

that representatives be chosen from factories, soldiers and sailors,

from among the non-party, in the presence of our delegates.

“Above the number of non-party representatives chosen by the given

method, you may add to the delegation up to fifteen percent Communards.

It is desirable to receive an answer, with a declared time to send

representatives of Kronstadt to Petrograd and representatives of

Petrograd to Kronstadt, on March 6 at 18:00 hours. In event of the

impossibility of giving an answer at the given time, we ask that you

declare your time, and the cause of the delay.

“Means of transport must be supplied to the Kronstadt delegates.”

PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

APPEAL OF THE “KRASNOARMEITSI” TO THE “KRASNOFLOTSI”

We the soldiers of fort Krasnoarmeets, turn to you, comrades of

Krasnoflotskii. We inform you that in Kronstadt, and likewise in the

forts and the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, we have not a single

general. There is none of the gentry of which the proclamations thrown

from airplanes speak so much and so loudly. We say to you that, as

Kronstadt was a town of the workers and peasants, so it has remained.

The generals are found in service to the Communists.

You say that we have become traitors for some kind of spies. That is a

shameless lie. As we were defenders of the freedoms won by the

Revolution, so we have remained. We appeal to you not to believe the

lies which the bureaucrat Communists drone at you. If you want to learn

the truth in this, send to us, to Kronstadt, your own delegation. It

will learn the truth, and learn of all that is being done here. It will

learn what kind of generals and Entente spies we have.

“The Crew of fort Krasnoarmeets”

RESOLUTIONS

The soldiers of fort Krasnoarmeets, having heard the report of a

representative of the Prov. Rev. Com, Comrade Vershinin, on the current

moment, resolved:

“We the soldiers of the above named fort, stand in entirety on guard for

the Revolutionary Committee. We will stand, that is defend ourselves, to

the final moment, for the Prov. Rev. Com. and for the workers and

peasants.

“We once again ask the Rev. Com. to widely distribute, by means of print

and radiotelegram, our resolution passed at the general Garrison Meeting

of Kronstadt, in order to avoid the futile bloodletting to which the

Communists call us. This must be done so that the working masses of the

town of Petrograd, and of other towns, may learn what is being done

here, and what we are fighting for.

“We send greetings to the Prov. Rev. Com., as the representatives

elected from the broad masses of the entire working class. Standing on

guard of the rights won by the laborers, we place ourselves and the fort

under the Committee’s full command.”

DEMIDOV, President

SMIRNOV, Secretary

II

By the General Meeting of the crew of the 4th Division and the Training

Crew.

Having heard the report of a representative of the 4th Division Crew,

Karpov, and of a representative of the Revolutionary Committee, Eveltis,

the following resolution was passed:

“In the current moment, when the fate of the country is being decided,

we, having taken power into our own hands, have entrusted military

leadership to the Revolutionary Committee. We declare to the entire

garrison, and to the workers, that we are prepared to die for the

freedom of the laboring people, and for liberation from the three-year

Communist yoke and terror. We will die, but will not take a single step

back. Long live Free Russia of the laboring people.”

The resolution was passed unanimously by the Meeting.

WE ARE NOT TAKING REVENGE

The long oppression of the Communist dictatorship over the laborers has

called forth the completely natural indignation of the masses. As a

result of this, the boycott or removal from service of Communists’

relatives has been adopted in several places. This must not be. We are

not taking revenge, but defending our laboring interests. It is

necessary to act with restraint, and to remove only those who strive

through sabotage or slanderous agitation to interfere with restoration

of the power and rights of the laborers.

ECONOMIZE ELECTRICITY

It has been noticed that some part of the populace is leaving the

electricity on all night, or is not extinguishing the light upon

departure from the room. Comrades, remember that we carry on a struggle

for our laboring interests. It has become vital, to the degree of

emergency, to conserve heating material, which is so necessary to us

with the approaching opening of navigation. Conserve electrical energy.

LEAVING THE RCP [Communist Party of Russia]

Declarations of departure from the Communist Party continue to arrive at

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

We the undersigned, servicemen in the Departmental Fines Company,

entered the RCP considering it to express the will of the laboring

masses. In fact, however, it has shown itself to be a butcher of workers

and peasants. The recent events in Peter have demonstrated this,

pointing out the complete falsehood of the party leaders, who use all

means to hold onto power. The broadcasts of the Moscow Soviet of

People’s Commissars serve as a shining example of this. We request

henceforth that we not be considered members of the RCP We wholly give

our support to the resolution of the Garrison Meeting of Kronstadt of

March 2 [sic] of this year. We also ask other comrades recognizing their

mistake not to be ashamed to admit it.

I. GUTMAN, I. EFIMOV, V. KUDRIAVTSEV, ANDREEV.

II

Being a candidate member of the R.C.P. from August of 1920, I have found

no good in any of its aspirations. Seeing that the Communist Party has

become separated from the masses, and does not express the people’s

will, I leave it. In this difficult time which we are suffering, I wish

to work for the benefit of the entire laboring people.

P. ANANIEV, former candidate member of the RCP

III

Also arrived the declarations of departure from the R.C.P. of 1) D.

Pisarenko, soldier of the 4th Artillery Division, 2) N. Pusmo, worker in

the Naval Artillery Laboratory, 3) O. Kuzmin, guard of the Kronstadt

Port, 4) P. Lebedev, serviceman in the Produce Base, 5) N. Kartashev,

member of the R.C.P. since 1918.

RESOLUTION

We, Communists of fort Rif, having discussed the current moment, and

having heard the call of the Provisional Bureau of the RCP in Kronstadt,

have reached the following conclusion. For three whole years, great

numbers of opportunists and careerists have poured into our party. As a

result of this, bureaucratism and a criminal attitude toward the

struggle with collapse have developed.

Our party has always placed before itself the work of struggling against

all enemies of the proletariat and working class, and we now declare

openly that we will also in the future, as honest sons of the people,

defend the victories of the laborers. We will not allow a single secret

or open White Guard to use the temporary, difficult situation of our

Soviet Republic. At the first attempt to raise a hand against Soviet

power we will be able to repulse to the counterrevolutionaries as

necessary. We have already declared, and declare once again, that we are

under the command of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, which has

given itself the goal of creating Soviets of the laboring and

proletariat class.

Long live Soviet Power, the true defender of the rights of laborers!

(signature), President of the meeting of Communists of fort Rif

(signature), Secretary of the meeting

PRODUCE FROM GORKOMMUNA

For the period from March 8 through 14 inclusive, the land and naval

garrison of the fortress will receive daily, in place of the previous

bread ration: a half pound of bread, half a can of preserved meat and a

quarter pound of meat.

The civilian populace will receive produce according to the following

norms:

Letter A daily: one pound of oats, half a can of preserved meat, a

quarter pound of meat and a one time additional half pound of sugar and

quarter pound of vegetable oil.

Letter C daily: one pound of oats, half a can of preserved meat, a

quarter pound of meat and a one time additional half pound of sugar and

quarter pound of vegetable oil.

For children:

Series A daily: half a pound of wheat, barley or dried bread, half a can

of preserved meat and a one time additional can of preserved milk, half

pound of sugar and quarter pound of table butter.

Series B and C daily: half a pound of barley, wheat or dried bread, half

a can of preserved meat, a quarter pound of meat and a one time

additional half pound of sugar and quarter pound of table butter.

Today bread will be issued for one day, with the appropriate coupon

being cut.

N. KAPUSTIN, member of the Rev. Com.

NOTICE

The Town Health Department brings to the attention of all doctors,

doctors’ assistants, and citizens, that under issuance of prescriptions

for additional food, the following rules must be followed: in the

prescription must be specified the first and family names of the

patient, the exact diagnosis, and the address.

First in order of fullfillment are prescriptions issued to children

suffering from infectious diseases, and then from pulmonary and renal

diseases, and then adults with infectious diseases.

Prescriptions are given to the selection commission at the Town Hospital

from 10 to 12 am daily. Return issue takes place on the following day

from 11 to 12 am, with prescriptions not picked up in 3 days being

considered annulled. All prescriptions issued before March 5 are also

annulled.

The present rules were worked out in consultation with doctors, doctors’

assistants, a representative of the Town Hospital and the Gorkommuna of

the City Health Department. This consultation requests all comrade

doctors and doctor’s assistants to view the issuance of prescriptions

with the highest degree of care, keeping in memory the produce

difficulties being suffered by the Republic.

PLUME, Head of the City Health Department

FROM THE ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT OF KRONSOVDEP

1) The Administration Department instructs all Uchkoms to take measures

to clean the footpaths of the town of snow, and also to bring the

courtyards into order, involving the broad masses of the populace in the

work. The Audit Commission is instructed to take active part in the

completion of the works.

2) All Uchkoms having gathered passports from citizens are instructed to

return such to the citizens into their own hands.

ANNOUNCEMENT

All military units, workers’ associations and organizations may receive

“Izvestiia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee” and pamphlets at

Sevtsentropechat in accordance with the set norm.

March 8

The initial Red Army infantry attack on Kronstadt was a disaster. In the

midst of a blinding snowstorm, Tukhachevsky’s units attacked from the

north and south with cadets at the forefront, followed by select Red

Army units and Cheka machine gunners who had orders to shoot defectors.

Shells from Kronstadt tore holes in the frozen Gulf of Finland; scores

of Red Army soldiers drowned beneath the ice. Others defected or refused

to advance. The Red Army suffered hundreds of casualties and defections.

Those few troops who reached Kronstradt were forced to withdraw.

Artillery attacks resumed when the storm subsided. In the afternoon,

Bolshevik aircraft began bombarding the island. Yet throughout the

revolt, this did not cause much damage.

“The assault of March 8 proved an unmitigated failure. The Communists

lost hundreds of men without even breaching Kronstadt’s defenses. In

their haste to suppress the revolt, they had deployed an insufficient

force—perhaps 20,000 in all—and had made inadequate preparations for a

successful storming of the powerful fortress. Troops chosen for their

reliability had faltered at the crucial moment, partly out of reluctance

to fire on ordinary sailors and soldiers like themselves, but mainly for

fear of crossing the open ice without protection of any kind, exposed to

the devastating crossfire of Kronstadt’s batteries and forts.

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Kronstadt Izvestia 6: Tuesday, March 8, 1921

TROTSKY’S FIRST SHOT IS A COMMUNIST SOS

FROM THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

At 6:45 pm, the Communist batteries in Sestroretsk and Lisy Nos opened

fire first on the Kronstadt forts.

The forts accepted the challenge, and quickly forced the batteries to

become silent. Following this, Krasnaya Gorka opened fire, receiving

worthy answer from the battleship Sevastopol.

Occasional artillery duelling continues.

Two of our soldiers were wounded, and taken to the hospital.

There is no damage anywhere.

THE FIRST SHOT

They began the bombardment of Kronstadt. Well, so be it; we’re ready. We

will measure our strengths.

They rush to act, and yes, they are forced to hurry. The laborers of

Russia, despite all the Communist lies, understand what a great endeavor

of liberation from three years’ slavery is being created in

Revolutionary Kronstadt. The butchers are unnerved. The victim of their

shameless bestiality, Soviet Russia, is slipping from their torture

chamber, and with her, dominion over the laboring people is slipping

finally from their criminal hands.

The Communist government will send an SOS. The weeklong existence of

Free Kronstadt is proof of their powerlessness. One moment more and the

worthy answer of our glorious revolutionary ships and forts will sink

the ships of the Soviet pirates. They are forced into battle with

Revolutionary Kronstadt, which has raised the banner, “Power to Soviets,

and not Parties.”

WE AND THEY

Not knowing how to retain the power which is falling from their hands,

the Communists are resorting to the most putrid, provocative methods.

Their base newspapers have mobilized all forces to set fire to the

people’s masses, and to paint the Kronstadt as a White Guard movement.

Now the gang of “patented” scoundrels has thrown out the slogan,

“Kronstadt has sold out to Finland.” Their shameless press is already

spattering poisonous spit, and now that there has been no success in

convincing the proletariat that White Guards were working in Kronstadt,

they are attempting to play on national feelings.

All the world already knows from our broadcasts what the Kronstadt

garrison and workers are fighting for, but the Communists attempt to

twist the meanings of events before the Peter brothers. The Communist

oprichnina has surrounded the people of Peter with a tight ring of cadet

bayonets and the party “guard,” and Maliuta Skuratov (Trotsky) [Maliuta

Skuratov, also known as G. L. Skuratov-Belsky, was a leader of the

Oprichnina under Ivan the Terrible] does not allow delegates from the

non-party workers and soldiers to enter Kronstadt. He fears the danger

that they will learn the entire truth, and that that truth in one

instant will sweep the Communists away. He fears that the laboring

people, with newly restored sight, will take power in their own

work-hardened hands.

That is why the Petrosoviet did not answer our radiotelegram requesting

the dispatch to Kronstadt of actual non-party comrades. Fearing for

their skins, the Communist leaders hide the truth. They let out rumors

that White Guards are at work in Kronstadt, that the Kronstadt

proletariat has sold out to Finland and to French spies, and that the

Finns have already organized an army, in order, together with the

Kronstadt mutineers, to occupy Petrograd, and so on.

To all this we can answer only one way: all power to the Soviets! Away

from that power, hands stained with the blood of those perished for the

cause of freedom, for the battle with White Guardism, landed gentry and

the bourgeoisie! Peasant, calmly work your land; worker, to your bench!

LIBERATED KRONSTADT, TO THE WORKING WOMEN OF THE WORLD (A Broadcast)

Today is a worldwide holiday, the Day of Working Women. We the people of

Kronstadt, under the thunder of cannons, under the explosions of shells

sent at us by the enemies of the laboring people, the Communists, send

our fraternal greetings to you, the working women of the world. We send

greetings from Red Kronstadt, from the Kingdom of Liberty. Let our

enemies try to destroy us. We are strong; we are undefeatable.

We wish you fortune, to all the sooner win freedom from all oppression

and coercion.

Long live the Free Revolutionary Working Woman.

Long live the Worldwide Social Revolution.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF KRONSTADT

March 8, 1921

MAY ALL THE WORLD KNOW

And so, the first shot has rung out. Bloody Fieldmarshal Trotsky,

standing to his waist in the fraternal blood of laborers, opened first

fire on Revolutionary Kronstadt, risen against the Communist government

for the establishment of true Soviet power. Without a single shot,

without a drop of blood, we, soldiers, seamen, and workers of Kronstadt,

threw down the Communist dominion, and even spared their lives. They

desire to once again, under threat of bombardment, tie their authority

to us.

Not wanting bloodshed, we proposed that non-party delegates be sent from

the Petrograd proletariat, that they might learn that there is a

struggle for power in Kronstadt. But the Communists hid this from the

Petrograd workers, and opened fire, the usual answer of the sham

worker-peasant government to the demands of the laboring people.

May all the world of workers know that we, protectors of Soviet power,

stand guard over the victories of the Social Revolution. We will be

victorious, or die under the ruins of Kronstadt, struggling for the

bloody cause of the laboring people. The workers of all the world will

judge. The blood of innocents is on the heads of the Communist beasts,

who are drunk with power.

Long live Soviet power!

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF KRONSTADT.

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR

Carrying out the October Revolution, the working class hoped to achieve

its emancipation. The result, however, was the creation of a still

greater enslavement of the human personality.

The power of police-gendarme monarchism passed into the hands of

usurpers, the Communists, who brought to the laborers, instead of

freedom, the fear every minute of falling into the torture chamber of

the Cheka. With their horrors, they have many times exceeded the

gendarme government of the tsarist regime.

Bayonets, bullets and the harsh cries of the oprichniks from the Cheka,

there is what the toiler in Soviet Russia gained after many battles and

sufferings. The Communist authorities have replaced the hammer and

sickle, glorious arms of the laboring state, in fact with the bayonet

and prison bars. They have done this for the sake of preserving a calm,

unsaddened life for the new bureaucracy of Communist commissars and

bureaucrats.

But what is most putrid and criminal of all is the creation by the

Communists of a moral cabal. They have laid hand even on the laborers’

internal world, forcing them to think in their way alone.

With the aid of the bureaucratic trade unions, they have tied the

workers to their benches, having made labor not a joy, but a new

serfdom. To protests by peasants, expressed in spontaneous uprisings,

and by workers, forced into strikes by the very condition of life, they

answer with mass executions, and with such bloodthirstiness that they

don’t have to borrow any from the tsarist generals.

Laboring Russia, first to raise the red banner of labor’s liberation, is

soaked through with the blood of those tortured for the glory of the

Communist dominion. In this sea of the blood, the Communists drown all

the great and light voices and slogans of the laboring revolution.

It has become ever more sharply visible, and now is completely apparent,

that the RCP is not defender of the laborers, as it has presented

itself. Rather, the interests of the laboring mass are foreign to it.

Having achieved power, it fears only to lose it, and for this end all

means are allowable: slander, violence, fraud, murder, and revenge on

the families of rebels.

The long patience of the laborers has come to an end.

The country, in battle with oppression and violence, is lit here and

there with the glow of uprisings. Worker stoppages have flared up, but

the Bolshevist okhranniks have not slept, and have taken all measures to

avoid and repress the unavoidable 3rd Revolution. [Okhranniks were

agents of the tsarist secret police, which was popularly referred to as

the Okhrana or Okhranka.]

But it has arrived all the same, and is being carried out by the hands

of laborers. The Communist generals see clearly that this is the people,

convinced of those generals’ betrayal of the ideas of socialism, who

have arisen. They shake in their skins, knowing that there is no place

for them to hide from the toilers’ anger. All the same, they try, with

the help of their oprichniks, to frighten the rebels with prisons,

executions, and other bestialities. But life itself under the yoke of

the Communist dictatorship has become more terrible than death.

The rebellious laboring mass has come to understand that in battle with

the Communists, and with the renewed serfdom they have given, there can

be no middle ground. It is necessary to carry through to the end. They

pretend to make concessions: in Petrograd Province they remove the

anti-profiteer roadblock detachments, 10 million in gold is assigned for

purchase of produce abroad. But it is necessary to point out that behind

this bait is hidden the iron hand of the master. This is the hand of a

dictator who desires, having waited out the unrests, to compensate his

concessions a hundred-fold.

No, there can be no middle ground. Victory or Death!

This is exemplified by Red Kronstadt, terror of counterrevolutionaries

of right and left.

Here a great new revolutionary step has been taken. Here has been raised

the banner of a rebellion for liberation from the three year violence

and oppression of Communist dominion, which has eclipsed the

three-hundred year yoke of monarchism. Here in Kronstadt has been laid

the first stone of the Third Revolution, which is breaking the last

fetters from the laboring masses, and opening a wide new path for

socialist creativity. This new revolution stirs the laboring masses of

both East and West, being an example of the new socialist construction,

opposed to the bureaucratic Communist “creativity.” It convinces the

laboring masses abroad, by the testimony of their own eyes, that

everything created here until now by the will of workers and peasants

was not socialism.

Without a single shot, without a drop of blood, the first step has been

completed. The laborers do not need blood. They spill it only in moments

of self defense. We have enough restraint, despite all the disgraceful

acts of the Communists, to not be limited by their isolation from the

life of society. We do this in order that they would not obstruct the

revolutionary work with false and spiteful agitation.

The workers and peasants advance unstoppably, leaving behind themselves

both the Uchredilka with its bourgeois structure, and the Communist

Party dictatorship with its Cheka and state capitalism, a deadly noose

which has snared the neck of the laboring masses, and threatens to

strangle them absolutely.

The present Revolution gives the laborers the possibility of having,

finally, their own freely elected Soviets, working without any and all

violent party pressure, and to reform the bureaucratic trade unions into

free organizations of workers, peasants and the laboring intelligentsia.

At last, the police stick of the Communist autocracy is broken.

REMEMBER THAT WE ARE THE SHOCK TROOPS OF THE REVOLUTION!

Workers are shock troops! Kronstadt is enduring a serious moment of

struggle for the liberation of Soviet Russia from the Communist yoke.

We the people of Kronstadt, recognizing this, must all show unflagging

fortitude, and show that in the struggle, no sacrifices are too terrible

for us. We have become each other’s family, unified by a single striving

for victory or death. We will share with each other the last tiny

morsel. So that the populace would not hunger, the garrison shares its

own allowances. All must be even, and not some hungry and some full.

Would that it were not so, but we will not leave our work. On the

contrary, we will take after it all the more firmly. Our revolution is

the Revolution of Labor, and its name, all to the benches, all to the

hammer! All for free labor! You are shock troops at work. Be also thus

the shock troops of the Revolution. Forge the Revolution, supporting the

free Socialist economy. Remember that on you first is laid the shock

work of saving Soviet Russia from the Communist yoke.

SOVIET POWER WILL FREE THE LABORING PEASANTRY FROM THE COMMUNIST YOKE

WHAT IS BEING DONE IN PETROGRAD?

The Helsingfors newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, in No 60, reports the

following news from Petrograd.

—The Petrograd workers are on strike, and are demonstratively leaving

the factories. With red banners they are demanding a change of

government and the overthrow of the Communists.

Sailors are joining the demonstrators.

The garrison shares the feelings of the masses, but for now is remaining

passive.

—Red units from the Korelian [Karelian] Isthmus have been rushed across

to Petrograd. As it was clarified, the cadets have been recalled.

—At the Laferme tobacco factory, the Secretary of the RCP [Communist

Party of Russia] called for order among the workers, but was whistled

down and driven off.

—At the Putilovsky Factory, several persons, Communist members of the

factory committee, have been killed.

APPEAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF WORKER-PEASANT INSPECTION

Due to the present moment, the purposes of the department of

Worker-Peasant Inspection being what they are, since control is always a

necessity in the interests of all citizens, independent of the situation

which has formed, and since the majority of the workers in the

Inspection were Communists, a number of whom are currently isolated, and

the remaining Communists may also be isolated, the work of control may

stop.

Now, as earlier, an unconscious element may carry out various thefts of

the people’s property in a period without control. Therefore, the

Revolutionary Troika of the Worker-Peasant Inspection appeals to all

employees formerly working in control to come help temporarily, until

the new elections. In this way, you may preserve the necessary and

normal order in all Soviet organizations.

A. GALKIN, President

THE TRAGEDY OF FORT KRASNOARMEISKII

(One of the Communist methods of party propaganda.)

The editors are swamped with declarations by soldiers, sailors, and

workers of departure from the RCP. Therefore, we are printing only the

family names of those leaving the party, and the most characteristic

declarations. Today, we are given the opportunity to impart a historic

document, testifying how this criminal party enlisted members.

In mid-July, 1919 began the attack by Rodzianko on Petrograd. In

connection with this, unrest began in the Red Army. This unrest spread

to Krasnaya Gorka and Kronstadt. Trotsky gave the order to liquidate it,

whatever that might require. The Communists mobilized their butchers,

and a bloody reprisal began.

On July 13, a steamship came to fort Krasnoarmeiskii, carrying a

Communist detachment, with Commissars Razin, Medvedev and Sotnikov in

command. Razin ordered the bugler to play assembly. The crew of the fort

left their barracks, and were ordered to form up in a single line. Razin

came forward and addressed the men of the fort with the following words.

“Comrades! I have brought you reinforcements, and replacements for the

tired. It is, of course, impossibile to free everyone, but a fifth part

may go on leave.”

After this, Razin began to count out every fifth man, who was then led

away to the left flank. In all, 55 people were counted out. “Play

retreat,” Razin commanded, and ordered the remaining soldiers to go up

into the fort tower, and to form up in one rank facing the newly arrived

detachment.

Following that, Razin took the 55 people who had been counted out to a

given location at the south shore, and formed them up in one rank,

opposite which the newly arrived unit arranged itself.

When all these preparations were completed, Razin read them a death

sentence. Three volleys rang out, and the 55 soldiers, before the eyes

of their comrades standing in the fort tower, fell as victims to the

unquenchable bloodthirst of the insane Communists.

Three comrades remained alive (one of them was wounded), and the butcher

Razin spared them.

The second act of the tragedy began. By order of the butchers, a pit was

dug, the not yet cold corpses dumped in and covered with carbolic acid,

the earth was evened, and the fraternal grave was covered with cement.

[Carbolic acid (phenol) was put in graves to avoid the spread of typhus

and other diseases.]

Finally, Razin ordered the remaining crew to enroll in the party, and

for those not wishing to do so to go out to the fence, forewarning them

that the fate of those just executed awaited them.

What was there left to do?

Thus did they recruit these new Communists.

Somewhat later, the commander of a machine gun crew arrived at the fort.

The commissars suspected that he had come to Kronstadt for propaganda

and�� yet another innocent victim washed the fort’s assembly ground with

his blood.

And the next day was issued a calm order “on removal from rations.”

We print it in full on the next page.

§ 10.

The soldiers named below, of the 5th, 6th, and 7th Batteries, and the

11th Squad of the Machine Gun Crew, killed by the authority of the

Provisional Revolutionary Court of Baltflot, are to be removed from the

divisional, battery, and crew rosters, and from all types of rations and

allowances, as of June 20 this year.

SOURCE: report of the Commander of fort OBRUCHEV, No 624, of June 2,

1919.

Truly signed: KARPOV, Commander of the 2nd Division

NEVEROVSKY, Commissar

Attested: MAKSIMENKO, clerk of the construction unit.

No explanations are necessary.

Comrade Soldiers! There is the kind of freedom which the Communists have

given you. There is the kind of authority against which we arose, and

the people against whom the Provisional Revolutionary Committee gives

the call to arms. Yesterday, a handfull of witnesses to this execution,

being in service until this time at fort Krasnoarmeiskii, passed the

following resolution at their meeting.

We, Communists of fort Krasnoarmeiskii, 6th Battery, give our support to

the worker-peasant power. We swear before representatives of our troika

who are carrying on joint work with the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee of the Town of Kronstadt, that we will stand to the last at

our posts, and achieve true liberation for workers and peasants. We

swear that we will not walk the path of lies by which the Communists’

bureaucrat representatives drove us into the RCP with falsehood,

violence, and the threat of execution.

A. Polunichev, A. Remin, D. Bukanov, G. Ivanov, I. Moshnikov, P. Pavlov,

N. Yulin, M. Tretiakov, V. Poliakov, I. Ivanov, F. Mikhailov, M.

Aksenov, M. Balabanov, N. Ivanov, A. Kondratiev, V. Tsvetoshin,

Bogdanov, O. Potapov, Novozhilov.

We all, workers and peasants, are striving to achieve a free and

unoppressed life, and therefore request that we not be considered

members of the RCP, but as non-party comrades.

KRONSTADT IS CALM

Yesterday, March 7, the laborers’ enemies, Communists, opened fire on

Kronstadt. The populace met the bombardment with spirit. Workers

expressed a comradely desire to take up arms. It is clearly seen that

the laboring populace of Kronstadt lives with exactly the same interests

and aspirations as the Provisional Revolutionary Committee elected by

it.

Despite the opening of military action, the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee did not even find it necessary to declare a state of siege.

Who need it fear? Not its own soldiers, sailors, workers, and laboring

intelligentsia.

It is a different matter in Petrograd. There, due to the emergency

situation which has been declared, movement about the city is only

allowed until 7 pm. Tyrants, of course, must fear their own laboring

populace.

