Kronstadt uprising of 1921

March 17, 2013 Exactly 92 years ago, the situation on the streets of Kronstadt was not at all the same as it is now. Sunday in the suburban area of ​​St. Petersburg does not promise anything unusual, everything goes according to the routine scenario of a quiet, peaceful, even somewhat patriarchal life. There is more activity in the streets than on weekdays. However, 92 years ago, 12-inch shells were exploding here, machine-gun bursts did not subside for a minute, volleys of rifles alternated with bayonet strikes. Thousands of people met in hand-to-hand combat, people fought with bitterness and frenzy. The rebellious Kronstadt did not give up without a fight. The fighting in the streets went on for more than a day and ended by the morning of March 18.

Who has won? The question seems strange, even in the shortest manual on Russian history of the 20th century it is quite clearly written that the rebels were driven out of Kotlin Island, and the power of the Bolsheviks was restored in the city and the naval base. However, years will pass and those who took the recalcitrant Kronstadt will themselves be destroyed by the power for which they fought not for life, but for death with confidence in their rightness. But so far, all this was not at all obvious, and the specific task - to return Kronstadt - was carried out methodically and purposefully.

Walking through the streets and squares of Kronstadt, it is now difficult to imagine what we are going to tell our story about. The situation and conditions here have changed painfully, and people have not been the same at first glance for a long time. But this is only at first approximation. History tends to repeat itself, and what seemed like a matter of time long gone, suddenly becomes timely and urgent, as if written these days. The connection of times is felt in every detail, if you look closely.

preconditions for an uprising.

So, 1921. The young country of the Soviets emerges victorious from the Civil War. The economic situation could be called critical. Three years of war and foreign intervention undermined the Russian economy, which was undermined by the First World War. By the end of 1920, the overall level of industrial production had fallen by almost 5 times compared with 1913. A critical situation had developed with the supply of fuel and raw materials. Many mines in Donbass were flooded and destroyed during the Civil War. The transport infrastructure was in complete disrepair. The delivery of food to the cities was at an extremely unsatisfactory level. The internal market collapsed due to the activities of food and barrage detachments.

At the beginning of 1921, the workers of Petrograd, employed in the smelting industry, received daily 800 gr. Of bread. Shock workers - 600. Other categories of workers from 400 to 200 grams. Part of the wages were given in kind, part of the products produced by the workers were exchanged for food. Families left the cities en masse. During the 3 years of the Civil War, the population of Petrograd decreased from 2.5 million to 750,000. Real hunger was felt in the cities. Often, part of the workers were removed from enterprises and sent to other parts of the country in order to get food. The sailors often did the same. There is evidence that food was sometimes stolen along the way. So, once a whole carload of meat went from Vologda to Petrograd, instead of Moscow, and only the intervention of the army prevented this theft. Naturally, in such a situation, the population of cities became dissatisfied with the existing situation.

But Russia was an agrarian country, and the peasants felt all the hardships of the war no less than the population of cities. The policy of war communism with the activities of food detachments primarily affected rural residents. A significant reduction in the area under crops was associated with the general ruin in the country, but the policy of requisitioning was the main blow to the peasantry. The land belonged to the peasants according to the decrees on land of October 26, 1917. By 1920, the land was divided among peasant families. The peasants got land and they just wanted to be left alone. But the war dragged on, and the food problem became at the forefront. As the peasant delegates said, "the land is ours, but the bread is yours." The activities of the food detachments were associated not with the Bolsheviks, but with the communists. Zinoviev, Trotsky and other party leaders, whose Jewish origin, associated with everything anti-people, were accused of having invented a new form of state farms, which again led to the enslavement of the peasants.

However, during the course of the war, the peasants were generally loyal to the Bolsheviks. Although sometimes there was resistance to the surplus, it was all explained by the struggle against the whites, who were perceived as a greater evil.

In November 1920, the armies of Wrangel left the Crimea, the Civil War, in general, ended, and a series of peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks and the policies of war communism began in the country.

The winter of 1920-21 was a turning point. Almost 2 million soldiers were demobilized, the economy had to be put on a peaceful footing. Between November 1920 and March 1921 the number of peasant uprisings increased sharply. On the eve of the Kronstadt rebellion, more than 100 different peasant uprisings swept through the regions of the country - in the Volga region, in the Urals, in Siberia, peasant uprisings flared up again and again. Many sailors were peasants, and discontent from the villages quickly penetrated the naval crews.

Lenin understood the need to transfer the economy to a peaceful track and abandon the policy of war communism. As early as November 1920, this issue was raised, but detailed proposals were actually prepared on the eve of the rebellion.

The main cause of discontent in the country was, first of all, hunger and deprivation. There was no plan for the transition from war communism, and in peacetime military methods had the exact opposite effect. This was the impetus for the show.

A particularly difficult situation at the beginning of 1921 developed in large industrial centers, primarily in Moscow and Petrograd. The norms for issuing bread were reduced, some food rations were canceled, and there was a threat of starvation. In February 1921, during the crisis in Petrograd, strikes began. On January 22, 1921, a reduction in rations was announced. The cup of patience overflowed. Petrograd was in a particularly difficult situation. More than 60% of the factories were closed, in the face of a lack of fuel and food, rumors immediately appeared that the new government, the commissars, did not need anything, which only fueled discontent.

The fuel crisis worsened. On February 11, 1921, 93 Petrograd enterprises were announced to be closed until March 1. Among them are such giants as Putilovskiy Zavod, Sestroretskiy, "Triangle" and others. About 27 thousand people were unemployed.

On February 21, a meeting was held at the Pipe Plant on Vasilyevsky Island. A resolution was adopted demanding a transition to democracy. In response to this, the executive committee of the Petrosoviet decided to close the plant and announce the re-registration of all employees and workers. The unrest of the workers began to develop into open riots. On the morning of February 24, about 300 workers from the Pipe Factory took to the streets. They were joined by workers from other factories and plants in Petrograd.

A crowd of up to 2,500 people gathered on Vasilyevsky Island. Not relying on the Red Army, the authorities sent red cadets to disperse it. The crowd was dispersed. In the afternoon, an emergency meeting of the bureau of the Petrograd Committee of the RCP (b) was held, which qualified the unrest at the plants and factories of the city as a rebellion. The next day, martial law was introduced in the city.

On the evening of February 27, an extended meeting of the plenum of the Petrograd Soviet opened, in which the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, M. I. Kalinin, who arrived from Moscow, took part. Commissar of the Baltic Fleet N.N. Kuzmin drew the attention of the audience to alarming signs in the mood among the sailors. The situation became more and more threatening. On February 28, a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) was held, at which the situation in Moscow and Petrograd was discussed. The first priority was the suppression of political opposition. The Cheka carried out arrests of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Among those arrested in Petrograd was one of the leaders of the Menshevik Party, F.I. Dan.

Naturally, the unrest in Petrograd, the speeches in other cities and regions of the country had a serious impact on the mood of the sailors, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt. The sailors of Kronstadt, who were the main support of the Bolsheviks in the October days of 1917, were among the first to understand that the Soviet power was, in essence, replaced by the power of the party, and the ideals for which they fought turned out to be betrayed. By mid-February, the total number of ship crews, military sailors of coastal units, auxiliary units stationed in Kronstadt and in the forts, exceeded 26 thousand people.

The beginning of the uprising.

Delegations were sent there to clarify the situation in Petrograd. Returning, the delegates reported to the general meetings of their teams about the reasons for the unrest of the workers, as well as the sailors of the battleships "Gangut" and "Poltava", standing on the Neva. This happened on February 27, and the next day the sailors of the battleships "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" adopted a resolution, which was submitted for discussion by representatives of all ships and military units of the Baltic Fleet. This resolution was, in essence, an appeal to the government to respect the rights and freedoms proclaimed in October 1917. It did not contain calls for the overthrow of the government, but was directed against the omnipotence of one party.

On March 1, a rally was held on Anchor Square, which was attended by Kalinin, Kuzmin and Vasiliev, as well as about 15 thousand sailors and residents of the city. The authorities tried to calm the sailors and called for an end to the unrest, but they were booed. Petrichenko came to the podium, a resolution was read to him, which was adopted unanimously (except for Kalinin, Kuzmin and Vasiliev). The Communists, who also gathered on the square quite a few, voted for the resolution.

RESOLUTION OF THE TEAM MEETING OF THE 1st AND 2nd BRIGADS

After listening to the report of the representatives of the teams sent by the general meeting of the teams from the ships to the mountains. Petrograd to clarify matters in Petrograd, decided:

1) In view of the fact that the present soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, to immediately hold re-elections of soviets by secret ballot, and before the elections to carry out free preliminary agitation of all workers and peasants.

2) Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, anarchists, left socialist parties.

3) Freedom of assembly and trade unions and peasant associations.

4) To convene no later than March 10, 1921, a non-party conference of workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of the mountains. Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd province.

5) Release all political prisoners of the socialist parties, as well as all workers and peasants, Red Army soldiers and sailors, imprisoned in connection with the workers' and peasants' movements.

6) Select a commission to review the cases of prisoners in prisons and concentration camps.

7) Abolish all political departments, since no party can enjoy privileges to propagate its ideas and receive funds from the state for this purpose. Instead, locally elected cultural and educational commissions should be established, for which funds should be allocated by the state.

8) Immediately remove all barrage detachments.

9) Equalize rations for all workers, with the exception of hazardous workshops.

10) To abolish communist combat detachments in all military units, as well as in factories and plants, various duties on the part of the communists, and if such duties or detachments are needed, then they can be appointed in military units from companies, and in factories and plants at the discretion of the workers.

11) Give the peasants the full right to act over their land as they wish, and also to have livestock, which they must support and manage on their own, i.e. without using hired labor.

12) We ask all military units, as well as fellow military cadets, to join our resolution.

13) We demand that all resolutions be widely announced in the press.

Unrest in Kronstadt. Requirements of sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress 51

14) Appoint a traveling bureau for control.

15) Allow free handicraft production by one's own labor.

The resolution was adopted by the brigade meeting unanimously with 2 abstentions.

Education of the WRC.

The most important events of the beginning of the uprising took place in the building of the former Engineering School. On March 2, representatives elected to the delegate meeting gathered at the House of Education in Kronstadt (formerly the Engineering School). It was opened by Stepan Petrichenko, a clerk from the battleship Petropavlovsk. The delegates elected a presidium of five non-partisans. The main issue at the meeting was the question of re-elections of the Kronstadt Soviet, especially since the powers of its former composition were already ending. Kuzmin was the first to speak. Indignation was caused by his words that the communists would not voluntarily give up power, and attempts to disarm them would lead to the fact that "there will be blood." He was supported by Vasiliev, who then spoke.

By a majority vote, the meeting expressed no confidence in Kuzmin and Vasiliev. Suddenly there was a message that the communists of the fortress were preparing to resist. A sailor rushed into the meeting shouting “half a day! the communists are heading towards the building to arrest the assembly.” In this regard, it was decided to urgently create a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRC) to maintain order in Kronstadt. The duties of the committee were assumed by the presidium and the chairman of the delegates' meeting, Petrichenko. The Committee also included his deputy Yakovenko, machine foreman Arkhipov, foreman of the electromechanical plant Tukin and head of the third labor school I. E. Oreshin.

The reaction of the authorities to the uprising.

The authorities declared the rebels "outlaws". Reprisals against the relatives of the leaders of the uprising followed. They were taken as hostages. Among the first to be arrested was the family of the former general Kozlovsky (chief of the fortress artillery).

Petrograd was declared under martial law, the authorities made every effort to isolate Kronstadt and prevent the uprising from spreading to the mainland. It was possible to do this.

However, the beginning of unrest in the fortress was accompanied by the collapse of the Bolshevik cells in the military and civilian organizations of Kronstadt. As of January 1921, they numbered 2,680 members and candidate members of the RCP(b). In the VRK, in the revolutionary troika, in the editorial office of Izvestiya VRK (public organ of the rebels), both individual and collective statements about leaving the party began to arrive. Many asked that their statements be published in the newspaper. The organization of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" almost completely left the party. A lot of applications were received from the workers of the industrial enterprises of the city serving the fleet. Withdrawal from the party continued until the last assault on Kronstadt, when it was already clear to everyone that the besieged were doomed. In total, during the Kronstadt events, about 900 people left the RCP (b). Most of them joined the party during the civil war. But there were also those who connected their lives with the party in the October days of 1917. On March 2, the Provisional Bureau of the Kronstadt organization of the RCP was organized, consisting of Ya. I. Ilyin, F. Kh. Pervushin and A. S. Kabanov, which called on the communists of Kronstadt to cooperate with the Military Revolutionary Committee.

The news of the events in Kronstadt provoked a sharp reaction from the Soviet leadership. The delegation of Kronstadters, which arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested.

On March 4, the Labor and Defense Council approved the text of the government message. The movement in Kronstadt was declared a "mutiny" organized by the French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the resolution adopted by the Kronstadters was "Black Hundred-Socialist-Revolutionary."

On the afternoon of March 5, 1921, Commander-in-Chief S. S. Kamenev, the commander of the Western Front M. N. Tukhachevsky and other senior officials of the RVSR arrived in Petrograd. Trotsky was personally present and gave the order to liquidate the rebellion. At the same time, an important operational order was issued on measures to eliminate the Kronstadt rebellion. Its main points were as follows:

"one. Restore the 7th Army, subordinating it directly to the High Command. 2. Temporary command of the 7th Army is to be assigned to Comrade Tukhachevsky, leaving him in the post of commander. 3. Temporary Army Commander 7 T. Tukhachevsky to subordinate in all respects all the troops of the Petrograd district, the commander of the troops of the Petrograd district and the commander of the Baltic fleet. 4. Simultaneously appoint the commander of the troops of the Petrograd district, comrade Avrov, the commandant of the Petrofortified District. Further, the order ordered to invite the Kronstadt rebels to surrender, and otherwise open hostilities. The order came into force on March 5 at 17:00. 45 minutes

Kronstadt was given an ultimatum demanding to surrender, to which the rebels refused. Military experts offered to support the uprising in Oranienbaum and contribute to its spread to the mainland, but the Military Revolutionary Committee firmly stood on the position of not being the first to use force. They naively believed that an uprising would break out in Petrograd and other parts of the country, sweeping away the power of the communists.

The first assault on Kronstadt.

Meanwhile, on March 8, the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) opened in Moscow. It was on this date that the assault on Kronstadt was scheduled. Trotsky and Tukhachevsky wanted to come to the congress as winners, but the conceived performance failed. Trotsky believed that with the first shots the rebels would surrender and therefore hurried the start of the military operation.

The troops were drawn to Kronstadt and on March 7, the Northern combat group (headed by E. S. Kazansky), concentrated in the Sestroretsk area, numbered 3763 people (of which the detachment of Petrograd cadets was the most combat-ready unit - 1195 fighters). The southern group (headed by A.I. Sedyakin) consisted of 9853 people. The artillery force consisted of 27 field artillery batteries: 18 in the sector of the Southern Group and 9 in the sector of the Northern Group; however, these were predominantly light guns, unsuitable for combating the concrete forts and rebel ships of the line; there were only three batteries of heavy guns, but their caliber also did not exceed six inches. On the afternoon of March 8, Soviet air reconnaissance reported that the shells lay near the fortress with a large undershoot, and “no damage was found in the city itself and on the two battleships standing in the harbor.”

The Soviet forces, which launched an offensive on March 8, were thrown back from the walls of the fortress without loss for the rebels. Having suffered serious losses, the Red Army retreated. Some battalions surrendered. The attack failed.

Preparing for the decisive battle.

The next 10 days passed in an atmosphere of gathering forces. Both the Red Army and the rebels were preparing for a decisive battle. However, to gather forces to suppress the rebellion was not at all an easy task. It was necessary to overcome not only technical difficulties in the work of transport and a catastrophic shortage of uniforms, but also open sabotage by some groups of troops.

So the area of ​​Art. From March 10, the 27th Omsk Rifle Division was concentrated in Ligovo , sent from the Western Front to reinforce the Soviet troops near Kronstadt. The division had 1115 officers, 13059 infantrymen, 488 cavalrymen, as well as 319 machine guns and 42 guns. The personnel of the division had good combat training and glorious military traditions: the division successfully fought against Kolchak and White Poles. However, near Kronstadt, before entering the battle, the commanders and political workers of the 27th division met with complex problems of an ideological nature. The division commander, V. Putna, noted that the units were leaving from Gomel in a combat mood, but he emphasized that the political staff was understaffed and did not correspond to the staffing table, and most importantly, it turned out to be insufficiently prepared to work in such difficult conditions.

In fact, the soldiers simply refused to go into battle, citing fear of ice, lack of supplies, but more often - agreement with the demand of the rebels.

About 300 delegates were sent from the Tenth Congress to raise awareness and carry out political work in the units of the Red Army. They were joined by communists from other areas, aimed at raising the consciousness of the Red Army. The group was headed by K. E. Voroshilov, a member of the Presidium of the Tenth Congress. Among the delegates who left for Kronstadt, there were many military specialists - commanders and commissars, active participants in the civil war: Ya. F. Fabricius, I. F. Fedko, P. I. Baranov, V. P. Zatonsky, A. S. Bubnov , I. S. Konev and many others. The delegates left Moscow for Petrograd in several special trains by rail on the night of March 11th.

