Talk:Kronstadt rebellion/Archive 1

1917 Revolutions mentioned
There are many minor references to the sailors of a similar revolution in 1917 but no clear explanation of what that was exactly. For a first time reader like myself with little experience with the Russian revolution, it's very confusing.

Copyvio
is there a copy'right' vio. if the site...http://www.infoshop.org/ is 'copyleft'? resolve:add a 'link' to the site?


 * If the page is copyleft I guess it's fine, seeing as the page was put together by some bunch of anarchos I can't see anyone minding, but can any other wiki legal-eagles advise? AFAIK the original source link should go in the edit summary box, i'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong?? quercus robur 14:45, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

resubmit: The Kronstadt rebellion took place in March, 1921. Kronstadt is a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. It served as the base for the Russian Baltic Fleet, and to guard the approaches to the city of St. Petersburg (which during the first world war was re-named Petrograd). At the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia was exhasted and ruined. The droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the famine during that last year added the final chapter to the disaster. In the years following the originally "bloodless" October Revolution, epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general breakdown of the economy and society had taken approximately twenty million lives. War Communism might have saved the Soviet government in the course of the Civil War, but it also helped to wreck the national economy. With private industry and trade proscribed and the state unable to perform these functions on a sufficient scale, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62 per cent of the prewar acreage, and the harvest yield was only about 37 percent of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million during the same span of time. The exchange rate of an American dollar, which had been two rubbles in 1914, rose to 1,200 in 1920. The unbearable situation led to uprisings in the countryside and to strikes and violent unrest in the factories. In urban areas, a wave of spontaneous strikes occurred and in late February a general strike broke out in Petrograd. In solidarity with the workers of Petrograd, the naval crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol adopted a resolution which demanded a number of issues: free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organisation, in addition to the equalisation of wages, the end of restricted travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city. In March 1921, the Kronstadt naval base, celebrated by the Communists as one of the sources of the October Revolution, rose in rebellion against Communist rule. The Communist Government responded with an ultimatum on March 2nd. They asserted that foreign intelligence sources and ex-Tsarist officers were the leaders and organisers of this 'counter-revolution'. The Communist government attacked on March 7th. By March 17th, the Kronstadt revolt was crushed by the Red Army, though not easily, having themselves suffered casualties in the thousands. Although Red Army units ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, the general disatisfaction with Bolshevik rule could not have been more forcefully expressed. And it was against this background of utter devastation and discontent that Lenin, who, besides, had finally to admit that a world revolution was not imminent, proceeded in the spring of 1921 to inaugurate his New Economic Policy in place of War Communism. Once more Lenin proved to be the realist who had to overcome considerable doctrinaire opposition to have his views prevail in the party and, therefore, in the entire country. Further Reading A History of Russia, N.V. Riasanovsky; [4th ed.]

From their website they don't mind as long as you reference the source. Secretlondon 12:28, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

References of the Soviet Union
It should be noted that Soviet Union did not exist in 1921. It was declared in 1922 only. The rebellion took place in R.S.F.S.R., not in the Soviet Union. --Gene s 09:57, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bizarre point
>(ironically, he had been placed in the fortress as a military specialist by Trotsky).< This entry about Koslovsky is most bizarre. Whilst it is true, I don't understand the context of it. Is the person who posted it saying Trotsky was right or wrong to post Koslovsky here? Koslovsky most certainly played a role in the Insurrection, even critics of the Soviet response admit as much. All former Tsarist Officers were under close administration by Political Commissars - Koslovsky's Commissar would have been arrested and interned by the Rebels - so are we to believe he had moved from Tsarist to being on the Left of the Soviet Government? Or was Trotsky right to be suspicious of an Insurrection involving a former Tsarist General? You cannot have it both ways, as the poster of this statement would like.

Max Rspct and thinking Trotsky gets too big a chunk of the links
You may think that there are too many link to Trotsky's arguements, but removing one referring to new material from the soviet archives, while choosing to keep a link to an article which is not even the subject of the wiki page is sneekily dishonest.

The Storozhevoy mutiny is mentioned on the wiki pages, yes, but does it deserve an external link in place of one directly relating to the Kronstadt Rebellion, particularly one that provides new information to that debate, no.

If you think that the Storozhevoy mutiny deserves an external link, it should be alongside the article from marxist.com on Kronstadt, not replacing it.

Do we need the quotes?
I kind of fail to see the purpose of these quotes. They seem unnessecary to this page. Perhaps for the other Kronstadt rebellion, and even there I still think they may not belong. Unless you can present me some reasons as to why they should be kept, but currently it seems like extra.