RESOLUTION

Passed by the general meeting of the united crews and garrison of fort

Konstantin, March 7, 1921

We the seamen and soldiers of the united military crews and garrison of

fort Konstantin, having heard the report of Comrade Nikolaev on the

current moment, find: that all the actions and measures of the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee are completely fair. We further find

that these actions fully express the opinions of the honest laboring

proletariat and laboring peasantry, which is presently striving with all

its strength to liberate itself from the damned Communist yoke. There

has been enough of the Communists riding on the people’s neck without

accountability or responsibility. May the murderer Trotsky know that all

his proclamations thrown out over Kronstadt represent nothing to us,

revolutionary seamen, soldiers, and workers, except the free provision

of besieged Kronstadt with paper. Their pogrom calls and threats are not

worrisome to us, and neither is their stinking slander. For we well know

that behind us will come the entire honest laboring masses of our dear

free Motherland, terribly tortured and robbed by traitorous Communism.

We have all sworn as one to carry through to the end with our holy cause

of liberating the laboring masses, which we have begun. May all those

Communal [sic] scarecrows know that only by crossing over our corpses

will they be able to take control of free Kronstadt. We have decided one

thing, either to die, or to exit honorably as victors.

Long live the Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt!

Long live the revolutionary seamen, soldiers, and workers of free

Kronstadt!

Down with the bankrupt commune!

Down with bloodthirsty Trotsky and his cohorts!

(signature), President of the meeting

(signature), Secretary

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

Today, bread is issued for March 3rd: by cards of letter A, half a pound

for bread coupon No 27.

By cards of letter B, in place of bread, four pounds of oats is issued

for four days, March 8th, 9th and 11th, for bread coupon No 27.

By cards of series A, for produce coupon No 4, a one pound can of

preserved milk, is issued from stores No 5 and 14.

By children’s cards of series B and C, in place of bread, two pounds of

wheat is issued for four days, through March 11; by series B for bread

coupon No 4, and C for bread coupon No 27.

Counted toward the bread norm for the four days through March 11, two

cans of preserved meat are issued to all categories from all stores; by

cards of letter A and B and series C for bread coupon No 26, of series A

for produce coupon No 5 and of series C for bread coupon No 5.

Issue of all produce noted is limited to the amount delivered to the

stores.

LEVAKOV, for the President of Gorprodkom

March 9

“On March 9, the day after the abortive assault on the rebel stronghold,

the Bolshevik leader Kamenev addressed the Tenth Party Congress in

Moscow. The military situation in Kronstadt, he said, had become “more

protracted” than anyone had expected, so that the liquidation of the

mutiny would not be accomplished “at an early hour.” The first attack

had been premature. In their anxiety to crush the rebellion before it

could receive outside help or spread to the mainland, the authorities

had acted too hastily, making faulty preparations and using an

insufficient quantity of troops and equipment, with the result that the

assault was repulsed with heavy losses.

But now time was even more pressing, for before long the ice would begin

to melt. Thus Tukhachevsky, the Bolshevik commander, urgently prepared

for a second attack in much greater strength than before.”

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Kronstadt Izvestia 7: Wednesday, March 9, 1921

Lenin said, “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification,” but

the people have become convinced that Bolshevist Communism is

commissarocracy plus executions.

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS (March 8, 1921)

Our artillery destroyed the railroad line near Martyshkino.

In Oranienbaum, fire broke out in the region of Kitaisky Dvorets.

Our artillery bombarded the northern and southern shores of the gulf.

The adversary took heavy losses.

In the town, not a single building suffered from the adversary’s

bombardment. Windows in several houses were broken by concussion.

Gromov, former Commissar of the Kronstadt Fortress, was killed in a

skirmish with our forward posts.

THEY ARE SHOOTING OUR CHILDREN

They don’t have to get used to spilling the blood of innocents. They

have already begun throwing bombs from airplanes over the dwellings of

peaceful residents of Kronstadt. The first bomb was thrown March 8, at a

few minutes before six. It fell in the eaves of a house, and the whole

matter ended with the ruin of the house’s facade, and the breaking of

glass in nearby houses. Wounded, fortunately lightly, was a boy of 13

years.

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF VICTORY?

With the adversary’s first shots, the restraint and determination of our

revolutionary garrison has all the more clearly appeared. It is bursting

for battle, but it strikes its blows not just as they chance to fall,

but where they are needed.

All are bursting to be armed, not excluding old men and young boys. The

show of spirit is remarkable. The laboring populace and garrison have

decided to fight to the end. All are inspired by the single thought of

breaking up the last remains of the Communist yoke. There is no turning

back. There is only the path forward—to Free Labor and Soviet power. The

rebels’ enthusiasm and restraint ensure our victory.

Kronstadt’s red eagles are writing a bright new page in the history of

Soviet Russia. Certainty in ourselves and selfless devotion to the

laborers’ interests–these are the strengths which guarantee our victory

over Communist field marshal Trotsky.

It is different in the adversary’s camp. As deserters and prisoners

report, Trotsky employs the usual Communist means of convincing the

laborers, he places machine guns in the rear of their attacking troops.

Against the rebels’ enthusiasm, the adversary has placed the enthusiasm

of the whip and firing squad.

HEAR THIS, TROTSKY!

In their broadcasts, the Communists have slung tubs of mud at the

leaders of the Third Revolution, who stand for true Soviet power and

against the outrages committed by the commissars.

We have not hidden this from the Kronstadt populace, and have fully

printed all their slanderous attacks in our Izvestiia.

We have nothing to fear. The citizens know how the revolution took

place, and who made it. The workers and peasants know that among the

garrison there are neither tsarist generals nor White Guards.

For its own part, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee sent a

broadcast to Petrograd demanding that the hostages taken by the

Communists—workers, sailors, and their families, and also political

prisoners—be freed from the overfilled prisons. In a second broadcast,

we proposed that non-party delegates be sent to us in Kronstadt. They,

being convinced on the spot of the true course of events, could open the

eyes of Peter’s laboring populace.

And what did the Communists do? They hid these broadcasts from the

workers and soldiers. Units of field marshal Trotsky’s troops which have

crossed to our side brought us Petrograd newspapers, and there is not a

word about our broadcasts in them!

Was it that long ago that these hucksters, used to playing with marked

cards, were yelling that there shouldn’t be any secrets from the people,

even diplomatic?

Hear this, Trotsky! As long as you are still running the people’s court,

you can shoot innocents in whole droves, but you can’t shoot the truth.

It will come out, and then you and your oprichnina will be forced to

answer.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNIONS

Under the Communist dictatorship, the mission of the trade unions, and

of their administrations in particular, was reduced to a minimum. In

four years of the revolutionary trade union movement in Socialist

Russia, our trade unions had no chance to be purely class organizations.

This situation came about not by their fault, but purely thanks to the

policy of the ruling party, which strived for a centralized, “Communist”

development of the masses. Therefore, the work of the trade unions came

down to nothing but completely unnecessary correspondence, for the

compilation of information about the number of members of one or another

industrial union, specialization, party status, and so on.

Relative to the economic-cooperative construction of the Republic and

the cultural development of the trade union workers, nothing was

undertaken. And that is completely understandable, since if the unions

had been given the right of broad independent action, then the entire

order of centralized Communist construction would have been destroyed,

and together with it would have collapsed the need for commissars and

politotdels.

These are undoubtably the situations which have made the working masses

forsake the unions, since the latter had become a Communist gendarme

yoke, holding down the laboring classes.

With the overthrow of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia] dictatorship,

the role of the Trade Unions must fundamentally change. Therefore, the

newly elected unions and administrations in the trade movement must

fulfill the great combat mission of educating the masses in the

cultural-economic construction of the country. They must pour a new,

invigorating stream into their activity, and become the expressers of

the people’s interests.

The Soviet Socialist Republic may only be strong when its administration

belongs to the laboring classes in the form of renewed trade unions.

We will undertake this cause, comrade workers! We will form new unions,

free from all oppression. In them is our strength.

S. FOKIN

FIRST MARTYRS FOR THE 3[rd] REVOLUTION

(About the executions in Oranienbaum)

On March 2, a rumor was passed in Oranienbaum that Kronstadt had driven

away Kalinin.

Sailors from Kronstadt had been arrested at the train station.

The First Aeronautic Naval Division has always stood on guard of the

Revolution, and sensitively listened to the voice of the laboring

people.

The Kronstadt resolution was delivered. In a moment, the news passed to

all the seamen of the Aero. Div., and at 6 pm. they gathered in their

club to discuss the new situation. The Communists got nervous and called

the Politodel, from which the RCP organizer Perekhov and other

Communists arrived. The division commissar was horrified when we elected

Comrade Kolesov, Commander of the Aero. Nav. Division, as President,

Comrade Balobanov as Secretary, and Comrade Romanov as Assistant

Secretary of a Revolutionary Committee, and especially when the entire

division unanimously supported the Kronstadt resolution.

The sailors rejoiced that power had passed into the hands of the

laboring people. The Communists vainly attempted to provoke us, saying

that we did not have the right to revolt against Communist Soviet power.

The sailors, in revolutionary ecstasy, replied to this that death was

better than the Communist yoke, and with the cry, “Long live the

Kronstadt sailors, soldiers, and workers,” went to the hangar where the

seaplanes were located.

In the hangar, we gathered for a second time. Comrade Balabanov [sic]

instructed that all seamen should be armed, but several, afraid of

spilling blood, did not agree with this order, and as we will see below,

paid cruelly for their love of peace and their trusting natures.

The seamen chose three delegates for communication with Kronstadt, and

decided to set a division watch of 20 persons. At this time, the

Communists were listening in on us, and reported everything to the

Politodel, where a Communist committee of defense was gathered. Its

president, commissar Sergeev, ordered military units to capture the

rebel sailors, who had clearly crossed to the side of the White Guards.

We went to our separate homes, since the Communists assured us that they

wouldn’t use any armed force or arrests against us.

Our delegates, sent to neighboring units with the Kronstadt fortress’

resolution, were arrested by chekists on the way. Comrade Kolesov wasn’t

able to use the telephone (central reported that it was out of order) to

communicate with Kronstadt and with other units. In fact, Sergeev,

commissar of the Oranienbaum garrison, called the Petrograd Defense

Committee and asked them to send an armored train with an echelon of

cadets as quickly as possible, and urgently called for 3 batteries of

light artillery, and a squadron of cavalry cadets. They armed all the

Communists from head to toe, supplied them with revolvers and machine

guns, issued each soldier 2 lb. of bread and 1 lb. of meat, and then

sent them to the brigade headquarters. Then the Communists set about

disarming the young seamen and the escort crew. They arrested the most

untrustworthy, and sent them to the Cheka. Some who escaped from under

arrest informed Comrade Kolesov of what was happening. He answered, “Let

them make their arrests. We don’t fear them, and won’t make any

opposition, since our forces are too small, just a 30 person guard.”

At 5 am on March 3, the armored train Chernomorets and an echelon of

cadets arrived from Petrograd. At 7 am, just as it had begun to get

light, the armored train came up to the building of the Naval Aeronautic

Division and aimed its cannons and machine guns point blank. Cadets

rushed at the seamen from all sides, and disarmed them. The infamous

beast Dulkis, from the Kronstadt Cheka, pointed his revolver at Comrade

Kolesov with the animal scream, “Don’t move White Guard, or I shoot.”

After this, they arrested our commander and took him under guard to the

Cheka, where they began to bring the sailors arrested in private

apartments.

After several hours, the chekists set about the interrogations. After

the interrogation of Comrade Kolesov and 44 seamen of the Aeronautic

Naval Division, at 4 o’clock on March 3 a company of cadets took them

past Martyshkino for execution. Soon, the crack of small arms volleys

was heard.

The Communists of the Aero. Nav. Division made sure to immediately

arrest the wives and relatives of the comrades who had been saved from

the terrible clutches of the Cheka.

Cadets arrived from Orel, Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow. Three more armored

trains came, and were put on the reserve tracks of the town of

Oranienbaum. After this, heavy artillery and the Moscow Cheka arrived.

For whom were these armed forces and oprichniki? Clearly, for the

workers, peasants, sailors and soldiers who had begun to want freedom

for labor and fairness.

Execution did not scare us. We decided to be victorious, or to die the

glorious death of a revolutionary seaman, who has proved that he is not

a gendarme, and not a servant of the Cheka which protects the Communist

Party autocracy which torments our wives and children in its torture

chambers.

Down with the Communist oppressors, who rob our fathers!

Long live Soviet power!

ABUSE OF THE WHITE FLAG

A white flag raised during military action means a temporary ceasefire,

to carry out negotiations between the adversaries. Thus it has always

been, among all nations.

But it is not so with the Communists. They turn the flag of peace into a

sign of betrayal, and under its cover carry out their stinking works.

Yesterday, March 8, soldiers with a white flag set out from Oranienbaum

in the direction of Kronstadt. Taking the advancing soldiers as truce

envoys, two of our comrades went out on horseback to meet them, having

beforehand removed from themselves all weapons. One of them rode right

up to the adversary’s group, and the second stopped at a small distance.

Barely had our truce envoy said a few words when the Communists threw

themselves on him, pulled him from the horse, and carried him away with

themselves. The second comrade managed to ride away back to Kronstadt.

The example is worthy of attention, to once more be convinced of the

methods which the Communists use in their struggle against the laboring

masses.

HOW THE COMMUNISTS LIE

—Tukhachevsky, commander of the army operating against Kronstadt, told a

reporter from Kransnyi Komandir, “We have received reports that the

civilian population of Kronstadt is receiving almost no produce.”

—The infantry regiment quartered in Kronstadt has refused to join the

mutineers, and not allowed itself to be disarmed.

—The main instigators of the mutiny are planning to escape to Finland.

—A non-party sailor who escaped from Kronstadt reports that on March 4,

General Kozlovsky spoke at a sailors’ meeting in Kronstadt. In his

speech he called for strong authority, and decisive action against

supporters of the Soviets.

—The mood in Kronstadt is one of demoralization. The masses of the

populace impatiently await the end of the mutiny, and demand that the

White Guard leaders be surrendered to the Soviet government.

This is what the Communists write about us. These are the means to which

they resort, tring to blacken our movement before the laboring people,

and by the same means to lengthen their own existence, if only by an

hour.

S. KAMENEV FLED FROM ORANIENBAUM

A March 7 issue of Krasnyi Komandir, provided to us by prisoners,

reports, “the Commander in Chief of all armed forces of the Republic,

Comrade S. Kamenev, having arrived in Petrograd in connection with the

events in Kronstadt, has returned to Moscow.”

A COMMUNIST ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE THE FORTS

On March 6, Comrade Afanasiev came to Comrade Ballot, a Communist, for

some books. The latter attempted to convince him to escape from fort Rif

to the Oranienbaum shore. In preparation, he had found out where the

guards and machine guns were placed, and where crossing the sea would be

least unpleasant.

He proposed that they dress all in white, since the night was light.

(The conversation took place at two o’clock in the morning.) But of

course, Comrade Afanasiev did not agree with him, arrested him and took

him to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

Under interrogation, Comrade Ballot admitted that he wanted to escape to

the Oranienbaum shore, and was searching for a companion so that it

wouldn’t be so boring. He says that he wanted to escape because he was

afraid of execution. On him were found 28 thousand rubles, and

identification papers.

On March 6, a General Meeting of the crew occurred at fort

Krasnoarmeiskii, at which Communists were in attendance along with the

others. After a report by Comrade Vershinin on the current moment and

how things stand in Kronstadt, demoralization was noticed among the

crew, since the Communists located there were zealously carrying on

their malicious agitation. They were making the crew feel that they were

still their lords, and did not intend to give up their place. After the

slogan proposed by Comrade Vershinin, “Victory or Death,” the crew came

to the point of view, better death than surrender.

Then the Communists, 50 persons in number, attempted to escape from the

fort, but were caught in a searchlight, restrained, disarmed, and turned

over to the authority of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of

Kronstadt.

At the present time, a cheerful and excited atmosphere and complete

support for revolutionary Kronstadt are noted at fort Krasnoarmeiskii.

A RESOLUTION BY DESERTERS

The truth about Kronstadt has already broken through all the obstacles

set up by the high-handed Communists, and units of the adversary’s

troops surrender to us in droves. They are now being convinced that the

soldiers, seamen, and workers of Kronstadt are fighting against

oppressors, fighting for true Soviet power. They see that it was not

generals (of which, by the way, there are none here) but the tortured

laboring people itself that overthrew the oprichnik-Communists.

We print below a resolution passed unanimously by 700 deserters.

“We, soldiers, peasants, workers, cadets, and officers, having heard a

report on the situation of Kronstadt, entirely give our support to the

resolution of the Garrison Assembly of the town of Kronstadt, and

express our faith in the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. We wish to

go hand in hand with it, and at its first call we will enter anew into

the ranks of the laboring masses, and will struggle against all Soviet

bureaucratism and unfairness.

SKEPKO, President

IVLEV, Secretary

ALL POWER TO SOVIETS, AND NOT PARTIES

RESOLUTIONS

I

We, candidate members of the RCP of the Union of Workers of the People’s

Communications, having discussed the current moment, arrived at the

following conclusion: we entered the party with the goal of working for

the good of the people, and stand entirely in defense of the interests

of the worker and peasant masses. Therefore, at the present difficult

time being suffered by the Republic, when all our strivings must be

turned to the battle with destruction, cold and hunger, we unanimously

declare that we do not stand for the authorities, but entirely for the

rightful cause of the laborers. Therefore we, as honest workers,

standing in defense of the interests and rights of the laborers,

unanimously declare that we are under the command of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, which has placed before itself the goal of

forming Soviets of the purely laboring proletarian masses.

Long live Sovet power, true defender of the laborers!

town of Kronstadt, March 8, 1921

PETROV, President of the Meeting

II

We, workers’ representatives, at the General Meeting of the 6th Raikom

of the Union of Metal Workers, having heard the truthful speech of a

deputy from the Prov. Rev. Com. of the Fortress of Kronstadt, say, “We

believe in you, we are with you. Go boldly forward on the shining path

which you have marked. We will not leave you, and if necessary, we will

die together with you for the good of our brothers the laborers.”

ROMASHEV, President

(signature), Secretary

ELECTIONS TO THE REVTROIKA AT THE WORKER-PEASANT INSPECTION

At the General Meeting of the workers of the Worker-Peasant Inspection,

it was decided that since there are 4 sub-departments in Rabkrin

[Worker-Peasant Inspection], just such a number of members should be

elected, that is, 4 persons: Galkin, Morozov, Neveikin, and Soloviev.

Three of those elected, Comrades Galkin, Morozov, and Neveikin, are to

remain at the Rabkrin Department, and Comrade Soloviev is to be located

at the Soviet of the People’s Economy sub-department. Comrade Galkin was

elected President of the Revtroika, and Neveikin Secretary.

AN APPEAL

Comrade Communists, come to your senses! Admit your unforgivable error

before the non-party comrades. I too was a Communist, of the battleship

Sevastopol’s collective, and have now understood how we were deceived by

our torture chamber bureaucrats. Comrade Communists, it is time to come

to your senses! Enough of shooting our own fathers and executing brother

peasants and workers by the order of some kind of Trotskies. We will

throw away our deceiving slogan, “The dictatorship of the proletariat.”

We will join in a comradely family together with our Rev. Com., for the

rightful cause.

Down with the oppressors’ party!

Long live the worker and peasant!

KOSKIN, a Communist

LEAVING THE PARTY

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

In view of the fact that in answer to the the comrade Kronstadters’

proposal for delegates to be sent from Petrograd, Trotsky and the

Communist leaders began to spill blood by firing the first rounds, I ask

that from today I no longer be considered a member of the RCP. The

speeches of Communist orators fogged my head, but today’s practices of

the bureaucrat-Communists have cleared it.

I ask that this declaration be printed in the press, and also ask the

crew to accept me into its close family, that I may share in its sorrows

and joys.

I bless the bureaucrat-Communists for the fact that they have uncovered

their face, and in that way brought me out of delusion. I was a blind

tool in their hands.

Former RCP member No 537,575

ANDREI BRATASHEV

Recognizing the critical situation which has been created by the actions

of a shameless little bunch of Communists, who have woven themselves a

thick nest at the top of the Communist party, and having entered the

Communist party under pressure, as a rank and file working man, I look

with horror on the fruits of their hands’ work. The country, brought to

ruin, can be rebuilt only by the worker and peasant, whom the Communist

party, as ruler, has plucked to the last feather. Therefore, I am

leaving the party, and will give my knowledge for the defense of the

laboring mass.

L. KOROLEV, Commander of the 5th Battalion, 4th Division

The bloody horror of Nikolai

We had not been able yet to forget,

When the commune’s “holy” party

Began to spill our blood anew.

She promised us liberty,

She promised us the gift of fortune,

But this her own gift she changed

To bloody terror and nightmare.

Executions, torments, tortures,

Blood poured from under swords.

She gave us three years of suffering

Worse than the Tsar’s butchers.

It has come true… By the Will of the people

The nightmare of oppression is broken,

Liberty has been returned

The mighty fire of uprising burns.

Grey Kronstadt, in past days

Moved ahead as a revolutionary.

It threw down Nikolai’s weight

And will throw down the Communist yoke.

Seaman K. KOLODOCHKIN

We, Communists of the battleship Sevastopol, having discussed the

current moment, arrived at the following conclusion: during the last

three years of our party’s existence, many self-seekers and careerists

have poured into our ranks. Because of the above, these careerists have

created a powerful bureaucratism in the country, and thereby have raised

the workers and peasants against the party.

Our party has always placed as its purpose the struggle against all

enemies of the proletariat and laboring class, and we now openly declare

that we, as honest sons of the workers and peasants, will stand also in

the future for the laborers’ victories. We will not allow a single White

Guard, either secret or open, to use the temporary, difficult situation

of our Soviet Republic, and at the first attempt to raise a hand against

Soviet power, we will know how the give the necessary repulse to the

counterrevolutionary hydra of the Entente.

We have already declared and declare once again that we are under the

command of the Kronstadt Provisional-Revolutionary Committee, which has

given itself the goal of forming Soviets of the laboring and proletarian

class.

Long live Soviet power, true defender of the rights of laborers!

We ask that this resolution be widely advertised in the press.

I. Petrov, Turk, G. Babanov, E. Soloviev, F. Bobor, Tikhomirov, A.

Agafonov, Dialensky, G. Moshuanov, Kornoniushkin, Iu. Kentok,

Kolomychenko, Chernov, I. Naumov, V. Ianishus, I. Semenov, N. Kitto, V.

Lubkov, O. Svetlov, V. Tuzov, A. Etikson, S. Fetrovin, Fedorov, Busybin,

Gant, Gavrilov

Declarations of departure from the RCP also arrived from the

following: 1) N. Ermolenko, seaman of the battleship Petropavlovsk, 2)

P. Tolbaev, candidate member of the R.C.P., 3) Zhukovsky, seaman of the

battleship Petropavlovsk, 8th Company, 4) I. Mischenkov, worker in the

Port Galvanoplastics Workshop, 5) M. Petrov, member of the RCP, 6) G.

Ivanov, soldier of battery No 5, 7) A. Buivolov, soldier of 3rd

Division, 8) also A. Krutikov, 9) also T. Timoshin, 10) also P. Moiseev,

11) also V. Sapogov, 12) also B. Dziubinsky, 13) also A. Sokovtsev, 14)

also I. Grishin, 15) also G. Semenov, 16) also E. Perezhogin, 17) G.

Rebon, seaman of the Company of Seamen Specialists, 18) D. Chizhov,

seaman of the Academic Mining Detachment, 19) A. Tuzov, artisan of fort

Petr I, 20) G. Zharov, member of the RCP, 21) I. Manziar, artisan of the

Mine Laboratory, 22) I. Petrov, worker of the Support Crew of 3rd

Division, 23) S. Savin, seaman of the Academic Mining Detachment, 24) G.

Kurakin, clerk of the Support Crew of the 3rd Artillery Division.

PRODUCE From Gorprodkom

Today, a quarter pound of biscuit is issued by adult cards of letter A,

for bread coupon No 24, counted against the bread norm for March 9.

2 pounds of wheat is issued from stores No 5 and 14 by children’s cards

of series A, for produce coupon No 6, counted against the bread norm for

March 8 through 11.

One pound of fresh meat by adult cards of letters A and B and children’s

of series C for bread coupon No 25, and by children’s cards of series B

for bread coupon No 6, counted against the bread norm for March 8

through 11.

1/16 lb. of yeast is issued by Rudkevich the yeast maker (corner of

Lenin Blvd. and Saidashnaia) for bread coupon No 4 by children’s cards

of series C, for payment.

It is announced for the information of Uchkoms and building

representatives, that citizens on naval rations must not be provided

with goods.

LEVAKOV, member of the Revtroika, for the President of Gorprodkom

POZDNIAKOV, Head of the Subdepartment of Distribution

March 10

“Days of anguish and cannonading. My heart is numb with despair;

something has died within me. The people on the streets look bowed with

grief, bewildered. No one trusts himself to speak. The thunder of heavy

guns rends the air. “

-Alexander Berkman, Kronstadt diary

“During the whole day of March 10th, the Communist artillery incessantly

shelled the whole island from south to north.”

-Voline, The Unknown Revolution

“So far, despite the intensive bombardment, casualties were remarkably

light; outsiders who visited Kronstadt reported little injury and only

minor damage to buildings and installations. Through March 10, by the

defenders’ own reckoning, only 14 persons had been killed and 4 wounded

(2 sailors, a soldier, and a civilian).”

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

So far, the chief effect of the Bolshevik offensive had been to isolate

the Kronstadt rebels and prevent their message from spreading. The radio

and press were running nonstop disinformation against them.

“In Moscow, the rebellion was a matter of growing concern. On March 10,

Trotsky returned with a grim report on the situation and presented it to

a closed session of the Tenth Party Congress. That evening, some 300

delegates volunteered for the front, over a quarter of the total

attendance and a dramatic measure of the gravity with which the rising

was viewed ten days after its outbreak.”

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Kronstadt Izvestia 8: Thursday, March 10, 1921

A BOMB THROWN AT KRONSTADT IS A SIGNAL FOR UPRISING IN THE COMMUNIST

CAMP

ORDER OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE, No 5, March 9,

1921

In connection with the military situation, the populace of the town is

directed to hang all windows with something thick at night, before

striking the light.

KILGAST, for the President of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee

TUKIN, for the Secretary

ORDER OF THE COMMANDANT OF THE TOWN OF KRONSTADT No 69, March 10,

1921

I order all Communists resident in the town of Kronstadt to surrender to

the Administration of the Commandant of the Town (Roshal Square) within

two days from the publication of this order all weaponry in their

possession, that is: revolvers, rifles, their ammunition, and also

sabres, dirks, and accumulator (electrical) lamps.

Those not carrying out this order will be considered to be acting

against the authority of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and if

weaponry is discovered in their possession, they will be liable to

severe consequences.

ZEMSKOV, Provisional and Acting Commandant of the Town of Kronstadt

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS (March 9, 1921)

Attempts by the adversary to attack from the North and South were

repulsed, with large losses for the attackers.

There were no losses on our side.

CALM AND RESTRAINT

We didn’t want blood. They started it, and the battle is on.

