90th Anniversary Commemoration: 18th March 1921 - 18th March 2011
Over the last few years, many on the left have been trying to formulate a vision of socialism based on democracy. As a consequence countless papers and talks have been produced internationally about how socialism needs to be participatory if true freedom is to be achieved. Some have given this search for a form of democratic socialism evocative names, such as ‘Twenty-First Century socialism’, ‘socialism-from-below’ and ‘ecosocialism’. In South Africa the desire for a democratic socialism has also inspired initiatives such as the Conference for a Democratic Left (CDL); while even the South African Communist Party has outlined a need for a more participatory socialist agenda. [Italiano]
* free and fair elections to the soviets;
* freedom of speech for workers, peasants, anarchists and socialists;
* free trade union activity;
* peasants to control land without employing wage labour.
These demands were drowned in blood by the Bolsheviks and without any sense of irony they celebrated the crushing of Kronstadt on the 18th March - the 50th anniversary of the Paris Commune.
Until these events, the Kronstadters had been hailed as the “pride and glory” of the Russian Revolution. They played a leading role in the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions. Yet it was these very same sailors who had embarked on a revolt against the Bolshevik state. Following Lenin and Trotsky’s own claims, the Kronstadters have been labelled “counter-revolutionaries” who sought “soviets without Bolsheviks” and capitalism [2]. In looking at the reasons for the revolt, however, it is important to go beyond these smears by examining the actual nature of the Russian Revolution, the role the Bolsheviks played, and the Kronstadters’ aims.
At the same time as this, soviets (soldiers, peasants and workers’ councils) began springing up all over Russia. These soviets often differed from one to the next. Some were highly bureaucratised, such as the Petrograd Soviet; while others were based more on direct democracy. Nonetheless, the idea of soviets was generally popular amongst workers and peasants, who believed that they offered an opportunity to genuinely democratise society [4].
Perhaps even more importantly throughout 1917 workers began to establish factory committees. At first, the aim was to use the factory committees to win demands from bosses. As the revolution began to deepen, the factory committees began to radicalise and the workers started using them, not only to monitor and pressurise bosses, but to seize factories outright. By the end of 1917 workers were beginning to implement worker self-management. Across Russia, peasants were also seizing land. Through these actions, the workers and peasants were literally taking the economy into their own hands, and they had begun the process of attempting to run it democratically. Likewise, soldiers began electing their own officers and a mass democratisation of the entire society was taking place. When a coup was attempted in August 1917, workers, peasants and soldiers armed themselves and founded democratic militia [5]. At various points, before October, there was a very real prospect that the state would be entirely overthrown and that workers and peasants themselves would implement direct democracy, not only politically but also economically.
Once in charge of the ‘revolutionary’ process, the Bolsheviks argued that the Party should capture state power, and operate a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The “dictatorship of the proletariat” therefore meant the dictatorship of the Party: “the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class … It can be exercised only by a vanguard” [8]. In this vision, there was no need for contestation or debate; the Party had a right to sole power, no matter what the working masses did. The Bolsheviks also believed a highly centralised state was necessary, to nationalise and run all industries, and to educate the working class. Indeed, Trotsky argued in Terrorism and Communism that the transition to socialism will involve a period when a powerful state is necessary, and before supposedly disappearing, this state would be the most ruthless form of government imaginable [9]. These beliefs would have a profoundly negative impact on the direction of the Russian Revolution once the Bolsheviks were in power.
The February revolution caught the Bolshevik Party utterly off guard. As the revolution deepened, the entire Bolshevik premise that workers could not attain a revolutionary consciousness on their own proved completely wrong. By their own admission, workers had proved to be far more revolutionary than the Party and were, in fact, closer to anarchism in practice than Marxism.
