The 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion and the New Economic Policy
The previous article discussed errors of Bolshevik “War Communism.” It described how anarchists aligned with capitalist forces against Bolsheviks.
The Soviet Union finally defeated Wrangel’s counter-revolutionary “White” army in November 1920. Other contradictions soon sharpened. This posed an even greater danger to the Bolsheviks. And to the dictatorship of the working class they were trying to lead.
Anarchists attempted their “third revolution” in 1920-21. They took advantage of growing dissatisfaction with the government.
Many peasants had sided with Reds against Wrangel’s Whites. Now their anger at grain requisitions exploded in over one hundred rebellions. Anti-government peasants chanted, “Don’t surrender your surpluses!”
Some went further: “Down with the Communists and the Jews!” Some were kulaks (rich peasants). Many were poor or middle peasants whom the Bolsheviks had failed to win politically.
Already in July 1920, mutinous Anarchists and Social-Revolutionaries had led thousands of troops in Samara (on the southern Volga) in an anti-government revolt that continued until 1923.
In August, grain requisitions sparked a peasant revolt near Tambov, southeast of Moscow. Antonov and other Left-Social Revolutionaries turned it into an armed struggle against the Bolshevik government. Twenty-one thousand Antonovist combatants included a detachment commanded by the anarchist Yaryzhka under the black flag.
Meanwhile, troops led by the anarchist Makhno in Ukraine were defeating the Austro-Germans and Whites. They soon pivoted to fighting Soviet troops. A Bolshevik cavalry commander, Maslakov, received orders to attack the Makhnovists. Instead, he mutinied with his brigade and joined them.
By February 1921, a new civil war was underway.
Discontent among urban workers was growing. Heavy snows and fuel shortages had forced the government to reduce bread rations by one third. In mid-February, worker protests reached Moscow and Petrograd.
Then on March 2, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base rebelled against the Soviet government. The anarcho-syndicalist (and former Bolshevik) Stepan Petrichenko was the key leader.
Many contradictions drove the Kronstadt rebellion. Kronstadt sailors had helped to lead the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. But many of those had long since left to defend the new Russia elsewhere. Only about 6% of Kronstadt sailors in 1921 were Bolsheviks. Most sailors were from peasant families. Some were openly antisemitic.
Many sailors, including some Bolsheviks, were unhappy with their commissar Raskolnikov and the military reforms hitting their units. Trotsky, Soviet War Commissar, defended the Red Army’s reliance on former Tsarist officers. He ended its original policy of units electing their officers. He declared that “the Communists in the army have no rights, only duties.”
Kronstadt rebels listed their demands. Anarchists spread these among peasant rebels from Ukraine to Siberia. The demands were not all controversial. Kalinin, a leading Bolshevik, went to negotiate. But it was no secret that “White” émigrés and their European capitalist backers were also plotting.
The Kronstadt seamen rejected émigré aid. They expected support from workers and peasants across Russia. It didn’t come. Soviet leaders tried for two weeks to neutralize the sailors politically. Then Bolshevik troops suppressed those still in rebellion.
In May, Petrichenko and a few others volunteered to serve General Wrangel. They proposed “restoring the gains of the March 1917 revolution.” That is, the bourgeois revolution. That reveals the class character of the Kronstadt rebellion. And of its anarchist politics.
Lenin correctly characterized Kronstadt to the Tenth Party Congress (then underway) as “a petty-bourgeois counter-revolution and petty-bourgeois anarchism.” Its real danger was its “wide influence on the proletariat.” It threatened “the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat and, consequently, the restoration of capitalism and of the old landowner and capitalist regime.”
That threat prompted the Bolsheviks to replace “War Communism” with the New Economic Policy (NEP).
“We are fighting for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of communism,” Lenin insisted. But Bolsheviks hadn’t shown the advantages of large-scale production. So, Lenin said, they had to make concessions to small producers.
The New Economic Policy (NEP) was that concession. Lenin called it “a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control.” Socialized state enterprises would operate on “a profit basis.” He was clear this was a retreat.
The NEP re-established a money-based economy. A “tax in kind” on crops replaced requisitions. Peasants could market surpluses. Capitalist relations of wage slavery, markets, and banking were restored. Food rations were phased out.
Not all Bolsheviks agreed with NEP. Kollontai sharply criticized it in her fiction. We have told that story elsewhere. Anti-Bolshevik forces correctly claimed NEP as a victory.
Lenin staked everything on maintaining state power. He fatally misestimated the power of the social relations of production. Instead of ensuring a road to communism, NEP helped turn communist cadres into a new capitalist ruling class.
We understand now that building communism requires a party that organizes industrial workers and soldiers to mobilize broader masses for revolution to destroy capitalism. As the Bolsheviks did. And at the same time to do what the Bolsheviks did not. Prepare masses politically and organizationally to build communist society, nothing less.
Previous articles in this series:
Part I Need for More Clarity on Communist Workers Power here
Part II Lessons of the Paris Commune here
Part III State and Revolution: Lenin on the Paris Commune here
Part IVFighting for Communist Workers Power 1917-1918 here
Part V Soviet Russia in 1918: Famine and “War Communism” here
Part VI Errors of “War Communism” here