The sailors, soldiers, and workers of Kronstadt, true to the laboring

Revolution, are forging fortune for Soviet Russia. The chains of the

three year Communist slavery are being broken with an iron hammer.

The Communist throne has begun to tremble, and in a blind rage they

choke themselves in the blood of laborers. They shoot workers and

peasants right and left. They jeer over and repress the rebels’

defenseless families.

One more blow and the bloodthirsty Moloch, which has lulled the laboring

people to sleep with sweet speeches, will be thrown down in ruins.

May the fraternal blood which waters the face of tormented Soviet

Russia, wrung from the workers and peasants by the criminal Communists,

be like cement; may it bind those who fight the hated yoke of the

traitors into a unified host. At the moment of decisive combat with the

hydra of the Bolshevik autocracy, we must be composed.

Our call to battle has already been heard.

Reserves are already approaching. Before the Bolsheviks’ eyes, our

brothers the workers and peasants are extending us a helping hand in our

battle with the maddened horde.

We must destroy the commissarocracy. With flaming hate in our heart and

a sober head, holding back those who burst for battle and thereby

preserving our living forces, we will strike the final decisive blow to

the enemy.

We will carry to success the titanic battle with those who have betrayed

the laboring people.

Calm and restraint.

FROM THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee, not following the Communist

example, left both them and their families at liberty. At the present

time it has been established that in an attempt at provocation, wanting

to sow panic among the populace, they have spread the most foolish

rumors. They talk of Krasnaya Gorka surrendering, of Trotsky promising

not to leave one stone of Kronstadt on another, and so on. All this

makes the civilian populace worry needlessly.

If there are several reports that the Prov. Rev. Com. is not now making

public, it is demanded by the military situation, since there are still

not a few spy-Communists among the populace. Citizens! Everything

possible is made public in Izvestiia. Do not believe whisperers’ rumors.

Try to restrain the culprits and hand them over to the Prov. Rev. Com.

The Prov. Rev. Com. warns that decisive measures, dictated by the

circumstances of the military period, will be taken against those sowing

lying rumors.

PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

A BROADCAST TO THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD

The following broadcast was sent on March 8:

To all… to all… to all…

Comrades, workers of the world! The Communists have declared our

uprising for true Soviet power a mutiny. But it is not we who are the

mutineers, but they.

The laboring masses have demanded free new elections to the stacked

Soviets. But the Bolshevik authorities, with bloody field marshal

Trostky at the head, have decided to repress the will of the laboring

people whatever may come of it. They defend the party autocracy with

executions of toilers and with violence against their families.

The Communists slander us, saying that our leaders are White Guard

generals. They say that we have sold out to Finland, and that it has

promised us support.

Before the world proletariat, we swear that no kind of White Guard

generals lead us, and that no kind of negotiations with Finland either

about military or produce support have there been, and none can there

be. We are supplied with military equipment and produce for the time

necessary to overthrow the Communists.

If, however, our struggle were to be drawn out, it is possible that we

would be forced to turn to external produce aid, for the good of our

wounded heroes, children and the civilian populace.

The Communists mask their weakness with claims that they are giving us a

period of grace. In actual fact, they cannot collect the forces

necessary to strangle the Third Revolution of laborers.

It has been three days since they fired the first shot, and first

spilled fraternal blood. Fighting for the rightful cause, we have

accepted the challenge. The garrison and laboring populace of Kronstadt,

having thrown off the shameful Communist yoke, have decided to fight to

the end.

With comradely greetings,

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF KRONSTADT

VOICE OF THE DECEIVED

For three and a half years, a little bunch of usurpers have made a

reality of their own thieving will. At last, the Kronstadt sons of

laboring Russia, horrified by the Communist oppression, came on March 1

to decide the fate of the deceived and robbed Russian people. With a

single voice, we of Kronstadt said to the Communist leaders, Kalinin and

the rest, “enough of oppression, and enough of deception. Off the road!

Let us breathe free and share our painful needs with all the workers,

peasants, sailors, and soldiers of the boundless Russian land.”

They, traitors, are frightened of the deceived Russian laboring people

coming to understand everything.

In 3 1/2 years of their reign, they have still not drunk their fill of

the innocent blood of toilers.

The executions of our brothers are still too few for them. They have

taken to torturing defenseless women and children. And where are our

representatives? Why can they not intercede for us, and liberate our

brothers who are languishing in prisons?

No, deceivers, we have heard enough of your fancy speech. No one

believes you any more. Don’t try to scare us either. No one fears you.

The laboring people itself, and not generals, is leading the struggle

against you, you blood-drinkers.

Long live the Russian proletariat, tortured, long-suffering all

adversities, and now in rebellion to gain its rights!

Long live the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Town of

Kronstadt, chosen by us, the laborers! Only it do we trust.

Off, hands stained with brotherly blood, stinking oppressors of Laboring

Russia!

THE REVTROIKA OF THE ENGINEER WORKING BATTALION

TO SOLDIERS FIGHTING ON THE COMMUNIST SIDE

Comrades! March 7, by order of Trotsky, butcher of worker-peasant

Russia, fire was opened on Free Kronstadt from the batteries of Lisy Nos

and Sestroretsk because Kronstadt no longer wants to dance to the piping

of the Communist party, which has betrayed the laboring worker and

peasant folk in order to gain power.

We did not want to spill fraternal blood, and we did not fire a single

shot until they forced us to do so. We were forced to defend the

rightful cause of the laboring people, and to fire. We were forced to

fire at our own brothers, sent to a certain death by Communists, who

feast on the people’s bill.

And at that time, their ringleaders, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and the rest,

were sitting on soft chairs in the warm, lit rooms of tsarist palaces,

discussing how the quicker and better to cover rebel Kronstadt in blood.

To your misfortune, a snowstorm arose and an impenetrable night

approached. Nonetheless, taking nothing into consideration, the

Communist butchers pushed you across the ice. They drove you from behind

with detachments of machine gun armed Communists.

Many of you perished that night, on the huge, icy expanse of the Gulf of

Finland. At sunrise, when the snowstorm had quieted, only pathetic

remnants reached us, hungry and exhausted, barely moving your feet,

dressed in white shrouds.

By early morning, nearly a thousand of you had been gathered, and by

afternoon a countless number. You paid dearly with your blood and

suffering for this venture. And after your failure, Trotsky rolled off

back to Petrograd, to once again drive new sufferers to the slaughter.

Our worker-peasant blood is obtained for him cheaply enough.

And once again, the regiments will set out, driven by well-dressed and

well-fed Communists who hide behind your backs, farther from our rounds,

in order to treat you to machine gun fire if you waver or if you don’t

want to give your body for the defense of these brigands. We don’t treat

the Communists like that. All the commissars, and even the butchers from

the Cheka, we feed with the exact same rations which we eat ourselves.

We refused butter to Kuzmin, Commissar of Baltflot, when he declared

that it’s impossible to live without it; we give butter only to children

and the sick. That is how matters stand in Kronstadt, and not like the

Communist deceivers tell you: that White officers and Finnish White

Guards have captured Kronstadt. No, Kronstadt is controlled only by

seamen, soldiers, and workers, who have given an oath to liberate you

and all Russia from the power of those who have betrayed the laboring

people.

Comrades, realize what you are doing and where you are going!

Look and see what awaits you, and what you are spilling your blood for!

The Communist administration has led Russia to unheard of destitution,

hunger, cold, and other disasters. Factories and plants have closed, and

railroads are almost at a stop. The countryside has been stripped to the

bone. There is neither bread, nor beast, nor tool to work the land.

There is no clothing, no shoes, no heat. Every day, hungry and cold

workers, peasants and city folk move toward a certain death, having lost

all hope for improvement in their lives.

And the traitorous Communist party brought you to this. For three and a

half years, they sang into your ears that there, there everything will

be arranged and it will be good, but in fact they have pulled the wool

over your eyes in the most base way, flayed the last bit from you and

now are sending you to the slaughter. The Communists don’t need you, but

only power over you so that they can continue to oppress the people for

their own pleasure.

So enough of bearing the oppressors and their power on our own necks.

Rise up, all as one, and with the comradely blow of a bayonet, throw the

base traitors into the grave. Join us, so that shoulder to shoulder we

may attack the common enemy, for the liberation of Soviet Russia and of

our brothers the peasants and workers from the pack of robbers with the

blood-drinkers Trotsky and Zinoviev at its head.

To arms, comrades!

As comrades, forward against the enemy!

Victory is ours!

THEY SHARE WITH BROTHERS

The struggle for Soviet power ties us ever closer together Every person

strives to somehow aid the common cause. The 1st Raikom of metalworkers

has unanimously decided to hand over to the common kettle the entire

horsemeat ration due them.

ELECTIONS TO THE REVTROIKA AND RAIKOM

The General Meeting of the 6th Regional Committee of the Union of

Metalworkers of the Kronstadt Port Construction Unit, after reports on

the events of the day by Comrades Kilgast and Perepelkin, passed the

following resolution, “We trust you, we are with you. Go boldly forward

on the holy path you have marked. We will not leave you, and if

necessary, will die together with you for the good of our brothers, the

laborers and workers.”

Comrade Kostenko was elected as Raikom representative to the Troika.

Comrade Boiarinov was elected President of the Regional Committee,

Comrade Parychev Secretary and Comrade Kupriianov a member.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I ask to correct a mistake which I noticed in yesterday’s March 9 number

of Kronshtadtskie Izvestiia, where it reports on my leaving the RCP. I

was never in the party, and hate the supporters of the party of those

who have deceived us with their lying slogans, under the mask of the

laboring people.

Down with the Communist blood-drinkers!

Long live the Power of Laborers!

G. REBONE, seaman of the Company of Seaman-Specialists

THE COMMUNIST THRONE HAS BEGUN TO TREMBLE

LEAVING THE PARTY

All those leaving the ranks of the RCP are directed to turn in their

party booklets and identifications at their electoral troikas. Those

leaving the party in the future and giving declarations are directed to

do so right now.

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

MY COMRADE STUDENTS OF THE LABOR, MILITARY AND NAVAL SCHOOLS!

I have lived for almost thirty years with a deep love for the people. I

have carried light and knowledge, as well as I was able, wherever it was

awaited, and wherever needed for the present moment. The Revolution of

1917 increased my strengths by giving my work free range, and I

continued to serve my ideal with great energy. The teachings of

Communism, with its slogan, “All for the people,” captured me with their

purity and beauty. Thus, in February of 1920, I became a candidate

member of the RCP. But with the “first shot” I was shaken by the thought

that I might be considered a participant in spilling the blood of

innocent victims. They have fired at a peaceful populace, at my deeply

beloved children, of whom there are 6 or 7 thousand in Kronstadt. I came

to feel that it is not within my strength to hold faith in, and profess

to a party which has disgraced itself by a bestial act. Therefore, with

this first shot I ceased to consider myself a candidate member of the

RCP.”

MARIIA NIKOLAEVNA SHATEL, teacher

March 8, 1921

I request that you no longer consider me a member of the RCP, since I

have become convinced that the Communists are oppressors. Like

bloodthirsty animals they do not feel sorry for their kills, and hunger

for the people’s blood. I greet the Provisional Revolutionary Committee,

which is leading the laboring people by a true and honest path.

SHISHELOVA, manual laborer of the Artillery Workshop

We, rank and file Communists of the Electrical Unit of the Third Region

have seen that when the comrade Kronstadters proposed that delegates be

sent from Petrograd, Trotsky sent an airplane filled with bombs. The

Communists started throwing bombs out on women and children who are in

no way guilty, and barely missed taking a boy of 13 years as their

victim. Because of this, and because executions of honest workers are

raging everywhere, we are constantly tortured by the actions and bestial

works of Trotsky and his champions, and are leaving the Communist party

in order to join all honest workers in the mutual struggle for

liberation of the laborers from oppression. We ask that we be considered

non-party comrades.

Anton Kovtun, Andrei Luts, Iuna, Starovevki, Otu, Smark, Eduard Pokrov,

Stepan Galiantcheev, Georgii Egorov, Andrei Filippov, Ivan Nikolaev,

Ivan Filippov, Nikolai Baksheev, Aleksei Bostalev, Filimonov, Petr

Pavlov and one illegible signature

Declarations also arrived from:

25) F. Andreev, machinist of fort Konstantin, 26) M. Logunov, sldr. of

the 4th Artillery Division, 27) also A. Sergeev, 28) V. Kondrashikhin,

sldr. of the Fortress Communications Service, 29) L. Savkovsky, seaman

of the Academic Mining Detachment, 30) also S. Yakovlev, 31) also V.

Shutov, 32) also P. Semeniuk, 33) also P. Kanatov, 34) also S. Ageev,

35) also F. Zhuravsky, 36) also Lebedev, 37) also Lavrov, 38) also V.

Golber, 39) also I. Karavaev, 40) also A. Malashenkov, 42) S. Artamonov,

seaman of the Kronstadt Naval Prodbaza, 43) F. Shlakis, artisan of the

Naval Artillery Laboratory, 44) M. Glukhov, seaman of the Worker-Escort

Detachment.

75) A. Suslov, sailor of the steamship Izhor, 76) P. Ivanov, seaman of

the Port Tugboats, 77) S. Artemov, sldr. of 5th Company of the infantry

regiment, 78) I. Ilyin, artisan of the Naval Artillery Laboratory, 79)

V. Shirmov, sldr. of the 13th Battery, 80) V. Prokopov, seaman, 81) P.

Zimin, seaman of the Academic Mining Detachment, 82) A. Tarasov, sldr.

of Battery No 4, 83) I. Morkin, sldr. of the 9th Battery of fort

Totleben, of the 4th Artillery Division, 84) also Ia. Malevansky, 85)

also V. Smirnov, 86) also V. Afanasiev, 87) also F. Litvinov, 88) also

K. Deviatkin, 89) also P. Kuzmin, 90) also N. Loginov, 91) also A.

Semionov, 92) also Shuagenkov, 93) V. Nekipelov, artisan of the

Ust-Kanal Substation, 94) D. Spiridonov, seaman of the Academic Mining

Detachment, 95) also V. Stepanov, 96) also A. Gorodinsky, 97) also V.

Burmatov, 98) also N. Kulikov, 99) also I. Petushkovsky, 100) also B.

Maksimovsky, 101) also M. Chernyshev, 102) also P. Zimin, 103) also N.

Steniaev, 104) also G. Vikhorev, 105) also D. Moshensky, 106) also A.

Saveliev, 107) also V. Spiridonov, 108) G. Zaitsev, member of the

R.C.P., 109) P. Kolosov, artisan of the Steamship Plant, 110) V.

Spiridonov, sldr. of the Second Artillery Division, 111) D. Sedlov,

sldr. of the 7th Artillery Division, 112) I. Melnikov, seaman of the

Mine Casting Workshop, 113) I. Vorobiov, cashier of the Town Finance

Department, 114) N. Kuriashev, baker of the Army Bakery, 115) also T.

Platonov, 116) M. Sysoev, militiaman, 117) also Breiner, 118) also I.

Dmitriev, 119) M. Fomin, sldr. of the 3rd Artillery Division, 120) S.

Rois, sldr. of the 4th Anti-Aircraft Battery of the Fortress Air

Defense, 121) K. Borovikov, sldr., 122) A. Rusakov, seaman, 123) P.

Kulikov, member of the R.C.P., 124) M. Trofinov, lithographer of the

Administration of the Artillery Commander, 125) A. Maiorov, seaman, 126)

V. Kappo, artisan of the Steamship Plant, 127) also A. Selivanov, 128)

G. Iosifov, 129) Ia. Tiulin, candidate member of the R.C.P.,130) A.

Vasiliev, sldr. 131) I. Chekulaev, artisan of fort Petr I.

Comrades, I ask that you accept me into your family, since I too am a

peasant and village toiler. My family, like yours, was destroyed by the

back-breaking and oppressive yoke of the RCP. Comrades, seeing all this

filth, seeing that the RCP has become bureaucratized and that all its

declarations and decisions have stayed on paper and not been brought to

life, I leave its ranks and give my support to the resolution which was

passed at the General Town Meeting of March 1, and for which I too

voted.

Once more comrades, I ask you to accept me into your ranks and to use my

work.

IUSHKOV, serviceman of the 3rd Division

We the undersigned, members of the RCP, declare that, finding the

party’s tactics to be fundamentally incorrect, and that it is completely

bureaucratized and absolutely separated from the masses, we are leaving

its ranks. Before all the laboring people, we brand those who remain in

its ranks with the shame of criminals and murderers.

We the undersigned call on all honest members of the RCP to give full

support to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee as the single organ

which expresses the will of the laboring people at the present time.

Follow us to honorable battle against the insane fanatics, and tell

yourself, “Victory or death for the glory of the laborers.”

M. Arkhipov, V. Trapezniakov, A. Rekhov, Shitov, Ia. Filippov, Ustinov,

Alekseev, Rumiantsev, P. Filippov, I. Ovchinnikov, A. Kniaginin, K.

Ilyin and I. Balashev, soldiers of the Air Defense of the Kronstadt

Naval Fortress

Seeing clearly that the RCP not only is not in agreement with the will

of the entire laboring people, but that it is attempting to hold power

for itself by all means in its command, up to and including threats and

false reports from the center of power, I declare to the Revolutionary

Committee that I consider myself to have left the ranks of the RCP. I

will exert all my reason, strength and two years of battle experience in

the last war for the good of the entire laboring people. I give my

entire support to the resolution of the garrison of the town of

Kronstadt.

I. SHAFRIN, seaman.

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

Today, 1/4 lb. of salted butter is issued from the meat stores by adult

cards of letters A and B, for produce coupon No 4.

1/4 lb. of table butter is issued to children of all series: by series A

for produce coupon No 7, by series B for produce coupon No 5, and by

series C for produce coupon No 4.

1/2 lb. of sugar is issued from all stores by all adult and children’s

cards. To adults of letters A and B and to children of series C for

bread coupon No 7, to children of series A for produce coupon No 8 and

of series B for bread coupon No 7.

The Presidium of Gorprodkom directs Uchkoms and house representatives,

on their personal responsibility, to take cards from those under arrest,

since the latter receive produce at their place of imprisonment, and to

present these to the Statistics sub-department no later than March 11.

All orders and writs issued by Gorkommuna before March 7 are declared

annulled.

Issues of produce declared by Gorkommuna until March 6 inclusive are

considered ended, and unused coupons in citizens’ possesion are

annulled.

From March 9 the following are the following norms are established for

the foddering of horses in the possession of Soviet institutions: 12

lbs. of oats in 24 hours and 4 lbs of hay in 24 hours. The

Administration of Gorprodkom directs that these norms be followed.

AL. OKOLOTKOV, for the president of Gorprodkom

March 11

An attack on Kronstadt from the southeast on the morning of March 11

failed, resulting in a large number of government casualties. Fog

prevented operations for the rest of the day.

“Visibility was so poor that a Communist pilot, flying from Oranienbaum

to Petrograd, mistakenly landed at Kronstadt. Seeing his error, he

revved up his engines and managed to take off amid heavy gunfire, making

it safely to Petrograd.”

-Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Kronstadt Izvestia 9: Friday, March 11, 1921

ALL POWER TO SOVIETS, AND NOT PARTIES

NOTICE

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee reports that today at 4 pm, in

the Garrison Club, there will be a meeting of the representatives

elected on March 2, for the organization of new elections to the

Soviets.

FROM THE COMMANDANT OF THE TOWN OF KRONSTADT

It is announced for your information that only those documents, giving

the right of passage about the town after 11 pm, are valid which have

the seal of the battleship Petropavlovsk, “Commander of the Town of

Kronstadt,” or “Staff of the Kronstadt Naval Fortress.” All other

documents issued by whatever kind of unit or institution are considered

invalid without the presence of the seals declared above.

ZEMSKOV, Commandant of the Town of Kronstadt

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

Over the entire course of the night of March 10, the Communist artillery

bombarded the fortress and forts with intensive artillery fire from the

southern and northern shores, meeting an energetic repulse from our

side. About 4 am, Communist infantry made the first attack attempt, from

the southern shore, but was repulsed. Communist attempts to attack

continued until 8 am, but all were repulsed by the artillery and small

arms fire of our batteries and garrison units.

THE CONFUSION OF AUTHORITY

Kronstadt began a struggle with the Communist usurpers of power, who

have taken for themselves the right to punish and pardon the peasants

and workers, like grand lords. We have thrown out a call to all the

laborers of Russia to struggle for freely elected Soviets. Our cry has

been heard. The revolutionary sailors, soldiers, and workers of

Petrograd are already coming to our aid.

We have learned from deserters that in Petrograd field marshal Trotsky

is already unable to raise a single combat detachment. He is forced to

make do with gangs of chekists, murderers from the anti-profiteer

detachments, and other scum.

We also learn that for the Communist staff, simple Communists are

already not enough for the attack on Kronstadt. They are calling for

select berserkers.

The Bolshevik authorities feel the ground slipping from under their

feet, and give the order in Petrograd to shoot any group of 5 people

gathered in the street. The authorities are scared. They are beginning

to act nervously, making mistake after mistake, and finally coming to

the point where they shoot cannons at sparrows.

The people of Petrograd are putting on pressure from the rear. One more

blow and the oppressors’ power will fall.

HOW THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE WAS FORMED

On the first of March at two o’clock, by permission of the Ispolkom and

not arbitrarily, a meeting of seamen, soldiers and workers gathered on

Revolution Square. As many as 15 thousand people were present at the

meeting. It occured under the presidency of Comrade Vasiliev, a

Communist and President of the Ispolkom, and with the participation of

Comrade Kalinin, President of the All-Russian Central Executive

Committee and Kuzmin, Commissar of Baltflot, who had arrived from

Petrograd.

The object of the meeting was to discuss a resolution passed previously

at the General Meeting of the ships’ crews of the 1st and 2nd Brigades.

This resolution was on the current moment, and the question of how to

lead the country out of the difficult state of general collapse and

ruin. This resolution is now well known to all, and does not include

anything that would hurt Soviet power.

In fact, it was the expression of true Soviet power, of the power of

workers and peasants. But Comrades Kalinin and Kuzmin, who gave

speeches, did not want to understand this. Their speeches were not

successful. They did not know how to speak to the masses, who were

tortured to despair. And so, the meeting unanimously passed the

resolution of the ships’ crews.

The next day, by the permission and authority of the Ispolkom, in

accordance with a decree published in Izvestiia, delegates from ships,

military units, workshops and trade unions, two per organization,

gathered at the House of Education (formerly the Engineering Academy).

In all, more than three hundred people were gathered.

The representatives of authority had lost their heads, and several of

them left town. Because of this it is completely understandable that the

protection of both the delegates and the building itself from excesses

from anyone’s side had to be taken on by the crew of the battleship

Petropavlovsk.

The Conference of Delegates was opened by Comrade Petrichenko. After the

selection of a 5 person Presidium, he gave the floor to Kuzmin,

Commissar of Baltflot. Despite the sharp definition of the garrison’s

and workers’ attitude toward the representatives of power and the

Communists, Comrade Kuzmin did not want to take it into consideration.

The object of the Conference was to find an exit, to settle by peaceful

means the situation which had formed. Specifically, the object was to

create an organ, with the aid of which it would be possible to cary out

new elections to the Soviets on a more fair basis, as outlined by the

resolution.

And this was all the more necessary since the authority of the old

Soviet, which was almost entirely filled with Communists, and had shown

itself incapable of carrying out vitally urgent tasks, had in effect

already ended. But instead of trying to calm the Conference, Comrade

Kuzmin stirred it up. He spoke of the dual situation which Kronstadt

occupied, of patrols, dual power, danger from Poland, of the fact that

all Europe is watching us. He assured us that all was calm in Petrograd,

pointed out that he was in the delegates’ hands, and that if they wished

they could shoot him, and concluded his speech with the declaration that

if the delegates wanted open armed struggle, then it would happen; the

Communists would not leave power voluntarily, and would struggle to

their last forces.

After Kuzmin’s speech, tactless and not bringing a single drop of calm

to the agitated mass of delegates but just inciting it more, was a

colorless speech by Comrade Vasiliev, President of the Ispolkom. This

speech had a very undefined composition, and lacked purpose. The

overwhelming majority of the Conference was clearly opposed to the

Communists.

But none the less, the Conference did not lose the certainty that it was

possible to reach agreement with the representatives of authority. This

is supported best of all by the fact that the Conference President’s

call to enter into substantive work and make an agenda found unanimous

support among the delegates.

It was decided to begin working out an agenda, but at the same time it

became clear to everyone that it was impossible to trust Comrades Kuzmin

and Vasiliev. It was necessary to temporarily restrain them, since the

order to take the Communists’ weapons away had not yet been issued, it

was not advisable to use the telephones, and the soldiers, as was later

shown by a letter divulged at the Conference, were afraid that the

commissars would not allow meetings in the units and such.

Although the Conference did not hide its negative attitude toward the

Communists, all the same when the question was raised after Comrades

Kuzmin and Vasiliev and the Fortress Commander had been removed, it was

decided to allow the Communists among the delegates to remain in the

Conference, and to continue in the general work along with the non-party

comrades. The Conference, despite the individual protests of several

members who proposed restraining the Communists, found it possible to

recognize them as the very same empowered representatives of units and

organizations as the other members.

This too supports the fact that the non-party delegates of the laborers,

soldiers, sailors, and workers believed that the resolution which had

been passed the previous day at the Garrison Meeting would not lead to a

break with the Communists, like it had with their party. They believed

that a common language could be found, and that they could understand

one another.

After this, at the suggestion of Comrade Petrichenko, the resolution

which had been passed the previous day at the Garrison Meeting was read,

and also passed by the Conference with an overwhelming majority of

votes.

And then, at that moment when it seemed the Conference would be able to

enter into substantive work, there came the out of order declaration of

a comrade delegate from the battleship Sevastopol saying that 15 carts

of rifles and machine guns were moving toward the building.

This report, completely unexpected by the Conference, was later shown to

be false, and was put out by the Communists in the hope of breaking up

the Conference. But at the moment when it was made, the tense

atmosphere, the clearly ill-disposed attitude of the representatives of

authority, and the entire situation had well prepared the Conference to

believe that it was actually so.

Nevertheless, the Conference supported the President’s proposal to enter

into discussion of the current moment on the basis of the resolution

which had been passed. The Conference began discussing measures which

would serve to actually carry out the resolution. A proposal to send a

delegation to Petrograd was laid aside, in view of the possibility of

its arrest. After this, proposals arrived from a large number of comrade

delegates, suggesting that a Provisional Revolutionary Committee be

formed from the Conference Presidium, and that it be appointed to attend

to carrying out new elections to the Soviet.

At the very last moment, the comrade President reported that a

detachment of two-thousand persons was moving toward the Conference.

After this, the Conference, unrestful and upset, broke up in alarm and

left the building of the House of Education.

With the closing of the Conference, and in connection with the report

which had just been made, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee set

off for the battleship Petropavlovsk with the object of finding

protection. It had its residence there until the Committee’s efforts had

ensured order in the town in the interests of all laborers, seamen,

soldiers and workers.

