Kronstadt Mutiny

In 1921, the main base of the Baltic Fleet, the key-city citadel of the proletarian revolution, Kronstadt, revolted.

Indeed, what gave rise to the armed uprising of the sailors of the fortress against the Soviet regime?

The answer to this question will not be so easy and simple, given that over the past years, most authors have considered it their duty to at least embellish, if not completely distort the facts. Trying to evaluate events that lie so far in the time period from the moment where we live, we will have to give a sober assessment of the articles and documents that we have at our disposal. A balanced assessment of the essence of the phenomena may not give an absolute guarantee of the veracity and reliability of the events in question, but it will help put forward some versions of the events of those days.

Russia on the eve of the rebellion

Consider the economic and political situation in the country on the eve of the rebellion in Kronstadt.

The main part of the industrial potential of Russia was put out of action, economic ties were broken, there was not enough raw materials and fuel. The country produced only 2% of the pre-war amount of pig iron, 3% of sugar, 5-6% of cotton fabrics, etc.

The industrial crisis gave rise to social collisions: unemployment, dispersal and declassification of the ruling class - the proletariat. Russia remained a petty-bourgeois country, 85% of its social structure fell to the share of the peasantry, exhausted by wars, revolutions, and food requisitioning. Life for the vast majority of the population has become a continuous struggle for survival. It came to strikes in the proletarian centers and mass unrest in the countryside. The arbitrariness of the Bolsheviks, which they carried out under the slogan of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in fact, the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, caused widespread indignation.

Random photos of nature

In late 1920 - early 1921 armed uprisings swept Western Siberia, Tambov, Voronezh provinces, the Middle Volga region, Don, Kuban. A large number of anti-Bolshevik peasant formations operated in Ukraine. In Central Asia, the creation of armed detachments of nationalists was increasingly unfolding. By the spring of 1921, uprisings were blazing across the country.

A difficult situation also developed in Petrograd. The norms for issuing bread were reduced, some food rations were canceled, and there was a threat of starvation. At the same time, barrage detachments did not stop their activities, confiscating food brought into the city by private individuals. On March 11, the closure of 93 Petrograd enterprises was announced, and 27,000 workers found themselves on the street.

About this period, Lenin said: “... in 1921, after we overcame the most important stage of the civil war, and overcame it victoriously, we stumbled upon a big - I believe, the biggest - internal political crisis of Soviet Russia. This internal crisis revealed the discontent not only of a significant part of the peasantry, but also of the workers. This was the first and, I hope, the last time in the history of Soviet Russia, when large masses of the peasantry, not consciously, but instinctively, in their mood, were against us.

Uprising in Kronstadt

Unrest in Petrograd, anti-Bolshevik demonstrations in other cities and regions of the country, could not but affect the mood of the sailors, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt.

The total number of ship crews, military sailors of coastal units, as well as ground forces stationed in Kronstadt and on the forts, was 13 February 1921 26887 people - 1455 commanders, the rest are privates.

They were worried about the news from home, mainly from the village - no food, no manufacture, no essentials. Especially many complaints about this situation came from sailors to the Bureau of Complaints of the Political Department of the Baltic Fleet in the winter of 1921.

Rumors about the events in Petrograd reaching Kronstadt were contradictory. Delegations from the personnel of the ships and units stationed in the fortress were sent to the city to clarify the causes and scale of the unrest. On February 27, the delegates reported to the general meetings of their teams on the causes of the unrest of the workers. On February 28, the sailors of the battleships "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" convened a meeting and adopted a resolution, which was submitted for discussion by representatives of all ships and parts of the Baltic Fleet.

On the afternoon of March 1, a rally was held on the anchor square of Kronstadt, which gathered about 16 thousand people. The leaders of the Kronstadt naval base hoped that during the meeting they would be able to change the mood of the sailors and soldiers of the garrison. They tried to convince the audience to give up their political demands. However, the participants by a majority vote supported the resolution of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol.

It was decided to disarm the communists who did not agree with the adopted resolution and threatened to pacify the discontented by force of arms.

Immediately after the rally, a meeting of the Bolsheviks was held, at which the possibility of armed suppression of the supporters of the adopted resolution was discussed. However, this decision was not made.

Petrichenko: “While carrying out the October Revolution in 1917, the workers of Russia hoped to achieve their complete emancipation and placed their hopes on the Communist Party, which promised a lot. What did the Communist Party, headed by Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and others, give in 3.5 years? During the three and a half years of its existence, the communists have not given emancipation, but the complete enslavement of the human personality. Instead of police-gendarmerie monarchism, they received every minute fear of falling into the dungeons of the state of emergency, which many times surpassed the gendarme department of the tsarist regime with its horrors.

The demands of the Kronstadters, in the resolution adopted on March 1, posed a serious threat not to the Soviets, but to the Bolsheviks' monopoly on political power. This resolution was, in essence, an appeal to the government to respect the rights and freedoms proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

Soviet institutions in Kronstadt continued to work. Proudly believing that the foundation stone of the third revolution had been laid in Kronstadt, the members of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the overwhelming majority of former workers and peasants, were deeply confident in the support of their struggle by the working people of Petrograd and the whole country.

The news of the events in Kronstadt provoked a sharp reaction from the Soviet leadership. The delegation of Kronstadters, which arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested. On March 4, the Labor and Defense Council approved the text of the government report on the events in Kronstadt, published on March 2 in the newspapers. The movement in Kronstadt was declared a "mutiny" organized by the French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the resolution adopted by the Kronstadters was "Black Hundred-Socialist-Revolutionary."

