Sailor republic
After the February Revolution of 1917, the Baltic Fleet base became a kind of autonomous republic. Anarchists dominated the ships of the Baltic Fleet and the Kronstadt fortress. There were mass killings of officers. The interim government did not take any investigations or measures against the murderers. More dear to yourself.
In Kronstadt, as in Petrograd, a dual power was formed. On the one hand, there is the Kronstadt Council, on the other, the sailors' meetings at Anchor Square. A kind of sea Zaporizhzhya Sich.
The Kronstadt council and the sailors' "whip" resolved all issues in Kronstadt: from law and order to an 8-hour working day at local enterprises.
By March 1921, there were more than 18 thousand soldiers in the Kronstadt fortress and the surrounding forts. The city was home to about 30 thousand civilians.
Two dreadnoughts wintered at the base - "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol", two battleships - "Andrew the First-Called" and "Respublika" (the ships were not capable of fighting, the mechanisms were inoperative), the minelayer "Narova", a minesweeper and several auxiliary ships.
The rest of the ships of the red Baltic Fleet were in Petrograd. As a result, the firepower of the fortress was quite high: 140 guns of various calibers (including 41 heavy ones), more than 120 machine guns.
The Red Navy was better supplied than the ground forces. Despite the difficulties with food in the country, the sailors did not suffer from hunger.
In addition, the "free Cossacks" had two good extra jobs.
First, there is year-round fishing. In summer boating and in winter - ice fishing. They used boats for fishing, had two motor boats. Each island fort had a small harbor in which dozens of civilian ships were based. Part of the catch was used by themselves, the other part of the "brother" was used for barter trade with the Finns. Alcohol, tobacco, chocolate, canned food, etc. were brought from Finland.
Secondly, it is smuggling. Theft and sale of state property. The maritime border with Finland was practically not guarded. And the base of the Russian fleet had a lot of valuable goods that could be stolen and sold.
In addition, in Kronstadt 1918-1921. you didn't even need to steal. Several forts, including the powerful Milyutin island fort, were simply abandoned. And they had no guards.
Dozens of military and civilian ships were thrown off the island of Kotlin and island fortifications. You could just drive up by boat or boat and take whatever you want. From weapons to furniture.
The smuggling channel was so profitable that the Finns themselves organized a transit corridor through Kronstadt to Petrograd.
From the Finnish coast in the summer on boats and small ships, and in the winter on sleds, the smugglers passed by the fortifications of the Kronstadt fortress and went to the Fox Nose, where the Petrograd traders were waiting for them. Obviously, the garrisons of the forts had a share from this channel.
Trotskyists
In the summer of 1920, the head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Leon Trotsky, decided to put the Baltic Fleet under his control.
In July 1920, a specialist, former Rear Admiral Alexander Zelenoy, was removed from command of the fleet. He took part in the salvage of the fleet in 1918 (Ice campaign of the Baltic Fleet), conducted operations against the British and Estonian naval forces.
Instead, Trotsky's protégé, the commander of the Volga-Caspian Flotilla, Fyodor Raskolnikov, was summoned from the Caspian Sea. True, the new fleet commander periodically fell into binges and suffered from mental illness.
He, like his patron, loved luxury and made full use of the old-regime benefits. So, from Astrakhan to Petrograd, he rode not in a simple echelon (as, for example, during the Civil War did Stalin and Voroshilov), but on a staff ship - the former royal yacht "Mezhen", and then in a special car.
Together with Raskolnikov, his chief of staff, Vladimir Kukel, and another celebrity of the Time of Troubles, the wife of the fleet commander Larisa Reisner, rode. Journalist, poet, revolutionary, former passion of Gumilyov and commissar of the headquarters of the fleet.
In Kronstadt, Kukel again became chief of staff, and Reisner began to lead the political department of the fleet. Larisa's father, professor of law, author of the “Decree on the Separation of Church from State,” Mikhail Reisner, also appears in the political department. The head of the rear of the Baltic Fleet was Sergei Kukel, brother of the chief of staff. In general, sheer nepotism.