THE TRUTH ABOUT KRONSTADT

(Voice of a Communist)

The spontaneous striving of the broad laboring masses to make a reality

of the bright ideals of the October revolution and of Soviet power has

called forth an amazing rise in the spirits of those involved in the

current revolutionary movement. From those few reports which make it

through to Kronstadt, it is possible to think that several of the

Petrograd Communist comrades, maybe because they don’t know the

situation in Kronstadt, or maybe deliberately, are drawing the Kronstadt

events in a completely different light.

To me personally, as a Communist, it is painful to hear my own party

members repeat this slander, this fantasy, which the Petrograd papers

write.

They are saying there that everything happening in Kronstadt is the work

of White Guards and Entente spies with General Kozlovsky as head, and

that Kronstadt has made an agreement with Finland and is ready to make

war on Peter.

The movement which began in the Peter factories was unquestionably

called out by lack of faith in the subverted Soviets, by the closing of

factories and plants due to lack of heating material and the produce

difficulties, and by the worker arrests connected with the movement. At

that time, however, it was unnoticed in Kronstadt, which is better

provided with heating material and produce, although there were rumors

passed about what was happening in Petrograd.

These rumors took root on the Petropavlovsk. Her crew took up the demand

to end arrests and release those already arrested, and added other

demands.

Because of this, on March 1, at the Garrison Meeting at Anchor Square,

in the presence of Comrade Kalinin, President of the All-Russian Central

Executive Committee, Comrade Kuzmin, Commissar of Baltflot, and almost

the entire populace and garrison of the fortress, a resolution which had

been worked out earlier was proposed, and passed unanimously (with the

exception of Comrades Kalinin, Kuzmin and Vasiliev) without any kind of

change at all.

The most fundamental and important point of this resolution was the

demand for new elections to the Soviets, so that representatives from

all left political parties, and anarchists also, could take part in

them. This would have been done so that the Soviets would represent the

actual power of the laborers themselves.

As for the other points of the resolution, like removing the

anti-profiteer detachments, liberating political prisoners, and so on,

some of these demands have already been fulfilled under pressure from

the masses. For example, there is an order by the Petrosoviet on

removing the anti-profiteer detachments from all of Petrograd Province.

Based on this resolution, which had been affirmed by the entire populace

and garrison of the fortress, the sailors of the Petropavlovsk proposed

to the Presidium of the Soviet that it should be newly elected in the

next couple of days. The next day, March 2 that is, in accordance with

an announcement by the Presidium of the Soviet, two delegates were

chosen from each union and raikom, who were supposed to elect from among

themselves a commission to hold new elections to the Soviet.

But in view of the fact that fully believable suspicions appeared among

the gathered delegates, about a supposed threat of oppression by the

Communists, and also in view of the threatening speeches by several

delegates on the Communists’ behalf, the Conference decided to elect a

Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and to also appoint it to organize

the elections to the Soviet and the protection of the town.

From all this, we see that there was no kind of White Guard organization

in this case, and that there couldn’t be any, because everything that

happened unfolded on grounds of the dissatisfaction of the broad masses

with the existing Soviets, the majority of the representatives in which

are Communists.

And once this is so, once we see that they no longer trust us, we have

to say right away, not losing a day, “Citizens! Take state control in

your own hands, but give us the right to take part in this work also, on

the same basis as others.” We have to do this in order to not earn still

greater hatred from the people’s masses, whose representatives we called

ourselves.

All the repressions, executions and destruction which are brought by the

war which the Communists have set up lead only to anger.

I am certain that comrade Communists who entered the party not because

of a desire for power, careerism or any other self interest will agree

with me.

PALANOV, candidate member of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia]

TO COMRADE WORKERS AND PEASANTS!

Kronstadt has started a heroic struggle with the hated Bolshevik

authorities for the liberation of the workers and peasants. But it was

not Kronstadt who first spilled comradely blood.

Our enemies are deceiving you. They say that the Kronstadt uprising was

organized by Mensheviks, SRs, spies of the Entente, and tsarist

generals. They assign the leading role to Paris! Idiocy! Our uprising

was made in Paris like the moon was made in Berlin. It is all a blatant

lie.

That which is now happening was prepared by the Communists themselves,

by their three year work of blood and destruction. Letters from the

villages are full of complaints and damnations of the Communists. Our

comrades have returned from leave full of hate and anguish, and informed

us of the horrors which the Bolsheviks have created across the entire

face of the Russian land. And finally, we ourselves felt, saw and heard

what was being done all around. From every direction, a great and

terrible scream came from the villages and town of unbounded Russia. It

lit a fire of indignation in our hearts, and caused us to raise our

hands against the Communists.

We don’t want to return to the old way. We are not servants of the

bourgeoisie or hirelings of the Entente. We are defenders of the power

of all laborers, against the unbridled, tyrannical power of some single

party.

In Kronstadt, there is neither Kolchak, nor Denikin, nor Yudenich. In

Kronstadt are laboring folk.

The reason and conscience of simple Kronstadt seamen, soldiers, and

workers has at last found the path and the words which will lead us out

of the dead end, and which tsarist generals could not find.

The Communists have taken this well into account. Wanting to sow discord

and to save their skins, they try to pin an image of White Guardism on

our uprising. They will not succeed.

In the beginning, we wanted to settle everything by peaceful means, but

the Communists didn’t want to concede. They cling to power more than

Nikolai, and are ready to drown all Russia in blood in order to keep

their autocratic power.

And now bloodthirsty Trotsky, that evil genius of Russia, drives against

us our children and your brothers, who cover the ice before the

strongholds of Kronstadt with hundreds of corpses. For four days already

the battle has seethed, the cannons have thundered and fraternal blood

has poured. For four days the Kronstadt heroes have triumphantly

repulsed all the enemy’s onslaughts.

Kronstadt stands firm. One and all are prepared to sooner die than

concede. Trotsky hovers like a kestrel over our heroic town, but he will

not take it. His arms are too short. Our enemies act with only cadets,

Communist fighting detachments and deceived troops, brought from far

away and driven forward with machine guns.

The soldiers are agitated and cross over to us. Only the Communists

remain. They are forced to select units from the butcher chekists,

heroes of the anti-profiteer detachments and other such villains.

The people of Peter are already renouncing them, and soon the Judases

will run off to hang themselves.

Comrade workers! Kronstadt is fighting for you, the hungry, cold, and

bare.

While the Bolsheviks rule, it will never be your lot to see anything

better. For three years they have fed you on frozen potatoes, spoiled

herring, and promises, and life is getting worse and worse.

But you put up with it all.

So tell us, in the name of what? Can it really be just so that the

Communists might flourish and the commissars get fat? Or do you still

believe them?

At an expanded session of the Petrosoviet, Zinoviev reported on the

millions in gold which are being issued to buy produce, and figured that

for every worker 50 rubles will arrive. So, if an old lord-land owner

would sell his serfs for a thousand ruble banknote, Zinoviev wants to

buy the Peter workers for 50 rubles. That, comrades, is the kind of

price which the Bolshevik market puts on you.

But we believe that our enemies will attract only unaware and backwards

workers with that kind of dodge. No kind of gold will be enough for them

to buy the honest and daring toilers.

Do not be slow!

Break the hated chains of the new serfdom.

Comrade peasants, the Bolsheviks deceived and fleeced you most of all.

Where is the land which you took from the land owners, and of which you

dreamed for hundreds of years? It has been given away to communards or

put under Soviet collectives, and you watch and lick your lips.

Everything has been taken from you that it was possible to take. You

have been subjected to wholesale pillage. You have been worked to

exhaustion by the Bolshevik serfdom. They force you to do the will of

the new lords with a hungry stomach, a pinched mouth, barefoot and

naked, and without a whisper.

Comrades, the people of Kronstadt have raised the banner of rebellion,

and are certain that tens of millions of workers and peasants will

answer their call.

It cannot be that the dawn which has appeared here has not become clear

for all Russia. It cannot be that the Kronstadt explosion has not made

all Russia, and first of all Petrograd, shake and arise.

Our enemies have filled the prisons with workers, but there are still

many daring and honest ones at liberty.

Arise comrades, to battle with the Communist autocracy!

LATEST NEWS

—An order by the Defense Committee has been published in Petrograd

forbidding street gatherings of more than five people under threat of

being fired on.

—The mood in the city is one of depression.

—There are no complete garrison units. Rather, small detachments are

formed from chekists, Communists, and cadets.

—Garrison units are rebelling.

—A round fell on the Communist headquarters on the Oranienbaum shore,

and destroyed a corner of the building.

—18 echelons have been hastily sent to the Polish border.

LIST OF THOSE KILLED, AND THOSE DIED FROM WOUNDS FOR MARCH 8, 9, and

10 (UNTIL 12 NOON)

1) FROM KRONSTADT UNITS:

1) Aleksandrov, Mikhail, 2) Danilov, Aleksandr, 3) Klimenkov, Zakhar, 4)

Mischenko, Stepan, 5) Pospelov, Aleksandr, 6) Pakhtonov, Ivan, 7)

Kovshin, Stepan, 8) Shaposhnikov, Foma, and also 1 seaman, 1 worker, and

four soldiers whose names were not discovered.

2) FROM ATTACKING UNITS:

1) Cadets: Viasev, Semen, 2) Shamritsky, Ivan, 3 and 4) two cadets whose

names were not made clear, and 5) Bachev, Aleksandr.

During the same period 2 seamen, 1 civilian, and 31 soldiers were

wounded.

HOW WE FEED THE COMMUNISTS

The following apportionment of produce has been confirmed for the

arrested Communists and war prisoners, until the improvement of the

produce situation in the fortress.

BREAD ALLOWANCE: 1/4 lb. of bread or 1/8 lb. of biscuit; 1/4 lb. of

meat. HOT FOOD ALLOWANCE: 12 zol. [1 zolotnik is about 4.62 grams] of

meat, 12 zol. of fish, 12 zol. of cabbage, 4 zol. of potato, 2 zol. of

fats, 4 zol. of sugar, .72 zol. of coffee.

Tobacco—3 zol. of makhorka [low-grade tobacco] and two boxes of matches

per month.

ON COMMUNIST BEGINNINGS

In view of the fact that the provisionally arrested Communists aren’t

now in need of shoes, theirs have been taken, 280 pairs in all, and

given for distribution to the troop units defending the approaches to

Kronstadt. The Communists have been given bast sandals in exchange.

This is as it should be.

ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCE TO THE GARRISON

For the month of March it is decided to additionally issue to the troop

units of the garrison: 1/2 lb. of sugar, 2 lb. of cabbage, 1 1/3 lb. of

potato, 50 cigarettes, 1/2 lb. of makhorka and 1 box of matches.

LONG LIVE RED KRONSTADT, WITH THE POWER OF FREE SOVIETS!

DOWN WITH THE COUNTERREVOLUTION OF LEFT AND RIGHT!

THEIR EYES HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee and the editors of Izvestiia are

swamped by Communists’ declarations of departure from the party. There

is such a mass of these declarations that due to the insufficiency of

space in the newspaper, it is necessary to print them in small bunches

in the order of arrival.

Those quitting the party are sailors, soldiers, deceived workers and

that part of the intelligentsia which was foolish enough to believe in

garish slogans and inflammatory speeches. What does this flight mean?

Fear of revenge from the laboring people who have torn power from the

bolsheviks? No. A thousand times no.

When it was noted to a woman worker appearing today with a declaration

of departure from the party that there were many such as herself fleeing

the party, she answered with indignation, “Our eyes have been uncovered,

but we aren’t fleeing.” The bright red blood of laborers, coloring the

icy cover of the Gulf of Finland for the benefit of some insane leaders

who are defending their own power, has opened the people’s eyes.

The bright red blood of laborers, coloring cover of the Gulf of Finland

for the pleasure of the insane Communists, clinging to their power,

opened the people’s eyes. All who still possess even a spark of

integrity, even a grain of truth in a tortured soul, are fleeing. They

flee the gang of demagogues without looking back.

All that remains is the criminal. Commissars of all ranks, chekists and

the “bigshots” who have fed well on the bill of the hungering worker and

peasant, remain, with their pockets bulging from gold. They rob museums

and palaces, the property which the people won with their own blood.

They still hope for something, but in vain. The people which in one

instant dared to throw from itself the yoke of tsarism and the gendarmes

dares to also throw from itself the feudal chains of the Communists.

The laboring people has recovered its sight.

LEAVING THE PARTY

In connection with the situation which has been created in Kronstadt I

consider it imperative to declare (in particular to the crew of the

battleship Petropavlovsk) that I have not taken part in the RCP since

August of 1920. Therefore, I ask that I not be counted as a member since

the declared time, and that it not be assumed that I am among the

usurpers of power who, instead of trying to come to well known

compromises and avoid spilling human blood, are throwing bombs at

children who are in no way guilty.

Comrade T. IA. BRATISHEVSKY,

seaman of the battleship Petropavlovsk, 8th Company

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

A half pound of bread is issued for March 11 by adult cards of letter A,

for bread coupon No 22.

Today, March 11, is the last day of issue of canned foods, meat, oats

and wheat.

TUKIN, President of the Administration of Gorprodkom

NOTICE

Various letters are arriving at the Secretariat of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee without the signatures of their authors. The

Secretariat brings to the general attention that such declarations will

absolutely not be considered.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION OF THE TOWN OF KRONSTADT

Late payment of the 40 ruble fee is slowing payment of salaries to the

presidents and secretaries of uchkoms, and therefore the Department of

Administration instructs all control commissions to make certain that

the noted fee arrives at the Department not earlier than the 15th and

not later than the 25th. If this is not done, the commissions also,

besides their presidents and secretaries, will be held responsible.

KASUKHIN, assistant to the head of the Department of Administration

The General Meeting of presidents and secretaries of uchkoms will take

place on Friday at 1 pm, in the House of Unions. Attendance is

mandatory. New mandates will be issued.

The Union of Workers of the Commission of the Economy directs members of

the union to receive their onions within a 2 day period, after which

time no kind of issue will take place.

The Committee of the Union of Metal Workers and the Revtroika jointly

direct all comrades free from guard duty to be at work at the whistle,

so that the number of free comrades in the workshops will be known.

Lists of those not showing up at work without good cause should be sent

to the union.

The Committee of the Union of Water Transport workers brings to the

attention of all members of the union that issue of onions ends March

13.

Issue of cigarette papers will occur at the union until March 18.

March 12

According to Za Narodnoe Delo, air and artillery bombardment resumed on

March 12, but the fighters at Kronstadt succeeded in shooting down one

plane, which crashed through the ice and disappeared into the Gulf of

Finland.

But despite continuing small victories like this, the future looked

increasingly bleak for the rebels. Their uprising had failed to spread.

It was not superior military force that had won the day for the

Bolsheviks, but rather, superior command of the flows of information.

Kronstadt Izvestia 10: Saturday, March 12, 1921

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE OVERTHROW OF AUTOCRACY AND THE EVE

OF THE FALL OF COMMISSAROCRACY

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee directs all military units of

the Kronstadt Fortress and Naval Base and Soviet departments and

institutions to present exact information to the Transport Department of

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee by March 13 for wagon and

automobile transport, having divided it into light or dray, and suited

or unsuited for carrying burdens.

V. BAIKOV, Director of the Transport Department of the Prov. Rev. Com.

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS for March 11, 1921

The day passed calmly.

Thick fog interfered with firing. About six pm Krasnaya Gorka opened

occasional and resultless fire on the town.

Our northern forts were subjected to increased shelling by Sestroretsk

and Lisy Nos.

The batteries of the adversary were silenced by the fire of our guns.

Observations were made by intelligence.

In Oranienbaum, a train carrying bread was destroyed by our fire. The

adversary’s garrison was without bread the entire day.

Yesterday, Kronstadt was subjected to repeated raids by airplanes

throwing bombs over the town.

At 4 pm, the adversary’s artillery opened fire from batteries located on

the Oranienbaum Shore and from Krasnoflotskii. Our artillery answered

energetically. Artillery fire subsided around 8 pm.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Prov. Rev. Com.

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense of the Kronstadt Fortress

TO ALL COMRADE SEAMEN, SOLDIERS AND WORKERS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE

REPULSE OF COMMUNIST ATTACKS FROM MARCH 8 THROUGH 12

Dear comrades! Fate itself has layed on you the great mission of

liberating dear Soviet Russia from the Communist yoke. To you dear

comrades, defenders of Kronstadt, the citadel of the Soviets, has fallen

the most important and responsible lot of selfless struggle. Behind your

valiant chests, as behind a rock wall, your mothers, wives, and children

calmly await victory.

They have entrusted their lives to you, and look on you with pride and

faith as the saviors of laboring Russia, and the defenders of a great

truth. Prove to the entire [sic] world of laborers, dear warriors, that

however difficult may the great struggle for freely elected Soviets

become, Kronstadt has always stood, and stands now, a vigilant watch on

guard of the laborers’ interests.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

STAGES OF REVOLUTION

It is already four years since the three-hundred-year yoke of autocracy

fell. The repressed people who had been guarded by the gendarmes and

police of Nikolai threw down the rotting throne of the tsar. All rich

and poor Russia rejoiced in freedom. Capitalists and landowners were

satisfied because they could finally put more in their own pockets,

stealing labor as before from the worker and peasant, without sharing

with the tsar and his champions. They hoped to seat themselves firmly on

the toilers’ neck, having duped the latter in the Constituent Assembly

to which Kerensky was slowly but surely leading.

The bourgeoisie was certain that it would be be able to continue

fleecing the peasant and worker. The unexperienced peasants and workers

were also pulled toward the Uchredilka, not knowing what it would

promise the toiler. The slogan of the Constituent Assembly ruled over

all Russia.

Temporarily. But the peasant continued to be in the same fix that he had

always been, waiting for when the Uchredilka would decide the question

of land. The worker was universally exploited. As before he didn’t have

the right to the produce of his own labor.

The toilers of Russia finally understood that they were not escaping the

cabal of the landowner and capitalist, and that this cabal was preparing

them a new serfdom, bourgeois power.

Patience broke, and in October of 1917 the bourgeoisie was thrown aside

by a comradely blow by the seamen, army, workers and peasants. It seemed

that the laboring people had entered into their rights.

But the Communist party, filled with self-seekers and having become

seperated from the peasants and workers in whose name it acted, seized

power into its own hands. It decided to govern the country with the aid

of its commissars, by the example of landowner Russia.

For 3 years, the toilers of Soviet Russia groaned in the torture

chambers of the Cheka. Everywhere, the Communist ruled over the worker

and peasant. A new Communist serfdom arose. The peasant became a hired

hand on Soviet farms, and the worker a hireling at a bureaucratic

factory. The laboring intelligentsia came to nothing. Those who tried to

protest were dragged off to the Cheka. They wasted no time with those

who continued to agitate… they put them against the wall.

It became stifling. Soviet Russia had turned into all-Russian katorga.

Worker unrest and peasant uprising testified that patience had come to

an end. A toilers’ uprising approached. The time to throw down the

commissarocracy arrived.

Kronstadt, vigilant guard of the Social Revolution, has not overslept.

It was in the first ranks of February and October. It first raised the

flag of rebellion for the Third Revolution of Laborers.

Autocracy fell. The Uchredilka has passed into the land of legend.

Commissarocracy too will collapse. The time has come for true power of

laborers, for Soviet power.

You fell as sacrifices to the great struggle.

Your unforgettable names shall not die in the noble memory of the

laboring

people, for whose fortune you laid down your wild heads.

In the battle’s roar you did not think of yourselves.

Warriors for an idea, you did not tremble before the pack of tyrants.

You, the first sacrifices of the Third Revolution, of the Revolution of

Labor,

gave an example of steadfast firmness in battle for your rights.

You went forward under the slogan Victory or Death.

You died.

We who are alive shall carry the battle to its end.

We vow on your fresh graves to be victorious or to lie next to you.

Already, the light of the Great Liberation of Laborers has begun to

shine.

KRONSTADT AND SMOLNY

We hide nothing, and hide from no one.

Everything we do, we do openly because our cause is rightful. It is to

realize the common desire of the laboring people, to realize true Soviet

power. No one can stop us from doing this.

And truly, in any case, bands of chekists and other murderers won’t stop

us. Heroism, the garrison’s morale and the populace’s calm certainty can

serve to guarantee this.

And what is being done at the same time in the camp of the adversary?

Interesting newspapers from March 9 which we recently received serve as

the best answer. We have hung these newspapers in the windows of

Sovtsentropechat [“Soviet Central Press”?]] so that citizens can

personally convince themselves of the unbounded, blatant lies with which

the newspapers, by orders from Smolny, try to hide the truth the truth

from the workers and soldiers.

Krasnaia Gazeta has come to the point that they are claiming that,

“cadets broke into the town. Vershinin, a member of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, was captured in the streets…”

Pathetic lackeys of the Communists, whom do you want to deceive?

Comrade Vershinin has been captured, this is true. But do you want to

know, citizens, under what circumstances Comrade Vershinin was taken?

Allow me. On March 8 a group of the opponent’s troops, with a white flag

in front, set out toward our patrols. Trusting in the flag, presuming

that a delegation was coming to us for negotiations, Comrade Vershinin

threw a revolver from himself and went out unarmed to meet the truce

envoys.

But what does one more Judas kiss mean to traitors? They captured the

unarmed truce envoy and carried him away with them..

That, citizens, is the entire truth for you! The lackeys from Krasnaia

Gazeta did not even succeed in agreeing with the lackeys from Pravda. At

the same time when the first was reporting that two thousand ‘gold

epaulets’ [tsarist officers] had snuck into Kronstadt, Pravda says they

were only “hundreds of White Guard Russian officers.”

The newspapers are before you citizens. Read and learn how the

Communists deceive the people.

We hide nothing. Their lies are our best agitator.

CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES OF MARCH 11

Delegates gathered at five o’clock in the Hall of Assemblies. Before the

beginning of the session, Comrade Petrichenko distributed the Bolshevist

Pravda and Krasnaia to the delegates. It was easily felt that

Revolutionary Kronstadt does not fear the lying Communist press. The

session opened at 4:55 under the roar of the bombardment of our glorious

floating fortresses. The Conference stands to honor the memory of the

fallen red eagles of Kronstadt.

The produce question was discussed first. The report of the Prov. Rev.

Com. was heard with deep attention. As was clarified after a short

debate, Kronstadt’s produce situation is completely fine. The Conference

decided to consider the actions of the Rev. Com. to be correct, and

proper for the current situation.

Current affairs were discussed next.

A report on the requisitioning of boots from the arrested Communists for

soldiers’ use was met with thunderous applause and calls of, “Right!

Take their winter coats!!!”

It was decided to celebrate the fall of autocracy at the same time as

the overthrow of commissarocracy, since there is no time now to take

away from military action. A representative of the workers of the sewing

workshop of the Soviet of the People’s Economy reported on the

preparation of 3000 sets of underwear, which it was decided to use for

those at the front line.

Comrade Kilgast requested that the delegates spread the request for

comrades to donate shoes for the soldiers.

The question was raised of liberating Communists on bail. After a

debate, in which Comrade Petrichenko noted the worth of a Bolshevik’s

word and that in general those arrested are only the most unrestful, it

was decided to leave the Communists under arrest so long as events have

not been wrapped up and military actions not come to an end. (Ilyin,

Galapov, Guriev, and others who were left at liberty continued to carry

on agitation and to gather secretly. Ilyin had the gall to phone

Krasnaya Gorka and give it information on how things stood in

Kronstadt.)

It was decreed that further arrests could be carried out by the Rev.

Com. only upon an inquiry into the question by the revtroikas.

One of the comrades related a fact which showed that there are also

honest Communists, who are fulfilling military assignments selflessly

and in an exemplary way.

At the end of the session, Comrade Petrichenko proposed that the

Conference thank the defenders of the approaches to Kronstadt. This was

met with long, unceasing, stormy applause.

“OUR GENERALS”

The Communists are spreading rumors that there are White Guard generals,

officers and priests included in the composition of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee. In order to stop this once and for all, we

bring to their attention that the Committee consists of the following

fifteen members:

1) PETRICHENKO—a senior clerk on the battleship Petropavlovsk;

2) YAKOVENKO—a telephone operator of the Kronstadt Regional

Communications Service;

3) OSOSOV—a machinist on the battleship Sevastopol;

4) ARKHIPOV—a machinist foreman;

5) PEREPELKIN—an electrician on the battleship Sevastopol;

6) PATRUSHEV—an electrician foreman on the Petropavlovsk;

7) KUPOLOV—a senior doctor’s assistant;

8) VERSHININ—a seaman/combatant on the battleship Sevastopol;

9) TUKIN—an artisan in the Electro-Mechanical Factory;

10) ROMANENKO—a watchman in the Repair Docks;

11) ORESHIN—Director of the 3rd Labor School;

12) VALK—a master in the Sawmill;

13) PAVLOV—a worker in the Mine Workshops;

14) BAIKOV—Director of Transport String of the Administration of

Contruction of the Fortress;

15) KILGAST—an ocean navigator.

These are our generals: the Brusilovs, Kamenevs, and the rest.

NEWS FROM PETROGRAD

—Pravda reports that, “in connection with the situation which has been

created, the Celebration of the Women’s Proletariat in Petrograd is

temporarily postponed.”

What kind of honest working woman would go to this celebration when

stranglers of freedom and chekists are in power?

How could anyone think of holidays?

GENERAL MEETING OF DESERTERS IN THE 4TH NORTHERN BARRACKS

The General Meeting of soldiers who have crossed over to us, having

first elected a revtroika consisting of Comrades Azarenko, Kuznetsov and

Davydenko, passed the following resolution: “We, deserters, of a newly

formed battalion, express our complete faith in the battalion commander,

Comrade Gribov. We are ready, at the first call of the Rev. Com. of the

Town of Kronstadt, to go to the next life defending the repressed.

seaman TROFIMOV, President of the Meeting

KUZNETSOV, Secretary

SOVIETS, AND NOT A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, ARE THE LABORER’S

STRONGHOLD

YOUNG HERO

The 14-year-old lad Podriadchikov has thrust himself into one of the

reconnaissance detachments. However they tried to convince him to give

it up, he persisted.

“You have to give me a rifle, and that’s it!”

They were forced to give in.

At night, the detachment set out on reconnaissance. Podriadchikov did

not lag behind the other comrades.

In the dark, they stumbled on an outpost of the adversary, and a

crossfire began. A stray bullet hit Podriadchikov in the leg at the very

moment when the outpost gave up and retreated.

“Cut the leg off or bind it up, but I won’t lag behind,” cried the young

hero. They quickly made a dressing, and Podriadchikov walked on. He is

now lying in the hospital, and cannot wait to heal from his wound so

that he can once more dash forward.

Last year, the Communists executed his father in a village.

LEAVING THE PARTY

All those leaving the ranks of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia] are

directed to turn in their party booklets and identifications to their

electoral troikas. Those leaving the party in the future and giving

declarations are directed to do so right now.

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

Working in Kronstadt for three years as a teacher at the Labor School,

and also being active in the army and naval units, I have moved ahead

honestly, leg to leg with the laborers of free Kronstadt. I have given

them all my strengths in the field of people’s education. The broad

sweep of the wave of enlightenment which the Communists began, Soviet

construction and the laborer’s class struggle with the exploiters all

drew me into the Communist party, of which I have been a member since

February 1, 1921. During the time that I have been in the party, a great

number of fundamental failings in the party “heights” have been opened

before me, spattering the beautiful idea of Communism with muck. Among

these, bureaucratism, separation from the masses, dictatorship and the

large number of so called “hangers on”, careerist and the like have

acted to repel the masses. All these things have given birth to a deep

chasm between the masses and the party. They have turned it into an

organization which is powerless in the struggle against the country’s

internal ruin.