Giving such a characterization of the events, the authorities took into account the then socio-political psychology of the masses, and above all of the proletarians. The bulk of the workers were extremely negative about attempts to restore the monarchy. Therefore, the mere mention of a tsarist general, and even one connected with the imperialists of the Entente, could discredit the Kronstadters and their program.

On March 3, Petrograd and the Petrograd province were declared under a state of siege. This measure is more directed against the anti-Bolshevik demonstrations of the St. Petersburg workers than against the Kronstadt sailors.

Without a preliminary investigation, according to the first, not yet verified, report of the Cheka, the decision of the Council of Labor and Defense, which was signed by V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky, "the former General Kozlovsky and his associates were outlawed." This was followed by repressive acts against their relatives. On March 3, arrests were made in Petrograd of persons who had absolutely nothing to do with the events in Kronstadt. They were taken as hostages. Kozlovsky's family was among the first to be arrested: his wife and four sons, the youngest of whom was not even 16 years old. Together with them, all their relatives, including distant ones, were arrested and exiled to the Arkhangelsk region.

The Kronstadters sought open and transparent negotiations with the authorities, but the position of the latter from the very beginning of the events was unequivocal: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must be severely punished. Parliamentarians who were sent by the rebels were arrested. The proposal to exchange representatives of Kronstadt and Petrograd remained unanswered. A broad propaganda campaign was launched in the press, distorting the essence of the events taking place, in every possible way propagating the idea that the uprising was the work of the tsarist generals, officers and Black Hundreds. Calls were made to "disarm a bunch of bandits" who had settled in Kronstadt.

On March 4, in connection with direct threats from the authorities to deal with the Kronstadters by force, the Military Revolutionary Committee turned to military specialists - staff officers - with a request to help organize the defense of the fortress. On March 5, an agreement was reached. Military experts suggested that, without waiting for the assault on the fortress, they themselves go on the offensive. They insisted on the capture of Oranienbaum, Sestroetsk in order to expand the base of the uprising. However, all proposals to be the first to start hostilities were resolutely refused by the Military Revolutionary Committee. offered, without waiting for the storming of the fortress, to go on the offensive themselves. They insisted on the capture of Oranienbaum, Sestroetsk in order to expand the base of the uprising. However, all proposals to be the first to start hostilities were resolutely refused by the Military Revolutionary Committee.

On March 5, an order is issued on operational measures to eliminate the "mutiny". The 7th Army was restored, under the command of Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8.

The offensive launched on March 8 ended in failure. Having suffered heavy losses, the Soviet troops retreated to their original lines. One of the reasons for this failure was the small number of attackers, whose forces, together with the reserve, amounted to 18 thousand people. The forces of the rebels numbered 27 thousand sailors, 2 battleships and up to 140 coast guard guns. The second reason lay in the mood of the Red Army soldiers, who were thrown onto the ice of the Gulf of Finland. It came to the direct disobedience of the Red Army. In the offensive zone of the Southern Group, the 561st Regiment refused to obey the order to storm the fortress. In the northern sector, with great difficulty, it was possible to force an attack by a detachment of Petrograd cadets, who were considered the most combat-ready part of the troops of the Northern Group.

Meanwhile, unrest in military units intensified. The Red Army soldiers refused to storm Kronstadt. It was decided to start sending "unreliable" sailors to serve in other areas of the country, away from Kronstadt. Until March 12, 6 echelons with sailors were sent.

In order to force the military units to advance, the Soviet command had to resort not only to agitation, but also to threats. A powerful repressive mechanism is being created, designed to change the mood of the Red Army. Unreliable units were disarmed and sent to the rear, the instigators were shot. Sentences to capital punishment "for refusing to carry out a combat mission", "for desertion" followed one after another. They were carried out immediately. For moral intimidation, they were shot in public.

On the night of March 17, after an intensive artillery shelling of the fortress, its new assault began. When it became clear that further resistance was useless and would lead to nothing except additional victims, at the suggestion of the fortress defense headquarters, the defenders decided to leave Kronstadt. The government of Finland was asked if it could accept the garrison of the fortress. After receiving a positive response, a retreat to the Finnish coast began, provided by specially formed cover detachments. About 8 thousand people left for Finland, including the entire headquarters of the fortress, 12 out of 15 members of the "revolutionary committee" and many of the most active participants in the rebellion. Of the members of the Revolutionary Committee, only Perepelkin, Vershinin and Valk were detained.

By the morning of March 18, the fortress was in the hands of the Red Army. The authorities concealed the number of dead, missing, and wounded on both sides.

Consequences of the Kronstadt uprising

The massacre of the Kronstadt garrison began. The very stay in the fortress during the uprising was considered a crime. All sailors and Red Army men went through the tribunal. The sailors of the battleships "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" were dealt with especially cruelly. Even being on them was enough to be shot.

By the summer of 1921, 10,001 people passed through the tribunal: 2,103 were sentenced to death, 6,447 were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and 1,451, although they were released, the charges were not removed from them.

With particular predilection, the punitive organs persecuted those who had left the RCP(b) during the Kronstadt events. People whose “corpus delicti” consisted in surrendering party cards were unconditionally classified as political enemies and tried, although some of them were participants in the 1917 revolution.

There were so many convicts that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was specially involved in the creation of new concentration camps. The expansion of places of detention was caused not only by the events in Kronstadt, but also by the general increase in the number of those arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, as well as captured military personnel of the White armies.