The ideological crisis that the events in Russia caused for the Bolshevik Party saw them oscillating back and forth between different positions throughout 1917 and into 1918. Initially the Bolsheviks supported the idea of a parliamentary democracy as the maximum goal. As workers and peasants began carrying out the socialisation of land, workers’ self-management; and demanding all power to the soviets, some Bolsheviks were driven in a more libertarian direction. Even Lenin flirted with council democracy [10]. But overall Bolshevik theory remained unchanged, so, while now calling for “all for power to the soviets,” the Bolsheviks tried to take sole control of the soviets as a step to state power [11].
Within weeks of setting up Sovnarkom, and effectively seizing state power, the Bolsheviks also established a secret police, the Cheka. The Cheka was officially tasked with combating anyone viewed as counter-revolutionary and was under the direct control of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Under Bolshevik rule, however, the term counter-revolutionary took on an ominously broad definition and included revolutionaries such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, and workers and peasants who disagreed with the decrees of the Party. Thus, in April 1918 anarchists came under attack from the Cheka. Various anarchist centres were raided and newspapers shut. During these raids, over 40 anarchists were killed and hundreds more taken prisoner. This, however, was merely the start of the Cheka’s reign of terror: it would grow to over 250 000 members, establish concentration camps, and play a key role in silencing any and all opposition to the Bolshevik party – including killing thousands of workers, peasants and revolutionaries [14]. Indeed, Lenin made it clear that any real opposition would not be tolerated when he said that the Party reserves “state power for ourselves, and for ourselves alone". [15]
By early 1918, the Bolsheviks faced their first major challenge when they were roundly defeated in elections to urban soviets. From that point on the soviets were purged, manipulated or dissolved; soviet democracy was shut down because it threatened the Party. The Bolsheviks turned the soviets into rubber stamps – packed with handpicked stooges – for Party orders from above. Likewise, freedom of speech was systematically suppressed. Trotsky would go on to justify such measures by condemning those who “put the right of workers to elect their own representatives above the Party, thus challenging the right of the Party to affirm its dictatorship even when the dictatorship comes into conflict with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy” [16].
By mid-1918 the right of soldiers to elect their officers was also removed, under the leadership of Trotsky, and over 50 000 officers of the old regime were drafted into the Red Army to install strict discipline. Differential rations were also introduced into Russia, with members of the Bolshevik Party receiving by far the best [17]. All of this had begun in one way or another before the Civil War broke out – in May 1918 – the advent of the war merely led to an intensification of the already authoritarian tendencies of the Bolsheviks. As had long been pointed out by anarchists, a state (which by its nature is centralised and hierarchical) and a true revolution (where the working class and peasants have direct power) were turning out to be incompatible [18]. Already by early 1918, therefore, the notion of a workers’ state had proven to be an oxymoron – the Bolsheviks had power; not the working class.
From there, the Bolsheviks began dismantling organs of worker self-management. They wanted the workers to come under their control by subordinating the factory committees to the state. As such, in January 1918 the Party attempted to completely smash the independence of the factory committees by integrating them into union structures, which were already controlled by the state. By June 1918, the Bolsheviks had gone further by decreeing that all forms of worker self-management and even workers’ control needed to end. In the process, the state went about re-introducing strict hierarchies in workplaces by implementing a system of one-man management and Taylorism. Control was passed to appointed managers: the former capitalists or to state bureaucrats [20] . Along with this, the right to strike was effectively ended. Large sections of the economy were militarised, all supplemented by forced labour camps. Land was nationalised and crops were forcefully requisitioned, including seed grain. The result of these measures was that starvation haunted Russia.