Leaflets were scattered over Kronstadt with the following content: “Kronstadters! Your "Provisional Revolutionary Committee" asserts: "There is a struggle going on in Kronstadt for the power of the Soviets." Many of you think that the great cause of the revolution is being continued in Kronstadt. But your real leaders are those who conduct business secretly, who, out of cunning, do not yet express their real goal. Oh, they know very well what they are doing, they perfectly understand the meaning of the ongoing events and soberly calculate when it will be possible to take the next step along the path of restoring the power of the bourgeoisie ...

Think about what you are doing. Learn to distinguish between words and deeds, because if you do not learn, then the coming weeks will teach you this, and you will quickly see how the living words about Soviet power of your leaders are very quickly replaced by an open struggle against Soviet power, open White Guards. But then it will be too late.

Now your actions are open whiteguardism, covered for the time being by empty words about Soviet power without communists. Empty, because during the hard struggle of the working people for self-liberation, without the Communist Party, there can be no Soviet power ...

The White Guards applaud you and hate us; choose quickly - with whom you are, with the Whites against us or with us against the Whites ...

Time is running out. Hurry up"

In party propaganda, special emphasis was placed on explaining the fundamental decisions of the 10th Congress on the abolition of food distribution and other economic measures designed to alleviate the situation of the peasantry and improve the material situation of the working people. At the same time, a stern and decisive rebuff was given to all attempts at hostile agitation. The verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals against instigators and provocateurs, cowards and deserters were widely publicized among the personnel of the Red Army units stationed near Kronstadt. The decisions of the Tenth Congress in many respects corresponded to the economic requirements of the rebels, but the communists were not going to share political power.

At this time, the Kronstadt Military Revolutionary Committee was gathering forces for the last battle. The resources of the city were at their limit, although Izvestia VRK published several times reports that "the food situation in the city can be considered quite satisfactory." Nevertheless, the norms for issuing cards were constantly decreasing, while the Red Army soldiers and Petrograd workers were given an increased norm. Subsequently, already in Finland, the sailors bitterly recalled that the St. Petersburg workers had betrayed them for half a pound of meat.

Well, on the northern and southern shores of the Gulf of Finland, work was underway to prepare for the final suppression of the rebellion. It was necessary to hurry, because. in a few weeks the ice would melt and ships with food, fuel and medicines would arrive in Kronstadt. The Russian emigration put a lot of effort into organizing the supply of Kronstadt on the ice, but these attempts, in general, were thwarted. The Red Cross was able to transport a small batch of flour from Finland, but this was not a mass phenomenon and did not improve the food situation in the city.

However, special lightweight portable bridges were designed for the Soviet troops in order to force open holes that could form on the ice of the bay from shell explosions. In total, it was possible to prepare 800 sledges and 1000 walkways in the South group, and 115 sledges and 500 walkways in the North group.

However, the situation with uniforms was catastrophically bad. There were not enough warm clothes, underwear, overcoats. So, for example, in the 499th Infantry Regiment, 25% of the Red Army men wore felt boots during the thaw, and 50% wore bast shoes. The uniforms of the relatively fresh and combat-ready 27th Omsk Rifle Division were in extremely poor condition. But the fighting forces of the Red Army grew every day. According to the summary of the operational department of the headquarters of the 7th Army, as of 9th of March, the number of Soviet rifle troops was as follows. Northern combat group: total fighters and commanders - 3285 (including 105 cavalrymen), 27 machine guns, 34 guns. Southern group: the total number of fighters - 7615 people (including 103 cavalrymen), 94 machine guns, 103 guns, there were also armored trains, but the document does not contain details on this. A brigade of cadets was also stationed here, the number of which is determined in the document inconsistently; approximately it was 3,500 fighters and commanders, including 146 cavalrymen; the brigade had 189 machine guns and 122 guns and 3 armored trains were attached.

Fortress assault:

By the day of the decisive assault, March 17, the Soviet command managed to assemble the following forces: the 11th and 27th rifle divisions, the 187th brigade of the 56th rifle division, communist special forces, red cadets of 16 military schools, as well as a number of other small units and numerous artillery . There is no exact data on the number. According to the calculations of A. S. Pukhov, the total number of soldiers of the 7th Army was 24 thousand with 433 machine guns and 159 guns, and together with the rear and auxiliary units, the Soviet troops concentrated for the assault on Kronstadt amounted to about 45 thousand people.

It was ordered to move through the ice field exclusively in marching columns, subject to complete silence and order, it was possible to disperse into a chain (even in the event of enemy fire) only in exceptional cases by order of the commander; it was specifically stipulated that "in the city with the rebels, do not enter into any conversations, arrest and send to the rear." As an example of a specific implementation of the general combat mission, one should cite an excerpt from the order of the commander of the 167th rifle brigade, given on the eve of the assault on the evening of March 16: “The brigade headquarters should establish telephone communication across the ice with units and the headquarters of the consolidated division, duplicating it with a live chain and messengers. During actions and movement on ice, observe silence, use movement in columns or reserve formations to the last opportunity. The columns should have in their heads shock groups in white coats, equipped with walkways, overturning, assault ladders; have machine guns on skids. When attacking, remember one cry: “Forward!”. There can be no retreat. Do not enter into negotiations with the rebels in the city. Organize the correct supply of fire supplies from the Oranienbaum coast to the units. Orderlies with a stretcher to follow the units.

The night of March 17 was dark, moonless, which made it easier for the Soviet troops. In the northern combat sector, since the evening, the cannonade from both sides was silent, so the Soviet units went on the offensive in complete silence; on the contrary, in the southern section from 1 to 4 o'clock. at night, the red artillery fired intensely, trying to strike at the two most powerful forts of Kronstadt - "Konstantin" and "Milyutin"; after several successful hits from heavy shells, both rebellious forts were forced into silence.

The forward units of the attacking infantry descended onto the ice in complete darkness at about 2 am, followed by second-echelon troops and reserves at various intervals. In the Southern battle group, the 32nd and 187th rifle brigades were in the first wave of the offensive. The rebels noticed the attacking Soviet units rather late: the fighters of the 32nd brigade managed to approach the city without a shot, the 187th brigade, advancing to the left, was noticed and fired upon earlier. The Red Army soldiers deployed in chains and began to overcome the wire barriers. The first took the blow of the enemy at 4 o'clock. 30 minutes. 537th regiment under the command of I. V. Tyulenev. The rebels opened intense fire from rifles, machine guns and light guns on the forward lines of the attackers. At the same time, their heavy batteries opened fire on the Soviet units of the second line moving on the ice, as well as on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland.

At 5 o'clock. 30 minutes. a green rocket flew up into the sky - a signal that the attackers broke into the city. At the same time, the fighters of the special purpose regiment, which was part of the 187th brigade, distinguished themselves. Under enemy fire, the regiment marched at a fast pace straight to the Petrograd pier - to the center of Kronstadt; one and a half hundred paces before the target, the regiment commander Burnavsky and commissar Bogdanov stepped out ahead of the chains and led them on the attack at a run. Only a hundred paces were passed, and the attackers lay down under heavy fire. However, this allowed the reserve units to approach, and when the rebels were forced to transfer fire to them.

The street battle that began within the boundaries of Kronstadt took on an exceptionally heavy and protracted character. The shore of the bay and the city streets were entangled with barbed wire fences, the spaces between the houses turned out to be blocked from logs, firewood, building debris, etc. The rebels fired from rifles and machine guns from short distances, inflicting noticeable losses on the attackers. They used, as a rule, windows and attics of stone buildings, hiding behind various structures and hiding in cellars.

Nevertheless, a fierce battle in the city gradually brought success to the Soviet troops. Heavy and bloody battles unfolded in particular in the area of ​​the Petrograd Gates and the Petrogradskaya Street adjacent to them. The rebels here repeatedly launched counterattacks, but each time they were forced to retreat deep into the city. By 14 o'clock. On March 17, units of the 167th brigade cut off the rebellious ships that were in the harbor from the port. It was a major success for the Soviet troops. In order to prevent a possible sortie from the side of the teams of the rebel battleships, the combat guards of the Soviet troops were posted along the coastline, but clearly insufficient in number (this, apparently, explains the fact that some activists of the rebels later managed to escape from the ships under the cover of darkness). It seemed that victory was already close, but the rebels launched fierce counterattacks. In the area of ​​Anchor Square, the head units of the Soviet troops - the 187th and 32nd brigades - came under cross attack and were forced to retreat. The mutinous artillery fired intensely at the advancing units of the second echelon, which were forced to move in bright sunlight. Fortunately, many shells did not explode or, falling at a sharp angle, ricocheted without breaking through the ice. However, Soviet reserves suffered losses while crossing the bay.