In the spring of 1922, a mass eviction of the inhabitants of Kronstadt began. On February 1, the evacuation commission began its work. Until April 1, 1923, it registered 2,756 people, of which 2,048 were "crown rebels" and members of their families, 516 people were not connected with the fortress by their activities. The first batch of 315 people was sent in March 1922. In total, 2,514 people were deported during the specified time, of which 1,963 were sent as “crown rebels” and members of their families, 388 as not connected with the fortress.

Conclusion

For many decades, the Kronstadt events were interpreted as a rebellion prepared by the White Guards, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists, who relied on the active support of the imperialists. It was alleged that the actions of the Kronstadters were aimed at overthrowing the Soviet regime, that the sailors of individual ships and part of the garrison in the fortress took part in the mutiny. As for the leaders of the party and the state, they allegedly did everything to avoid bloodshed, and only after appeals to the soldiers and sailors of the fortress with a proposal to abandon their demands remained unanswered, it was decided to use violence. The fortress was taken by storm. At the same time, the victors remained extremely humane towards the vanquished. Only the most active participants in the rebellion, mostly former officers, were sentenced to death. In the future, repressions were not carried out.

The events, documents and articles we have considered allow us to give a different view of the Kronstadt events. The Soviet leadership was aware of the nature of the Kronstadt movement, its goals, its leaders, that neither the Socialist-Revolutionaries, nor the Mensheviks, nor the imperialists took any active part in it. However, objective information was carefully hidden from the population and instead a falsified version was offered that the Kronstadt events were the work of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, White Guards and international imperialism, although the Cheka could not find any data on this.

Much more important in the demands of the Kronstadters was the call for the liquidation of the monopoly power of the Bolsheviks. The punitive action against Kronstadt was supposed to show that any political reforms would not affect the foundations of this monopoly.

The party leadership understood the need for concessions, including the replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind, and permission for trade. It was these questions that were the main demand of the Kronstadters. There seemed to be a basis for negotiations. However, the Soviet government rejected this possibility. If the X Congress of the RCP(b) opened on March 6, that is, on the day appointed earlier, the turn in economic policy announced at it could change the situation in Kronstadt, affect the mood of the sailors: they were waiting for Lenin to speak at the congress. Then, perhaps, an assault would not have been needed. However, the Kremlin did not want such a development of events.

The Petrograd Committee of the RCP(b) introduced martial law in the city, the instigators of the workers were arrested. On March 1, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the military fortress of Kronstadt (garrison of 26 thousand people) under the slogan "Power to the Soviets, not to parties!" passed a resolution supporting the workers of Petrograd. Thus began the famous Kronstadt uprising.

There are two main points of view on this event. The Bolshevik approach, where the rebellion is called senseless, criminal, which was raised by a mass of sailors disorganized by anti-Soviet agents, yesterday's peasants, outraged by the results of war communism.

Liberal, anti-Soviet approach - when the rebels are called heroes who put an end to the policy of war communism.

Speaking about the prerequisites for the rebellion, they usually point to the plight of the population - the peasants and workers, who were ruined by the war that had been going on since 1914 - the First World War, then the Civil War. In which both sides, white and red, supplied their armies and cities with food at the expense of the rural population. A wave of peasant uprisings swept across the country, both in the rear of the White armies and the Reds. The last of them were in the south of Ukraine, in the Volga region, in the Tambov region. This allegedly became the prerequisite for the Kronstadt uprising.

The immediate causes of the uprising were:

Moral decay of the crews of the dreadnoughts "Sevastopol" and "Petropavlovsk". In 1914-1916, the Baltic battleships did not fire a single shot at the enemy. During the two and a half years of the war, they only went to sea a few times, carrying out the combat mission of long-range cover for their cruisers, and never took part in combat clashes with the German fleet. This was largely due to the design flaws of the Baltic dreadnoughts, in particular, weak armor protection, which led to the fear of the naval leadership to lose expensive ships in battle. It is not difficult to guess how this affected the psychological state of their teams.

Checking the Baltic Fleet in December 1920, the head of the 1st special department of the Cheka, Vladimir Feldman, reported:

"The fatigue of the masses of the Baltic Fleet, caused by the intensity of political life and economic turmoil, aggravated by the need to pump out from this mass the most persistent element, hardened in the revolutionary struggle, on the one hand, and dilute the remnants of these elements with a new immoral, politically backward addition, and sometimes even directly politically unreliable - on the other hand, it changed to some extent for the worse the political physiognomy of the Baltic Fleet. The leitmotif is the thirst for rest, the hope for demobilization in connection with the end of the war and for the improvement of the material and moral condition, with the achievement of these desires along the line of least resistance. Everything that hinders the achievement these desires of the masses or lengthens the path to them, causes discontent.

The negative impact of the "fathers-commanders". Instead of appointing a real military commander to Kronstadt, who would put things in order in the "sailor freemen", where the positions of the anarchists were strong, Fyodor Raskolnikov, L. Trotsky's protégé, was appointed commander of the Baltic Fleet in June 120.

Trotskyist propaganda. Raskolnikov practically did not deal with official affairs, and he devoted the time devoted not to drinking to spreading the ideas of Trotskyism. Raskolnikov managed to draw the Kronstadt party organization of about 1.5 thousand Bolsheviks into the "discussion about trade unions." On January 10, 1921, a discussion of party activists took place in Kronstadt. Trotsky's platform was supported by Raskolnikov, and Lenin by the commissar of the Baltic Fleet Kuzmin. Three days later, a general meeting of the Kronstadt communists was held with the same agenda. Finally, on January 27, Raskolnikov was removed from his post as commander of the fleet, and Kukel was appointed temporarily acting.