Raskolnikov and other Trotskyists are trying to draw the sailors into
"A discussion about trade unions."
In January 1921, a conference of the Bolsheviks of the Baltic Fleet was held in Kronstadt.
It was attended by 3,500 people. Of these, only 50 people voted for Trotsky's platform. Raskolnikov was not even elected to the presidium.
The offended fleet commander leaves with his wife for Sochi.
At the same time, the fleet commander made a major mistake (or sabotage?).
He transferred two dreadnoughts from Petrograd to Kronstadt for the winter. Formally, they wanted to punish the sailors for poor discipline. In the former capital, wintering was much more fun than in Kronstadt.
This caused great irritation to the sailors of the battleships. They became the first troublemakers. It is possible that without this translation, in general, there would be no rebellion.
Also in January 1921, Nikolai Kuzmin was appointed commissar in Kronstadt.
According to his contemporaries, it was a "master". The sailors immediately disliked him.
He actually slept through the beginning of the rebellion.
On March 1, he tried to calm the crowd. But his threats only inflamed the sailors.
"Barin" was arrested. And he was imprisoned until the end of the rebellion.
Soviets without communists?
The leader of the Kronstadt uprising was Stepan Petrichenko.
He was born into a peasant family, was a worker, in 1913 he was drafted into the Navy.
In November 1917, he was elected chairman of the Council of People's Commissars on Nargen Island (part of the fortress of Peter the Great), which was proclaimed an independent Soviet republic.
However, the brothers did not want to fight the Germans for "independence". And in February 1918 they were evacuated to Helsingfors, and from there to Kronstadt.
In the spring of 1918, Petrichenko switched to the battleship "Petropavlovsk". It was he and several other sailors from the dreadnought who brewed the whole booze.
On February 28, 1921, a draft resolution was drawn up on the battleship, which was adopted on March 1 at a rally on Anchor Square. The resolution contained demands for re-election of the Soviets, freedom of activity for socialist parties, the abolition of the institution of commissars and political departments, the abolition of surplus appropriation, etc.
On the same day, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of sailors, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt was formed on board the battleship. A third of its members served on the battleship.
Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin tried to calm down the protesters. He was not afraid to speak in front of a raging crowd. But they did not listen to him. And they invited him to return to his wife.
Before leaving, Kalinin ordered to concentrate reliable people in the most important points. And he promised an ambulance.
The party committee of Kronstadt did not have reliable units to arrest the instigators and suppress the rebellion in the bud.
In parallel, a second control center appeared.
On March 2, the commander of the fortress artillery, Major General Alexander Kozlovsky, gathered about 200 of his supporters in the artillery headquarters.
On March 3, Petrichenko convened a military council at Petropavlovsk. It included Kozlovsky, former officers Solovyanov, Arkannikov, Buser and other military experts. The fortress and forts were divided into four sections.
The main slogan of the rebels was the cry
"Soviets without communists!"
On March 8, 1921, Vladimir Lenin spoke about the events in Kronstadt at the X Congress of the RCP (b):
“Let's remember the democratic committee in Samara.
All of them came with slogans of equality, freedom, constituent members, and they, not once, but many times turned out to be a simple step, a bridge for the transition to White Guard power.
The experience of all of Europe shows in practice how an attempt to sit between two chairs ends."
The leader of the Russian communists very accurately indicated the essence and future of the Kronstadt and other similar uprisings, many of which were already in the past.
What would have happened if a significant part of Russia had adopted this slogan?
The newly created state apparatus would immediately collapse. And the Red Army would too. Civil war would break out with renewed vigor. In place of the suppressed nationalists, White Guards, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Greens and bandits, similar forces would appear. The intervention would start again.
When the ice melted in the spring of 1921, the British fleet would arrive in Kronstadt. Behind him were the White Guards and White Finns, who claimed Karelia and the Kola Peninsula. In the Crimea or Odessa, the French fleet would have landed 50 thousand Wrangel's bayonets.