But who was rebelling?
Was it the heroes of 1917? Or new people who had replaced them, as they got involved in the wider Civil War?

If you read the sources carefully, you find that those who supported the revolt have to agree it was a new set of people. Most of the men of Kronstadt 1917 were somewhere else by 1921. They accepted the crushing of the revolt at their old base as a bitter necessity if the Bolsheviks were to hang on to power.

Multi-party systems work when the differences aren't considered worth dying for. When they are worth dying for, then one party has to suppress the rest to get any sort of stability.

How would the world have gone if the Bolsheviks had fallen from power in 1922 or 1923? Without the pressure of a strong rival system, would the West have changed from what it was in the 1920s?

--GwydionM 21:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Max rspct - hardly
Max rspct seems intent upon putting a completely one-sided view on this page, every time I balance his POV with other content, it is reversed. There are two sides to every story - but in this instance only one is being told. There is constant reference here to 'Bolsheviks' when by 1921 the Bolshevik Party no longer existed. There is constant fantasy about the way in which the Rebellion was dealt with, ommissions of the series of emmissaries esnt to & ultimatums issued to the Rebels. All of this I am trying to balance out - not to remove one POV, but to add balance, and it is constantly being reversed. Unless this stops I will have to appeal to Wikipedia.

I concur. Max respect's goal is to demonize the Bolsheviks, when there were clearly many more factors, like the White forces aided by foreign governments. (Kozlovesred 00:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

Why don't the POVers who are constantly reverting my attempts at relative NPOV not discussing this here? Where are you, natalia and maxrespect? You won't see a single day without my reversions unless you explain yourself. (Kozlovesred 00:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

No that's not my intention. Check my talkpage on the subject if u haven't already... I want to collaborate and talk on the subject here tho. Please note: No personal attacks and this: Civility --  max rspct   leave a message  00:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how I am being anything but civil. Please discuss your attempts to revert NPOV on this page. Why do you insist on demonizing the Bolsheviks, when there were clearly many other factors at play, and why do you insist on two quotes from notorious anti-Bolshevik anarchists? Put two quotes from Lenin or Trotsky in, and I'll understand. (Kozlovesred 00:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

The concept of Neutral point of view is to report on the opposing sides and their impact. Verifiability is also important. The statement that: "'A note on the Kronstadt Naval Base in 1921 - the makeup of the Naval Base in 1921 in no way reflected the Kronstadt of 1917 - the original Revolutionaries were spread all over the Red Army by this time, the Kronstadt of 1921 was made up mainly of newer recruits from Peasant backgrounds with a smattering of workers'" does not balance the article at all, because I do not see references on it, and it uses very non-neutral language. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais  (Be eudaimonic!) 00:29, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

You are correct that it needs references, but this quotation does address the difference between the Kronstadt of 1917 and the Kronstadt of 1921, which many are frequently prone to overlook for conveniences' sake, no? (Kozlovesred 01:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC))


 * Whether or not this difference was significant as to vindicate Lenin's position is a POV; it firstly, it is an interpretation of the facts which need verification especially as what defines "mainly" and how many "originals" were spread and in what specific way (numbers, numbers!). Weasel words hardly qualify the statement. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais  (Be eudaimonic!) 03:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course, an NPOV article should theoretically not be vindicating anyone, but I do think that an analysis that brushes over the differences, namely the different social composition of 1917 and 1921, should not be tolerated. This implies that the uprising that occurred in 1921 occurred with the same group of sailors as the uprising in the Bolshevik's favor in 1917, which is not true, and POV. (Kozlovesred 03:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

The point here is that this whole article is to start with a POV - in fact when it comes to Kronstadt all we have are POV's - and they are polarised POV's. The point I put in about the makeup of Kronstadt in 1921 however is NOT a POV, it is a fact, the best layers of revolutionaries from Kronstadt were either dead or leading detachments of the Red Army. There were not enough Military Specialists left at Kronstadt loyal to the Mutiny to actually fire the artillery pieces in the forts.

On the subject of Military Specialists, even the Anarchist POV article admits that Kozlovsky was a former Tsarist Officer - then blames Trotsky for installing him as a Military Specialist! You can't have it both ways, either he was a bourgeois who was opposed to the workers state, or he was not, or perhaps the Anarchist argument is that he did a 360 degree turn and became an Anarchist?