Strangely, emigre and Western newspapers began to publish reports about the uprising that had allegedly already begun in Kronstadt 3-4 weeks before it began.

In Paris, on February 10, 1921, the message of the Russian "Latest News" was, in fact, a completely usual newspaper duck for that time and the emigre press:

"London, February 9. (Correspondent). Soviet newspapers report that the crew of the Kronstadt fleet rebelled last week. They seized the entire port and arrested the chief naval commissar. The Soviet government, not trusting the local garrison, sent four red regiments from Moscow. According to rumors, the rebellious sailors intend to start operations against Petrograd, and a state of siege has been declared in this city. The rebels say that they will not surrender and will fight against the Soviet troops ".

Dreadnought "Petropavlovsk"

Nothing of the kind was observed in Kronstadt at that moment, and the Soviet newspapers, of course, did not report any rebellion. But three days later, the Parisian newspaper Le Matin ("Morning") published a similar report:

Helsingfors, February 11. It is reported from Petrograd that, in view of the latest disturbances of the Kronstadt sailors, the Bolshevik military authorities are taking a whole series of measures to isolate Kronstadt and prevent the Red soldiers and sailors of the Kronstadt garrison from infiltrating into Petrograd. The delivery of food to Kronstadt has been suspended until further orders. Hundreds of sailors were arrested and sent to Moscow, apparently to be shot."

On March 1, a resolution supporting the workers of Petrograd was issued, with the slogan "All power to the Soviets, not to the communists". They demanded the release from prison of all representatives of the socialist parties, the holding of re-elections of the Soviets and the exclusion of all communists from them, the granting of freedom of speech, assembly and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, allowing handicraft production with their own labor, allowing peasants to freely use their land and dispose of products their economy, that is, the elimination of the food dictatorship. To maintain order in Kronstadt and organize the defense of the fortress, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRC) was created, headed by the sailor-clerk Petrichenko, in addition to which the committee included his deputy Yakovenko, Arkhipov (engine foreman), Tukin (master of the electromechanical plant) and Oreshin (manager third labor school).

On March 3, Petrograd and the Petrograd province were declared under a state of siege. The Kronstadters sought open and public negotiations with the authorities, but the position of the latter from the very beginning of the events was unequivocal: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must lay down their arms without any conditions. Parliamentarians who were sent by the rebels were arrested.

On March 4, the Petrograd Defense Committee presented an ultimatum to Kronstadt. The rebels were forced to either accept it or defend themselves. On the same day, a meeting of the delegates' meeting was held in the fortress, which was attended by 202 people. It was decided to defend. At the suggestion of Petrichenko, the composition of the Military Revolutionary Committee was increased from 5 to 15 people.

On March 5, the authorities issued an order for operational measures to eliminate the uprising. The 7th Army was restored under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The 7th Army is being reinforced with armored trains and air detachments. More than 45 thousand bayonets were concentrated on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.

On March 7, 1921, artillery shelling of Kronstadt began. On March 8, 1921, units of the Red Army stormed Kronstadt, the assault was repulsed. A regrouping of forces began, additional units were pulled together.

On the night of March 16, after an intensive artillery shelling of the fortress, a new assault began. The rebels noticed the attacking Soviet units too late. So, the fighters of the 32nd brigade were able to approach the distance of one verst to the city without firing a single shot. The attackers were able to break into Kronstadt, by morning the resistance was broken.

During the battles for Kronstadt, the Red Army lost 527 people killed and 3285 people wounded. The rebels lost about a thousand people killed, 4.5 thousand (of which half were wounded) were taken prisoner, some fled to Finland (8 thousand), 2103 people were shot by the verdicts of revolutionary tribunals. Thus ended the Baltic Freemen.

Uprising features:

In fact, only a part of the sailors raised the rebellion; later, the garrisons of several forts and individual inhabitants from the city joined the rebels. There was no unity of sentiment, if the entire garrison had supported the rebels, it would have been much more difficult to suppress the uprising in the most powerful fortress and more blood would have been shed. The sailors of the Revolutionary Committee did not trust the garrisons of the forts, so over 900 people were sent to the Rif fort, 400 to Totleben and Obruchev each. Commandant of the Totleben fort Georgy Langemak, future chief engineer of the RNII and one of the "fathers" "Katyusha", categorically refused to obey the Revolutionary Committee, for which he was arrested and sentenced to death.

On the deck of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" after the suppression of the rebellion. In the foreground is a hole from a large-caliber projectile.

The demands of the rebels were pure nonsense and could not be met in the conditions of the just ended Civil War and Intervention. Let's say the slogan "Soviets without Communists": The Communists made up almost the entire State Apparatus, the backbone of the Red Army (400 thousand out of 5.5 million people), the command staff of the Red Army for 66% of the graduates of the courses of painters from workers and peasants, appropriately processed by communist propaganda. Without this corps of managers, Russia would again sink into the abyss of a new Civil War and the Intervention of fragments of the white movement would begin (only in Turkey, the 60,000-strong Russian army of Baron Wrangel was stationed, consisting of experienced fighters who had nothing to lose). Along the borders were the young states, Poland, Finland, Estonia, which were not averse to chop off more Russian land. They would have been supported by Russia's "allies" in the Entente. Who will take power, who will lead the country and how, where to get food, etc. - it is impossible to find answers in the naive and irresponsible resolutions and demands of the rebels.