In the cities, waves of strikes broke out in 1918, 1919 and 1921. Amongst the working class, resistance to one-man management was widespread. By 1919 strikes had taken place in cities like Moscow against the repressive conditions in the factories and unpaid wages. In these cases, the Cheka dealt with the strikers harshly [22]. Perhaps the fiercest resistance by the working class to Bolshevik rule occurred between 1920 and 1921 in Petrograd. The strikes in Petrograd were driven mainly by the fact that workers were being driven into starvation. In Petrograd, illegal food markets existed, which were mainly controlled by Bolshevik Party members and soldiers [23]. Many people used these illegal markets to source food as the state ration system was unreliable and inadequate. In the summer of 1920, Zinoviev issued a decree forbidding any kind of commercial transactions. The result was that the majority of the people of Petrograd were plunged into starvation, as the state apparatus was in no position to supply food to the city. Workers throughout the city went out on strike demanding food supplies. Sections of the workers also demanded freedom of speech and for working class political prisoners to be released. The Bolsheviks responded with tyranny: a curfew was put in place, martial law was declared, all meetings were banned, and hundreds of striking workers arrested. Hearing about the strike and the plight of workers, the Kronstadt sailors decided to send a delegation to Petrograd to investigate the situation for themselves [24].
When the Kronstadt delegation returned from Petrograd, meetings were held to discuss what should be done to take the revolution forward. The Kronstadters, through an open soviet process, put forward a set of demands - the Petropavlovsk Manifesto. Their newspaper (now online in English) repeated their claims [25]. The Kronstadters had hoped that their demands could be addressed peacefully – they firmly believed that the Bolsheviks would see that their demands were aimed at implementing a free form of socialism. This was not to be [26].
The Bolsheviks, then in congress, were busy suppressing Party dissidents infected with an “anarcho-syndicalist deviation.” And Lenin and Trotsky knew full well that soviet democracy would end Bolshevik power. They believed an end to the Bolsheviks as the sole power would mean an end to the revolution – although the truth was that Bolshevik actions had already destroyed the aims and gains of the 1917 Revolution. When informed of the Kronstadters’ demands, the Soviet state immediately responded by threatening them. Trotsky demanded that the Kronstadters, who had taken the step of setting up an independent soviet once their demands had been soundly rebuffed, surrender or be shot down like partridges [27]. The state also took measures to isolate Kronstadt from the Petrograd workers, by providing emergency rations in the city – in a desperate bid to stunt the widespread discontent that existed [28]. The Bolshevik propaganda machine also went into overdrive to try and convince workers across Russia that the Kronstadters were counter-revolutionaries and not socialists. On the eve of the Red Army invasion, the Kronstadters were hoping that workers would join with them, and that a Third Revolution would take place; not just to end capitalism but also the authoritarian state in Russia. This unfortunately was a forlorn hope as on the 6th of March the first attacks on Kronstadt by the Red Army began. Initially, however, the troops refused to attack Kronstadt. In response, the Party sent 3 000 Communist cadre to persuade them. When that failed, more compliant troops were brought in, and many of the soldiers were forced to march on Kronstadt under the threat of death [29].
This lesson is more important than ever. People wanting to build a truly democratic socialism need to be aware that the state itself, of whatever type, is neither an ally of the popular classes nor an institution they can use. Workers, the poor and peasants need to build counterpower, outside and against the state and capital, to create a new society within the shell of the old. Faith needs to be placed in workers and the poor to bring genuine socialism about – the task of revolutionaries is to encourage this, not substitute for it. As Bakunin pointed out “the authoritarian system of decrees in trying to impose freedom and equality obliterates both” [30].