In the afternoon, the 80th brigade came to the aid of the vanguard units, with it the commander of the consolidated division P.E. Dybenko and the commissar of the Southern Group K.E. Voroshilov came to the very center of the battle. The rebels withdrew into the city. Here began a fierce protracted battle. The Soviet units suffered losses, because in street battles the superiority was on the side of the rebels, who knew the topography of the city well; often their groups through cellars and attics went to the rear of the Red Army. At the same time, the Northern Group was also forced to slow down their advance and move to the left, in the direction of the main attack; as a result, the road to Finland could not be cut.

Fierce mutual counterattacks continued in the city for a long time. Around noon, the Soviet units were forced to retreat from the city center to the pier. At this moment, one of the most spectacular episodes of the Battle of Kronstadt took place. The Soviet command threw into battle one of the last reserves - the cavalry regiment of the 27th division. The cavalry attacked the sea fortress on the ice.

P. E. Dybenko described this turning point of the battle as follows:

“By 5 p.m. on March 17, one third of the city was in our hands. But, as it turned out, at that time the rebellious headquarters decided to hold out on the strongholds of the city until dark and at night attack the Red Army soldiers, exhausted by the daily battle, cut them out and take Kronstadt again ... But the rebels failed to carry out this insidious plan. At 8 pm on March 17, the Red troops launched a decisive offensive, supported by artillery that had arrived on the ice. The cavalry regiment galloping over the ice to support the units located in the city produced considerable confusion on the rebels. By 11 p.m., all the strongholds were occupied by the red units, and the rebels began to surrender in whole batches.

By evening, the battle had taken a sharp turn. The rebels could not stand the tension of the battle and began to retreat. Together with them, among the first to leave the city, most of the members of the "revolutionary committee" headed by Petrichenko and the officers - leaders of the rebellion. The crews of both battleships flew white flags. However, the battles with separate groups of the enemy continued all night and subsided only in the morning of the next day. March 18 at 12 noon 10 min. Finally, the last order for the Kronstadt operation was given:

"one. The Kronstadt fortress has been cleared of rebels. 2. Comrade was appointed military commandant of Kronstadt. Dybenko. 3. The supreme command of the troops of the fortress and the coastal oburon is transferred by the comrade group to Comrade Sedyakin until the order of the commander-7.

Results.

Thus the uprising was put down.

Soviet troops captured 2444 rebels, including three members of the "revolutionary committee" - Valka, Perepelkin, Pavlov. Some of the active leaders of the rebellion, mostly former officers, were already a few days later directly in Kronstadt tried by a military tribunal and shot by its verdict. At the same time, the total losses of the Red Army are estimated at 10,000 people (although the official figures are several times less), some of them are buried in a mass grave on Anchor Square in Kronstadt.

In fact, the introduction of the New Economic Policy, the abolition of barrage detachments and requisitioning, the permission of small-scale handicraft production, and other changes were the embodiment of the economic program of the rebels. But no political progress followed, the power of the Soviet bureaucracy and the communists only strengthened, eventually leading to the sole rule of I.V. Stalin.

March 25 1921 held a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet. The delegates stood to honor the memory of the fallen. Then Nikolai Nikolaevich Kuzmin, a fearless commissar who remained faithful to his duty to the end, was greeted with thunderous applause and delivered a great speech. On the same day, a civil memorial service was held in the St. George's Hall of the Winter Palace in honor of the fallen Red Army soldiers, and then the funeral procession headed across the entire Nevsky Prospekt to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where the victims of the battles near Kronstadt were buried. In the Petrograd Military District alone, 487 commanders and Red Army soldiers were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Most of the Kronstadters were placed in the forts of the former Russian fortress of Ino (Petrichenko was also located here), the rest were in camps near Vyborg, in Terioki and other places. The camps were guarded by Finnish soldiers.

The fate of the participants in the uprising was tragic. Of the 8,000 who fled to Finland, many returned, where they ended up in concentration camps. Stepan Petrichenko himself lived in Finland, collaborated with Soviet intelligence, was arrested by the Finns in 1941 and extradited to the USSR in 1944. In the Soviet Union, he was sentenced to 10 years in camps and died in Vladimir in 1947 during the transfer.

General Alexander Nikolaevich Kozlovsky changed many professions over the years of his life in a foreign land: he was a teacher of physics and natural science, a road worker, a foreman at a mechanical plant, a mechanic in a garage. He died in 1940 in Helsinki, his family remained hostage, his sons and wife were sentenced to corrective labor and prison terms, and one of his sons committed suicide.

More is known about the commanders of the Red Army, but their fate turned out to be sad. L. Trotsky, as you know, was deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the country. Early on the morning of August 20, 1940, NKVD agent Ramon Mercader assassinated Trotsky in Mexico.

Chairman of the Petrosoviet Zinoviev Grigory. Evseevich On August 24, 1936, Zinoviev was sentenced to capital punishment in the case of the Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center. Shot on August 25, 1936 in Moscow.

Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the former commander of the 27th Omsk Division V. Putna were shot in Moscow in the basement of the building of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on June 11, 1937.

Who has won?

It is difficult to give an answer.

The idea and the course of the country's development won, as the Bolsheviks understood and did.

Previous events

The sailors and Red Army soldiers passed a resolution supporting the workers of Petrograd and demanded the release of all representatives of the socialist parties from imprisonment, the holding of re-elections of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the exclusion of all communists from them, the granting of freedom of speech, assembly and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, permission handicraft production with their own labor, allowing the peasants to freely use their land and dispose of the products of their economy, that is, the elimination of the food dictatorship.

On March 1, 1921, the “Provisional Revolutionary Committee” (VRK) was created in the fortress, headed by the Social Revolutionary, sailor S. M. Petrichenko, the committee also included his deputy Yakovenko, machine foreman Arkhipov, master of the electromechanical plant Tukin and head of the third labor school I E. Oreshin.

Using the powerful radio stations of the warships, the VRC immediately broadcast the resolution of the rally and a request for help.

Events March 2-6

The Kronstadters sought open and transparent negotiations with the authorities, but the position of the latter from the very beginning of the events was unequivocal: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must lay down their arms without any conditions. The parliamentarians who were sent by the rebels were arrested - for example, the delegation of Kronstadters, who arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested. The rebels were declared "outlaws". Reprisals against the relatives of the leaders of the uprising followed. They were taken as hostages. Among the first to be arrested was the family of former general Kozlovsky. Together with them, all their relatives, including distant ones, were arrested and exiled to the Arkhangelsk province. They continued to take hostages even after Kronstadt fell. Relatives of the leaders of the Military Revolutionary Committee and military specialists who left Kronstadt for Finland were arrested.

On March 4, the Petrograd Defense Committee delivered an ultimatum to Kronstadt. The rebels had to either accept it or reject it and fight. On the same day, a meeting of the delegates' meeting was held in the fortress, which was attended by 202 people. It was decided to defend. At the suggestion of Petrichenko, the composition of the Military Revolutionary Committee was increased from 5 to 15 people.

The garrison of the Kronstadt fortress consisted of 26 thousand military personnel, however, it should be noted that not all personnel participated in the uprising - in particular, 450 people who refused to join the uprising were arrested and locked in the hold of the battleship Petropavlovsk; with weapons in hand, the party school and part of the communist sailors went ashore in full strength, there were also defectors (in total, more than 400 people left the fortress before the assault).

Storm March 7-18

On March 5, 1921, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council No. 28, the 7th Army was restored under the command of M. N. Tukhachevsky, who was instructed to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8. It was on this day that, after several postponements, the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b) was supposed to open - it was not a mere coincidence, but a thoughtful step taken with a certain political calculation. The tight deadlines for preparing the operation were also dictated by the fact that the expected opening of the Gulf of Finland could significantly complicate the capture of the fortress.

At 18:00 on March 7, shelling of Kronstadt began. At dawn on March 8, 1921, on the day of the opening of the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), the soldiers of the Red Army stormed Kronstadt. But the assault was repulsed, and the troops with losses retreated to their original lines. As K. E. Voroshilov noted, after an unsuccessful assault “ the political and moral state of individual parts was alarming”, two regiments of the 27th Omsk Rifle Division (235th Minsk and 237th Nevelsky) refused to participate in the battle and were disarmed.

As of March 12, 1921, the rebel forces numbered 18 thousand soldiers and sailors, 100 coastal defense guns (including the ship guns of the battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk - 140 guns), over 100 machine guns with a large amount of ammunition.