The present moment has opened people’s eyes to the most terrible facts.

When the many thousand person populace of Kronstadt proposed a number of

fair demands to the “defenders of the laborer’s interests,” the

bureaucratized heights of the RCP rejected them. Instead of dealing

freely with the laborers of the town of Kronstadt, they opened

fratricidal fire on the workers, sailors, and soldiers of the

revolutionary town. As if that wasn’t enough, they throw bombs from

airplanes on the defenseless women and children of Kronstadt. This has

pleated even more thorns in the Communist Party’s crown.

I do not want to be a supporter of the comrade Communists’ barbarous

excesses, and I also don’t believe in the tactics of the party

“heights,” which have called for the spilling of blood and for great

distress among the people’s masses. Therefore, I openly declare before

the Provisional Revolutionary Committee that since the moment of the

first shot at Kronstadt I no longer consider myself a candidate member

of the RCP, and give my entire support to the slogan taken by the

laborers of Kronstadt, “All Power to Soviets, and not Parties!”

T. DENISOV, teacher in the 2nd Labor School

I ask that you no longer consider me a member of the RCP. Seeing the

tactics of the butcher Trotsky, I consider it a disgrace to be in its

ranks. I have been and will be with the people, and will die the death

of the honorable with them.

N. ALEKSANDROV, artisan of the Steamship Factory

We have watched the course of unfolding events in order to find out the

truth behind all the loud words which authority, in the person of

Trotsky and the rest from the camp of the evil kestrels, spoke and

suggested to us, preaching the ideas of the RCP. With their first shot

at the workers and peasants, in the person of the Kronstadt proletariat

which has arisen to fight for a rightful cause, we understood that it

was time for us to throw the shroud from our eyes, put there by those

who call themselves warriors for the people’s liberation. We decided

that it was time to say for all to hear, “betrayers of the people,

spillers of innocent blood, hands off power, and eternal damnation to

you.”

We ask that from the present moment you no longer consider us to be

members of the RCP. We ask that you accept us into your midst as honest

toilers who are prepared to stand at any time in defense of the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Town of Kronstadt, and even,

if it should be necessary, to lay down our lives for the workers and

peasants, and for the power of free Soviets.

I. GUROV, A. YAKUSHIN, seamen of the Predbaza [sic]

The Communist party has lost the faith of the laboring masses, and its

power has passed without any violence or blood into the hands of the

revolutionary laboring masses of Kronstadt. Nonetheless, the Central

Authorities are blockading Kronstadt and sending out provocative

broadcasts and proclamations, trying to anchor its power with hunger,

cold, treachery and force. Considering such a policy a betrayal of the

fundamental slogan of the Socialist Revolution, “All Power to the

Laborers,” I think that the Communists have put themselves in the ranks

of the enemies of all labor. There is only one exit, to stay at your

post to the end, and battle mercilessly with all who try to tie the

laboring masses to their authority with force, treachery and

provocation. We break all connection with the party.

MILORADOVICH, BEZSONOV AND MARKOV,

former members of the RCP fort TOTLEBEN (MORSKOI)

At the General Meeting of the RCP of the crew of the Transport String of

the Naval Fortress of Kronstadt, in the presence of the secretary of the

Revtroika, a resolution of departure from the party was passed by the

following members: P. Goriachev, I. Iakovlev, Vasilii Likhrov, Nikolai

Shubin, N. Scharov, P. Veselov, B. Belov, I. Makarov, Vasilii Kolosov,

I. Khapov, Smorodinov, A. Arkhipov, Smirnov, Novikov, N. M. Kovkin, G.

Mikhailov, K. Krylov, A. Smirnov, N. Chertkov, Ukhlin, V. Serikov, A.

Khrul, A. Okunev, I. Andreev, N. Ivanov, A. Egorov. 26 persons in all.

Because of the slogan held by the RCP, “All power to the Soviets,” and

because of the one-sided party agitation, and also not wishing to just

remain a witness to the building of Soviet power, I entered the RCP in

June of 1920. However, I have been convinced that the party does not

express the will of the broad layers of the populace, the workers and

peasants. This is in part supported by letters received from the

provinces about the difficulties and oppression which the party directs

at the village peasantry in the localities. Because of this, I ask that

you no longer consider me a member of the RCP, and I give my support to

the resolution passed at the meeting on March 1. I place myself entirely

under the authority of the actions and decisions of the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee of the Town of Kronstadt.

P. BARANOV, Head of the Watch of the Kronstadt Port

Having discussed the current situation, we, Communists of the collective

of the Communications Service of the Naval Fortress of Kronstadt, have

arrived at the unanimous conclusion that the Communist Party, having

torn away from the broad masses, has set out on the path of

bureaucratism and repression against the laborers’ freedom. In three

years in power, the party has brought the country to the wild raging of

the Cheka, which has widely carried out executions and used all means to

strangle and mock the laborers, and covered itself with their name. The

Republic writhes in agony, brought to beggary by the policies of the

bloodthirsty and power-blinded leaders. We greet the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee, which is courageously raising rebellion against

the party dictatorship and oligarchy. We give our support to the slogan,

“Power to Soviets of Laborers, and not to Parties.”

Down with the party dictatorship!

Long live the true power of laborers!

We the undersigned to this resolution declare our departure from the

Communist Party, and ask that you accept us into the midst of the

non-party comrades, to carry out joint work for the good of the

Republic.

V. Remizov, V. Gromov, A. Elesin, P. Arsentiev, F. Kozyrev, V. Zinoviev,

N. Vasiliev, V. Nikolaev, P. Blintsov, L. Semukov, P. Trubochistov, I.

Starostin, V. Andreev, N. King, E. Grigoriev, P. Kiprushkin, A.

Sedelkin, I. Sheremet.

I, a telephonist of the central station of fort Shants, being by nature

a person of weak character, was not strong enough to stand against the

force of the bloody Communists who recruited me into their party during

party week. [“Party weeks” were periods of reduced or eliminated

requirements for party membership. There were two in Petrograd in 1919.]

Having made myself, or, more truthfully, when the Communists had made me

a blind weapon in their hands, my beliefs about their actions had not

changed. In my soul, I realized that the bureaucrat Communists would

never achieve the prosperity of the laboring masses by way of violence,

base deceit, spilling blood, and the other acts of our authority.

But fear! Only fear for my own life did not let me denounce my party

colleagues, bloody Communists.

And I was silent, staying on the edges.

But then arose the hour of repayment. Communist power, until then

seemingly undefeatable, was overturned. The rabble of criminals, in the

person of the Communists, was arrested. The laboring people breathed

free, having thrown down the heavy burden…

And I? I am a Communist. The bloody document, the party booklet which

remained with me, and which has now been turned in to the Revtroika of

fort Shants, says so.

Comrades, forgive me for my unwilling stay in the RCP, and I will try to

justify your faith. I recognize the Prov. Rev. Com., and cry together

with you, “Hoorah!”

N. ROMANOV, telephonist of fort Shants

Finding the methods to which Lord Trotsky has resorted extremely

horrifying, staining the party with the blood of its own brother

workers, I consider it a moral obligation to leave the party. I ask that

this be announced in the press.

V. GRABEZHEV, President of the Union of Construction Workers,

candidate member of the party

Declarations have also arrived at the editorial offices from the

following:

131) I. Petrushkovsky, seaman of the Academic Mining Detachment, 132)

also Maksimovsky, 133) also Chernyshev, 134) also Burmashev, 135) also

Kulikov, 136) also D. Vorobiev, 137) also V. Pushkin, 138) V. Galonin,

seaman of the battleship Petropavlovsk, 139) also F. Zaitsev, 140) also

Shpinev, 141) also P. Samokhin, 142) also Iudin, 143) also N. Butuzov,

144) also F. Zhbirov, 145) also P. Orekhov, 146) also Olshevsky, 147)

also Kudriashev, 148) also Misiuk, 149) also O. Rykov, 150) also D.

Pavlov, 151) also Lobanov, 152) also A. Zuev, 153) also N. Kolosov, 154)

also I. Pavlik-Linker, 155) also A. Svitin, 156) also F. Tkachuk, 157)

also Sholopaev, 158) also S. Makarov, 159) also Klimin, 160) P. Chernin,

161) also M. Gusev, 162) also M. Lazarenko, 163) also A. Shilov, 164)

also I. Eremeev, 165) also F. Izhek, 166) also Makrezhetsky, 167) also

Smetanin, 168) also A. Gordykov, 169) also M. Grigoriev, 170) also A.

Dronin, 171) also S. Shavanov, 172) also I. Ershov, 173) also M. Flerov,

174) also S. Soloviev, 175) also S. Kozlov, 176) also I. Diakonov, 177)

also K. Zhukin, 178) also Shpinov, 179) also I. Matiukhin, 180) also A.

Kocherin, 181) also T. Bychkov, 182) also N. Ermakov, 183) also

Zhevenin, 184) also Zhukovsky, 185) O. Stepur, artisan of the Mine

Laboratory, 186) F. Strelkov, employee of the Prodbaza, 187) also A.

Petukhov, 188) also I. Reshetnikov, People’s Investigator of the II

District, 189) F. Matulik, employee of the Naval Bakery, 190) M.

Malafeev, seaman of the crew of the Guard Headquarters, 191) V. Gogolev,

serviceman of the Communications Service of the Administration of the

Artillery, 192) S. Afanasiev, sldr. of the 4th Division of the

Artillery, 193) S. Kurenev, employee of the Water Transport, 194) Lauve,

employee of the Internal Guard Ship, 195) also G. Grinshtein, 196) also

S. Shcherbo, 197) A. Sushilnikov, soldier, 198) V. Trepetsky, member of

the RCP, 199) also Danchenko, 200) also A. Esenovsky, 201) A. Egorov,

doctors’ assistant of the Internal Guard Ship, 202) also E. Belozerov,

203) A. Serkov, worker of the Steamship Plant, 204) also K. Nikolaev,

205) also A. Belikov, 206) also A. Lysov, 207) also Bezzubikov, 208)

also Vladkmerov, 209) also Voronin.

NOTICES

On the basis of a telephonogram from the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee of March 11, in view of the military standing of the town, the

March 12 holiday is moved to an unspecified date, and it is therefore

instructed to consider SATURDAY a normal (working) day.

MATVEEV, Provisional and Acting Director of the Department of Labor

A. FEDOROV, member of the Central Troika

The Union of Printers brings to the attention of members of the union

that issue of buttons, cigarette papers and “Baker” brand powder ends

March 15.

March 13

In an interview with the New York Herald correspondent in Moscow, Lenin

derided the uprising as doomed and asserted that the only possible

alternative to his own government would be the return of the Tsar,

proclaiming that the demands of the Kronstadt rebels for democracy were

impossible:

“What can they (the revolutionists) do if they take Petrograd? Only one

thing—starve. They will have a big, foodless city on their hands, and we

shall have more food for Moscow, as more supplies are coming in from

Kuban and Siberia, and for a short time we will no longer have to feed

Petrograd, which has of late been a strain on our resources, owing to

its remoteness from the grain districts…

“This shortage of bread and fuel and the transport difficulties are due

to the fuel famine. Despite all our efforts, Petrograd’s food position

became acute recently, and there is genuine starvation in the suburbs of

that city.

“An advance on Moscow (by the revolutionists) over the melting snow and

swampy ground, and because of the torn up railroads and devastated

country, is impossible. The sailors at the head of this foolish mutiny

at Kronstadt will be out of their element as soon as they lose sight of

the Gulf of Finland. How can they provision themselves for such hard

march through districts affording them no food? And we shall see that

there is no food there.

“If they accept supplies from foreign Powers they brand themselves at

once as traitors to Russia and the whole country will rise against them,

just as it rose against Denikine and Kolchak.

“I believe that there are only two kinds of government possible in

Russia—a Government by the Soviets or a Government headed by a Czar.

Some fools or traitors in Kronstadt talked of a Constituent Assembly,

but does any man in his senses believe for a moment that a Constituent

Assembly at this critical abnormal stage would be anything but a bear

garden.

“Some people in America have come to think of the Bolsheviki as a small

clique of very bad men who are tyrannizing over a vast number of highly

intellectual people who would form an admirable Government among

themselves the moment the Bolshevist regime was overthrown. This is a

mistake, for there is nobody to take our place save butcher Generals and

bureaucrats who have already displayed their total incapacity for rule.

Lenin stated that if the uprising in Kronstadt had been planned by

counterrevolutionary forces, it was an extremely poor plan. His claim

could just as easily be used to argue that it was not a plot, but a

legitimate—if untimely—revolt of the oppressed:

“I can’t say much for the common sense of the people who fabricated this

particular plot. To seize an ice-bound island, containing very little

food and absolutely dependent for all its supplies on Russia, was a

foolish thing to do, although, to be sure, it was only a part of a much

larger plot which missed fire everywhere else.”

At the close of the article, the journalist reported that

Lenin—apparently wandering from the subject at hand—directed readers to

a text he had written in praise of bourgeois engineers and other

specialists, showing his hand:

“The bourgeois specialist who knows his job is ten times more useful to

us than the conceited Communist who is only able to shout slogans and

write twaddle.”

In Kronstadt, it had always been popular for the revolutionaries to

oppose themselves to the bourgeoisie. We can imagine how they must have

felt to see Lenin side with the bourgeoisie over them in the capitalist

press.

Kronstadt Izvestia 11: Sunday, March 13, 1921

ORDER OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE No 6

Left at liberty, the Communists are abusing the trust which the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee has shown them. They have been

discovered attempting to send light signals to the enemy.

Because of this, the Prov. Rev. Com. asks all Kronstadt citizens to

vigilantly watch for enemies of the people, to urgently bring to the

attention of the Rev. Com. all occurrences of signals being sent, and to

restrain the guilty parties until authorities arrive.

Traitors and spies are warned that they will be dealt with on the spot,

without any court, by the laws dictated by the moment.

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

ORDER ON THE DEFENSE OF THE NAVAL FORTRESS OF KRONSTADT No. 3

(COMBAT)

March 11, 1921, Fortress of Kronstadt § 1

I order that the adversary’s airplanes not be fired upon from small arms

and machine guns, either by individuals or crews. Such fire, being

completely without purpose, cannot cause damage to the airplanes and is

a useless waste of bullets.

OSOSOV, for the President of the Prov. Rev. Com.

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense of the Kronstadt Fortress

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

From 24:00, March 11 until 12:00, March 12

There was calm until 10 am.

From 10 am on there were occasional artillery exchanges and raids by the

adversary’s airplanes, which threw out several bombs.

The bombs caused no damage in the town.

From 12:00 through 24:00, March 12

Around 1 pm, raids by the adversary’s airplanes began, with bombs being

thrown on the town. There was artillery fire by the adversary until 7

pm, to which the artillery of the fortress responded energetically.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Military Revolutionary Committee

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense

YOU WON’T INTIMIDATE THEM!

The Bolsheviks continue to throw bombs from airplanes. They think that

they will intimidate the populace. Their only means of action is lead.

They have nothing else left. They are washed out. The blood of peaceful

citizens, women, and even children they obviously don’t value at all.

All the citizens of Kronstadt have been welded into a single mass by

their anger. Just one feeling burns in their souls, a feeling of hate

for the oppressor Communists. The residents of the town do not face

current events passively, as the Bolshevik newspapers slander, but with

a great enthusiasm. All citizens divide the burden of the struggle which

which has been raised by the garrison and workers of the rebellious

town. They all await a new, bright life, free from any yoke.

You can’t intimidate them with airplanes.

The innocent victims lie on the heads of the Communists. But the

populace remains calm, and doesn’t give in to outbursts of purposeless

anger against the insane oppressors. The populace bears itself

heroically and selflessly.

Airplanes won’t intimidate them!

IT IS NECESSARY TO BREAK AWAY

The Communist Party has swelled greatly in numbers since it took power

in its own hands, but it was lost a great deal in quality because of

this. It sucked in a huge mass of people who entered it with the goal of

receiving a cushy job. Self-seekers among the hangers-on finally brought

us to the point where the ideological element in the party, which

sincerely wanted to serve the laborers, became powerless to do anything.

Besides that, during these 3 years the party leaders have become

separated from the working masses, and long ago brought corruption and

ideological confusion into the party.

The Tenth Party Congress, which was to have gathered in March, would

undoubtably have recognized these differences of belief. The party might

have split if its upper reaches wouldn’t change their policies, which

have led to complete contradiction with the entire worker and peasant

masses. But events don’t wait. The long muffled dissatisfaction of the

masses has burst out, and has taken the character of a people’s

movement.

Besides that, in order to come to deal with with the masses’ demands for

new elections to the Soviets, which do not now express the will of the

laborers, and about changing the policy toward the peasantry, the

Communist bureaucrats decided to put the movement down with martial law

and with executions of workers and peasants. Such a situation among the

upper reaches of the party, which have placed in motion every possible

repression and lie to hold on to power, cannot be made right by a lone

person devoted to the ideal of Communism. Every honest Communist must

break away from those who cannot find any other language for the workers

and peasants than the language of cannons and bombs.

And how should this breaking away be done? Some comrades have done this

by leaving the party completely, and becoming non-party comrades. But

there are those who are tied strongly to the idea of the Communist

Revolution, and who have drawn the Marxist worldview deeply into

themselves. Such comrades, maintaining their party membership, must

loudly declare that they will not take moral responsibility for that

which the upper reaches of the party have done against the workers and

peasants. The must honestly help in making right those deficiencies with

which our Soviet Russia is so rich. Comrade Palanov has already acted in

this way. I add my voice to his. May other comrade Communists also speak

out like this.

M. KOPILOVICH, candidate member of the RCP (Communist Party of Russia).

TO THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD!

The following broadcast was sent by the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee:

Kronstadt.

To all… to all… to all…

to the Workers of the world!

The airborn Communist predators have begun to envy Wilhelm’s laurels.

They hover over Kronstadt like kestrels, throwing bombs and killing the

peaceful populace, our wives and children. But this will not stop us

from fighting to the end for the holy interests of the laboring masses.

May the workers of the world know that we are struggling for the true

power of the laboring people, while bloody Trotsky and well-fed Zinoviev

with their champions are struggling for the power of the Communist

oppressor Party.

May the workers of the world know that these criminals are hiding the

truth from the people, and putting out the slanderous lie that tsarist

generals lead us. It has been twelve days now since this handful of true

hero proletarians, these workers, sailors, and soldiers, isolated from

the whole world, took on themselves the whole weight of the blow struck

by the Communist Party butchers. But we are cheerful. We will bring the

cause which we have begun to a victorious end, or die with the cry,

“Long live freely elected Soviets.”

May the workers of the world know this.

Comrades, we need your moral support. Protest against the oppressor

commissarocrats. Remember the innocent victims of Louvain [Belgium] and

Reims [France]. Then, Imperialism was defending its power over the

people, and now that same power over the people is being defended by the

Communist Party, which has raised its hand against revolutionary

Kronstadt!

We send damnation to the butchers!

With comradely greetings,”

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

I, an old seaman of the 1904 recruitment, having suffered all the bitter

parts of life and currently an insignificant workingman for the good of

the laborers, pass through the current moment with deep sorrow in my

heart. For three years, the suffering worker, peasant and every kind of

honest toiler believed in a bright future, believed in the leaders of

the Communist Party who stand at the front.

But a split is occurring in the heights of the party, and it is echoing

everywhere. The party has occupied itself with politics at the time when

the end of the Civil War demands that it direct its work only into the

channel of economic life, the channel of reconstructing the economy of

the destroyed country.

In the localities, outrages have been committed by the proteges of the

commissars and of other responsible workers. Complaints have been

brought from far and wide against individual members of the party. The

grumbling got stronger, and finally the suffering worker and peasant

would not put up with it and revolted openly. The ruling party did not

justify the faith of the masses, and Kronstadt broke away first.

Away with you, torture chambers and tortures! Enough of spilled blood;

honest citizens don’t want it! These are practices of butchers from the

tsarist time of the past. In a free country they must not be. The

peasant will understand that it is necessary to give the city bread even

without commissars, and the worker in turn will strive to give the

peasant everything necessary from his own production. The power which

the laboring class has won for itself won’t be given away to anyone. The

laboring class will make it stronger, and direct it into a new channel

of life.

Soviet power must be the expression of the will of all the laboring

masses, without the rulership of any kind of political party. A great

cause is being carried out, and Kronstadt has made the start, as

vanguard of the Revolution. It let all the Republic understand that it

is impossible to continue like this. There are no stinking plots against

Soviet power here. All the laboring masses of Kronstadt see this. There

are no White Guards at the head of the movement here, but only selfless

citizens who have taken on their own shoulders the responsibility of

carrying the cause to the end, with the slogan, “Victory or Death.”

No one wanted blood, and all the rumors let out by the Communists that

this is an open uprising against Soviet power aren’t founded on

anything. Life goes on normally. The call to bloodletting is being made

by the upper reaches of the party in the person of Trotsky.

Blood has been spilled.

For what? For the dominion of the party?! No, enough of politics and

blood. Leaders of the Communist Party, realize what you are doing! If

you haven’t come to an understanding among yourselves, fight however you

want, but leave us in peace. We, the lowly, don’t want that. We want to

build our lives, to set right the country’s destroyed economy so that

the children won’t be able to say of their fathers that they didn’t do

anything for the good of the younger generation.

Let us build our lives!

And you must give up your position to the laboring people without any

bloodletting. Give your place at the wheel of government to the

laborers. I openly declare, as a rank and file Communist, that our

children must not perish under bombs thrown from airplanes by Trotsky’s

order.

Having respect for the idea of Communism, like every other pure idea, I

as a rank and file member of the party, given to the service of the

entire laboring class since a young age, openly say, “let all laborers

breathe free.”

There must not be any more of the dominion of any kind of party. Our

Soviets must be the expressors of the will not of parties, but of the

electors. It is necessary to create the will of the laboring masses.

They seek truth, freedom, and a better life, without oppression, torture

chambers, executions, and tortures.

I remain in spirit with the pure idea of Communism, since every pure

idea is faith in a better future, and no on has the power to kill it. At

the same time, I declare that after three years in the party, I have

seen the entire unfairness of the upper reaches of the party, which have

contracted the disease of bureaucratism and become separated from the

masses. Therefore, I take the stamp of party membership from myself, and

in general do not intend to enter any other party from this time on. I

worked, and want to continue to freely and honestly work, for the good

of all the laborers of Soviet Russia, like every honest citizen.

KURASHEV, Director of the Town Finance Department,

former worker in the Naval Artillery Laboratory

NEWS FROM PETROGRAD

At the Tenth Congress of the RCP, now taking place in Moscow, the

Control Commission made a report on its activity. Of 200 cases

investigated by the Commission, 50 turned out to be of criminal

character. The cases involved occurred due to the workers responsible

using their position for personal comfort. The Commission raised the

question before the Central Committee of the necessity of carrying out

the most merciless struggle with the unbelievable excesses which

responsible figures are allowing themselves.

What a great group, there’s nothing to say!

The following order was issued by the Commander of the Baltic Fleet in

connection with presently occurring events.

“A strict revolutionary order is to be enforced on all ships, and in all

units and institutions of Baltflot. A decisive struggle is to be carried

out against any and all instances of violating order and discipline. No

kind of assembly is to take place in ships, units and institutions.

Access by outside persons to ships, units and institutions without

permission of the commissar is categorically forbidden.”

“All commanders and commissars are ordered to be at their places. The

Revolutionary Tribunal of Baltflot is ordered to punish those guilty of

violating this order with all the severity of wartime law.”

THEY ARE TAKING AWAY RUSSIAN GOLD

In relation to the arrest of Russian gold located on the steamship

Ankon), the news agency Gavas reports that 160,000 rubles in gold were

hidden in the cabin of a member of the Russian trade mission. After the

arrest, the gold was handed over to the care of an Italian bank.

GREAT THANKS

It is impossible to find the words to suitably thank those kind

Kronstadters who, despite the meaningless ration received both earlier

and now, are tearing the last crumbs from themselves every day and

bringing us at the forward outposts a dinner of soup and even bread.

There have even been occurrences when bread received by coupons in the

stores was given to soldiers on their way to the forts, at the same time

blessing them, making the cross and giving them the very best wishes.

We bless the kind Kronstadters, and believe that the great holy cause

will be taken to its end.

You, and with you also we, must show the laborers of Russia and the

entire world that Kronstadters are able to fight not only against the

bourgeoisie but also against any and all enslavers of the laborer’s

will, even if they come from the left.

Long live the power of true Soviets, and not parties!

ANDREEV, soldier of the 560th Infantry Battalion

FRATERNAL AID

The people of Kronstadt are trying in all ways to come to the aid of the

comrade soldiers who are defending the rights of the laboring people.

Yesterday, Boris Scheglov, clerk of the Port Transport String, gave the

manager of the building of the Prov. Rev. Com. two pairs of boots for

the brother warriors.

FROM THE AGITATION CENTER OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

We, revolutionary seamen, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt have swept

the hated Communist yoke away with a comradely blow, and have sworn to

be victorious or die. There can be no compromise with the oppressors.

We will keep our vow. The much suffering Russian laboring people,

tortured by the Cheka, starved, carrying more than four years of cruel

war, await us as deliverers, holding out their dry and calloused hands.

We see that the Communist authorities deal cruelly with anyone who

speaks a word of sympathy toward us. We did not only decide to struggle

with our enemies with bayonets and cannons, but also with the word. We

are dedicating all our strengths so that our word, our press, might

freely uncover all the crimes of the Communist Party and all the horrors

of the torture chambers of the Cheka. We want to uncover everything that

the oppressors resorted to in trying to seat themselves securely and

safely on the throne.

But the Bolshevik authorities, the power of sticks and bayonets, does

not allow us to speak freely with our deceived brothers. In defending

ourselves, we all remember that it is our fraternal blood, the blood of

deceived toilers which is pouring, and not that of commissars and party

leaders. They are far away, separated from the carnage they have made.

On soft couches, they discuss how to better deceive the whole laboring

people, and choose which military unit to send to certain death against

Kronstadt.

In answering their cannons, we did not abandon the matter of propaganda,

and we have taken all measures so that our press might be spread not

only in Kronstadt but also among the adversary’s troops. Comrade seamen,

sacrificing themselves, cross the firing lines. So that there would be

less blood spilled, and so that not a single confused soldier would

remain with the deceiver Trotsky, it is necessary to expand agitation

even more. It is necessary to increase the the number of cadres in the

army which propagandizes the idea of the power of laboring people.

Everyone in who’s heart burns a holy hatred against the crimes committed

by the Communists, come with identification from the revolutionary

troikas to the Agitation Center of the Provisional Revolutionary

Committee (House of the People). Come speak to Comrade Perepelkin, to be

enlisted in the ranks of the agitators.

We believe that our call will receive a warm answer.

PEREPELKIN, Director of the Agitation Center of the Prov. Rev. Com.

TO YOUTH! Voice of the Young Proletarian)

Comrade young proletarians!