The issue is that the whole article has a totally one-sided pro-Anarchist slant. There is no NPOV here at all, it is all one POV. Either we need to break it up into chunks with the two different sides of the story, or there needs to be balanced viewpoints throughout the article, which is what I tried to do. Just removing one POV and leaving another is not right.

I also think that using the page as a banner advert for Anarchism is very out of order. There were Anarchist influences at Kronstadt, but there were also SR influences and petit bourgeois influences, how does it become a banner advert for Anarchy? (Trotboy 13:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

What's the point of having an entire section based on Goldman's criticism of Trotsky? Why not have another based on Trotsky's criticism of Goldman, and then another on Goldman's criticism of Trotsky ... Either put something constructive in, Ultramarine, or it will be deleted. Kozlovesred 17:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Where are you, maxrespect? Why do you insist on deleting trotsky's counter-criticism? Is it not fair to let Trotsky answer for himself when he gets criticized by a political opponent? If not, then take out Goldman's criticism as well. Kozlovesred 21:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright, maxrespect. That seems entirely more fair. Kozlovesred 23:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia an excuse for peddling half-baked anarcho-mythology?
I've done a substantial edit to the page. So that the real history has proper standing in the page, rather than just a passing mention here or there. I'm willing to discuss it.

--kingcal


 * I personally don't want to get into this in a big way at the moment. I think your additions have some major problems.  For instance, all that discussion of anti-Semitism among Ukrainian peasants and the Whites is completely irrelevant unless you can establish that the Kronstadters were Ukrainian peasants and Whites.  Simply quoting Bakan at length isn't going to satisfy anybody.  Avrich and Getzler, for instance, have effectively challenged claims that all the Kronstadters in 1921 were recent peasant recruits by, for instance, going through the rosters they were able to get from the Soviet government.  I'll add a warning that since your remarks on this talk page and in your edit summaries show some extreme POV, your edits are going to be looked at pretty carefully and pretty skeptically.  I'll leave that for others or for the future.  For the moment I've only removed a factual error -- that's a Pentagram in the White propaganda, not a Star of David (as explained in the image's notes).  David Schaich 22:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

There is POV there, undoubtedly, but unlike max rspct, I think it should be revised, not deleted. Kozlovesred 07:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Koslovesred's big POV pastes
I edited it earlier .. leaving npov in - and you reverted it.. so u started ;edit war' mr Koslovesred - Don't write biasly - slagging off anarchists/communists/socialists like that. U must not portray stuff as accepted fact when it is a minority belief amongst.. mostly leninist activists (and putting releases from the perpertrators of the suppression themselves)_. --  max rspct  leave a message  06:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't start any edit war. It was your crude and baseless deletion of valuable material that started this. These are not even my own additions! But what I must ask is why you seek to delete and not revise. I got hammered for this on the Lenin page, and then I finally realized that compromises are necessary. Explain the POV: "In contradiction of many the Anarchist and left-Communist accounts of the rebellion, defenders of the Bolshevik policy have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. So Abbie Bakan writes ..." It sets out clearly what the perspective is. If Israel Getzler has something else to say about the peasant's anti-Semitism, which was certainly fostered by the Tsarist government, then include it! Until then, your deletion of sourced and academic material will be reverted. Kozlovesred 07:01, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

YOU ARE USING ONE BIAS SOURCE - You haven't read the NPOV rules and you are outnumbered by the main accounts which have all dismissed the conspiracy theory. Try and put a section in without pasting loads from that ONE article and writing so unscholarly and POV style. Try reading more about the subject. --  max rspct   leave a message  07:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

All sources are biased. I thought you knew that. And which main accounts? I haven't seen anybody agree with your totalitarian policy of deletion because it doesn't fit with your ideology. And like I said before, those aren't my words, but kingcal's. If you have a problem with them, modify them. Until then, I will revert. Kozlovesred 07:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The point of an Encyclopedia is to give all available accounts of a matter. The perspective I offered in my addition to the article was sourced and contained NO ASSERTIONS WHICH CANNOT BE BACKED UP WITH EVIDENCE. You may dispute the evidence, and offer refutations, but this delete is a total disgrace. It's quite clear to me what this page has been up to now: a page where anarchists and critics of the Bolsheviks can assemble to write an article full of weasel words about Bolshevism - a political movement they neither understand nor care for.

If someone wants to discuss amendments to my bit then, as I said at the start, that's fine.