In preparation for the second assault, the strength of the group of troops was increased to 24 thousand bayonets, 159 guns, 433 machine guns, the units were reorganized into two operational formations:

• Northern group(commander E. S. Kazansky, commissar E. I. Veger) - advancing on Kronstadt from the north along the ice of the bay, from the coastline from Sestroretsk to Cape Lisy Nos.
• Southern group(commander A.I. Sedyakin, Commissar K.E. Voroshilov) - advancing from the south, from the Oranienbaum area.

About 300 delegates to the 10th Party Congress, 1114 communists and three regiments of cadets from several military schools were sent to the active units for reinforcement. Reconnaissance was carried out, white camouflage suits, boards and lattice bridges were prepared to overcome unreliable sections of the ice surface

The assault began on the night of March 16, 1921, before the start of the battle, the attackers managed to covertly occupy Fort No. 7 (it turned out to be empty), but Fort No. 6 put up a long and fierce resistance. Fort No. 5 surrendered after the start of the artillery shelling, but before the assault group approached it (the garrison offered no resistance, the cadets were greeted with exclamations of “Comrades, do not shoot, we are also for Soviet power”), however, the neighboring Fort No. 4 held out for several hours and during the assault the attackers suffered heavy losses.

With heavy fighting, the troops also captured forts No. 1, No. 2, Milyutin and Pavel, however, the defenders left the Rif battery and the Shanets battery before the assault began and went to Finland on the ice of the bay.

In the middle of the day on March 17, 1921, 25 Soviet aircraft raided the battleship Petropavlovsk.

After the capture of the forts, the Red Army broke into the fortress, fierce street fighting began, but by 5 o'clock in the morning on March 18, the resistance of the Kronstadters was broken.

On March 18, 1921, the rebel headquarters (which was located in one of the gun turrets of Petropavlovsk) decided to destroy the battleships (along with the prisoners who were in the holds) and break through to Finland. They ordered to lay several pounds of explosives under the gun turrets, but this order caused outrage. On the Sevastopol, the old sailors disarmed and arrested the rebels, after which they released the communists from the hold and radioed that Soviet power had been restored on the ship. Some time later, after the start of the artillery shelling, Petropavlovsk also surrendered (which most of the rebels had already left).

According to Soviet sources, the attackers lost 527 people killed and 3285 wounded. During the assault, 1 thousand rebels were killed, over 2 thousand were “wounded and captured with weapons in their hands”, more than 2 thousand surrendered and about 8 thousand went to Finland.

The results of the uprising

A brutal reprisal began not only over those who held weapons in their hands, but also over the population, since all the inhabitants of the rebellious city were considered guilty. 2103 people were sentenced to capital punishment and 6459 people were sentenced to various terms of punishment. In the spring of 1922, the mass eviction of the inhabitants of Kronstadt from the island began. During the following years, the surviving participants in the Kronstadt events were repeatedly repressed later. In the 1990s - rehabilitated.

The memory of the uprising

Decree of the President of the Russian Federation on the construction in Kronstadt of a monument to the victims of the events of 1921 and their rehabilitation

The commander of the shock communist battalion was the future commissar of the fortress V.P. Gromov. He, the chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Baltic Fleet V. D. Trefolev and other participants in the assault were buried on the Anchor Square of Kronstadt in the mass grave of the Kronstadters who died in the struggle for the victory of Soviet power. An eternal flame has been burning over their grave since November 7, 1984.

In St. Petersburg, one of the streets is called Trefoleva Street, in honor of one of the leaders of the suppression of the uprising.

Near the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra there is a mass grave on which is written “In memory of the victims of the Kronstadt rebellion. 1921"

According to the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 1994, a monument to the victims of the events of 1921 and their rehabilitation should be erected in Kronstadt.

see also

Notes

1. S. N. Semanov, Kronstadt rebellion, M., 2003 ISBN 5-699-02084-5
2. Kronstadt. 1921. Under the general editorship of A.N. Yakovleva. Compiled by V. P. Naumov, A. A. Kosakovskiy. Series "Russia. XX century. Documents". M., 1997.
3. Soviet military encyclopedia. - T. 4. - S. 479-480.
4. K. E. Voroshilov. From the history of the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion. // Military History Journal, No. 3, 1961. pp. 15-35
5. Kronstadt rebellion (Russian). Chronos website. Archived from the original on June 1, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
6. N. Trifonov, O. Souvenirov. The defeat of the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt rebellion // Military History Journal, No. 3, 1971. pp. 88-94
7. M. Kuznetsov. The rebellious general to the slaughter. // "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" dated 08/01/1997.
8. The Civil War in the USSR (in 2 vols.) / coll. authors, ed. N. N. Azovtsev. Volume 2. M., Military Publishing House, 1986. pp. 321-323
9. Great Soviet Encyclopedia. / ed. A. M. Prokhorova. 3rd ed. T.13. M., "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1973. p.480
10. The Kronstadt tragedy of 1921: documents (in 2 vols.) / comp. I. I. Kudryavtsev. Volume I. M., ROSSPEN, 1999. p.14
11. Encyclopedia "Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR" (2nd ed.) / editorial board, ch. ed. S. S. Khromov. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1987. p.311
12. S. E. Gerbanovsky. Storming the rebellious forts. // Military History Journal, No. 3, 1980. pp. 46-51 - ISSN 0321-0626

Literature

• Kronstadt rebellion // Soviet military encyclopedia / ed. N. V. Ogarkova. - M .: Military Publishing House, 1979. - T. 4. - 654 p. - (in 8 tons). - 105,000 copies.
• Pukhov S. A. Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. [M.], 1931
• Kronstadt rebellion. Sat. articles, memoirs and documents / ed. N. Kornatovsky. L., 1931
• M. Kuzmin. Kronstadt rebellion. L., 1931
• O. Leonidov. Liquidation of the Kronstadt rebellion. M., 1939
• K. Zhakovshchikov. The defeat of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. L., 1941
• Semanov S. N. Elimination of the anti-Soviet Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. M., "Science", 1973
• Shchetinov Yu. A. A thwarted conspiracy. M., 1978
• Ermolaev I. Power to the Soviets! ..: On the events in Kronstadt March 1-18, 1921 - Journal "Friendship of Peoples". 1990, no. 3, p. 182-189
• Kronstadt 1921. Documents. / Russia XX century. M., 1997
• The Kronstadt tragedy of 1921: documents (in 2 vols.) / comp. I. I. Kudryavtsev. M., ROSSPEN, 1999
• Semanov S. N. Kronstadt rebellion. - M.: EKSMO: Algorithm, 2003. - 254 p.
• Novikov A.P. Socialist-Revolutionary leaders and the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 // Patriotic history. - 2007. - No. 4. - P.57-64
• Evrich P. Uprising in Kronstadt. 1921 / Trans. Igorevsky L. A. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007. - 237 p.

Links

• Kronstadt 1921. Documents on the events in Kronstadt in the spring of 1921. Collection. M., 1997
• L. Trotsky. The mutiny of the former General Kozlovsky and the ship "Petropavlovsk" (Government message) March 2, 1921
• L. D. Trotsky. The hype around Kronstadt // Bulletin of the Opposition
• Cayo Brendel Kronstadt - the proletarian offspring of the Russian Revolution
• "Power to the Soviets, not to the parties!" From the newspaper "News of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Red Army Men and Workers of the City of Kronstadt" No. 13, Tuesday, 03/15/1921
• Documentary film by Alexei Denisov “Kronstadt rebellion. Who has won?"
• The fate of the officer of the battleship "Sevastopol", midshipman Vladimir Sergeevich Beckman in the documents and memoirs of relatives.
• Artyom Krechetnikov The uprising in Kronstadt: for freedom of trade and the power of the Soviets (Russian). BBC Russian service (March 17, 2011). Archived from the original on May 19, 2012. Retrieved March 17, 2011.

1921 the end of a bloody civil war. The armies of the White Guards and interventionists are almost completely defeated, the young Soviet state of workers and peasants is gradually strengthening and recovering from the agrarian legacy of tsarist power and military devastation. But the internal contradictions fomented by counter-revolutionary forces do not leave the country either. And one of the most frequently recalled results of such contradictions, which occurred during the period of the establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, is the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.

To begin with, consider the main causes and nature of the rebellion that occurred. In the bourgeois environment, it is customary to present the Kronstadtsers as a kind of heroes of the struggle against the "dictatorship of the Bolsheviks", and with a handout from the bourgeoisie, this heroic halo of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet is picked up by all kinds of "left" movements of an anti-Soviet orientation, in particular, anarchists, exposing this as almost a new revolution, bearing anti-state character. But how was it in reality?