The rebels were mediocre commanders, militarily, and did not use all the possibilities for defense (probably, thank God - otherwise much more blood would have been shed). So, Major General Kozlovsky, commander of the Kronstadt artillery, and a number of other military experts immediately suggested that the Revkom attack the Red Army units on both sides of the bay, in particular, capture the Krasnaya Gorka fort and the Sestroretsk area. But neither the members of the Revolutionary Committee nor the ordinary rebels were going to leave Kronstadt, where they felt safe behind the armor of battleships and the concrete of the forts. Their passive position led to a quick defeat. During the fighting, the powerful artillery of the battleships and forts controlled by the rebels was not used to its full potential and did not inflict any special losses on the Bolsheviks. The military leadership of the Red Army, in particular Tukhachevsky, also did not always act satisfactorily.

Both sides did not hesitate to lie. The rebels published the first issue of Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, where the main "news" was that "There is a general uprising in Petrograd." In fact, unrest in the factories in Petrograd subsided, some ships stationed in Petrograd, and part of the garrison hesitated and took a neutral position. The vast majority of soldiers and sailors supported the government.

Zinoviev, on the other hand, lied that White Guard and British agents penetrated Kronstadt, throwing gold left and right, and General Kozlovsky raised a rebellion.

- The "heroic" leadership of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, headed by Petrichenko, realizing that the jokes were over, at 5 o'clock in the morning on March 17, they left by car across the ice of the bay to Finland. Following them rushed a crowd of ordinary sailors and soldiers.

The result of the suppression of the rebellion was the weakening of Trotsky's position: the beginning of the New Economic Policy automatically pushed Trotsky's positions into the background and completely discredited his plans to militarize the country's economy. March 1921 marked a turning point in our history. The restoration of statehood and the economy began, an attempt to plunge Russia into a new Time of Troubles was stopped.

For many decades, the history of the Civil War and other events that followed the October 1917 coup were romanticized by all means of Soviet propaganda. In 1936, the masters of "the most important art for us" created the film "We are from Kronstadt", dedicated to the events of fifteen years ago. From numerous posters pasted all over the vast country, the fighters for Soviet power courageously looked at the White Guard invisible executioners, bristling with bayonets, to whose chest the rebels tied massive boulders in order to give the bodies of their victims negative buoyancy. The Kronstadt mutiny of 1921 in the mass consciousness became one of the milestones of the heroic struggle of the new world with the old. Now, more than nine decades later, one can calmly and without emotions try to figure out what really happened at the Baltic island naval base.

Economic situation

Start

Any uprising begins with its organization. On February 28, a meeting was convened on the battleships and a resolution was adopted, in the text of which the sailors designated as their goal the establishment of truly people's power, and not party dictatorship.

The newspaper "Izvestia VRK" (the abbreviation stood for "Provisional Revolutionary Committee", it included fifteen elected representatives) published the adopted document, it happened on March 2. The Kronstadt rebellion was led mainly by sailors (9 people), as well as a nurse, a school director and four representatives of the proletariat. They also elected the chairman of the RVC, he became Stepan Petrichenko, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet. When the Bolsheviks received information that the head of the committee was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party, and there was a general among the participants in the riot (A. N. Kozlovsky commanded the artillery of the base), they immediately announced a White Guard-SR conspiracy.

Meanwhile, six hundred of the most devoted VKP(b) communists were arrested and isolated. They were not shot, they only took away good boots, giving out bast shoes in return. Approximately a third of all party members (about three hundred) supported the rebels. Lenin and Trotsky understood that the rebellion threatened not just the loss of an important outpost in the Baltic Sea. If it is not suppressed, the whole of Russia may flare up. 1921 became a fateful year.

Information war

The potential developed in the first days of the uprising was not further developed due to the limited thinking of its leaders. The determined members of the Military Revolutionary Committee tried to insist on an offensive initiative (direction - Oranienbaum and Sestroretsk and further expansion of the bridgehead), but they did not find support. But the danger of such a development of the situation was well understood in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks began preparations for a possible siege of the city, carrying out a series of events that today would be called elements of an information counterattack. On March 2, the Soviet press organs briefly described the Kronstadt rebellion as "Black Hundred-Social Revolutionary", organized by the White Guard General Kozlovsky with the support of the French special services with the aim of restoring tsarism. All this from beginning to end was untrue, but it had an effect on the general population, who were anti-monarchist during the years of the Civil War. So the year 1921 in the history of Russia (and possibly the whole world) marked one of the first cases of successful manipulation of mass consciousness.

Martial law was introduced in the entire metropolitan province.

indecisiveness

The Kronstadters naively believed that the Bolshevik Politburo, frightened by such a massive manifestation of discontent, would not suppress it by force, but would begin a political dialogue. In addition, they felt their considerable military potential, after all, the Baltic Fleet, no joke. But in this matter, the organizers of the uprising showed a clear overestimation of their own strength. Kronstadt in 1921 was not distinguished by its former combat capability. Discipline left much to be desired, unity of command was undermined by the reforms of the armed forces, many military specialists fled, many naval officers were physically destroyed by revolutionary sailors in the previous years of the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. The coastal batteries were not able to conduct effective fire, the ships, frozen into the ice, lost their maneuver. The rebels, not the Bolsheviks, took the first steps towards establishing a negotiating process. The parliamentarians were immediately arrested and subsequently shot. Immediately, repressions began against the families of the rebels.