--Kingcal 14:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

At this time the "Class and national characteristics" section is little more than a huge (5-paragraph!) quote from an obscure Marxist writer with little credibility. Since its central point -- that the composition of the troops at the base had changed dramatically during 1918-1921 -- is presented in the previous section as well, I'm going to merge the first sentence into that section and discard the quote (and section) itself. After all, Trotsky himself is only paraphrased, so why should an entire section be stolen from Abbie Bakan's article? Two uncritical sentences with several links promoting this relatively minor and contested interpretation of events seems like plenty to me, especially relative to the small size of the article as a whole. Yours, David Schaich 21:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Composition of the garrison etc
Getzler's book and others completely overturns this Leninist claim that the composition was completely different.

"..that the politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlosk and the Sevastopol, both reknowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on ! january 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine and 9% from Finland, Latvia and Poland."..

"Nor, as so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whome Yakinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found out, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920 and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in petrograd." Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The fate of a Soviet democracy, Israel Getzler ISBN 0521894425 (Chapter 6 - 'The Third Revolution', Cambridge University Press

Yes i guess this is a bit overdue KOz. However, you have never been willing to have a neutral wording on this topic. Now u have forced my hand and I give you a definitive block of text which i will now put in the article. Gertzler's book is the only one in print, or at least not printed by either a Leninist or 'Anarchist/pro-Kronstadt' body. However you have been abusive and out of order in the past so... i have little symapthy. The case has been made before but you didn't listen. --  max rspct   leave a message  23:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Good. This is exactly what I have asked for. If I was, according to you, abusive and/or out of order in the past, then I must apologize. You are correct that the case was made before, but evidence such as this was not introduced. I will be replying on it shortly. Kozlovesred 23:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Before a formal reply, I would like to know where Getzler got those statistics. I have a right to be inquisitive, since the title of the book portrays, at least according to me, a snide hint of anti-communism. Also, other anti-communist historians, such as Robert Conquest, have been accused of shady statistics in the past, so this seems like a fair question. Kozlovesred 23:48, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes i would dispute Conquest stuff .. but this is such a long way from that. Tommorrow i will scan the biblio etc --  max rspct  leave a message  23:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It is largly irrelivant. There are clearly two POVs. NPOV states that we should present them both.Geni 00:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

No doubt correct, but Max Rspct does have statistics to back his POV. I just wanted to know where they're from. Kozlovesred 01:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I dunno Geni, my stuff is sourced from non-fringe sources. POV? --  max rspct  leave a message  13:28, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I inserted other statistics from scholars that Bakan cites in her? work. Kozlovesred 02:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

"thousands executed" and "Siberian labor camps"
Is there a citation for these claims? I've read a few items on Kronstadt and have not encountered either of these claims. I figured I'd bring it to the talk page before leaving it to say "there are no reliable figures." In the Stacks


 * Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy (Viking 1997), pg. 767: "During the following months 2,000 more rebels were executed, nearly all of them without trial, while hundreds of others were sent on Lenin's orders to Solovki, the first big Soviet concentration camp on an island in the White Sea, where they died a slower death from hunger, illness and starvation." You can check it out in the Amazon reader thing.  Figes himself cites half a dozen other sources in the corresponding endnote (pg. 859).  The main problem I see is that the White Sea isn't really Siberia. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 23:51, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you post the reference? Perhaps the best way to approach the language is to say "jailed" rather than "Siberian labor camps." In this meaning of the term "concentration camp," they are prisons with considerably more liberty than a typical jail, more penal towns than prisons proper. As there is no mention of forced labor (and "died a slower death" is entirely rhetorical), "jailed" seems to be the proper term. In the Stacks 01:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Sailors
Can anybody tell me how many sailors fought in the rebellion please? Dermo69 21:58 25 November 2006 (UTC)

New numbers debate
I hesitated bringing this up here, since I though the issue was so clear-cut. At least one editor has been replacing information on the Kronstadters' losses with official and undoubtedly incorrect Soviet numbers of 527 killed (which even seems to include both government and rebel forces). The relevant paragraph from the supplied source leaves no question that these numbers are too low:

Official figures suggest that 527 people were killed and 4,127 were wounded. Historians who have studied the uprising believe that the total number of casualties was much higher than this. According to Victor Serge over 500 sailors at Kronstadt were executed for their part in the rebellion.

One, though by no means the only one, of these historians is Figes, mentioned above. He also describes these 500 executed sailors on page 767, noting that there were an additional 2000 executed over the following months. The page and Figes's notes can be viewed online at Amazon.com for anyone who would like to verify this for themselves. Or Avrich or Getzler could be consulted, since if I recall correctly, they agree on the rough order of magnitude of these numbers.