With the outbreak of the civil war, the workers' and peasants' government was forced to switch to an emergency policy of the so-called "war communism", part of which was the food requisitions held in the villages. Initially, the peasantry tolerated this, accepting it as a temporary evil, but as the Civil War dragged on for a long three years, the contradictions between the city and the petty-bourgeois countryside, the contradictions between (in this case) consumer-workers and producers-peasants, grew more and more, which led to the emergence of all kinds of peasant gangs of a counter-revolutionary nature: Makhnovist gangs, "green rebels" and others. It was not a struggle "for", but an exclusively "against" proletarian dictatorship. Enraged petty proprietorship, dissatisfied with the expropriation of its property for wartime needs, attacked the Workers' and Peasants' Government as the source of all troubles in their minds, disguising their frankly counter-revolutionary essence under beautiful slogans. And one could still justify the uprising by the famine that followed the surplus appraisal, but breaking these unfounded conjectures, we will quote L.D. Trotsky, who left a note on this issue:

Demoralization on the basis of hunger and speculation in general terribly intensified towards the end of the civil war. The so-called "sacking" took on the character of a social disaster that threatened to stifle the revolution. It was in Kronstadt, where the garrison did nothing and lived on everything ready, that demoralization reached especially great proportions. When hungry Peter had a particularly hard time, the Politburo more than once discussed the question of whether to make an "internal loan" from Kronstadt, where there were still old stocks of all sorts of goods. But the delegates of the St. Petersburg workers answered: “You won’t get anything from them with kindness. They speculate in cloth, coal, and bread. Every bastard has now raised its head in Kronstadt.

Such was the real situation, without sugary idealizations in hindsight.

It must be added that in the Baltic Fleet, as "volunteers", those from the Lettish and Estonian sailors who were afraid to go to the front and were going to move to their new bourgeois homelands: Latvia and Estonia, settled down as "volunteers". These elements were fundamentally hostile to the Soviet regime and fully displayed their counter-revolutionary essence during the days of the Kronstadt rebellion. Along with this, many thousands of Latvian workers, mainly former farm laborers, showed unparalleled heroism on all fronts of the civil war. Consequently, neither Latvians nor "Kronstadters" can be painted in the same color. One must be able to make social and political distinctions.

In this way, during the hungry years, the rebels themselves did not provide assistance to the hungry Peter, and when the accumulated seemed little, they bared their teeth, also demanding from the worker-peasant government "to disarm and disband the political departments", thereby generally openly showing their counter-revolutionary essence. And the very slogan of the rebels “power to the Soviets, not parties” cannot leave any doubts about the true, hostile dictatorship of the proletariat of the essence of the rebellion, since it was difficult not to understand that the elimination of the leadership of the Bolsheviks over the Soviets would very quickly destroy the Soviets themselves. Like the demand for free trade by the rebels, this threatened the basic principles of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and as a result, the rebellion itself threatened to nip it in the bud.

Thus, the causes and the counter-revolutionary nature of the rebellion became clear to us. Not the romantic spirit of the anarchist struggle against the state and not the famine were the reasons for the rebels' dissatisfaction with the policy of war communism, but only the threat that what they had accumulated would "leak".

At the end of February, a wave of strikes and rebellious moods swept through Kronstadt, putting the factories and factories to work. By taking decisive action, according to the report of the Deputy Chairman of the Petrograd Gubchek Ozolin, mentioned in the negotiations with Petrograd, the Cheka managed to arrest "the entire head of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks." Also, Ozolin tells Yagoda: “In total, up to 300 people were arrested, the remaining 200 are active workers and from the intelligentsia. According to the investigation, the Mensheviks play a prominent role in the ongoing events.. The role of the latter in fomenting protest moods is, in principle, beyond any doubt. It is worth emphasizing that during the years of the Civil War, the Mensheviks almost openly advocated the restoration of capitalism, which is why their participation in the Kronstadt rebellion gives the latter a pronounced counter-revolutionary connotation even more, regardless of any slogans of the rebels.

Dreadnought "Petropavlovsk"

In the following days, the situation began to heat up more and more. Fermentation and confusion began in some of the reserve regiments, which so far could be calmed down. February 28, 1921 a meeting of the teams of the battleships "Sevastopol" and "Petropavlovsk" was held at which the rebels adopted a resolution with demands worthy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks: to hold re-elections of the Soviets without the Communists, to abolish the commissars and political departments, to give freedom of activity to all socialist parties and to allow free trade. And already on March 1, a 15,000-strong rally took place on Anchor Square in Kronstadt under the slogan “Power to the Soviets, not to the parties!”. Everyone was waiting for the arrival at the rally of the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, who arrived on the melted ice of the bay. Dolutsky in "Materials for the study of the history of the USSR (1921 - 1941)" writes: “The brethren greeted Mikhail Ivanovich with applause - he was not afraid, he came. The All-Russian headman knew where he had arrived - yesterday, at a general meeting, the teams of the battleship Petropavlovsk adopted a resolution for re-elections to the Soviets, but without the Communists, for freedom of trade. The resolution was supported by the crew of the second battleship - "Sevastopol" - and the entire garrison of the fortress. And here is Kalinin in the seething Kronstadt. One - without security, guides, took only his wife!

But the sailors (who until recently demanded freedom of speech) did not allow Mikhail Ivanovich to finish, just as they did not give the Baltic Fleet Commissioner Kuzmin, who arrived at the rally to speak, an opportunity to speak. "End the old songs, give me some bread!" shouted the rebels, preventing Kalinin from continuing. Here, however, it should be noted that there was just enough bread for the Kronstadters, the Red Navy ration for the winter of 1921 (the data is given in the same source by Dolutsky) was in a day: 1.5 - 2 pounds of bread (1 pound \u003d 400 g), a quarter pound of meat, a quarter pound of fish, a quarter - cereals, 60 - 80 gr. Sahara. The St. Petersburg worker was content with half the ration, and in Moscow, for the hardest physical labor, workers received 225 grams per day. bread, 7 gr. meat or fish and 10 gr. sugar, which once again confirms the thesis about the exclusively anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary nature of the rebellion.

Kalinin tried to reason with the crowd: “Your sons will be ashamed of you! They will never forgive you today, this hour, when you voluntarily betrayed the working class!”. But the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was no longer listened to. Kalinin left, and on the night of March 1-2, the rebels arrested the leaders of the Kronstadt Soviet and about 600 communists, including the commissar of the Baltic Fleet Kuzmin. The first-class fortress that covered the approaches to Petrograd ended up in the hands of the rebels. On March 2, the rebels made an attempt to start negotiations with the authorities, but the latter's position on what was happening was simple: before any negotiations begin, the rebels must lay down their arms. Without fulfilling these requirements, all parliamentarians sent to the Bolsheviks from the rebels were arrested. On March 3, a defense headquarters was created in the Kronstadt fortress, headed by the former captain Solovyanin. The former General of the Red Army Kozlovsky, Rear Admiral Dmitriev and an officer of the General Staff of the tsarist army Arkannikov were appointed military specialists of the headquarters.

The Bolsheviks did not pull any further, and on March 4 the rebels were given an ultimatum demanding to immediately lay down their arms. On the same day, a meeting of the delegates' meeting was held in the fortress, which was attended by 202 people, at which this issue was raised. The decision was made to defend. At the suggestion of Petrichenko, the leader of the rebellion (not at all Kozlovsky, as the Bolsheviks then believed and as some sources now mention), the composition of the VRC - the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, created by the rebels on March 2, was increased from 5 to 15 people. The total number of the garrison of the Kronstadt fortress was 26 thousand people, however, not all personnel took part in the counter-revolutionary action, in particular, 450 people who refused to join the rebellion were arrested and locked in the hold of the battleship Petropavlovsk. In addition to them, the party school and part of the communist sailors went ashore with weapons in their hands, there were also defectors (in total, more than 400 people left the fortress before the assault).

Semanov writes: "At the very first news of the beginning of the Kronstadt armed mutiny, the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government took the most decisive measures to eliminate it as soon as possible."

V. I. Lenin took an active part in their development and implementation. On March 2, 1921, the Council of Labor and Defense of the RSFSR adopted a special resolution in connection with the rebellion. The next day, signed by Lenin, it was published. The resolution ordered:

“1) Former General Kozlovsky and his associates should be outlawed.

2) The city of Petrograd and the province of Petrograd shall be declared under a state of siege.

3) Transfer all power in the Petrograd fortified region to the Petrograd Defense Committee.

But it is clear that military operations against the rebels could not be limited to the forces of the Petrograd garrison alone, requiring the transfer of military units from other parts of the country.

