“A good sample of ‘revolutionary individual initiative’ is the Kronstadt affair. I have given it a little study since I saw you last. There is no question that if the Kronstadt affair had not been wiped out, it would have resulted in the downfall of the Soviet Power. There is no doubt that many of the participants who called themselves Anarchists and S.R.’s were sincere in their notions. Subjectively they were doubtlessly highly moral revolutionists. But objectively it was a filthy counter-revolution. I don’t give a damn for the moral values. The counter-revolutionary officers came over from Finland (protected by the Finnish Government!) and joined the anarchists and the S.R.’s and the Mensheviks. The French Navy lay outside the frozen area, waiting for the ‘Anarchists’ (who could compromise enough to associate with Cadet officers), to hold Kronstadt until the ice would break and let the French and British battleships fight for ‘Soviets without Bolsheviks! Yes, that is a fine example of free and easy ‘revolution’ without discipline. The fellows that did this crazy thing, killed thousands of the best and youngest and bravest of the soldiers that the revolution had. And yet there are people who call themselves ‘Anarchists,’ and ask me to pity the fellows who were responsible for the Kronstadt affair. Monks that ponder in their cells on the misfortunes of man in general can pity them, I have not time to pity such men.
“There are people calling themselves ‘Anarchists’ that are now saving that Kronstadt was the real ‘Revolution.’ If such people were to be allowed to operate with ‘free speech’ and ‘free demonstration’ within the circle that is held by the bayonets of the Red Army, the revolution would be dead now, and here would reign the ‘democratic freedom’ and pogroms of Capitalist Hungary, with Wrangel, Seminoff, Pilsudski, Harding, Briand, and Llovd George guaranteeing you your “freedom of revolutionary initiative.’”
https://www.marxists.org/history/intern ... oldman.htm
… In March 1921 the Kronstadt sailors’ mutiny issued a national call to overthrow the Bolshevik leadership of the Revolution. The mutiny’s main demands included: the release of all political prisoners; the abolition of the special leading position of the Communist party; the rights of the peasants to do with their land whatever they wanted; the immediate re-election of the Soviets by ‘free and secret ballot’; and the elimination of all restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 209
All kinds of counter-revo lutionary elements—Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolution aries, Anarchists, Whiteguards, bourgeois nationalists—• became active again. The enemy adopted new tactics of struggle against the Soviet power. He began to borrow a Soviet garb, and his slogan was no longer the old bank rupt “Down with the Soviets!” but a new slogan: “For the Soviets, but without Communists!”
A glaring instance of the new tactics of the class enemy was the counter-revolutionary mutiny in Kronstadt. It began in March 1921, a week before the Tenth Party Con gress. Whiteguards, in complicity with Socialist-Rev olutionaries, Mensheviks and representatives of foreign states, assumed the lead of the mutiny. The mutineers at first used a “Soviet” signboard to camouflage their pur pose of restoring the power and property of the capitalists and landlords. They raised the cry: “Soviets without Communists!” The counter-revolutionaries tried to ex ploit the discontent of the petty-bourgeois masses in order to overthrow the power of the Soviets under a pseudo Soviet slogan.
Two circumstances facilitated the outbreak of the Kronstadt mutiny: the deterioration in the composition of the ships’ crews, and the weakness of the Bolshevik or ganization in Kronstadt. Nearly all the old sailors who had taken part in the October Revolution were at the front, heroically fighting in the ranks of the Red Army. The naval replenishments consisted of new men, who had not been schooled in the revolution. These were a perfectly raw peasant mass who gave expression to the peasantry’s discontent with the surplus-appropriation system. As for the Bolshevik organization in Kronstadt, it had been greatly weakened by a series of mobilizations for the front.
This enabled the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Whiteguards to worm their way into Kronstadt and to seize control of it. The mutineers gained possession of a first-class for tress, the fleet, and a vast quantity of arms and ammuni tion. The international counter-revolutionaries were tri umphant. But their jubilation was premature. The mutiny was quickly put down by Soviet troops. Against the Kron stadt mutineers the Party sent its finest sons—delegates to the Tenth Congress, headed by Comrade Voroshilov. The Red Army men advanced on Kronstadt across a thin sheet of ice; it broke in places and many were drowned. The almost impregnable forts of Kronstadt had to betaken by storm; but loyalty to the revolution, bravery and read iness to die for the Soviets won the day. The fortress of Kronstadt fell before the onslaught of the Red troops. The Kronstadt mutiny was suppressed.
History of the CPSU Bolsheviks, p384