The X Congress of the RCP(b) was scheduled to begin on March 8. The split consciousness of the leadership of the insurgent sailors manifested itself in some expectations of change and softening of the Bolshevik policy towards the peasants. To some extent, they were justified, at the congress it was decided to replace the surplus tax with a tax in kind (that is, not everything, but only a part, began to be taken away from the peasants), but the Leninist leadership did not want to recognize this measure as forced. On the contrary, the leader of the world proletariat formulated the promising party policy as a merciless desire to “teach this public a lesson” so that it would not even dare to think about resistance for several decades. Lenin did not look further, but in vain ...

On the Kronstadt ice...

Three hundred delegates to the Congress began to prepare for a punitive campaign against the rebellious island. In order not to walk on the ice alone, they decided to take with them the 7th army of Tukhachevsky, which urgently needed to be restored and reorganized. On the day of the expected opening of the Congress, the red troops, supported by artillery, went on the attack. She choked. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion on the first attempt failed for three reasons, including the lack of strategic talents of the “red Bonaparte”, poor preparation, expressed in the lack of attacking forces (18 thousand bayonets against 27 thousand defenders) and low morale. The Red Army soldiers of the 561st regiment generally refused to shoot at the rebels, for which they were severely punished. To improve discipline, the Bolsheviks used the usual methods: selective executions, detachments and accompanying artillery fire. The second assault was scheduled for March 17th.

This time the punitive units were better prepared. The attackers were dressed in winter camouflage, and they managed to covertly approach the positions of the rebels on the ice. There was no artillery preparation, it was more problems than good, polynyas were formed that did not freeze, but were only covered with a thin crust of ice, immediately sprinkled with snow. So they proceeded in silence.

rout

The attackers managed to overcome a ten-kilometer distance by the predawn hour, after which their presence was discovered. A counter battle began, which lasted almost a day. There was no way for the attackers and defenders to retreat, the battle was fierce and bloody. Each house was taken with huge losses, but no one reckoned with them. In the memoirs written later, the participants in the assault, who later became prominent military leaders, honestly noted the exceptional courage of both sides. On March 18, the rebellion was suppressed, the majority of the participants in the uprising of the Kronstadt garrison were captured or killed. About a third of the personnel (approximately 8 thousand) were able to escape across the ice to the adjacent Finnish territory, including almost the entire VRK. Three instigators (Valk, Vershinin and Perepelkin) did not have time to evacuate and were arrested. The real losses of the parties were not disclosed.

Results and losses

The Kronstadt uprising of 1921 completely dispelled the illusions of a significant part of the population of Soviet Russia about the possibilities of real people's self-government. Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other members of the leadership of the CPSU (b) managed to quite intelligibly explain to the broad masses the futility of resistance to the new government by harsh forceful methods. Despite the secrecy of information about human losses, they can still be estimated from indirect data. The garrison was about 27 thousand. 10 thousand people fell under the tribunal (2103 were shot), eight more were able to escape from the "proletarian retribution". Consequently, the number of dead rebels against Soviet power is approximately 9 thousand people.

The losses of the attacking side, as a rule, are greater than those of the defending side. Considering that there were two assaults, and the first of them was extremely unsuccessful, it can be assumed that up to 20 thousand soldiers of Tukhachevsky's 7th Army were killed during the punitive expedition.

The year 1921 in the history of Russia became a new page in the Soviet party mythology with the same actors as in the previous "heroic" times. The legendary hero of the Civil War, sailor Dybenko, who became famous for many outstanding atrocities and no less epic cowardice, took part in the suppression of the rebellion. It was he, according to official historians, who smashed the Germans near Narva on February 23, 1918. In fact, the echelon with its valiant army was hardly able to be detained in the Middle Volga region. In Kronstadt he managed to distinguish himself.

95 years ago, on March 18, 1921, the Kronstadt rebellion was suppressed, which began under the slogan "For Soviets without Communists!". This was the first anti-Bolshevik uprising since the end of the Civil War. The teams of the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk demanded re-elections of the Soviets, the abolition of commissars, freedom of activity for the socialist parties and free trade.

The Kronstadt sailors were the vanguard and strike force of the Bolsheviks: they participated in the October Revolution, suppressed the uprising of the cadets of military schools in Petrograd, stormed the Moscow Kremlin and established Soviet power in various cities of Russia.
And it was these people who were outraged by the fact that the Bolsheviks (whom they believed) brought the country to the brink of a national catastrophe, the country was devastated, 20% of the country's population was starving, in some regions there was even cannibalism.

In late 1920 - early 1921 armed uprisings of peasants swept Western Siberia, Tambov, Voronezh provinces, the Middle Volga region, Don, Kuban, Ukraine, Central Asia. The situation in the cities became more and more explosive. There was a shortage of food, many plants and factories were closed due to a lack of fuel and raw materials, workers found themselves on the street. A particularly difficult situation at the beginning of 1921 developed in large industrial centers, primarily in Moscow and Petrograd. All this heated up the social atmosphere.
People really saw that the standard of living that the Soviet government gave them is much worse than the standard of living of livestock under the previous government ... There was a mass exit from the party, a riot began.

The reason for the unrest in Kronstadt was the protests of the workers in Petrograd. On February 24, 1921, the workers of the Pipe Factory took to the streets. They were joined by workers from other enterprises. Soon sailors and soldiers appeared among the demonstrators. The mob freed the workers who had been arrested for absenteeism (at shut down factories).
The news of unrest in the capital reached Kronstadt. On March 1, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the military fortress of Kronstadt (garrison of 26 thousand people) under the slogan "Power to the Soviets, not to parties!" passed a resolution supporting the workers of Petrograd.