“Foreseeing the possibility of inconsistency in actions between the local Petrograd leadership and the army command,” Semanov writes further, “The STO of the RSFSR, chaired by Lenin, decided on March 3: The Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, which exercises its leadership in accordance with the established procedure.

So, throughout the struggle against the rebels, the government supported the St. Petersburg workers, the Bolsheviks and the Petrograd Defense Committee. The available military and material forces were thrown to help the defenders of the city from the rebels.

The party also had to make considerable efforts for counter-propaganda measures. The matter was also complicated by the fact that Kronstadt was traditionally considered the "capital" of the Baltic Fleet. And especially the authority of the oldest naval fortress in Russia increased after October, when the bulk of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet became the vanguard of the socialist revolution. And of course, in its propaganda, the rebellious self-proclaimed revolutionary committee tried in every possible way to use this fact, posing as the successor to the deeds of the revolutionary Baltic sailors, therefore, even before the armed suppression of the rebellion, party organizations began a major explanatory campaign among the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. Meetings and rallies were held on ships and in military units, fleet veterans made appeals to ordinary sailors and soldiers, urging them to change their minds and go over to the side of the worker-peasant Soviet power.

Measures were also taken to counter-propaganda influence on the sailors who were accidentally involved in the rebellion by the Kronstadt ringleaders. Semanov writes: “In the propaganda materials, the counter-revolutionary essence of the “revolutionary committee” was emphasized in every possible way, it was proved that its actual leaders were former officers, disguised White Guards. On March 4, the appeal of the Petrograd Defense Committee was published: “They got through. To the deceived Kronstadters". It said:

“Now you see where the scoundrels led us. Got through. Behind the backs of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the bared teeth of the former tsarist generals have already peeked out ... All these generals Kozlovskys, Burskers, all these scoundrels Petrichenko and Tukin, at the last minute, of course, will run away to the White Guards in Finland. And you, deceived ordinary sailors and Red Army soldiers, where will you go? If you are promised that they will feed you in Finland, you are being deceived. Haven't you heard how the former Wrangelites were taken to Constantinople and how they died there by the thousands, like flies, from hunger and disease? The same fate awaits you, if you do not come to your senses immediately ... Whoever surrenders immediately - his guilt will be forgiven. Surrender immediately!"

According to the testimony of the same Semanov, in the first days of March, a general mobilization of universal education was carried out. By March 4, there were 1,376 communists and 572 Komsomol members in units of this kind. The trade unions did not stand aside either, having formed their detachment of 400 people. These forces were used so far only for the internal defense of the city, but at the same time they became the reserve of the regular Red Army units that surrounded the rebellious Kronstadt. Party, trade union, Komsomol mobilizations, as well as the call for general education, were carried out in an organized and fast manner, demonstrating the complete readiness of the Petrograd communists to repulse the insurgents.

The trade unions played their own and no small role in the mobilization of the working masses of Petrograd. Trade unions, according to Pukhov, were a great force: they had 269,000 members in the city and about 37,000 more in the province.

March 4 The Council of Trade Unions appealed to the population of the city. "Again, gold epaulettes appeared at the approaches of Red Petrograd." This is how the call of the council began, implying General Kozlovsky and other leaders of the rebellion with a "royal" past. Further, the appeal recalled the troubled days of 1919, when the White Guards stood literally under the walls of the city. “What saved Red Petrograd from Yudenich? The close solidarity of the St. Petersburg workers and all honest working people. The appeal recalled the decisive events of the civil war, to respond with close rallying to the provocations of the anti-Soviet forces.

Armed detachments of Komsomol members were created in all districts of Petrograd. And the slogan of the revolutionary troika: “Not a single communist should stay at home” turned out to be one hundred percent fulfilled.

On March 5, 1921, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council No. 28, the 7th Army was restored under the command of Tukhachevsky, who was instructed to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8. It was on this day, after several postponements, that the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) was to open. But this was not a mere coincidence, but a thoughtful step taken with a certain political calculation.

The tight deadlines for preparing the operation were also due to the fact that the opening of the Gulf of Finland could greatly complicate the assault and capture of the fortress. On March 7, the forces of the 7th Army numbered almost 18,000 Red Army soldiers: almost 4,000 soldiers in the Northern Group, about ten in the Southern, and another 4,000 in reserve. The main striking force was the combined division under the command of Dybenko, which included the 32nd, 167th and 187th brigades of the Red Army. At the same time, the advance to Kronstadt and the 27th Omsk Rifle Division began.

At 18:00 March 7 the shelling of the Kronstadt forts with course batteries began. At dawn on the 8th, on the day of the opening of the X Congress of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the soldiers of the Red Army stormed Kronstadt on the ice of the Gulf of Finland. However, it was not possible to take the fortress: the assault was repulsed and the troops returned to their original positions with losses.

The unsuccessful battle, as Voroshilov later recalled, undermined the morale of some parts of the army: “the political and moral state of individual units was alarming,” as a result of which two regiments of the 27th Omsk Rifle Division (235th Minsk and 237th Nevelsky) refused to participate in battle and were disarmed.

According to the Soviet military encyclopedia, as of March 12, the rebel forces numbered 18 thousand soldiers and sailors, more than a hundred guns and over a hundred machine guns, as a result of which the number of troops preparing for the second assault on the fortress was also increased to 24 thousand bayonets , 159 guns and 433 machine guns, and the units themselves were divided into two operational units: the southern group, under the command of Sidyakin, advancing from the south, from the Oranienbaum region and the northern, under the leadership of Kazansky, advancing on Kronstadt from the north along the ice of the bay, from the coastline from Sestroretsk to Cape Lisiy Nos.

The preparation was carried out carefully: a detachment of employees of the Petrograd provincial police was sent to the active units for reinforcement (of which 182 fighters took part in the assault - employees of the Leningrad Criminal Investigation Department), about 300 delegates of the X Party Congress, 1114 communists and three regiments of cadets of several military schools. Reconnaissance was carried out, white camouflage suits, boards and lattice walkways were prepared to overcome unreliable sections of the ice surface.

Assault on the fortress was launched on the night of March 16, 1921, before the start of the battle, the Red Army forces managed to quietly occupy Fort No. 7, which turned out to be empty, but Fort No. 6 put up a long and fierce resistance. Fort No. 5 surrendered immediately after the artillery shelling began, but before the assault group approached it. The garrison itself, it is worth noting, did not offer any resistance, the cadets from the assault group were greeted with exclamations of “Comrades, do not shoot, we are also for Soviet power”, from which we can conclude that not all participants in the rebellion were eager to continue participating in it.

But the neighboring fort number 4 held out for several hours and during the assault the attackers suffered heavy losses. In the course of heavy fighting, it was also possible to capture forts No. 1 and No. 2, Milyutin and Pavel, however, as Voroshilov later recalled, the defenders left the Rif battery and the Shanets battery before the assault began and went to Finland on the ice of the bay who willingly accepted them.

After capturing all the forts, the Red Army broke into the fortress, where fierce street fighting began with the rebels, but by 5 o'clock in the morning on March 18, the resistance of the Kronstadters was broken, after which the headquarters of the rebels, located in one of the gun towers of Petropavlovsk, decided to destroy the battleships together with the prisoners who were in the holds and break through to Finland. They ordered to lay several pounds of explosives under the gun turrets, but this order caused outrage. On the Sevastopol, the old sailors disarmed and arrested the rebels, after which they released the communists from the hold and radioed that Soviet power had been restored on the ship. Some time later, after the start of the artillery shelling, Petropavlovsk also surrendered, which had already been abandoned by most of the rebels.

On the deck of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" after the suppression of the rebellion. In the foreground is a hole from a large-caliber projectile.

According to the Soviet military encyclopedia, the attackers lost 527 people killed and 3285 wounded. During the assault, over a thousand rebels were killed, over 2 thousand were “wounded and captured with weapons in their hands”, more than two thousand surrendered and about eight thousand went into Finland.

The counter-revolutionary rebellion in Kronstadt was suppressed. Life in the city gradually improved, but the victims were considerable.

The forts of Kronstadt, the port and buildings of the fortress city, the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol were damaged. Great material resources were expended. Such is the price for a senseless rebellion raised by a handful of counter-revolutionaries who, by demagogy and lies, have succeeded in capturing half-starved and tired sailors and soldiers with them. Among the captured rebels were three members of the so-called temporary revolutionary committee. Some of the immediate leaders of the rebellion, who did not have time to escape to Finland, were handed over to the court and, according to his sentence, were shot.