Though I try, it's hard for me to believe that these edits are in good faith. They are so clearly unreliable, incorrect and POV that I am inclined to consider them willful and malicious. I have now incorporated both sets of figures into the article. Hopefully this will serve to end any developing edit war, but I will make sure reliable numbers remain in the article, within the bounds of WP:3RR. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 22:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

People being punished for violent crimes is totaly detached from the issue which pertains to the Kronshtadt rebellion. The claim that thousands were executed loses plausibility considering that the vast majority of the sailors defected to Finland when their little adventure was smashed. Perhaps the official total can be put in place along with other estimates. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Otto Schmidt (talk • contribs) 23:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Voline and Mett referenecs added
Note - I have added two further notable works dealing with the Rebellion from an Anarchist perspective - Voline's 'Unknown Revolution' and Ida Mett's 'Kronstadt Commune.' There are others but these are easiest to locate. Adereterial 11:54, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Casualties
Russian sources show the following:

Red Army: 527 killed and 3285 wounded

Rebels: about 1000 killed, 2000 wounded, 2500 captured —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.127.37.147 (talk) 06:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

removed tag
Why is this included in the Anarchism series?
 * It no longer is, as anarchism/anarchists played no major role in this anti-Bolshevik uprising. Though it is of great importance to anarchist histrionics, it certainly should not be "tagged" as anarchist. The Kronstadt rebels did not demand the destruction of the socialist state, but disagreed with the exigencies of War Communism.In the Stacks

Avrich, who has done some of the best work on the matter to date, makes a strong case for the significant influence of anarchism in Kronstadt. No, the sailors weren't proposing a purely anarchist program, as they were seeking reforms rather than the end of government altogether, but anarchist ideas are deeply infused in the ideology they espoused. Dust and cinder —Preceding comment was added at 03:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Bias
Wow! Finally a Wikipedia article that really makes an attempt to give a fair hearing to all interpretations of an historical event!

I like the article yes, but perhaps too interpreted by non-marxist ideals. To me Kronstadt rebellion is more a marxist rebellion against the bolsheviks whose policy lead to "communist" dictatorship in Russia, and as such should be given atleast a footnote.


 * Since when is there a differential between marxism and communism? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.157.159.132 (talk • contribs) 15:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The term was "communism", not communism. With quotation marks. I think this is a relevant point: many Kronstadt rebels were communists, but were against Leninist variant of communism, a.k.a Bolshevism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dogma00 (talk • contribs) 15:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Lenin's suspicion of an imperialist conspiracy
Goldman mentions in her account of Kronstadt, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/trotsky.html

"The news in the Paris Press about the Kronstadt uprising two weeks before it happened had been stressed in the campaign against the sailors as proof positive that they had been tools of the Imperialist gang and that rebellion had actually been hatched in Paris."

So we can presume that at the time of the rebellion, this was the main argument on the thesis that it was "undoubtedly been prepared by French counterintelligence". Maybe someone knows more on that news. As it is quoted at the end of this page below, Lenin himself said that Kronstadt "lit up reality like a lightning flash" and gave way to his N.E.P. So at least we can say that the rebellion showed to the party the state of massive dissatisfaction among its people, free from conspiracy/provocation questions about the rebellion. best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.170.138.209 (talk) 00:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Kronshtadt vice Kronstadt
Since this is a Russian name for a Russian city - even though it derives from German - it should be transliterated more accurately.Федоров (talk) 22:16, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

White conspiracy/alledged contact
Paul Avrich dismisses the idea based on the document that HE found: "Decades later historian Paul Avrich did discover an unsigned hand written manuscript labelled "Top Secret" and entitled "Memorandum on the Question of Organising an Uprising in Kronstadt." However, reading the document quickly shows that Kronstadt was not a product of a White conspiracy. Avrich rightly rejects the idea that the "Memorandum" explains the revolt, arguing they had "no time to put these plans into effect." The "eruption occurred too soon, several weeks before the basic conditions of the plot. . . could be fulfilled." It "is not true," he stresses, "that the emigres had engineering the rebellion." The revolt was "a spontaneous and self-contained movement from beginning to end." Moreover, revolt "caught the emigres off balance" and that "[n]othing. . . had been done to implement the Secret Memorandum, and the warnings of the author were fully borne out." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., pp. 106-7, pp. 111-2, pp. 126-7, p. 212 and p. 123] If Kronstadt was a White conspiracy then how could the conspirators have been caught unawares?" check also. -- maxrspct  in the mud  20:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