Sailors, soldiers and residents of Kronstadt held a rally on Anchor Square, at which they demanded from the Bolsheviks: to release all political prisoners, to abolish commissars, to give complete freedom to leftist parties, to allow handicraft production, to allow peasants to use their land, to allow freedom of trade. On the same day, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRK) was created in the fortress, which was not subordinate to the Bolsheviks.
The Kronstadters sought open and transparent negotiations with the authorities, but the Council of People's Commissars made a decision: not to enter into negotiations, but to suppress the rebellion by any means. The rebels were declared "outlaws". Reprisals against the relatives of the leaders of the uprising followed. They were taken as hostages.

On March 2, Petrograd and the Petrograd province were declared under a state of siege.
On March 3, 1921, a “defense headquarters” was formed in the fortress, headed by the former captain E.N. Dmitriev, officer of the general staff of the tsarist army B. A. Arkannikov.
On March 4, the Petrograd Defense Committee issued an ultimatum to Kronstadt. It was decided to defend. The garrison of the fortress of Kronstadt numbered 26 thousand military personnel, however, it should be noted that not all personnel participated in the uprising - in particular, 450 people who refused to join the uprising were arrested and locked in the hold of the battleship Petropavlovsk; with weapons in hand, the party school and part of the communist sailors went ashore in full force, there were also defectors (in total, before the assault, more than 400 people left the fortress).

Few communists were willing to shed the blood of the sailors who gave power to Lenin and Trotsky. And then the party sends its generals to suppress it. Here are Trotsky, and Tukhachevsky, and Yakir, and Fedko, and Voroshilov with Khmelnitsky, Sedyakin, Kazansky, Putna, Fabricius. It seems that at that moment no one threatened the young Soviet Republic. Except the peoples of Russia. Peter has already gone on strike. Tambov peasants impaled brutalized commissars on pitchforks. Therefore, Kronstadt had to be crushed. Urgently. But commanders alone are not enough. And then the party sends delegates to its Tenth Congress and big party members. Here and Kalinin, and Bubnov, and Zatonsky. The Consolidated Division is being formed ... It was also called Sbrodnaya. They gathered those communists who were guilty, stealing, drinking, selling out. Comrade Dybenko, former chairman of the Tsentrobalt, comrade Dybenko, who had fled from the battlefield, expelled from the party for cowardice, was appointed at the head of the Consolidated Division (the metro and the street are still named after him in St. Petersburg).

On March 5, 1921, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council No. 28, the 7th Army was restored under the command of M.N. Tukhachevsky, who was instructed to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8.

At 18:00 on March 7, shelling of Kronstadt began. At dawn on March 8, 1921, the soldiers of the Red Army stormed Kronstadt. But the assault was repulsed by a garrison of 8 thousand sailors, and the troops with huge losses retreated to their original lines. As K. E. Voroshilov noted, after an unsuccessful assault, “the political and moral state of individual units was alarming,” two regiments of the 27th Omsk Rifle Division (235th Minsk and 237th Nevelsky) refused to participate in the battle and were disarmed. And after it became known that individual soldiers were going over to the side of the rebels, the mobilization of the Communists throughout the country was announced.

The Consolidated Division also distinguished itself. Yudin, deputy head of the special department, reported on Dybenko's courage: “The 561st regiment, having retreated a mile and a half to Kronstadt, refused to go on the offensive. The reason is unknown. Tov. Dybenko ordered the second chain to be deployed and fired at the returnees. Regiment 561 is taking repressive measures against its Red Army soldiers in order to further force them to go on the offensive.

The most conscious communists went to suppress the rebellion, among these activists were the writer Fadeev, the future Marshal Konev.

As of March 12, 1921, the rebel forces numbered 18 thousand soldiers and sailors, 100 coastal defense guns (taking into account the ship guns of the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk - 140 guns), but the guns of the forts were stationary and, unfortunately, mostly aimed away from the attackers.

In preparation for the second assault, the strength of the group of troops was increased to 24,000 infantry (according to some sources, up to 40,000), including from the penalty box.
Naturally, five detachments were set up to shoot "cowards and deserters" ...

The assault began on the night of March 17, 1921, the attackers were in white masks and were seen only a kilometer from the fortress, so the artillery fire was ineffective, especially since the shells were fed manually, the battleships froze into ice and blocked each other's firing zones, and plus also, the shells that fired were armor-piercing, with bottom fuses ... punching a hole went under water and exploded deep under water. And many did not explode at all because the breakers were placed incorrectly. All this is due to the low proficiency of the personnel, who lost regular officers, whom these same sailors shot en masse on a class basis years earlier.

From March 17 to March 18, 1921, about 8 thousand rebels, including General Kozlovsky, left for Finland. Their departure by lot was covered by several hundred people.
On March 18, 1921, the headquarters of the rebels (which was located in one of the gun turrets of Petropavlovsk) decided to destroy the battleships (along with the prisoners who were in the holds) and break through to Finland. They ordered to lay several pounds of explosives under the gun turrets, but this order caused outrage. On the Sevastopol, the old sailors disarmed and arrested the rebels, after which they released the communists from the hold and radioed that Soviet power had been restored on the ship. Some time later, after the start of the artillery shelling, Petropavlovsk also surrendered (which most of the rebels had already left).