The White Guard army would have united with thousands of "greens" who were still walking in the south. In the West, the 500 thousand army of Pilsudski could resume hostilities, with his plans for the Commonwealth "from sea to sea." Petliurists and whites would follow the Polish masters. In the Far East, Japan could become more active, would support the White Guards in Primorye.
The peasant war would flare up with renewed vigor.
At the same time, Soviet Russia of the 1921 model did not have the resources of 1917. There were no estates and palaces of the nobles and the bourgeoisie, stuffed with good. There were no enterprises that could be nationalized. There were no warehouses full of grain. There were no goods, weapons and ammunition.
The country lay in ruins. The people have lost millions of lives. Russia could simply not withstand the new massacre. And would have disappeared into historical oblivion. Thus, there was no "third way".
It was an illusion that would lead the country and the people to a new and complete disaster.
Only the iron Russian communists then kept Russia from destruction.
However, the Kronstadt sailors did not think about it.
The maximum of their "politics" is blackmail in order to bargain for new benefits. Once they did it - with the Provisional Government.
Interestingly, "tourists" often visited the ice rebels. Among them were representatives of Finnish intelligence, as well as White Guard organizations associated with Britain.
The head of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Chernov, declared his readiness to support the uprising, subject to the adoption of the program of his party.
And a large-scale information campaign has begun in the West.
The British press wrote about the shelling of Petrograd by the fleet, the uprising in Moscow and Lenin's flight to the Crimea.
That is, the fears that the Kronstadt revolt could become the first link in a new stage of the Civil War were quite reasonable.
An inglorious end
It is not surprising that the Soviet leadership took the situation in Kronstadt very seriously.
The Labor and Defense Council (STO) declared the participants in the uprising outlawed, introduced a state of siege in Petrograd and the Petrograd province.
To suppress the uprising, the head of the Revolutionary Military Council Trotsky and the commander-in-chief Kamenev arrived in Petrograd. The 7th Army of the Petrograd Military District, headed by Tukhachevsky, was recreated.
Air raids began on March 5. From the 7th - artillery shelling from the forts "Krasnoflotsky" and "Peredovoy" ("Krasnaya Gorka" and "Gray Horse").
The rebels returned fire on the forts, Oranienbaum and Sestroretsk, where the troops of the 7th Army were concentrated.
On March 8, the Northern group of Kazansky (about 10 thousand soldiers) and the Southern group of Sedyakin (about 3, 7 thousand people) went to storm the fortress across the ice of the Gulf of Finland. Due to poor organization, low motivation of the fighters, the attack failed. Part of the Red Army went over to the side of the rebels.
The Soviet command is reinforcing the 7th Army and the forces of the Petrograd District. Delegates of the 10th Party Congress held in Moscow and communists for party mobilization have been sent to the troops.
The Soviet grouping was reinforced to 45 thousand people (in the 7th Army - up to 24 thousand people), about 160 guns, over 400 machine guns, 3 armored trains.
After a lengthy artillery barrage on the ice of the Gulf of Finland, on March 17, the Red Army broke into Kronstadt. True, the effectiveness of the artillery fire of both the rebels and the Red Army was extremely low. Damage to the city, to forts and ships was minimal.
The fighting continued for another day.
By 12 noon on March 18, control over the fortress was restored.
On the evening of the 17th, the command staff began to prepare the battleships "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" for the explosion. However, the remaining sailors (many had fled earlier) arrested the officers and rescued the ships. They announced on the radio the surrender of the ships.
On the morning of the 18th, the dreadnoughts occupied the Red Army.
About 8 thousand people, including members of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, fled across the ice to Finland.
The "leader" of the rebels, Petrichenko, fled in the first rows, in a car.
The losses of the rebels, according to official figures, amounted to over 3 thousand people killed and wounded. Another 4 thousand surrendered.
The losses of the Red Army are over 3 thousand people.
By the summer of 1921, over 2,100 rebels were sentenced to death. To various terms of imprisonment - more than 6, 4 thousand.
In 1922, by the 5th anniversary of the October Revolution, a significant part of the rank-and-file insurgents were amnestied. In two years, half of those who fled to Finland returned under two amnesties.