1. Thorndycraft, L. The Kronstadt uprising of 1921. http://libcom.org/library/-kronstadt-uprising-1921-thorndycraft
2. Trotsky, L. 1930. History of the Russian Revolution. Haymarket Books: United States
3. Browder, R and Kerensky, A. (eds). 1961. The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents. Stanford: United States
4. Chattopadhyay, P. Did the Bolshevik seizure of power inaugurate a socialist Revolution? A Marxian inquiry. http://libcom.org/library/did-bolshevik-seizure-power-inaugurate-socialist-revolution-marxian-inquiry-paresh-chatt
5. Zabalaza Book. The Russian Revolution Destroyed: The strategy and nature of Bolshevism. http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/rusrevdestroyed.pdf
6. Lenin, V. 1902. What is to be Done? Socialist Party of Great Britain: United Kingdom
7. Trotsky, L. 1920. Terrorism and Communism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch07.htm
8. VI Lenin, Collected Works, volume 27, p21
9. Trotsky, L. 1920. Terrorism and Communism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/index.htm
10. Lenin, V. 1917. The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. The April Theses). www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
11. Chattopadhyay, P. Did the Bolshevik seizure of power inaugurate a socialist Revolution? A Marxian inquiry. http://libcom.org/library/did-bolshevik-seizure-power-inaugurate-socialist-revolution-marxian-inquiry-paresh-chatt
12. Avrich, P. 1973. The Anarchists and the Russian Revolution. Thames and Hudson: United Kingdom
13. Chattopadhyay, P. Did the Bolshevik seizure of power inaugurate a socialist Revolution? A Marxian inquiry. http://libcom.org/library/did-bolshevik-seizure-power-inaugurate-socialist-revolution-marxian-inquiry-paresh-chatt
14. Voline. 1947. The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921. Black Rose Books: Canada
15. Lenin, V. Collected Works. volume 28, p. 213
16. Trotsky, L. 1925. Sochinenyia. Gosizdat: Soviet Union, p. 136
17. Goldman, E. 1923. My Disillusionment with Russia. Doubleday, Page & Company: United States
18. Kropotkin, P. 1897. The State: Its Historic Role. Freedom Press: United Kingdom
19. Brinton, M. 1970. The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control. Black Rose Books: Canada
20. http://libcom.org/library/radical-tradition-one
21. Arshinov. P. 1974. History of the Maknovist Movement. Black and Red Solidarity: United States
22. Brokvin, V. 1990. Workers unrest and the Bolshevik’s response in 1919. Slavic Review. Vol. 49, Issue 3 pp. 350-373
23. Goldman, E. 1923. My Disillusionment with Russia. Doubleday, Page & Company: United States
24. Mett, I. 1967. The Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921. Black Rose Books: Canada
25. Izvestia (1921) http://libcom.org/library/kronstadt-izvestia
26. Thorndycraft, L. The Kronstadt uprising of 1921. http://libcom.org/library/-kronstadt-uprising-1921-thorndycraft
27. Getzler, I. 1983. Kronstadt 1917-1921: The fate of Soviet Democracy. Cambridge Press: United Kingdom
28. Van der Walt, L. 80th anniversary of Kronstadt Uprising: 18 March 1921/ 18 March 2001. http://lucienvanderwalt.blogspot.com/2010/09/never-forget-80th-anniversary-of.html
29. Mett, I. 1967. The Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921. Black Rose Books: Canada
30. Bakunin, M. Bakunin on Anarchy, pp193-194, emphasis in original
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Voting is not a primary sin - electing individuals or groups to position of power to decide till next election is the primary sin.
An old and experienced revolution explain how position of power after the revolution win corrupt even the most dedicated revolutionaries. There is only one viable direct democracy: world commune built as multi tier delegate assemblies based on assemblies of members of grass root communities. The delegate can function only within a specific mandate, no benefit involved, accountable all the time, and can be immediately recalled by the grass root community they are members and the - to which all are subordinate and can be recalled immediately by the assembly that delegated them and the grass root community they are member of.
This is a brilliant piece. We must remember Kronstadt. But why the lack of critique of the DLF which is, largely, a collection of Trotskyist groupuscles with no popular support?
Michael
"For a further elaboration on the CDL, and its resultant formation of the Democratic Left Front see the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front’s statement at www.anarkismo.net/article/18858"
See above.
This text has also been published by Zabalaza Books as a PDF pamphlet. There is a seperate post to it on anarkismo at: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/19041
The PDF pamphlet can be also be downloaded directly from: http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/kronstadt_90th_ann...n.pdf
English Italiano Deutsch
Anarkismo.net is a international anarchist-communist news service