Comrade members of the Communist Youth League, each of us well knows the

situation which has formed in the Republic, and in particular in

Kronstadt. Each of us has seen and heard everything.

Comrades! After the October Revolution, when power fell into the hands

of the now bankrupt Communist Party, many of us with our passionate

youthful hearts, as is always the case with youth, aspired to something

bright and new, to something which was to give us and our fathers and

mothers a bright laboring life. We thought that the Communist Party

would bring us to that bright future, and we strived for the party. For

three years, we with our fathers and brothers spilled our young blood

for the Communist Soviets.

For three years, we lived in expectation of an improvement in our lives.

But after all three years of struggle, cold, and hunger we saw that our

lives were not improving but worsening. We were convinced once and for

all that the Communist Party, with all its commissars who feast during

plague, chekists, and anti-profiteer troops, would lead us to certain

death.

Every aware comrade cannot and must not blame the Communist Party, as

such. They will blame those Communists who, being in power, abused the

people’s faith, and who, seeing their distress, mercilessly robbed them.

The patience of the laboring masses has been exhausted. The workers and

sailors of Peter raised the banner of revolt against the oppressors, the

Communists and chekists who have been set up by the Communist Soviets.

This uprising was put down by cadets and Communist forces, and hidden

from us. We fed only on rumors. But these rumors, speaking of base acts

by the Communist Party, which considers itself the expression of the

people’s will while at the same time executing masses of hungry and cold

workers who have rebelled, were, as we all know, confirmed by our

delegation of seaman. And Kronstadt arose.

At our giant meeting of the garrison and workers, and afterwards at the

Conference of Delegates, the banner of uprising was lifted not by

generals but by seamen, sailors, and workers. Only sailors, workers, and

soldiers sit in our Revolutionary Committee.

Kronstadt will again be “Red,” the Communists write in their base and

lying organs. We answer that our heroic Kronstadt was, is, and will

always be Red.

With their endless lying leaflets and articles, they haven’t closed but

just still more opened our eyes to their crimes.

Comrades! The author of these lines, although not having joined the

party, was and remains a Communist by conviction. But the acts of our

Communist Party: executions of workers; murder of peaceful residents

with bombs; deception of the people with words and press, are shameful

and it is time to put an end to them!

To a unification of strengths. We must all, from the smallest to the

greatest, rise in a comradely way to the defense of our dear freedom

against the strong paws of the bureaucrat Communists.

Comrades, young proletarians, and in particular members of the Communist

Youth League, whose eyes the Communist Party has closed for three years,

all as one to the aid of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee!

All for free Red Soviets!

I. DVORIAN, long-time worker in the Russian Communist Youth Organization

TO WOMEN

Comrade women! Your brothers, husbands and sons, our great warriors for

liberation from the Communist yoke, are selflessly standing in defense

of Kronstadt, risking their life every minute.

Comrade women! Support our warriors. Be ready to lighten the sufferings

of the wounded, which there isn’t a single armed struggle without, with

female sensitivity and a caring female hand.

Enlist in the Red Sisters of Compassion. May our defenders feel once

more time that they are not forgotten, that the thankful people of

Kronstadt remember and care for them.

Forward to the defense of Red Kronstadt, warriors with the red banner of

Labor, women with the red cross.

It is possible to enlist at the Department of Health.

A SMALL SATIREAN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

“Hello hello! Comrade, give me Petrograd, Smolny… Smolny?… This is

Trotsky.”

“Hello comrade, this is Zinoviev. How are things?”

“Great… We’ve succeeded in duping a whole herd of soldiers to believe

that Kronstadt is destroyed, and that all that’s left for them is to

occupy the outposts and guard positions.”

“They went?”

“They went. Oh, but the traitors from the Krasnogorsk bakery refused to

give them bread for the road… They say they need it themselves…”

“And what of it?”

“Nothing… I convinced them; issued them each 2 pounds of unground wheat.

They broke, and I sent Dulkis and Razin with them, in the rear with

machine guns.”

“Stupendous… When do you think you’ll take Kronstadt?”

“Devil only knows. Our detachments surrender, but for some reason the

Petropavlovsk doesn’t want to, even though I asked them to very

strongly. There’s just no kind of mutuality… even out of conscience.”

“What’s this, comrade, talking about conscience? Look, a pig gets

conscience after its been hit with a nice thick stick, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, they’re devils, but seriously… and not with a stick, but with

twelve-inchers [cannons]… What’s up with you?”

“Its all right with us. The workers are striking, the seamen and

soldiers are unrestful, the populace is starving… In any case, the

Tsar’s train is at the ready, in case we have to make a quick get away.”

With that, the conversation was cut off.

A TELEPHONE OPERATOR

LEAVING THE PARTY

All those leaving the ranks of the RCP are directed to turn in their

party booklets and identifications to their electoral troikas. Those

leaving the party in the future and giving declarations are directed to

do so right now.

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

We, Communists of the collective of the Naval Hospital, ask that you no

longer consider us members of the RCP. It has bred bureaucratism and

careerism anew, and doesn’t want to listen to the voice of the people,

but has sent deceived sons of the Republic against Kronstadt, saying

that bands of White Guards are bossing us. But we ourselves see who

specifically overturned the commune’s power. It was our own comrade

sailors, soldiers, and workers.

Comrade Communists, it is time to come to your senses!

Enough of being passive about the current moment. In a comradely way,

work together with our Revolutionary Committee.

Long live Soviet Power!

Long live the real fraternal union of workers and peasants!

A. IUNKER, A. ILYIN, former members of the RCP.

Declarations have also arrived from the following:

210) V. Zaitsev, serviceman, 211) also V. Kashabin, 212) Zhazhmorskaya,

employee of the Naval Hospital, 213) also Zavodchikova, 214) also V.

Baranov, 215) O. Vinogradov, sldr, 216) A. Skorodkov, sldr., 217) M.

Lavrov, sldr., 218) A. Berezkin, member of the Union of Water

Transporters, 219) V. Montiev, member of the R.C.P., 220) N. Starshinov,

seaman, 221) also M. Maksimov, 222) N. Omelchuk, member of the RCP, 223)

also V. Velikanov, 224) also Ia. Miagkov, 225) also Ermolaev, 226) G.

Katachev, sldr., 227) E. Nikolaev, sldr. 228) V. Zakharov, artisan of

the Galvano-Plastics Workshop of the Kronstadt Port, 229) N.

Savelchikov, employee of the Department of the People’s Education, 230)

A. Borodavsky, telegraph operator; military seamen of the Machinists

School: 231) Bogdanov, Ivan.

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

Yeast is issued by Rudkevich the yeast maker by children’s cards of

series B, for bread coupon No 11.

Citizens who have registered their cards at store No 18 must receive

meat and fatty products at store No 19.

LEVAKOV, for the President of the Administration of Gorprodkom

NOTICE

The Central Troika of the Bureau of Trade Unions directs that the 8 hour

working day be reinstituted, since the 6 hour working day was introduced

only because of lack of heating material. The moment we are living

through urgently demands that all forces be strained for the fulfillment

of works of military character. Therefore, the Central Troika of the

Bureau of Trade Unions directs that from March 14, work is to be carried

on from 9 am until 5 pm.

A. FEDOROV, President of the Revtroika

A. SKVORTSOV, Secretary

—The Revtroika requests that representatives and secretaries from the

uchkoms assemble by 2 pm on March 13 at the trade union offices to

receive new identifications. Attendance is mandatory for all.

—The Union Vsemediksantrud [All Medical and Sanitation Labor] announces

that the last day of issue of onions to members of the union will be the

16th.

—The Housing subdepartment instructs all uchkoms to give exact

information to the subdepartment within a week on all free apartments

and rooms, and also on apartments subject to consolidation.

ROSCHIN, Director of the Housing subdepartment

Lost: produce card letter B, No 36802, belonging to citizen Stepanova.

March 14

“On the morning of the 14th, under cover of darkness, fresh Bolshevik

detachments advanced into a hurricane of artillery and machine-gun fire

and were forced to withdraw, leaving scores of dead and wounded on the

ice. This, however, was the last of the small-scale attacks. For the

next 72 hours, though air and artillery operations continued as before,

all ground activity ceased as the Communists prepared an all-out effort

to take the rebel citadel by storm.:

Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921

Kronstadt Izvestia 12: Monday, March 14, 1921

The Revtroika of the Naval Hospital informs citizens that March 14 at 8

pm, in the hospital chapel

REQUIEM SERVICES WILL BE PERFORMED FOR THE FALLEN DEFENDERS OF THE

APPROACHES TO KRONSTADT.

BODRY, President of the Revtroika of the Naval Hospital

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

from 24:00, March 12 until 24:00 March 13

About 3 am, a party of the adversary tried to attack from the South, but

was driven off by our fire.

From 3:30 am there was calm.

About the 12th hour, an adversary flying machine flew over the town and

threw out bombs.

From 12 am until 9 pm, the adversary carried an artillery fire on our

batteries.

Krasnoflotskii fired several heavy rounds at the town, but thanks to the

fire of our artillery, it was soon forced to cease fire.

Over the course of the entire day, the adversary’s airplanes flew over

Kotlin [the island on which Kronstadt is located] and threw bombs at the

town. Thanks to the energetic work of our anti-aircraft batteries

against the airplanes, substantial harm was not inflicted on the town.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Rev. Com.

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense of the Kronstadt Fortress

TO LIVE WITH WOLVES IS TO BE LIKE A WOLF

It was reasonable to expect that at the great moment of the laborer’s

struggle for their violated rights, Lenin would not be a hypocrite, and

would speak the truth. Somehow, in the opinion of the workers and

peasants, the concept of Lenin on the one hand and Trotsky and Zinoviev

on the other came to be different. If they didn’t believe a single word

from Zinoviev and Trotsky, faith in Lenin was still not lost.

But…

On March 8, the 10th Congress of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia]

opened, and Lenin is repeating the usual Communist lies about rebel

Kronstadt. He declared that the movement is occuring under the slogan of

“free trade,” and then added, “it was for Soviets, and against only the

dictatorship of the Bolsheviks,” not forgetting to implicate, “White

generals and petty bourgeois anarchist elements.”

We see that Lenin, speaking filth, has become confused, and lets slip

the truth that at its root the movement is a struggle for Soviet power

and against the party dictatorship. In his nervousness he declared,

“this is a counterrevolution of a different type. It is extremely

dangerous, no matter how insignificant their corrections in our policy

seem at first glance.”

And there is something to fear. The blow of the revolutionary people of

Kronstadt is strong, and the ringleaders of the arrogant party feel that

their autocracy has come to an end.

Lenin’s unlimited nervousness slips through all through his speech on

Kronstadt. The words “dangerous” and “danger” are repeated over and

over. He says, “in order to end this petty bourgeois danger, incredibly

dangerous to us since it doesn’t unify the proletariat but divides it,

we need maximum solidarity.”

Yes, it has become necessary for the head Communist to tremble, and to

call for “maximum solidarity,” since not only the Communist dictatorship

but also the party itself have shown signs of breaking.

Could Lenin have spoken the truth in general? Not so long ago at a

discussion meeting about trade unions he said, “I am deathly fed up with

this, and apart from my disease I would be glad to quit it all and run

away wherever I could.”

But his confederates do not allow him to run away. He is held as their

prisoner, and must slander just like they do. And also, the party policy

is such that its realization is prevented by Kronstadt, which is

demanding not “free trade” but true Soviet power.

VAIN HOPES

The Petrograd Pravda for March 11 prints a letter from Zinoviev to the

non-party comrades. This unrestrained boor expresses his sorrow that

there have come to be few worker-Communists in Petrograd factories, and

that therefore, “it is necessary to the Communists, come of it what may,

to draw honest non-party workingmen and women into Soviet work.” That

Communists have become few in the factories is understandable; everyone

flees from the party of traitors. It is also understandable that the

chekists want to shut the non-party workers’ mouths with every kind of

truth and untruth, by involving them in join work.

This provocateur writes, “Let’s, in an organized way, arrive at a

systematic method of drawing non-party comrades to work.” But what

honest worker will join that gang of thieves, commissars, and chekists?

The workers well understand that these new gendarmes need to choke their

grumbling with any concessions, to lull them from their vigilance, in

order to squeeze them still stronger afterwards with their iron tongs.

The workers see how they are revenging themselves on their non-party

comrades in Kronstadt.

“Recently,” Zinoviev sobs on, “there was a major misunderstanding

between us and the Baltic Factory. But if the Baltic Factory were to be

first to carry out the given plan, and showed an example to the others,

then many mistakes would be forgiven it.”

Here again speaks the provocateur. Of course, in those days the

Communists assured us in their broadcasts to the Kronstadt workers that

all was well in Peter, and that the Baltic factory was working. Now,

suddenly, there are “major misunderstandings,” and invitations to show

an example “to other factories.” Unrest has begun in other factories

too. So when was Zinoviev trying to deceive us, then or now?

In order to obtain the Baltic workers for their use, the Communists

promise them all the blessings of the world.”We will assign the workers

to the jobs most important at the current moment: produce, heating,

control over Soviet institutions and the like. We will give non-party

workers the opportunity, through their representatives, to take the most

active part in the purchase abroad, for gold, of produce for the Peter

workers, in order to make it through the difficult months. We will put

the question of the struggle with bureaucratism in our institutions on a

practical footing. We will scold and criticize each other, and come to a

full and fundamental understanding.

This is how sweetly Zinoviev sings, lulling the workers, drawing their

attention away from the sound of the bombardment directed against their

Kronstadt brothers. Why have the Communists been silent up to now? Why

haven’t they done this during their almost four year rule?

Very simply, they couldn’t do this before, and they can’t do it now

either. We know the value of their promises, and not just promises but

agreements (a bunch of paper). No, the worker won’t sell his freedom and

his brothers’ blood for all the gold in the world. Let Zinoviev give up

this empty fancy of, “coming to an understanding.” Now, when the

Kronstadt brothers have risen to the defense of true freedom, the

workers can give the Communists only one answer. “Get out of power as

quickly as possible, you butchers and provocateurs, while it’s still

possible to run away, and don’t fool yourselves with vain hopes.”

MEETING OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

At the March 13 meeting of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, the

report of the General Meeting of Communists imprisoned in the Naval

Investigative Prison was heard. It included a request to the Prov. Rev.

Com. to allow Zosimov, former Commissar of the Battleship Brigade, to

leave for Moscow to attend the meeting of the regular session of the

V.Ts.I.K. [All-Russian Central Executive Committee], in order to

illuminate the true lay of matters in Kronstadt.

After an exchange of opinions and a discussion from all sides, the Prov.

Rev. Com. decided to consider Zosimov’s trip to Moscow unnecessary,

since the truth about the events happening in Kronstadt should be well

known to the government of the R.S.F.S.R. and the V.Ts.I.K. from our

broadcasts. Because of their fear of the people’s masses, the Communists

have not been publicizing these.

Also, Zosimov’s release might be interpreted by the government of the

R.S.F.S.R. as a sign of weakness by the Prov. Rev. Com., and of a desire

to come to a compromise. There can’t even be talk of this, in view of

the strongly expressed desire of the laboring masses of Kronstadt to

forever liberate Russia from the power of the Communists.

HOW THEY LIE

We print word for word a group of notices printed in the March 11 number

of Petrogradskaia Pravda.

Internal War in Kronstadt

At 8 pm, the Committee of Defense received the following report from

Tukhachevsky, Commander of the Army, in Oranienbaum. “Heavy small arms

and machine gun fire is heard from Kronstadt. In Oranienbaum, columns

are seen making an attack from Kronstadt toward the Mine Casting

Workshops, which are located somewhat northeast of fort Konstantin. The

attack is apparently being made either against fort Konstantin or

against independent units which have risen against the Kronstadt White

Guards, and are fortified in the region of the Mine Casting Workshops.

Fire in Kronstadt

During our capture of one of the numbered forts, a strong fire was

noticed in Kronstadt. The town was cloaked in thick smoke.

An Attack by Cadets

On March 8, one of the cadet detachments made an attack on one of the

forts located on Kronstadt’s northern side. The cadets, first stuck to

their knees in snow, then splashing through the water which covers the

ice in places, moved forward daringly and decisively. The officers,

commissars and Communists were in front. Fire from the forts could not

stop the attackers, despite cruel machine gun and artillery fire from

the neighboring forts.

The fort was taken so swiftly, and so unexpectedly for its defenders,

that they abandoned the fort leaving completely loaded weapons and a

half-cooked meal. During our control of three of the mutineers’ forts, a

great quantity of cannon-wadding, 40 cases of munitions and other

military property was captured in one of them.

More on the Leaders and Inspirers of the Mutiny

One of the deserters who left Kronstadt on the night of March 7 reports

on the attitude and carriage of the White Guard officers as follows.

“Their attitude is highly “playful.” It doesn’t, of course, bother them

that they have started a bloody affair. They dream of the blessings

which will fall to their part in the event that they control Petrograd.

‘We will take Petrograd. We’ll get no less than half a pood [1 pood is

equal to 16.38 kg.] of gold to a mug. If it doesn’‘t come off, we’ll go

to Finland. They’ll take us in there with pleasure,’ these lords

declare.”

They feel like they are lords of the situation, and in fact they are.

They carry themselves with the “free seamen” like in the old, tsarist

times. “The present tone is one of command, completely unlike with the

Communists,” the sailors say on this account. The only thing lacking is

the gold epaulets.

We bring to the attention of the lord White Guard officers that they

will hardly be successful in running off to Finland, and instead of gold

they will each receive a nice portion of lead.

And Krasnaia Gazeta reports, “two sailors arriving in Reval report that

150 Bolsheviks have been killed in Kronstadt.

ORANIENBAUM. A store of provisions was destroyed by successful strikes

of our artillery.

ORANIENBAUM. The sailors on the ships are isolated from the shore, and

suppressed by the White officership. Increasingly, notices of

approaching aid, printed several times a day in different forms, are

spread about the town.”

Even better is the report of Makhovik.

The Union of Printers has received the following letter in response to

gifts taken by working women, members of the union, to the comrade

soldiers who are defending the Peter proletarians from the White Guard

adventurers.

TO THE UNION OF PRINTERS

Dear friends!

Universal thanks to you for the presents to your red units, who have

already taken three forts. I send you greetings in all our names. Today

was heated. I think that everything will be liquidated tomorrow.

Warm greetings to all unions.

DURMASHKIN, Secretary of the Politotdel of the Military District 3/9/21

This is how history is written. This is how the Communists think to hide

the truth from the people with slander and deceit.

A LITTLE FARTHER

A little farther…

We are at the threshold.

Without stormy days

In bloody drunkeness

We move toward the goal—

The lighthouse is seen.

Manacles are off,

Armor is on

Ice is melted.

Roar of the storm

And banner of purple—

The people have risen.

From the gloom of the crypt,

Where we rotted blindly

Until these days

We went out to the light,

Set fire to the rocket—

The mutiny of fires.

A little farther…

We are at the threshold

Without stormy days

Passing the shoals

We move toward the goal

The lighthouse is seen.

GLEB VERZHBITSKY

THEY REFUTE THE SLANDER

The Helsingfors newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet reports:

“March 9, a broadcast from Kronstadt was captured in Reval, saying that

Kronstadt is not now in need of produce aid, and refuting the

provocative rumors that it has turned to Finland for support.”

WHY THE POPULACE HUNGERED

By direction of the Prov. Rev. Com., searches were carried out in the

apartments of several commissars. Large reserves of produce were found

in each of them. These were taken away, and given to the Produce

Committee for distribution among the populace.

In this way, from the wife of commissar Ilyin (Shirokaia Street 19) were

taken: 1 pood of meat, 1 pood of dried bread, 30 pounds of salt, and 10

lb. of fish. The following was left her: 1 1/2 pood of flour, 4 poods of

potatoes, 2 poods of liver, 15 pounds of meat and other produce. Items

taken were: 12 pairs of new shoes, a jacket, and a leather skirt. 2

jackets were left her.

From Dulin, Commissar of the Detachment of Special Purpose, the

following were taken: 1 pood 9 lbs. of meat., 1 pood 28 lbs. of salt,

165 boxes of matches, 14 1/2 lbs. of loose tea, 1 pound of brick tea,

and 4 poods 33 lbs. of dried bread. Also taken were: buckwheat, oat

flour, millet, wheat, wheat flour, soap, kerosine, and even 1 pood 3

lbs. of nails.

Dulin was arrested.

Life was pretty good for the lord commissars.

FRATERNAL AID

The following donations have arrived for the warriors at the front: from

E. Zavgorodin, a two day ration of bread and a pack of makhorka; from S.

Ivanov, a stoker on the Sevastopol, a soldier’s overcoat; from O.

Tsimmerman, a woman employee of the Rev. Com., cigarettes; from S.

Putilin, one pair of boots; from A.L., clerk of the Port Chemical

Laboratory, one pair of boots.

ARISE, REPRESSED!

It is now three years that the populace of Soviet Russia has languished

under the Communist yoke. These arrogant beasts’ bloodthirsty leaders

have pitilessly poured, and pour now, the blood of the laborers. The

servitors of the Communist autocracy, hiding under the traitorous mask,

“Power of the Laboring People,” have deceived, and try to still deceive,

the workers and peasants with their lying slanderous speeches. And

besides that, the blood of deceived toilers pours on endless fronts.

Everyone knows how they take almost the last chicken from a soldier’s

family, but the fattened commissars, having fortified themselves with a

solid ration, look out for themselves, and do their stinking business in

the rear. They yell from their bloody scaffolds, “all land to the

peasants, and the factories and plants to the workers.” But at the same

time, the Communists have built communal farms, occupying the best

pieces of land, and put a still heavier and stronger land-owner on the

neck of the most impoverished peasant.

The worker has become a night animal instead of a factory owner. He

cannot work where he wants, and cannot refuse to work beyond his

strength. Anyone who speaks a word of truth they shoot, leave in prison

to rot, or torture in the Communist torture chambers.

Worker and peasant, languishing under the Bolshevik yoke, it is time for

you to wake from your lethargy! Form true Soviets.

Look, with one blow, revolutionary Kronstadt has knocked down the

stranglers of the will of the laboring people. Power has truly passed

into the hands of the laborers.

When the rebellious proletariat demanded the liberation of its brothers

who were languishing in the prisons, bloody Trotsky opened fire on Red

Kronstadt. Having dressed deceived soldiers in white shrouds, he sent

them with rifles in their hands to strangle our truth. But truth is not

for Trotsky to strangle. All laboring Russia and all the world knows

that we struggle for the laborers’ liberation from the despotic power of

the usurper Communists.

All the world knows that Kronstadt can’t bear to listen anymore to the

moans of its repressed and ruined brothers. However Trotsky might try to

strangle the free idea of Kronstadt, he will soon be forced to dress

himself in the same white shroud in which he dressed the unfortunate

soldiers whom he deceived and drove out with machine guns to die without

glory on the ice at the approaches to Kronstadt.

We have decided to be victorious or to die under the ruins of glorious

Kronstadt. May we be judged by the workers of the world. We stand firmly

at our posts, and having raised the banner of liberty, we are certain of

victory.

Long live the Soviets!

Damnation to the stranglers of liberty, the Communists!

seaman KOPTELOV

APPEAL TO WORKERS, SOLDIERS, AND SAILORS

On March 2, we, the people of Kronstadt, threw off the damned Communist

yoke and raised the red flag of the Third Revolution of Laborers.

Soldiers, seamen and workers, revolutionary Kronstadt calls you. We know

that they lead you into delusion and don’t tell the truth about events

here, where we are all ready to give our lives for the holy cause of

liberating the worker and peasant. They try to convince you that white

generals and priests are with us. In order to put an end to this once

and for all, we bring to your attention that the Provisional

Revolutionary Committee consists of the following fifteen members.

• Petrichenko—a senior clerk on the battleship Petropavlovsk;

• Yakovenko—a telephone operator at the Kronstadt Regional

Communications Service;

• Ososov—a machinist on the battleship Sevastopol;

• Arkhipov—a machinist foreman;

• Perepelkin—an electrician on the battleship Sevastopol;

• Parushev—an electrician foreman on the battleship Petropavlosk;

• Kupolov—a senior doctor’s assistant;

• Vershinin—a seaman/combatant on the battleship Sevastopol;

• Tukin—an artisan in the Electro-Mechanical Factory;

• Romanenko—a watchman in the repair docks;

• Oreshin—Director of the Third Labor School;

• Valk—an artisan in the Sawmill;

• Pavlov—a worker in the Mine Workshops;

• Boikov—Director of the Transport String at the Admin. of Construction

of the Fortress;

• Kilgast—an ocean navigator.

These are our generals: the Brusilovs, Kamenevs, and the rest, and it is

the gendarmes Trotsky and Zinoviev who hide the truth from you.

Comrades, look about and see what they have done to you, what they are

doing to your wives, brothers, and children. Are you really going to

suffer and perish under the yoke of the oppressors?

DOWN WITH COMMISSAROCRACY!

Capturing power, the Communist Party promised you all the blessings of

the laboring masses. And what do we see in fact? Three years ago, they

told us, “When you want, you can recall your representatives. You can

newly elect the Soviets.” But when we, the people of Kronstadt, called

for new elections to the Soviets, free of party pressure, Trotsky the

newly appeared Trepov gave the order, “don’t spare the bullets.”

Soldiers, you see how valuable your lives are to the Communists. They

send you across the ice barehanded to take Red Kronstadt, stronghold of

the Laboring Revolution. They send you to take impregnable forts and

ships, whose armor twelve inch shells can’t pierce.

What treachery!

We called for a delegation of Petrograd toilers to be sent, so that you

might learn what kind of generals are with us, and who commands us. But

there is no such delegation. The Communists fear that a delegation would

learn the truth and tell it to you. They tremble, feeling the earth

shake under them.

But the hour has rung. Off dirty paws, stained with the blood of our

brothers and fathers! The laborers’ spirit of freedom is still strong.

They won’t let the vampire Communists enslave them again, sucking out

the last drop of blood from the tortured proletariat.

Toiler, did you really overthrow tsarism and throw down Kerensky in

order to put the Maliuta Skuratov oprichniks, with Fieldmarshal Trotsky

in the lead, on your own neck?

No! A thousand times no!

The work hardened hand is heavy, and the base oppressors who have

destroyed millions of toilers’ lives to capture power will not withstand

it.

Damnation to the hated Communist yoke!

Down with the party yoke!

Long live the power of workers and peasants!

Long live freely elected Soviets!

THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE OF KRONSTADT Kronstadt, March

13, 1921

A RESOLUTION

Passed March 12 by the General Meeting of soldiers of the Transport

String of the Naval Fortress of Kronstadt.

We, the soldiers of the Transport String of the Naval Fortress of

Kronstadt, having listened with attention to the report of Comrade

Perepelkin, member of the Prov. Rev. Com., about the current moment,

find all the actions and measures taken by the Prov. Rev. Com. to be

correct, and appropriate for the state of war.

We give our entire support to the defense of the interests of the

laboring peasantry and workers, and detach 50 people from our crew to

carry out combat service under the complete command of the Prov. Rev.

Com. This will not sap the ability of the Transport String to do special

urgent work. At the first call by the Prov. Rev. Com., we will all

answer as one, and will be ready to go any time of day or night.