What book is this by Avrich? Is it the one I cited? I'd like to read the pages from that book, instead of an anarchist web site, which, I think you'd agree maxrspct, has an openly political agenda to defend when it comes to this historical event. Kozlovesred 01:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The avarich book is the first one on the works cited section of this article, for now. it is the only book i've read on the subject and a damn good one at that. maxrspct's citations from the book are accurate and paul leaves no room for a white conspiracy in his work. Skeet 04:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say that Avrich's "Kronstadt 1921" is, to date, the best scholarship that has been done on the subject. Dust and cinder —Preceding comment was added at 03:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I have read Paul Avrich's book and it should be noticed that though he dismissed the idea of the memorandum as a proof of a revolt inspired by emigres, he also states that it could be possible that there might have been a "very closed group" addressed by the National Centre agents between January and February and lead probably by Petrichenko. Moreover he states that there is undeniable evidence that the Centre and the revolutionary Committee reached an agreement when the uprising was being repressed. He just rejects the conspiracy argument based on the development of the uprising because the memorandum plans aren't the same as what really happened. As an anarchist he favours a theory of spontaneity but it should be said that this wouldn't imply necessary that the conspiracy wasn't truth. --Historyisworth (talk) 01:30, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracy and ommissions
I've read through some of the talk below this, but I'm still at a loss as to why the word Bolshevik(s) is continually used in this article? I've read from different sources that they renamed themselves to the Communist Party in 1917,18,19, all of which are obviously pre-Kronstadt. The intro should make an initial reference to the Bolsheviks and when they were renamed, so that people who only know them as Bolsheviks know who we're talking about, but Communist Party should be used from then on. Also, this article lacks any mention of Alexander Shlyapnikov or Alexandra Kollontai, both of whom had been prominent Bolsheviks and denounced Lenin etc as having lost touch with the people and serving their own interests. Another thing i think should get a mention is the decree on factionalism. Even if it's just a reference next to where NEP is mentioned, it should be noted that Kronstadt gave Lenin a bit of a shock, hence NEP and DoF. Yet another interesting thing not here is Lenin's public and private reaction to Kronstadt. Lenin pubicly dismissed Kronstadt as pathetic or something to that effect, but later tells the tenth party congress that Kronstadt had "lit up reality like a lightning flash." (Michael Lynch, Reaction & Revolutions: Russia 1881-1924, Second Edition, p.124). The final thing is a quote from Victor Serge, an ex-anrchist, who basically said that 'my communist friends and i' almost joined joined Kronstadt, except that they feared that without Lenin there would be nothing, chaos would follow, which would inevitably result in the return of the white emigres, and 'another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian.' (Cited in Richard Malone, Analysing the Russian Revolution, p. 154.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.245.158.178 (talk • contribs) 14:37, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that. This article needs a complete make over. Victor Serge's correct quotation is:"After much hesitation, my Communist friends and I finally sided with the party(...) The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected Soviets into the slogan "Soviets without Communists!" If the Bolshevik dictatorship were to fall, we felt, the result would be chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and, finally, another dictatorship, of necessity anti-proletarian." http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1945/memoirs/ch04x.htm--78.144.232.218 --Historyisworth (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The article is an bad state, from what I've gathered edit wars have reduced it to what we have now. I also was wondering the wisdom in including the entire resolution, isn't that wikisources domain? besides in my sources the wording is much different. --Matthewdavies (talk) 11:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

War Communism Propaganda
There had been grain collections by both the Tsarist and Bolshevik government throughout the period 1914-1920. Denikin, Kolchak,and even Makhno had conducted a similar policy of grain collections in the territory they occupied. With the absence of control of the main grain-producing regions of the Ukraine and the North Caucusus occupied by the Whites throughout the civil war, the Bolsheviks did not even have much of a chance to collect grains. The following effectively discredits these fabricated claims about excessive grain procurements:

1914: 67.8 milllion tons produced; 5 million tons collected

1915: 74.3 million tons produced; 8.2 million tons collected

1916: 62.5 to 65.5 million tons produced; 8.9 million collected

There is incomplete production data for 1918 and 1919 because the Bolsheviks did not have control of the main grain producing regions. Nevertheless, collections by the Bolsheviks were a mere fraction of collections by the Tsarist regime. This refutes the claim that the Bolsheviks' procurements of grain contributed to famine. It was declining agricultural production alone caused by drought and breakdown of infrastructure that brought to famine.