Captured sailors are tried. Each case was examined individually and 2,103 death sentences were handed down (VIZh. 1991, no. 7, p. 64). They shot at the same time the priest and the headman of the Naval Cathedral. Also, 6459 people were sentenced to various terms of punishment.

According to Soviet sources, the attackers lost 527 people killed and 3285 wounded. During the assault, 1,000 rebels were killed, more than 2,000 were “wounded and captured with weapons in their hands,” more than 2,000 surrendered.
A brutal reprisal began not only over those who held weapons in their hands, but also over the population. In the spring of 1922, the mass eviction of the inhabitants of Kronstadt from the island began. Over the following years, the surviving participants in the Kronstadt events were repeatedly repressed later.

Those who took part in the March 1917 uprising also fell under the Bolshevik terror. Subsequently, Kronstadt turned into a gloomy Soviet dungeon and a place of martyrdom for thousands of Petersburgers of all classes. Here in 1918-1920. arrested officers and clergy were delivered on barges. They were kept in Kronstadt prisons, one of which housed the local GPU under the Bolsheviks. There is evidence of the executions of officers and clergy in Kronstadt, 400-500 people were shot and buried in the courtyard of the former civil prison, many were flooded on barges behind the Tolbukhin lighthouse.

The fate of the 8,000 surviving rebels in Finland was also not very enviable: the Finnish government was extremely afraid of the communist infection from Russia and kept them behind barbed wire. The American Red Cross took up food for the rebels, Russian émigré organizations collected clothes and linen for them.

After the declared amnesty, half of the refugees returned to the USSR, where they perished in prisons.
Those who remained in exile eked out a miserable existence, and after the Soviet Union attacked Finland, they were subjected to harassment and persecution, changed Russian names to Finnish, hiding their origin, tried to assimilate in Finland, so the descendants of the rebels do not speak Russian, but once a year they gather in the Orthodox Church of the Intercession in the city of Lappeenranta, where in 1993 the last Kronstadt rebel was buried...

In 1994, all participants in the Kronstadt uprising were rehabilitated, and a monument was erected to them on the Anchor Square of the fortress city.

After the defeat of the whites. The reason for the unrest was the speeches of the workers in Petrograd. On February 24, 1921, the workers of the Pipe Factory took to the streets. They were joined by workers from other enterprises. Soon sailors and soldiers appeared among the demonstrators. The crowd freed the workers arrested for absenteeism (at stopped enterprises).

The news of unrest in the capital reached Kronstadt. At a rally of sailors and the population of the fortress on March 1, 1921, a resolution was adopted demanding "immediately to make elections of councils by secret ballot, and before the elections to conduct a free preliminary agitation of all workers and peasants." The resolution also demanded freedom of speech for left SRs and anarchists, the restoration of other civil liberties, the release of political prisoners - socialists and the review of the cases of others, the elimination of communist privileges, the structures of the Bolshevik economic dictatorship. And the main economic requirement: “to give the peasants the full right to act over the whole land as they wish, and also to have livestock, which must be maintained and managed on their own, i.e. without using hired labor.

About 27 thousand people participated in the uprising. The Bolsheviks outlawed the Kronstadts, after which the fortress revolted. A Military Revolutionary Committee (WRC) was elected, most of whose members were non-partisan. The most important issues were resolved at a meeting of delegates of units and enterprises. Active participation in the uprising was taken by representatives of the left socialist parties and movements from the Menshevik-Internationalists to the anarchists. The leaders of the uprising advocated Soviet power without the dictatorship of the communists. On March 15, 1921, the Izvestia of the Military Revolutionary Committee published the introductory article “Power to the Soviets, not to the parties!”. This idea of ​​non-party democracy stemmed from the ideas of the former Bolsheviks (such were many members of the Military Revolutionary Committee and participants in the uprising, including the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, S. M. Petrichenko). They were attracted by the emancipatory slogans of the revolution and disappointed by the totalitarian practice of Bolshevism. The leaders of Kronstadt hoped to win over to their side the broad working masses, who had once followed the Bolsheviks.

Continuing the "cause of October", Kronstadt followed the line of workers' and soldiers' sentiments, opposed not only to the Bolshevik dictatorship, but also to the "white" restoration.

The situation was uncertain. Major strikes continued in Petrograd and other cities, and workers declared their support for Kronstadt. The spread of the movement to Petrograd, inevitable in the event of melting ice, could radically change the situation in the country - the main forces of the Baltic Fleet were in the hands of the rebels. The rebels also counted on the offensive of the peasant armies of N. I. Makhno and A. S. Antonov.

The Bolshevik leadership of Petrograd took measures to isolate the rebels. Activists of the socialist parties in Petrograd were arrested, military units were disarmed, the soldiers of which expressed sympathy for the Kronstadters.

On March 8, the first offensive on Kronstadt was launched by the 7th Army (about 18 thousand people) under the command of M. N. Tukhachevsky. The rebels fought off this assault. The Bolsheviks were in a hurry, because they feared that with the melting of the ice, the insurgent fleet would be able to move on Petrograd. By March 16, the strength of the 7th Army was increased to 45 thousand. On March 17, the Reds crossed the Gulf of Finland on the ice and broke into Kronstadt the next morning. After fierce fighting, the uprising was crushed. The Red Terror was unleashed in the city. Over 1,000 were killed, over 2,000 were wounded, and 2,500 were captured. About 8 thousand participants in the uprising (including Petrichenko) went across the ice to Finland.