Long live the Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt!

Long live the revolutionary seamen, soldiers, and workers of Kronstadt!

Down with commissarocracy!

Down with the predatory beast Trotsky!

FEDOROV, President of the Assembly

MAIER, member

A. IVANOV, Secretary

LEAVING THE PARTY

All those leaving the ranks of the RCP [Communist Party of Russia] are

directed to turn in their party booklets and identifications to their

electoral troikas. Those leaving the party in the future and giving

declarations are directed to do so right now.

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

In December of 1919, when Yudenich was approaching Petrograd, Sotnikov,

former Aide to the Commissar of Construction of the Fortress, gathered

all the comrades of fort Krasnoarmeiskii. After a lying speech, he

ordered all the non-party comrades to choose one of two things, either

the party or the left flank, where the 55 people executed by the butcher

Razin in the Krasnogorsk events were buried. Under such a threat, I was

forced to become a member of the RCP.

But as the saying goes, “you won’t be nice by force.” Even though I was

counted on paper as being in the RCP, in spirit it wasn’t so.

In 1920, I was thrown behind bars by the beast Sitnikov [sic] because I

dared to ask the truth, why the Finns were bringing every possible kind

of produce over the border to lord Gromov, the little Kronstadt tsar.

On leaving prison, I couldn’t flee the party since everything was under

surveillance. But at last there has come a free time, when the yoke of

commissarocracy has fallen, and I may freely stand up in the ranks of

free workers and peasants.

The Communists told us that they were put in power by the people, and

that they stand for the people. But who really put them in power? They

told us that it is necessary to endure, and to carry on through hunger

and cold for the good of our past achievements. But just as soon as

these “apostles” had returned to their homes, everything appeared there,

except birds’ milk.

Not so long ago they reminded us of the year 1905, when the hungry

workers who went to ask Nikolai for bread were fed with lead. But look

what they themselves gave the workers when they dared to ask for bread.

They treat them to bullets, prisons, and so on. It has become several

times worse than under Nikolai.

After the October Revolution, all these “apostles” with the souls of

traitors stripped everyone on the sidewalks of their fur coats, or stole

produce down to the very crumbs if they found someone with it. But now

look at these thieves. Each of them has several fur coats, all their

hands are hung about with gold, and their suitcases are stuffed with

toys from Nikolai’s time, produce, and so on.

And all the same such scoundrels yelled, and still yell, that they are

struggling for the freedom which they are strangling with bullets and

prisons.

And so comrades, I am quitting this bloody traitorous party, and

joyfully entering into your free ranks.

Long live the free peasant and worker!

V. IAKOVLEV, sldr. of the Training Crew of the 4th Division

I make this declaration to the Provisional Revolutionary Committee and

the citizens of the town of Kronstadt so that you would not consider me

to be a sympathizer with the Communists. I have been on guard of the

just, Civilian Court since the 1st Revolution, as the People’s Judge who

is elected independent of party membership. Due to the distortion of the

fundamental declaration of the Republic Constitution by the Communist

Party, in 1921 I was forced to secure “political reliability” and

support in my struggle for the people’s citizens’ rights against the

arbitrary rule of the chekists and other oprichniks, in order to have

the strength to repulse the dominance of criminal Communists over

individual private citizens who came for legal help.

Now, when this dominance threatens the entire people’s mass with bloody

horrors, and comes from the central Communist authorities, I am leaving

the party. It has not justified my faith, and I want to be in the ranks

of the first warriors of the 3rd Revolution.

ALLIK, People’s Judge of the Third District of the Town of Kronstadt

March 15

Paul Avrich claims that on March 15, speaking at the the Tenth Party

Congress, Lenin acknowledged of the Kronstradt rebels that, Bolshevik

propaganda notwithstanding, “They do not want the White Guards, and they

do not want our power either.”

The full significance of the ‘liquidation’ of Kronstadt was disclosed by

Lenin himself… At the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party, staged in

Moscow while the siege of Kronstadt was in progress, Lenin unexpectedly

changed his inspired Communist song to an equally inspired paean to the

New Economic Policy. Free trade, concessions to the capitalists, private

employment of farm and factory labor, all damned for over three years as

rank counter-revolution and punished by prison and even death, were now

written by Lenin on the glorious banner of the dictatorship. Brazenly as

ever he admitted what sincere and thoughtful persons in and out of the

party had known for seventeen days: that ‘the Kronstadt men did not

really want the counter-revolutionists. But neither did they want us.’

The naive sailors had taken seriously the slogan of the Revolution: ‘All

power to the Soviets,’ by which Lenin and his party had solemnly

promised to abide. That had been their unforgivable offense. For that

they had to die. They had to be martyred to fertilize the soil for

Lenin’s new crop of slogans, which completely reversed the old.”

-Emma Goldman, “Living My Life”

Kronstadt Izvestia 13: Tuesday, March 15, 1921

MANDATORY DECLARATION FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION

In view of the approaching thaw, due to which water has formed on the

streets, I direct all UCHKOMS to see to enlisting citizens to work on

cleaning ice from the sidewalks, and also cleaning the drainage gratings

in the middle of the street. Cleaning is to take place March 15, in the

morning.

KASUKHIN, Assistant Director of the Department of Administration

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

from 24:00, March 13 through 12:00, March 14

Over the course of the night, the adversary’s parties tried to attack

twice, but were repulsed by our fire. After 4 am, there was a calm on

the front.

from 12:00 until 24:00

About 13:00 the adversary began artillery fire, to which our artillery

gave an energetic response. Firing continued with pauses until 18:30,

after which a calm set in.

The adversary’s airplanes did not fly during the entire day.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Military Revolutionary Committee

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense

THE TRADING HOUSE OF LENIN, TROTSKY, AND CO.

The trading house of Lenin, Trotsky and Co. has done well. The criminal,

autocratic policies of the ruling Communist Party have led Soviet Russia

into the abyss of beggary and ruin.

Enough of this, it’s time to rest. But apparently the toilers still

haven’t spilled enough blood and tears. This is a moment of historic

battle, daringly raised by Revolutionary Kronstadt for the rights of the

laboring people which have been desecrated and trampled by the

Communists. And now the flock of ravens has flown together for its 10th

Party Congress, and is reaching agreements on how to continue their

Cain-like business even more slyly and effectively.

Their shamelessness is complete. They speak of concessions with complete

calm. They have become used to it. Lenin even talks like this, “We have

started to develop a beginning for concessions. The degree to which this

will be successful doesn’t depend on us, but we must achieve it.” He

further admits that the Bolsheviks have brought Soviet Russia to ruin,

“for we cannot reconstruct the country without technology from abroad,

to somewhat catch up with other countries in economic terms. The

situation has required us to buy abroad not only machines, but also

coal, which we have much of.”

Lenin consoles us, “Such sacrifices will be necessary in the future

also, in obtaining items of broad use, and for the collective farms.”

Where is the economy made right, for the good of which the worker was

turned into a slave in a bureaucratic factory and the laboring peasantry

into hired hands on Soviet farms?!

But this is still not enough. Lenin, talking about agriculture, promises

even more “blessings,” under the further “ownership” of the Communists,

as he himself puts it. “And if it is possible to sometimes reestablish

large scale farming and industry, then it will only be by the path of

placing new sacrifices on any producer, giving him nothing.”

That is the kind of “blessing” which the head of the Bolsheviks promises

to all who will continue to submissively carry the yoke of

commissarocracy. The peasant was right who said at the Eighth Congress

of Soviets, “everything’s going all right, only… land’s ours, but

grain’s yours; water’s ours, but fish’s yours; forest’s ours, but the

wood’s yours.”

But the toiler doesn’t have to worry. Lenin promises, “to make a number

of concessions to the smallholder, to give him known limits of a free

economy.” Like the old “kind” landowner, he intends to make a few petty

concessions in order to squeeze even harder later with the tongs of

party dictatorship. This is clearly visible from the phrase, “of course,

you won’t achieve it without compulsion, for the country is terribly

impoverished and tired.”

It’s clear. You can take even the last shirt from the beggar.

The mission of peaceful construction Lenin understands to be, “with

concessions at the top and taxes at the bottom.”

WHAT THE COMMUNE GAVE

“Comrades, we will build a beautiful new life,” the Communists said and

wrote. “We will destroy the entire world of oppression, and build a

bright Socialist heaven,” they sang to the people.

But what in fact came of it? All the best houses and apartments are

taken by departments and subdepartments, and their bureaucrats have set

themselves up spaciously, comfortably, and warmly. The number of

available apartments was reduced, and workers live in the very same

places where they lived before, just more run-down and more crowded.

The houses are reaching old age, and the stoves are almost ruined.

Broken windows aren’t fixed. Roofs are bursting and just about to begin

leaking. Fences are strewn about. Waterpipes are half ruined. Toilets

don’t work. Apartments are flooded with refuse. Citizens see to their

needs in strangers’ courtyards. Stairways are unlit and filthy.

Courtyards are like pigsties. Garbage cans and cesspools are overfilled.

The streets are dirty; the sidewalks haven’t been cleared and slippery.

It’s dangerous to walk.

In order to receive an apartment it is necessary to have pull in the

housing department; otherwise, don’t even think about it. Only the

select have spacious and comfortable apartments.

The matter of food is even worse. Irresponsible and incapable workers

have ruined hundreds of thousands of food items. They distribute nothing

but frozen potatoes. Meat is rotten in spring and summer. They didn’t

used to give to swine what citizens have received from the builders of

“heavenly” life.

Honest Soviet fish (herring) saved the day, but recently there isn’t

even that.

In order to receive these pathetic scraps it was necessary to serve

hours at the fronts.

Soviet stores turned out to be worse than the factory stores of

unpleasant memory, where the owner-manufacturers dumped every kind of

trash, and the enslaved workers couldn’t say a word.

In order to destroy home life, our rulers introduced communal

cafeterias… And what came of it?

The food there was even worse! Produce was plundered, and the citizens

were given the remains. Children’s food was somewhat better. But what

was given to the children was still not enough, and most important,

there wasn’t enough milk. In their time, the Communists took all the

milk cattle from the laboring populace to their farms. Half they

destroyed. Milk from the surviving cattle went first to administrators

and employees, and only the scraps to the children.

But the worst of all was the clothing and shoe situation. People wore

only what was stored away earlier. If anything came in for distribution,

then it was very little. (Now, for example, one of the unions is issuing

buttons, and they have to make it 1 1/2 buttons per person. Isn’t it

funny?) Shoes were especially bad. The path to heaven may be short, but

all the same you won’t get there without soles on your shoes.

There were, however, channels in which all that was needed flowed

freely. People close to the Communist Party, and those with power, had

everything. They had their own cafeteria, special rations, and a special

orders table for their service, distributing blessings by the good will

of a woman commissar.

But people knew that the “commune” sapped, and in the end destroyed,

productive labor. Any inclination and interest to work fell away.

Cobblers, tailors, water carriers and others who had earlier worked by

handicraft, quit and went away, someone here and someone there. They

became port guards and watchmen, joined the ranks of the departmental

workers, and so on.

This is the heaven which the Bolsheviks took on themselves to build. In

place of the former regime there arose a new regime of excess, vileness,

“comradeship,” selfishness, thievery and speculation. It is a horrible

regime, where it’s necessary to hold out your hand to the authorities

for every little piece of bread and every button. It’s a regime where

you don’t even own yourself, and there’s no way to be your own master.

It’s a regime of slavery and humiliation.

This is the kind of hell we lived in for three years. But that was still

just the blossoms, and we will rescue ourselves from the berries.

EVENTS IN PETROGRAD

Through March 12

A state of siege has been declared. Guards on the bridges have been

increased. Guard posts have been placed at busy crossings, controlling

the movement of automobiles and horses. Movement is forbidden after 9 pm

The theaters are closed.

—The mood of the workers is one of sympathy toward the people of

Kronstadt. The workers are expectant. The electrical station and water

supply work industriously. All other factories are either striking or

“Italianing” [sit-down striking, after the form of Italian labor

protestors].

—The mood of the army units is not favorable to the authorities.

Therefore they aren’t sent to the front, but are held in barracks and

not issued weapons. Due to the danger of active interference by the

sailors, a partial transfer has been begun to the Black Sea. To the

front are sent exclusively cadets, and independent units quickly thrown

together from members of regional and suburban soviets.

—Produce situation. The entire amount on hand in the Petrograd

storehouses at the beginning of March amounted to 23,000 poods (a

meaningful part being frozen meat). Of that, 22,000 poods have now been

requisitioned for the needs of the Petrograd garrison; 1000 poods are

left for high Soviet employees. There are no reserves for the populace.

The steam grainmill Mordukha stands empty.

—Hostage arrests are being carried out in Petrograd and its surrounding

areas. About 20,000 persons have been arrested by now. (The figure is

not confirmed.)

—The March 4 session of the Petrosoviet. The Kronstadt events are the

main issue of the day. Zinoviev calls for the presentation of two

ultimatums: 1) to the people of Kronstadt, 2) to the striking Petrograd

factories, and the Baltic in particular. (After a number of speakers

testified, the second ultimatum was not presented.) By far the most

conspicuous speech was that of Filippov. Its contents in short: “Having

fought in the July and October days of 1917 for the dictatorship of the

working class, we got a dictatorship of the ruling party.” After

Filippov’s speech, time was limited to seven minutes, and about 20

speakers were deprived of speech. None the less, seaman Emelianov was

able to read the Kronstadt resolution. The disorders among the Petrograd

seaman and the unsucessful attack on [fort] Totleben were explained with

factual reports.

—Wounded from the Kronstadt front are beginning to arrive in Petrograd.

Many of them are self inflicted. For example, of 100 people wounded in

Sestroretsk, 60 were self inflicted.

—On the 10th, more than 100 people from the Naval Academy refused to go

to the front. They were sent to the tribunal [court].

A SMALL SATIRE

In the empire Eresefeser [RSFSR]

There once appeared a strange SR

(a spy also, and Menshevik)

Who spoke with tongue both spry and quick,

And a former priest (and general)

Who quickly built a fine scandal.

Very nicely lived the folk:

In the baths washed without soap,

Warmed in winter without wood,

And fattened up on fatless food.

Never rushing, in good measure,

Folks would eat their frozen taters,

And with tasty “Soviet ham”

Indulge themselves, just now and then.

For a pair of wooden soles,

Three whole years they worked their doles,

Though tied in knots like broken shoots,

They never did obtain the boots…

Life, that is, flowed beautifully,

Without grumbling, patiently.

But the terrible dream is broken,

Entire, the garrison has woken,

Holding meetings, shouting solutions,

Scribbling up resolutions.

Then arrived himself Kalinin,

Tongue as soft and slick as linen,

He sang to them like honeyed wine,

But success he didn’t find.

Every heart was set aflame,

And the poor Communards, what a shame…

The few remaining “hearty souls,”

Were just like crabs upon the shoals,

And running heels were all that was seen,

Of those from the feared Cheka machine.

Fearing terrible retribution,

Flight’s the commissar’s solution,

But the politruk [head of the politotdel] didn’t have the chance,

And now he sits without his pants,

Right there down in the old cell block,

With the Communists, a regular flock.

And they’ve even, scandal of all scandals,

Dressed themselves in plain bast sandals.

Gotten all upset and glum,

Trotsky sends an ultimatum,

“If this disorder you don’t douse,

Then, like a bunch of foolish grouse,

A loyal host having gathered round,

I’ll give the order to shoot you down.”

But our boys, firm and plucky,

Select a Committee and revtroiki,

Shoulder to shoulder now they sit,

Before a fire they have lit…

So wait a bit, for the moment when

The “mighty leaders” make their ends,

Like little bugs, on weapon pins.

HOW THEY LIE

Krasnaia Gazeta reports in the March 12 edition:

—Oranienbaum, 11th. There are confirmed reports that there is a

rebellion by seamen in Kronstadt.

—Oranienbaum, 12th. Yesterday, individuals were noticed making their way

across the ice from Kronstadt to the Finnish shore. It was also noticed

that crossings were being made from Finland to Kronstadt. This all

points to an undoubtable connection with Finland.

—Oranienbaum, 12th. Red pilots who were over Kronstadt yesterday report

that there are almost no people to be seen in the streets. There are no

guards or communications. Also, no communication with Finland is

visible.

—Oranienbaum, 11th. Deserters from Kronstadt report that the sailors’

mood is one of demoralization. Faith in the sailors by the mutiny

leaders has fallen so low that they are no longer allowed to service the

artillery. The artillery is serviced exclusively by officers, in whose

hands actual power is located. The sailors have been removed from almost

all positions.

Firing in Kronstadt

By reports received today, frequent small arms and machine gun fire is

occurring in Kronstadt. This gives basis to think that there is an

uprising in Kronstadt.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE FEEDING OF HORSES

The besieged condition of the town of Kronstadt forces our produce

organs to widely use stores of buckwheat and millet husks and oat chaff

for foraging horses. Feeding horses with substitutes can support the

horse and protect the transport we need if they are used especially

skillfully. Horses eat husks and chaff badly; they often sicken, and it

is not rare for them to die. In order that this doesn’t happen, and that

the noted substitutes will be useful to us, the following is

recommended:

• Feeding horses with substitutes: begin using buckwheat and millet

husks and oat chaff immediately, while stores of other forage are still

not exhausted. Changing one feed for another in a horse’s ration

requires time. The horse must be continuously prepared and accustomed to

the new feed.

• Change the horse over to feeding on hulls and chaff by degrees,

starting the daily ration with 1/2, and only after several days (usually

two weeks) bringing it to the standard norm. The horse can’t forget oats

and take to hulls quickly, and will be hungry and nervous for a long

time. Giving hulls immediately and in large quantity, without

preparation, will necessarily bring a dangerous colic in the horse.

• Do not give dry hulls and chaff. The horse eats them badly in such a

form, and the dust which flies up irritates the horse’s nose and throat

and brings out a cough in the horse. Before giving the chaff and hulls

to the horse, it is absolutely necessary to moisten them in water for

12-18 hours, or to steam them with boiling water. It is possible to use

the method of Ôself-warming’, or fermentation, of the hulls and chaff.

That is done like this: Dig a pit of the size necessary, line it with

boards, and divide it into 4 sections with a partition. This is done

because the fermentation of the chaff usually takes 3 days, and

therefore if there are 4 sections it is possible to have a

self-fermenting fresh feed every day, readily eaten by horses. Before

lining the pit, the hulls and chaff are usually moistened with not

particularly cold water, and then are pressed thickly into the pit. A

bit of hay dust quickens the fermentation process, and a small amount of

salt improves the taste. The size of the pit is dependant on the daily

demand for chaff; 1 cubic arshin [1 arshin is equal to .71 meters] gives

around 100 pounds of self-fermented chaff.

• It is necessary to shake the feed chaff and husks through a sifter to

remove earth and small stones, for if these are added, the horse gets a

sore mouth, eats it badly and often sickens.

• Don’t give the horse clay or moldy husks and chaff in its feed. When

such substitutes are used in case of special need, it is absolutely

necessary to add a small quantity of salt to the feed.

• It is good to give chaff and husks in mixture with other feed, with

added oats, hay dust, twigs and a small quantity of salt.

• As possible, don’t give the horse chaff and hulls on an empty stomach.

Best of all in the morning is to give the horse a little hay, and only

then chaff and husks.

• Every 2-3 days, add some soda with wood charcoal to the chaff and

husks. This will protect the horse from sickness.

• When feeding the horse with substitutes, don’t burden it with work.

Don’t keep it wet and in the wind. Increase the horse’s supervision and

care.

By following all the offered rules, you will meaningfully lighten the

effect of feed substitutes on the horse, and help us to preserve it for

our bright future, when economy and labor will develop without the

threat of cannons, and without substitutes for the people’s will and

power.

The veterinary doctor

NEWS FROM PETROGRAD

In Petrograd, the entire militia has been placed on a barracks footing,

and is carrying out increased work to protect the city, the electrical

station, train stations, factories and other sites. As regards the

militia women, they are carrying out guard duties protecting

institutions and factories. Thus, on guard of the Putilovsky Factory

there are now exclusively women on duty.

The trial court of the Petrograd Revolutionary Military Tribunal heard

the matter of Mikhail Iakovlevich Bulanov, sldr. of “I” Battalion, who

was accused of leaving his battalion without permission while it was

moving into attack, and of spreading rumors which might have brought

sedition and panic in the soldiers’ ranks.

Bulanov refused to fight against his brother Kronstadters. The tribunal

sentenced M. Ia. Bulanov, 20, to execution. The sentence was carried

into fulfillment.

FRATERNAL AID

The following donations have arrived for the defenders of the approaches

to Kronstadt: From I. Pervushin, 1/2 lb. of makhorka [cheap tobacco] and

2 boxes of matches; from Comrade Arkhipov, a pair of boots; from Comrade

Kiselnikov, 3 packs of cigarettes, 3 boxes of matches and 1 pair of

Russian high boots.

From Onisimov, 1 pair of old boots, 1 pair of underwear, 2 tobacco

pouches, 1/4 lb. of makhorka and 2 boxes of matches; from Tsiplenkov, 1

pair of green cloth trousers and 1/2 lb. of makhorka; from Ignatiev, 1

pair of boots, 3/8 lb. of makhorka and 2 boxes of matches; from

Mikhailov, 1 pair of underwear, 1 seaman’s duck blouse and 3/8 lb. of

makhorka; from Bekker 1 pair of boots, 3/8 lb. of makhorka and 1 box of

matches; from Yakushkin, 1/4 lb. of first quality tobacco; from Gurov,

1/4 lb. of makhorka; from Riumin, 1 pair of Russian uniform boots and

3/8 lb. of makhorka; from Grigoriev, 1 pair of boots; from Fadeev, 1/8

lb. of makhorka; from Bobyliev, 1 pair of trousers, 1 sailor’s flannel

blouse, 1 service cap, and 1/8 lb. of makhorka; from Veidekis, 1 pair of

Russian boots and 1/4 lb. of tobacco; from Stogov, 1 pair of underwear,

1 1/2 lb. of cereals and 1 can of pickled cabbage; from Bomkov, 1 pair

of old boots and 1 quilted skirt; from Komarov, 1/4 lb. of makhorka and

1 box of matches; from Okosov, 1/8 lb. of makhorka; from Scherbakov, 1/8

lb. of makhorka; from Kulgas, 1/8 lb. of makhorka; from Romanov, 1/4 lb.

of makhorka and 1 box of matches.

APPORTIONMENT

For issue to the garrison units and town residents of the fortress of

Kronstadt.

A. Bread issue to army units, the fleet and workers from March 15

through 21 inclusive.

• 1/2 lb. of bread or 1/4 pound of biscuit a day. 2. 1/4 lb. of canned

meat a day. 3. 3/8 pound of meat a day.

To the civilian populace:

To children of series A.

• A 1 pound tin of canned milk through April 1. 2. 2 lbs. of flour

through April 1. 3. 1 lb. of wildfowl through April 1. 4. 3 eggs through

April 1.

To children of series B.

• Half a pound of barley a day. 2. A quarter pound of wildfowl a day. 3.

A quarter pound of meat a day. 4. A quarter pound of cheese through

April first.

To children of series C.

• A half pound of barley a day. 2. A half pound of meat a day. 3. 1

pound of caviar, one time.

To adults of letter B.

• 1 pound of oats a day. 2. 3/8 lb. of meat a day. 3. One pound of

caviar, with a quarter pound one time.

Besides this, to children of all series is additionally issued a quarter

lb. of table butter, and a half pound of sugar, and to adults a quarter

pound of salted butter, and a half pound of sugar.

PETRICHENKO, President of the Rev. Com.

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense of the Fortress of Kronstadt

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

It is announced that bread for March 14 was issued from stores No 1, 4,

25, 11, 12, 14, 19 and 31. Those who didn’t receive any are directed to

receive it today at those same stores.

For March 15, a half pound of bread is issued by adult cards of letter A

for bread coupon No 18.

—Today, 3 lbs. of oats are issued by adult B cards for bread coupon No

22, counted against the bread norm for March 15, 16, and 17.

—3 pounds of barley is issued by children’s B and C cards, counted

against the bread norm for the six days from March 15 through 20: by B

cards for bread coupon No 12, and C for bread coupon No 22.

Issue of the declared produce will take place for 4 days.

Issue of remaining produce counted against the bread norm will be

announced specially.

Due to the new allotment, today is the last day for all old issues,

announced before March 14, with the exception of meat. The last day of

meat issue is Wednesday, 3/16.

TUKIN, President of the Administration of Gorprodkom

NOTICES

—The Committee of the Union of Metal Workers notifies comrade workers

that cigarette papers and “Baker” brand powder are issued to members

from the union store.

—A purse with the documents of citizen Natalia Bunakova has been lost.

Personal identification and a night pass are in it.

—The Administration of the Union of Workers in Education and Socialist

Culture informs that there will be a General Meeting of members of the

union at 4 pm on March 15 at the 3rd Labor School. Attendance is

mandatory.

—Personal identification No 44 in the name of seaman M. Kreinin has been

lost. Please consider it invalid.

ANNOUNCEMENT

All military units, worker’s associations and institutions can receive

‘Izvestiia of the Revolutionary Committee’ and pamphlets at

Sevtsentropechat, in accordance with the worked out norm.

March 16

On March 16, a meeting of the Congress of the Russian Communist Party

(Bolsheviks) passed a Resolution On Party Unity addressing the uprising:

The fact that the enemies of the proletariat take advantage of all

deviations from a strictly consistent communist line was seen most

clearly in the example of the Kronstadt uprising, when the bourgeois

counterrevolution and White Guards in all the world’s countries

immediately manifested their readiness to accept even slogans favouring

a Soviet system, if only the dictatorship of the proletariat could be

overthrown in Russia; when the Socialist Revolutionaries and the

bourgeois counterrevolution in general made use, in Kronstadt, of

slogans allegedly favoring an uprising in favor of a Soviet system but

opposed to the Soviet government in Russia. Such instances fully prove

that the White Guardists are striving—and are able—to assume the guise

of communists and even to assume positions to the ‘left’ of communism,

if only they can weaken and overthrow the bulwark of the proletarian

revolution in Russia.

This resolution concluded by further centralizing power in the Central

Committee to expel any member from the Party on any pretext:

“In order to ensure strict discipline within the party and in all Soviet

work, and to achieve maximum unity while eliminating all factionalism,

the Congress gives the Central Committee full powers to apply all

measures of party punishment up to and including expulsion from the

party in cases of violation of discipline or of a revival or toleration

of factionalism.”

At the same time, Trotsky made a statement to the London Daily Herald,

repeating the previous allegations that the uprising was simply the work

of “counter-revolutionary generals.”

“If the liquidation of the Kronstadt mutiny is taking some time, this is

because, in the measures we are adopting, we have had and are having not

only to spare our units unnecessary losses but also to spare in every

way possible the peaceful population and the garrison of Kronstadt,

which is not participating in the mutiny. Our losses due to the guns of

Kronstadt have so far been insignificant.”

In fact, the Bolsheviks had already suffered a large number of

casualties.

Trotsky concluded by asserting that “The historical assignment of the

SRs and Mensheviks consists in trying to put the Russian

counter-revolution in the saddle, as the agent of world imperialism.”