1918: 1.8 million tons collected

1919: 3.5 million tons collected

1920: 44.5 million tons produced; 5.9 million tons collected

1921: 38 million tons produced; 3.8 million tons collected

Source: The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, ed. R.W Davies, Mark Harrison, and S.G Wheatcroft. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.110.222.149 (talk) 18:10, 9 December 2006 (UTC).


 * Bullshit. The Bolshies' grain requisitions were much greater than those carried out by the Whites, and also had the effect of disincentivizing grain production by the peasants.  It was this secondary effect that caused the famine, because so much of the land was allowed to stay fallow.  As for Davies et al., they are probably relying on official data from the Soviet government that was purposely falsified to disinform the people. 67.169.177.176 (talk) 06:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Bakan
Why is Abbie Bakan even mentioned in this article? Based on the worthless rag of hers which is cited as a source in this article, she's nothing but a shill for Lenin and the rest of the commie gang. In that rag, she not only shows egregious pro-Communist bias, but doesn't even bother to check the facts, much less look at the causes of the Kronstadt rebellion or even cite reliable historical sources on that subject. She also discredits herself with absurd accusations of a White conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet government and even of the rebellion being motivated by anti-semitic racism among the sailors. Furthermore, all the claims made in that rag are based on a case of begging the question: that is, since Lenin's Communist regime was good (major premise) and the Kronstadt rebellion harmed said regime (minor premise), suppressing the rebellion was justified. Last but not least, the mere fact that the aforementioned rag was first published by a self-admitted socialist party by definition means that this source DOES NOT meet EITHER WP:NPOV OR WP:RS. If such sources continue to be used in Wikipedia articles, the whole project will soon turn into Commiepedia. 67.169.177.176 (talk) 06:51, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

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"Composition of the garrison"
A contentious debate is over the composition of the garrison of sailors at Kronstadt. Some proclaim they were a different group, others proclaim they were the same revolutionary sailors of 1917. Emma Goldman criticized Leon Trotsky for his role in the suppression of the rebellion, arguing that it made his later criticism of Stalinism hypocritical. Trotsky responded that Goldman's criticisms were mainly perfunctory, and that they ignored the differing social composition between the pro-Bolshevik Kronstadt Uprising of 1917 and the mainly "petty bourgeois" Kronstadt Uprising of 1921.

Defenders of the Bolshevik policy, such as Abbie Bakan, have claimed that the Kronstadt rebels were not the same sailors as those who had been revolutionary heroes in 1917. In response, Israel Getzler presents detailed evidence that the vast majority of the sailors had been in the Navy since 1917:


 * (...)that the veteran politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, both renowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only some 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted into the fleet before 1918. Over 80% were drawn from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine, and 9% from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. ...


 * Nor, as has so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yasinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920, and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in Petrograd.

Tony Cliff defends the Bolshevik policy, stating that "the number of industrial workers in Russia, always a minority, fell from 3 million in 1917 to 1,240,000, a decline of 58.7%, in 1921–22. So was there a decline in the agricultural proletariat, from 2,100,000 in 1917, to 34,000 only two years later (a decline of 98.5%). But the number of peasant households (not individuals which is many times greater) had risen with the parcelization of land from 16.5 million in early 1918 to over 25 million households by 1920, an increase of some 50%."

According to this view, the majority of the sailors in the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt were recent recruits of peasant origin. Stepan Petrichenko was himself a Ukrainian peasant. He later acknowledged that many of his fellow mutineers were peasants from the south, who were in sympathy with the peasant opposition movement against the Bolsheviks. In the words of Petrichenko: "When we returned home our parents asked us why we fought for the oppressors. That set us thinking."

This section has been tagged for cleanup for nearly a decade. The core problem is that the paragraph is written like a scholarly debate of historiography, more befitting of a journal's letters section than of an encyclopedia article. Based on what I read in these talk page annals, this section might have been a "NPOV" compromise to show "both sides" rather than overweighting a single perspective. But time has passed and while this section lists a lot of detail, it's hard to grasp what it's saying or if it's even scoped properly for a general readership. Are the sailor demographics/origins inconclusive? If so, we should say so. If there are two camps, we should say so and group opinions. If some opinions are sturdier than others, e.g., coming from respected scholars, we should identify them and say so. But the section isn't helpful as written. It needs to be rewritten to remove the unreliable sources and synthesize the rest. Or it might not be necessary to include at all. (not watching, please )  czar  17:33, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Soviet Casualties
why isn't the first wave of soviet attacks counted in the casualty section of the infobox? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scu ba (talk • contribs) 03:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:36, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * 1921-artillery south of kronstadt.jpg

