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By Root 2317 0

the hope of some settlement. It was the sailors of Kronstadt. True to their revolutionary traditions and solidarity with the workers, so loyally demonstrated in the revolution of 1905, and later in the March and October upheavals of 1917, they now again took up the cudgels in behalf of the harassed proletarians in Petrograd. By no means blindly so. Quietly and without outsiders knowing about it, they had sent a committee to investigate the claims of the strikers. Its report roused the sailors of the warships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol to adopt a resolution in favour of the demands of their brother workers on strike. They declared themselves devoted to the Revolution and the soviets, as well as loyal to the Communist Party. They protested, however, against the arbitrary attitude of certain commissars and stressed the need of greater self-determination for the organized bodies of workers. They further demanded freedom of assembly for labour unions and peasant organizations and the release of all labour and political prisoners from Soviet prisons and concentration camps.

The example of these brigades was taken up by the First and Second Squadrons of the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt. At an open-air meeting on March I, attended by sixteen thousand sailors, Red Army men, and workers of Kronstadt, similar resolutions were adopted unanimously with the exception of only three votes. The dissenters included Vassiliev, president of the Kronstadt Soviet, who was chairman of the mass meeting; Kuzmin, the Commissar of the Baltic Fleet; and Kalinin, President of the Federated Socialist Soviet Republics.

Two anarchists who had attended the gathering returned to tell us of the order, enthusiasm, and fine spirit that had prevailed there. Not since the early days of October had they seen such spontaneous demonstration of solidarity and fervent comradeship. If only we had been there, they lamented. The presence of Sasha, for whom the Kronstadt sailors had made such a valiant stand when he was in danger of extradition to California, in 1917, and of me, whom the sailors knew by reputation, would have added weight to the resolution, they declared. We agreed that it would have been a wonderful experience to participate in the first great mass meeting on Soviet soil that was not machine-made. Gorki had assured me long ago that the men of the Baltic Fleet were born anarchists and that my place was with them. I had often longed to go to Kronstadt to meet the crews and talk to them, but I had felt that in my disturbed and confused state of mind I could give them nothing constructive. But now I would go to take my place with them, though I knew that the Bolsheviki would raise the cry that I was inciting the sailors against the regime. Sasha said he did not care what the Communists would say. He would join the sailors in their protest in behalf of the striking Petrograd workers. [ ... ]

We felt elated over the splendid solidarity of the Kronstadt sailors and soldiers with their striking brothers in Petrograd and we hoped that a speedy termination of the trouble would soon result, thanks to the mediation of the sailors.

Alas, our hopes proved vain within an hour after we had received news of the Kronstadt proceedings. An order signed by Lenin and Trotsky spread like wildfire through Petrograd. It declared that Kronstadt had mutinied against the Soviet Government, and denounced the sailors as “tools of former tsarist generals who together with Socialist-Revolutionist traitors staged a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the proletarian Republic.”

“Preposterous! It’s nothing short of madness!” Sasha cried as he read the copy of the order. “Lenin and Trotsky must be misinformed by someone. They could not possibly believe the sailors guilty of counter-revolution. Why, the crews of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol in particular had been the staunchest supporters of the Bolsheviki in October and ever since. And did not Trotsky himself greet them as ‘the pride and flower of the Revolution’!” [ ... ]

Extraordinary martial law was declared