Any communist or socialist who was not a Bolshevik was effectively an

accomplice of world imperialism.

At the same time, Red Army shells were falling in Kronstadt near the

cemetery where the rebels were performing burial rites for their fallen

comrades.

Kronstadt Izvestia 14: Wednesday, March 16, 1921

Today, March 16, at 4 pm, after a burial service in the Naval Cathedral,

THE FIRST SACRIFICES IN THE STRUGGLE

FOR FREEDOM OF THE LABORERS

will be committeed to earth in a fraternal grave on Revolution Square.

Killed on March 8: Aleksandr Kapralov, Mikhail Aleksandrov, Aleksandr

Danilov, Zakhar Klimenkov, Stepan Mischenko, and one worker and four

soldiers whose names have not been discovered.

Died from wounds: Foma Shaposhnikov, Petr Fedorov, Iakov Arkhipov, Semen

Drozdov, Feodosii Khatko, Sergei Nechaev, Mikhail Bystrov, Aleksandr

Pospelov, Ivan Pakhtalov and Stepan Kevshin.

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

From 24:00, March 14 through 12:00, March 15

Around 6 am, the adversary’s intelligence made an attempt to approach

our guard line, but was dispersed by fire. Prisoners were taken by us.

Around 11 am, the adversary began occasional artillery fire.

For the time from 12:00 noon until 12:00 midnight, March 15

From 2 pm on, there was occasional artillery firing. Around 5 pm, firing

ceased. After 6:30 pm, the enemy apparatuses [airplanes] carried out

three raids. One bomb was thrown, but didn’t cause any harm. The

apparatuses flew away after the very first shots by our anti-aircraft

batteries.

OSOSOV, Vice President of the Prov. Rev. Com.

SOLOVIANOV, Head of the Defense

SOCIALISM IN QUOTATION MARKS

Carrying out the October Revolution, the seamen, soldiers, workers, and

peasants spilled their blood for Soviet power, for the construction of a

Republic of labor.

The Communist Party well understood the mood of the masses. Having

written deceitful slogans that stirred the masses on its banner, it drew

them along behind it, and promised to bring them to a bright Kingdom of

Socialism which only the Bolsheviks could build.

Naturally, limitless joy filled the workers and peasants. “At last,

slavery under the yoke of land owners and capitalists would pass into

the realm of legend,” they thought. It seemed that the time of free

labor on the land and in the factories had come. It seemed that all

power had passed into the laborers’ hands.

The children of the laboring people were drawn into the party’s ranks by

sly propaganda, and held there with the chain of severe discipline.

Feeling their strength, the Communists first removed from power the

socialists of other movements. Then they shoved the workers and peasants

themselves from the helm of the ship of state. At the same time, they

continued to rule the country in their name.

The Communists exchanged the stolen power for the authority of

commissars, and for arbitrary rule over the body and soul of the

citizens of Soviet Russia. Contrary to common sense, and in defiance of

the will of the laborers, there began the persistent construction of

bureaucratic socialism with its slaves, instead of a free kingdom of

labor.

Having let production fall into disarray under “workers’ control,” the

Bolsheviks carried out nationalization of the plants and factories. From

a slave of the capitalist, the worker became a slave of the bureaucratic

institutions. Even that became too little. They planned to bring in the

Taylor sweatshop system.

The entire laboring peasantry was counted with the kulaks, declared an

enemy of the people. The enterprising Communists occupied themselves

with destruction, and took to setting up Soviet farms, the estates of a

new land owner, the state. That is what the peasantry received under

Bolshevik socialism instead of free labor with liberated land.

In exchange for grain requisitioned almost bare, and cows and horses

taken away, there were Cheka raids and executions. There’s a good

exchange of products in the labor state: in exchange for bread, lead and

bayonets.

A citizen’s life became impossibly boring and bureaucratic. It was life

drawn by the powers that be. Instead of a free development of

personality and a free laboring life, there arose a completely

unprecedented slavery. Any free thought, any fair criticism of the

actions of the criminal rulers was made a crime, punishable by

imprisonment, and not rarely even by execution.

The death sentence, a desecration of human dignity, began to flourish

“in the socialist fatherland.” This is that bright Kingdom of Socialism

which the Communist Party brought us to. We have received bureaucratic

socialism with Soviets full of bureaucrats, who obediently vote by the

orders of a committee of the party of infallable commissars.

The slogan, “he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat,” was turned inside out

under the new, “Soviet” order to be, “all for the commissars.” And for

the workers, peasants and laboring intelligentsia there remained labor,

continuous and unenlightening, in prisonlike conditions.

It became unbearable, and Revolutionary Kronstadt first broke the

manacles, and broke the prison bars, fighting for Socialism of another

kind. It is fighting for a laboring Soviet Republic, where the producer

will find himself the fully empowered master and commander of the

produce of his own labor.

IN POWERLESS SPITE

In the proud knowledge of its power and with the strong desire to

rebuild desecrated freedoms, Kronstadt threw off the Communist yoke. It

refused to pay tribute in the lives, fortunes and welfare of its people

to a bunch of lunatics.

Tortured Russia was forced to bear the nightmare of the All-Russian

Cheka, the rivers of blood shed by innocents, sobs and moans in the

village hut, thefts, and oppressions in the cities, and strangling of

any thought or any living word, all for the good of the unbothered

existence of the Kremlin khans.

But at the same time, these sufferings increased the fortress’s

strengths ten fold from the very first moment of the formation of the

Provisional Revolutionary Committee. When Kronstadt, that veteran of

freedom, answered the first shot of the socialist autocrats, there was a

feeling as if along with a round from a gun barrel there shot out

indignation and revulsion. It was felt that there will not be an end to

this revulsion until the time when the chains of “Communist freedom”

which entangle the laboring people have been torn away.

Kronstadt, in calm certainty that it was correct, said to its enemies,

“Come and get it.” The jackals of the Communist pack bared their teeth,

the leaders began to howl, and the ravens, smelling the kill beforehand,

flew down from all sides to the Oranienbaum and Sestroretsk shores.

Loyal communards by good will, and the remaining soldiers deceived with

tales of what is being created here and driven with machine guns, were

expected to obtain the head of grey Kronstadt for the red headquarters

at Krasnoflotskii in two shakes, as it was said in Petrogradskaia

Pravda.

The quick accounting was not successful. Neither tsarist methods of

repression using contemporary junker-cadets, nor the napoleonic heads of

the central commands of all the fronts could help the situation.

In powerless spite, the jackals ran away with their tails between their

legs. The ravens have flown off with wild croaking to the familiar nests

of their secret police, sowing slander and lies in their Communist

press, and shooting or putting in prison those who didn’t want and do

not want to believe in Petrogradskaia Pravda.

Powerless spite: to hide the truth of free Kronstadt from you at the

price of blood and lies.

Every new shot from the fortress brings closer the liberation of all the

country’s laborers from the shameful Communist yoke.

THE REVTROIKA OF THE AIR DEFENSE

RED WREATH FOR A WARRIORS’ GRAVE

Today, one more grave mound rose on Kronstadt’s Anchor Square. The

beginnings of the 3rd Revolution were laid in this square, and in it

will be committed to earth the first warrior heroes for its slogans.

Brothers in spirit, they will lie in a fraternal grave. Twenty red

coffins with our defenders’ bodies will be lowered into the earth. These

red coffins are the symbol the the blood spilled in battle for the good

of the laborers, and a symbol of the fire of Revolution, sweeping from

its path all who raise their hand against the will of the laboring

people, and lighting the torch of freedom.

Therefore, may their murderers know that in burying our red heroes, we

have also dug a grave for them. We will bury the butchers there without

a feeling of sorrow or sadness, but with damnation.

LEND A HAND, BROTHERS, AND FORWARD FOR FREEDOM!

The shadow of Protopopov crowns the insane heads of the bloodthirsty

stranglers with Trepov’s laurels. Raising bridges, counting on

starvation—Oh gendarme’s of Nikolai, you turn white before them. Lies in

newspapers, provocation by Finland—Oh Gapon, how far they are ahead of

you. Bands of chekists, cadet detachments—Oh berserkers of the Turkish

sultans, you have risen from the dead.

There are machine guns at the crossroads; an icebreaker has passed down

the Neva [in order to make the river uncrossable]. Workers of Petrograd!

You have all been arrested. You are all being watched by the butcher

Trotsky. Seaman and soldiers are locked in their barracks. This is a new

kind of concentration camp for the proletariat.

When we, through our authorities, proposed that a delegation be sent to

Kronstadt and impartially convinced that there are neither generals nor

epaulets with us, but only the laboring mass, which has taken power in

its own hands, we agreed that to the impartial non-party comrades would

be added Communists, chosen by your authorities, they opened fire.

Why did they do this? The leaders of the authorities cannot not know the

truth, and because they know, they are committing a crime. Their power

is being destroyed. It slips from them. They must choke and strangle

their adversaries, and the stronger they do so, the longer they will

exist.

These political corpses have outlived themselves. They have died in

Russia, for Russia, apart from Russia, but they still hold on, and in

order to hold on they raise the bridges, send an icebreaker down the

Neva, set up machine guns, arrest 20,000 people… But will they be able

to arrest all of Russia?

And with all of this, they call themselves the power of workers and

peasants.

Break the chains, brothers. The dawn of the 3rd Revolution is rising.

The bright sun of freedom shines here in Kronstadt. The oppressors power

tumbled down like a house of cards, and we, free, are building our

Revolutionary Soviet.

Lend a hand, brothers, and forward for freedom and fortune, for power to

Soviets, and not parties.

EVINKTIS, seaman of the battleship Sevastopol

LIST OF WOUNDED, KILLED, AND DIED OF WOUNDS

Brought to the Naval Hospital from March 10 through 14

KILLED: soldiers—Sergei NECHAEV and Feodosii KHATKO

DIED OF WOUNDS: Iakov ARKHIPOV

LIGHTLY WOUNDED: sldrs. - Fedor SHITEL, Andrei KOLIASA, Pantelei

KARELIN, Georgii CHALENKO, and sailor Dmitrii CHERIUKANOV

HEAVILY WOUNDED: Iosif ERMOLAEV, Mikhail SOVRASOV

WITHOUT COMMISSARS

Yesterday, it was possible to see an interesting sight in the town. A

directive was given by the Department of Administration, through the

uchkoms, on cleaning the sidewalks of ice and snow. Under the thunder of

cannons, citizens poured into the streets and took after the work in a

comradely way. The necessary tools were found: shovels, crowbars, axes

and the like. The populace answered in a comradely way to the laboring

duty, which under the commissarocracy they did under the lash.

MEETING OF THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

March 14, a meeting of the Prov. Rev. Com. took place. Among other

things, the following resolution was made.

1). About the Worker-Peasant Inspection;

Having heard the report of Comrade Romanenko about the unclear and

undefined condition of the existing apparatus of inspection and control,

it being an organ chosen by the former Soviet, and not answering to the

spirit of the time, after an exchange of opinions it is resolved:

The Worker-Peasant Inspection of the former Kronstadt Soviet Department

is to be eliminated. Worker control over civilian institutions is to be

placed with the Soviet of Trade Unions, which is assigned to chose a set

number of people from the memberships of all the unions. It also must

take control of all matters left by the former Worker-Peasant

Inspection.

2). About the Cultural-Educational Section of the former Politotdel;

It is resolved: The Revtroika is to be eliminated. All

cultural-educational work is to be given into the authority of the

Garrison Club.

All property and resources of the former Politotdel and its sections and

sub-departments are to be transferred to the Garrison Club. The Garrison

Club Revtroika is to take charge of all this, and to make a report on it

to the Prov. Rev. Com.

3). About shock work on the repair of the water transport and liquid

resources of the Kronstadt Port and Fortress.

It is resolved:

The Soviet of Unions is assigned to immediately call a Technical

Conference of representatives from interested institutions. This

Conference is assigned to urgently find out, jointly with a

representative of the Prov. Rev. Com.: 1) the necessary number of

working hands, 2) the amount of material needed, and 3) the amount of

time need for completion of the shock work.

FRATERNAL AID

The following donations have arrived at the Fleet Department of Produce

Distribution for the use of the defenders of true freedom:

March 14, from employees of the Prodbaza: Comrade Voevutsky, a new

summer soldier’s blouse, 1/4 lb. of tobacco, and 1/4 lb. of makhorka

[i.e., cheap tobacco]; Comrade Filippov, 1/8 of makhorka and one box of

matches; from Comrade Mikhailov, 1/2 lb. of makhorka; from Comrade

Alekseev, a new jacket, a pair of puttees, 1/4 of tobacco, and 3 boxes

of matches; from Comrade Kuvaldin, high boots, wide summer trousers, 250

cigarette papers, 1/4 of tobacco, and 3/8 of makhorka; from Comrade

Nikitin, 1 pair of underwear, 1 shirt, 1/8 lb. of makhorka, and a piece

of gray soap; from Comrade Buman, a soldier’s blouse, a new sheet, wide

trousers, a shirt, 1 pair of socks, 1/2 lb. of tobacco, 1/2 lb. of

makhorka, 500 cigarette papers, and 10 boxes of matches.

March 15, from the employees of the Prodbaza of the Fleet Produce

Administration: from Comrade Mokhov, 3/4 lb. of makhorka; from Comrade

Kondrashev, 1 underwear, 1 shirt, 1/2 lb. of high grade tobacco, 3/8 lb.

of makhorka, and 250 cigarette papers; from Comrade Baikov, 1 pair of

boots, 1 pair of new pants, 1/3 lb. of makhorka, and 2 boxes of matches;

Onuchin, 1 pair of boots, 1 pair of cloth trousers, and 1/4 lb. of

makhorka; Poplavsky, 1 pair of boots, 2 sailors’ striped vests, 1 pair

of underwear, 1 puttees, 1/8 of makhorka, 25 cigarettes, 2 boxes of

matches, and 1 cloth sailor’s blouse; Artamonov, 1 pair of boots, 1

underwear, 1 black pants, and 1/2 of tobacco; Manivmon, 1 quilted

trousers, 1 flannel sailor’s blouse, 1 sailor’s striped vest, and 3/8

lb. of makhorka; Ilyin, 1 set of worker’s clothing, 1 soldier’s hat, 1

pair of foot bindings, and 1/4 lb. of makhorka; Svirshevsky, 10,000

rubles, and 1/4 lb. of makhorka; Bek, 1 flannel sailor’s blouse and 1

second hand trousers; Shipelev, summer trousers, 1 set of worker’s

clothing, 2 soldier’s hats, and 1/4 lb. of makhorka; Maltsev, 1/4 lb. of

makhorka; Telenkov, 2000 rubles, 1 army soldier’s hat. and 1/4 lb. of

makhorka.

The General Meeting of servicemen of the Administration of the 4th

Division of Artillery unanimously resolved to extend a fraternal hand of

aid to the defenders of free Kronstadt, and share an extra pair of

boots. In the same day, the following made donations:

Nikitin B., Karpov I., Dvoinikov I., Sumin F., Sidorov V., Osipov V.,

Naumovich K., Panov V., Malyshev I., Uvarov M., Zubarev V., Veselov V.,

Kriuchkov M., Morokhin I., Elesin I., Vasiliev I., Vorobiev I., Mazul

A., Ostaschev I., Povoliaev A., Parenkov N., Kirilov A., Govorlivykh A.,

Emelianov Kh., Ankudinov F., Stopin N., Zakharov V.

Donations continue to arrive.

THANK YOU

On March 14, an unknown female citizen gave about 5-6 pounds of meat

into the command of the President of the Revtroika of the Naval Crew of

the First Command of Baltflot. At that time, the seamen had just set off

for one of the numbered forts, and the meat was placed in their hands.

The seamen give their heartfelt gratitude to the conscientious citizen.

It is now known to all that this great-spirited, unknown woman shared

this so valuable and tasty morsel with the seamen.

May the party of traitorous liars know this, may they tremble

pathetically before the single, fraternal family of Kronstadt.

Crew of the First Command of Baltflot

A SMALL SATIRE: KRONSTADT CHASTUSHKAS

The all-Russian commune

Razed us to the ground,

The Communist dictatorship

Brought us to ruin.

We drove the landowners out,

And waited for freedom, land,

We shook off all the Romanovs,

And were blessed with Communists.

Instead of freedom and land

They gave us the Cheka

And planted Soviet farms

Hither and yon.

They take away bread and beast,

The peasant bloats from hunger,

They took a gray horse from Erema,

And a ploughshare from Makar.

There are no matches, nor kerosine,

Everyone sits with a torch,

Under the Bolshevist commune,

They only eat potatoes.

They sent to the village

Five arshins of red calico,

The commissars took it all away,

Not an inch for the middle peasant.

And throughout Russia

The peasant rose for land,

But everyone writes in Izvestiia,

“The kulaks have rebelled.”

The chekist rides out

Like a tsarist general,

Floods the land with blood,

He’s fleeced everything to the bone.

They’re bringing serfdom for us anew,

Hey, wake up peasants!

Only the Bolsheviks alone,

Eat and drink like the barons before.

Arise peasant folk!

A new dawn is rising—

We’ll throw off Trotsky’s fetters,

We’ll throw off Lenin the tsar.

We’ll overthrow the dictatorship,

We’ll give freedom to labor,

We’ll allot for labor

The land, factories and plants.

Labor will establish equality,

And with labor free forever

Fraternity of all people will come,

And otherwise never.

A RESOLUTION BY PRISONERS OF WAR

At a general meeting of 240 prisoners of war, being cadets, officers,

and soldiers, taking place in the Army Stables, the following resolution

was passed unanimously.

“On March 8, we, Moscow and Petrograd cadets, officers and soldiers,

received an order to attack the town of Kronstadt. They told us that

White Guards had raised a mutiny in the town of Kronstadt. When we came

without a shot to the shores of the Town of Kronstadt, and having met

the forward units of sailors and workers, we became convinced that there

was no kind of White Guard mutiny in Kronstadt. On the contrary, the

soldiers and workers had overturned the power of the commissarocracy.

Right there, we voluntarily crossed to the side of the people of

Kronstadt. We now ask the Rev. Com. of the Town of Kronstadt to add our

strength to its army units, since we want to stand up as defenders of

the workers and peasants, not just of Kronstadt but of all Russia also.

We consider that the Prov. Rev. Com. of the Town of Kronstadt has really

taken the true path in the cause of liberation of all laborers, and that

only with this slogan, “All power to Soviets, and not Parties,” is it

possible to bring to an end the work which has been begun.

We promise to tell of anyone noticed propagandizing against the actions

and orders of the Prov. Rev. Com. of the Town of Kronstadt, and to send

them on the the Rev. Com.

(signature), President

(signature), Secretary

RESOLUTION

At the General Meeting of the crew of fort Totleben Morskoi, taking

place March 15, after the report of delegates from the Prov. Rev. Com.,

the following resolution was passed: “We the garrison of fort Totleben

Morskoi greet you, comrade seamen, workers and soldiers of the town of

Kronstadt, in the great difficult hour of our glorious struggle against

the hated Communist yoke. We are all ready as one to die for the

liberation of our suffering brothers, the peasants and workers of all

Russia, who are held in chains of damned slavery by deceipt and

oppression. Protecting the approaches to Kronstadt, we will be faithful

to our word to the end. We believe that soon we will smash to bits the

circle of enemies around the fortress with a decisive attack, and bring

freedom to every person of the suffering motherland, real truth and

freedom.”

LEAVING THE PARTY

All those leaving the ranks of the RCP are directed to turn in their

party booklets and identifications to their electoral troikas. Those

leaving the party in the future and giving declarations are directed to

do so right now.

Declarations of departure from the RCP arrive unceasingly at the

editorial offices, but in view of their great quantity and the

insufficiency of space, the editors are unable to publish them

immediately, and will include them as possible in following editions of

the newspaper.

Having discussed the current situation, we, members of the RCP, are

disgusted by the shameless actions of the little bunch of Communist

bureaucrats who strive to protect their power with arms, and to build

prosperity for themselves on others’ misfortune. We openly declare that

we did not enter the party in order to drown the world of laborers in

blood, but to give all our strength and knowledge for the good of the

laborers. This gang used our trust and wove itself a wasps’ nest. We

consider such oppressors to be outside the law, and we will, equally

with the toilers of the town of Kronstadt, defend the true path on which

the revolutionary seamen, soldiers, and workers stand. As of this date,

we do not consider ourselves to be members of the party, and give

ourselves entirely into the command of the Revolutionary Committee.

Fedorov, Efimov, Berendakov, Kurochkin, Tikhomirov, Esh, Kuznetsov,

Vishnevsky, Efimov, Storkhberg, Tmota and Tsepaev, employees of the

Worker-Peasant Inspection

Declarations have also arrived from the following:

Seamen: 232) Kulakov Mikhail, 233) Burmistrov Aleksandr, 234) Lugovskoi

Mikhail, 235) Dudkevich Arkadii, 236) Shabariv Ivan, 237) Romanov

Sergei, 238) Mamchenko Pavel, 239) Baranon Kuzma, 240) Kotenkov Ivan,

241) Sviiazev Sergei, 242) Brauk Karl, 243) Vokovets Ivan, 244)

Vinogradov Mikhail, 245) Senni Maksim, 246) Bogdanov Vasilii, 247)

Terentiev Stepan, 248) Grafov Aleksei, 249) Krasnoshevsky Iosif, 250)

Cheridnichenko Mark, 251) Lisitsyn Nikolai, 252) Sorokin Semion, 253)

Diak Anton, 254) Bykov Grigorii, 255) Vlasov Dmitrii, 256) Sereda

Andrei, 257) Buluev Andrei, 258) Ekimov Mikhail, 259) Morozov Aleksei,

260) Korliakov Grigorii, 261) Malaukhov Vasilii, 262) Prasolov Grigorii,

263) Butin Ivan, 264) Poliakov Gerasim, 265) Shatokhin Mikhail, 266)

Saltykov Mikhail, 267) Iurchenko Mark, 268) Raskatov Vasilii, 269)

Gusarov Mikhail, 270) Zhitnikov Aleksandr, [sic] 272) Protasov Ivan,

273) Sovolev Mikhail, 274) Markov Mikhail, 275) Kholodov Ivan, 276)

Marinov G., 277) Sitnikov Andrei.

Candidate members of the RCP: I. Marklev; A. Utrimov, soldier of the

10th Battery; also N. Malafeev; Kondratenko, member of the RCP; S.

Gorlov, sldr. of 4th Division; I. Kivikhin, employee of the Prodbaza; I.

Grigoriev, sldr. of the Fortress Fire Crew; also I. Korotov; N. Andreev,

member of the Admin. of the Union of Sewing Production; N. Tikhomirov,

employee of the Watch Crew of the Kronstadt Port; Zavialov, sldr. of

fort Totleben; also P. Ivanov; N. Platonov, seaman; F. Zhilin, master in

the Naval Artillery Laboratory; Angileiko, Aide to the Commander of the

Engineer. Work. Battalion; Nikiforov, Aide to the Director of the

Transport String of the Admin. of Construction; I. Panfilov, sldr. of

560th Battalion; also D. Piskarev; N. Vinogradov; also Korshinov; A.

Solonschikov, soldier of the Watch Crew of the Kronstadt Port; also I.

Maksimov; K. Grigoriev, seaman; E. Khromov, member of the RCP; A.

Krasikov, Head of the Admin. of the Commander of the Town of Kronstadt;

E. Tikhomirov, seaman; Gamzov, employee of the Ship Department; also

Leonenko; also Korotkevich; also Galakhov; also Blashek; also Bortnikov;

also A. Beliaev; also E. Balaev; also I. Petrov; also Sterling; also

Iampoltsev; also Petkevich; also E. Nikitin; also V. Egorov; also

Karpovich; also Shulgin; also Vnukov, also I. Bykhov, sldr. of the

Kotlin Railroad; also Brynsky; also Volkov; also Baranovsky; also M.

Fedorov; also Grushechevich; also Kuzmin; also V. Romanov; also V.

Zembal; also S. Afanasenko, militiaman; also N. Kraubner, serviceman of

the Admin of Construct. of the Fortress; P. Ukhnalevich, member of the

RCP; also 334) Popov.

PRODUCE FROM GORPRODKOM

Today, half a pound of bread is issued by adult cards of letter A for

coupon No 17. March 16, 17, and 18, 2 lbs. of white flour is issued by

children’s cards of series A from stores No 1, 5, 10, 13, 14 ,15, 25,

and 30 (independent of registration) for produce coupon No 11, and a one

pound tin on canned milk from stores No 5 and 14 for produce coupon No

12. Flour and milk will be issued for three days.

March 16 and 17, the haberdashery store (formerly belonging to Schukin)

will be open from 2 to 7. It is incumbent on institutions and citizens

having orders for good from the above named store to register them in

the Department of Distribution of Gorprodkom, room No 19, and to receive

the goods during the announced period.

AL. OKOLOTKOV, for the President of Gorprodkom

NOTICES

—The handicraft workshop of the Soviet of the People’s Economy accepts

orders for bed linen and clothes, with trimmings supplied by the

orderer.

—The Department of Social Security announces to citizens that textiles

in the possession of the Department have all been distributed. Others

who have turned in applications will be supplied first, upon receipt of

textiles.

—Warrant No 12 of Comrade Nikitin, member of the Revtroika of the

battleship Petropavlovsk has been lost. We ask that it be considered

invalid.

NOTICE

The Administration of the Central Garrison Club brings to the attention

of club members that lessons have resumed in all studios. It therefore

addresses a request to all teachers, and also to club members to attend

lessons as possible.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Revtroika of the Prodbaza asks military units and the civilian

populace to not throw away tins from preserves, since they can be used a

second time for the same purpose. Please turn them in at the following

addresses.

At Big Port, to Aramonov, the overseer of the warehouses, or on former

Kniazheskaya Street at the Oprodkomflot Store. Receipt will take place

from 10 am until 4 pm.

Afterwards

Before dawn on March 17, the final attack on Kronstadt got underway,

involving fully 50,000 Red Army troops. The Kronstadt sailors fought

valiantly, but they were dramatically outnumbered and the Red Army was

willing to absorb a large number of deaths to recapture the outpost and

put an end to the standoff. According to Paul Avrich, the American

consul estimated Red Army casualties as high as 10,000. The fighting

lasted all day and into the evening.

The next day, March 18, was the anniversary of the beginning of the

Paris Commune.

Over 8000 of the rebels—including Petrichenko and ten other members of

the Revolutionary Committee—escaped across the ice to Finland, more than

half of the total number of fighters at Kronstadt. Others were not so

lucky.

Ask by the chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal why he had opposed

himself to Soviet power, one defendant answered ironically: “What

difference does it make to us ignorant people what kind of power?”

On March 31, 1921, having crushed their own equivalent of the Paris

Commune, the Bolshevik authorities renamed both of the best-known ships

that had participated in the Kronstadt uprising. Without a trace of

irony, they renamed the Sevastopol, which had sustained Red Army strikes

from three 12-inch shells that killed or wounded 102 rebel sailors, the

Parizhskaya Kommuna (“Paris Commune”). Likewise, they renamed the

Petropavlovsk the Marat after the murdered French revolutionary leader,

Jean-Paul Marat.

Wherever you see a monument, you can be sure a slaughter took place.