Capitalization
I realize this is a minor issue to start a new section on, but what are the capitalization rules for 'Soviet'? It seems proper that it be capitalized when plural, though I'd like to just make sure before I make any changes.
 * That's a good question. Here is my opinion based on MOS:INSTITUTIONS. I believe if it is referring to a specific soviet, using it as part of a proper name (eg: Soviet Union, Supreme Soviet, Petrograd Soviet), it should be capitalized. If it is a generic word, such as city/cities or council/councils (eg: "the workers petitioned the council/soviet" or "a message was sent to the soviets/councils"), not used as part of a proper name, it should not be capitalized. But this is my opinion. It would be a good question to ask at WP:GOCE to get a more definitive answer.  // Timothy ::  talk  08:10, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Centennial
, was this expansion original or a translation from somewhere else (pt:Revolta de Kronstadt)? Want to make sure I get the attribution right, if it's using Avrich en español (2004) vs. English (1970 or facsimile), and looks like we're missing the full citation for Daniels and Schapiro from whence this text came. Might be nice to spruce this up for a feature on the Wikipedia main page for the rebellion's centennial next year, but checking the sourcing first. czar 05:21, 29 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey User:Czar, I think the expansion was a translation of the Portuguese language article, but I made that back before I knew about proper article translation etiquette, so it's not marked properly. Apologies. I'll make sure to fix any mistakes I find. Grnrchst (talk) 07:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * As I proofread the translation, I found a bunch of numerical facts incorrect in the original paraphrase (i.e., the translation of Avrich was fine but the paraphrase into the Spanish Wikipedia article had issues then translated into Portuguese and now to English). For a sampling, see my edits to the Portuguese article—I made some attempt to correct since it's listed as a quality article there. I started converting our Avrich citations from the Spanish version (2004) to English (1970) when reviewing the text and ended up just rewriting most of it. czar  19:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Image: Artillery facing right
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * 1921-artillery south of kronstadt.jpg


 * See http://boat.ucoz.ru/_pu/0/65224.jpg for a lower res version. Its caption reads:
 * "Артиллерийская позиция южной группировки войск в дни ликвидации Кронштадтского мятежа. 1921 г."
 * or "Artillery position of the southern group of troops during the liquidation of the Kronstadt mutiny, 1921".


 * The same original caption appears in Мифы и легенды российского флота/Myths and legends of the Russian fleet on p. 160 with the subcaption: "Иа собранця ЦГАКФФД Санкм-Пемербурза", i.e., Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents of St. Petersburg. I believe this book is the source of the original scan above. I'm contacting the archive.


 * The same photo/caption can be found here and sourced here (need to log in/can't see). It was published a few days earlier here. That same text was published seemingly verbatim in this 1967 reference work and earlier in Zhukov's 1965 Советская историческая энциклопедия/Soviet Historical Encyclopedia.


 * The original uploader pointed to Alamy, which says it's PD (likely unfounded, though)


 * TASS 216646 lists its provenance as unknown.


 * A similar image in Kronstadt insurgency 1921 of the year: myths and ordinariness is cryptically attributed to: (1) Kronstadt 1921. Documents. / Russia XX century. M., 1997, and (2) Semanov, S. N., Kronstadt Rebellion. M., 2003. I think the former is and the latter is.

czar 11:40, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Historiography
There might be some points to make here on the rebellion's historiography, e.g., whether foreign involvement played a role and how it's approached in Soviet vs. Western sources, but having reviewed what I could access, those linked contributions read as original research making synthetic claims of a debate while not citing any direct source that notably disputes the established history, as solidified by Avrich, of no foreign involvement. If there is scholarly discussion or disagreement about the Secret Memorandum that Avrich uncovered, it has eluded me or is most likely in Russian. I don't recall such criticism from what I've skimmed of his book reviews. I'm looking into Mutnick 1979, mentioned in Smele's 2003 bibliography (p. 336) as critiquing Avrich and others, but I'm not expecting much depth since it's the introduction to collected Kronstadt works by Lenin and Trotsky. My poor machine translation of Popov 2014 (on early Soviet historiography) doesn't go into any depth besides describing the Bolshevik "sole truth" position as a conspiracy theory. Apart from mentioning this about the Soviet historiography as part of the rebellion's Legacy, not seeing the due weight in secondary sources for covering "historiography" in any greater depth. Please do share any contemporary responses to Avrich, if relevant and noteworthy, or if you read Russian and can confirm any of the sources used in the Russian Wikipedia article as useful, let's discuss. czar 04:10, 19 January 2021 (UTC)