Life in Petrograd returned to normal rather quickly. Already on March 21, V. I. Lenin sent a telephone message to the Petrograd Soviet about the immediate lifting of the state of siege in the city, and even earlier Tukhachevsky was recalled to Moscow, and D. N. Avrov again became the commander of the troops of the Petrograd Military District. On his orders, the Northern and Southern groups of troops were disbanded. On April 10, 1921, the 27th Omsk Rifle Division, which had done so much to defeat the rebellion, was transferred to the Zavolzhsky Military District at the direction of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. March 22 in Moscow? Vladimir Ilyich received the delegates of the Tenth Congress, who returned after the fighting near Kronstadt. He told them about the results of the congress, talked with them about the battles with the rebels, and then, at the request of the delegates, took pictures with them.

As for the fate of the rebels who fled to Finland, they were met rather coldly. The correspondent of Latest News on March 20, 1921, dispassionately described the following expressive scene: “The Finnish border guard disarms the sailors and soldiers, first forcing them to return and pick up abandoned machine guns and rifles on the ice. More than 10 thousand guns have been picked up. The leaders of the rebellion were placed in the former Russian fortress of Ino, and the rest were distributed to camps near Vyborg and in Terioki. At first, a stir broke out around the leaders of the rebellion, they were interviewed, they were interested in, and, albeit minor, but figures of the Russian emigration. However, they were soon forgotten about, and the responsibility for their existence was placed on the Red Cross.

All this most accurately emphasizes the idea of ​​V. I. Lenin that in the period of fierce class struggle there is no and cannot be a third force, it either merges with one of the opposing factions fighting among themselves, or it is dispersed and perishes.

Lenin himself returned to the lessons of Kronstadt more than once in his notes, and in a letter to the Petrograd workers he formulated one of the most important conclusions of the “Kronstadt lesson”:

“The workers and peasants began to understand after the Kronstadt events better than before that any transfer of power in Russia [from the Bolsheviks to the “non-Party”] is to the benefit of the White Guards; It was not without reason that Milyukov and all the intelligent leaders of the bourgeoisie hailed the Kronstadt slogan "Soviets without Bolsheviks."

And he put an end to this sad story a month later, writing the following:

“The mass of workers and peasants need an immediate improvement in their condition. By placing new forces, including non-Party people, in useful work, we will achieve this. The tax in kind and a number of related activities will help this. In this way we will cut the economic root of the inevitable fluctuations of the small producer. And we will fight ruthlessly against political vacillations that are useful only to Milyukov. There are many who hesitate. We're few. The vacillators are separated. We are united. Those who waver are not economically independent. The proletariat is economically independent. Those who waver do not know what they want: they want it, and they inject themselves, and Milyukov does not order it. And we know what we want.

And that's why we will win."

Literature:

1) Voroshilov K.E.: From the history of the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, “Military Historical Journal. 1961. No. 3.S. 15-35.

2) Pukhov A.S.: The Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. The Civil War in essays. [L.], 1931, p. 93.

3) Semanov S.N.: Elimination of the anti-Soviet Kronstadt rebellion.

4) Trotsky L.D.: "The hype around Kronstadt"

March 18, 1921 forever became a black date in the history of Russia. Three and a half years after the proletarian revolution, which proclaimed Freedom, Labour, Equality, Brotherhood as the main values ​​of the new state, the Bolsheviks, with cruelty unprecedented under the tsarist regime, dealt with one of the first actions of the working people for their social rights.

Kronstadt, who dared to demand re-elections of the soviets - "due to the fact that real soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants" - was covered in blood. As a result of a punitive expedition led by Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, more than a thousand military sailors were killed, and 2103 people were shot without trial by special tribunals. What was the fault of the Kronstadters before their "native Soviet government"?

Hatred for snickering bureaucracy

Not so long ago, all archival materials related to the “case of the Kronstadt rebellion” were declassified. And although most of them were collected by the victorious side, an unbiased researcher will easily understand that the protest moods in Kronstadt have aggravated to a large extent due to the outright nobility and rudeness of the party bureaucracy that has been snickering.

In 1921, the economic situation in the country was very difficult. The difficulties are understandable - the national economy has been destroyed by the civil war and Western intervention. But the way the Bolsheviks began to fight them outraged most of the workers and peasants who had given so much for the dream of a welfare state. Instead of "partnerships", the authorities began to create the so-called Labor armies, which became a new form of militarization and enslavement.

The transfer of workers and employees to the position of mobilized was supplemented by the use of the Red Army in the economy, which was forced to participate in the restoration of transport, fuel extraction, loading and unloading and other activities. The policy of war communism reached its climax in agriculture, when the surplus appropriation discouraged the peasant from the minimum desire to grow crops, which would be completely taken away anyway. Villages were dying, cities were emptying.

For example, the population of Petrograd decreased from 2 million 400 thousand people at the end of 1917 to 500 thousand people by 1921. The number of workers at industrial enterprises during the same period decreased from 300 thousand to 80 thousand. Such a phenomenon as labor desertion has gained gigantic proportions. The IX Congress of the RCP (b) in April 1920 was even forced to call for the creation of penal work teams from the captured deserters or to imprison them in concentration camps. But this practice only exacerbated social contradictions. The workers and peasants more and more often had a reason for discontent: what were they fighting for?! If in 1917 a worker received 18 rubles a month from the "damned" tsarist regime, then in 1921 - only 21 kopecks. At the same time, the cost of bread increased several thousand times - up to 2625 rubles per 400 grams by 1921. True, the workers received rations: 400 grams of bread per day for a worker and 50 grams for a member of the intelligentsia. But in 1921, the number of such lucky ones dropped sharply: in St. Petersburg alone, 93 enterprises were closed, 30 thousand workers out of the 80 thousand that were available at that time were unemployed, which means that they were doomed, along with their families, to starvation.

And next to it, the new “red bureaucracy” lived well and cheerfully, having invented special rations and special rations, as modern bureaucrats now call it, awards for effective management. The sailors were especially outraged by the behavior of their "proletarian" Commander of the Baltic Fleet Fyodor Raskolnikov(real name Ilyin) and his young wife Larisa Reisner, who became the head of the cultural enlightenment of the Baltic Fleet. “We are building a new state. People need us,” she declared frankly. “Our activity is creative, and therefore it would be hypocritical to deny yourself what always goes to people in power.”

Poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky recalled that when he came to Larisa Reisner in the apartment of the former naval minister Grigorovich, which she occupied, he was amazed by the abundance of objects and utensils - carpets, paintings, exotic fabrics, bronze Buddhas, majolica dishes, English books, bottles of French perfume. And the hostess herself was dressed in a dressing gown, stitched with heavy gold threads. The couple did not deny themselves anything - a car from the imperial garage, a wardrobe from the Mariinsky Theater, a whole staff of servants.

The permissiveness of the authorities especially excited the workers and military personnel. At the end of February 1921, the largest plants and factories in Petrograd went on strike. The workers demanded not only bread and firewood, but also free elections to the Soviets. Demonstrations, by order of the then St. Petersburg leader Zinoviev, were immediately dispersed, but rumors about the events reached Kronstadt. The sailors sent delegates to Petrograd, who were amazed by what they saw - factories and plants were surrounded by troops, activists were arrested.

On February 28, 1921, at a meeting of the battleship brigade in Kronstadt, the sailors spoke in defense of the Petrograd workers. The crews demanded freedom of labor and trade, freedom of speech and press, free elections to the Soviets. Instead of the dictatorship of the communists - democracy, instead of appointed commissars - court committees. The terror of the Cheka - stop. Let the communists remember who made the revolution, who gave them power. Now it's time to return power to the people.

"Silent" rebels

To maintain order in Kronstadt and organize the defense of the fortress, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRC) was created, headed by sailor Petrichenko, in addition to which the committee included his deputy Yakovenko, Arkhipov (machinery foreman), Tukin (master of the electromechanical plant) and Oreshin (head of the labor school).

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRK) of Kronstadt: “Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, economic ruin has been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, ruling the country, broke away from the masses and proved unable to lead it out of the state of general ruin. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently taken place in Petrograd and Moscow, and which showed quite clearly that the Party had lost the confidence of the working masses. Nor did they take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the intrigues of the counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of the whole people, of all working people.

However, the VRC did not go further than this, hoping that the support of "the whole people" would solve all the problems by itself. Kronstadt officers joined the uprising and advised to immediately attack Oranienbaum and Petrograd, capture the Krasnaya Gorka fort and the Sestroretsk area. But neither the members of the Revolutionary Committee nor the ordinary rebels were going to leave Kronstadt, where they felt safe behind the armor of battleships and the concrete of the forts. Their passive position subsequently led to a quick defeat.

"Gift" to the Tenth Congress

At first, the position of Petrograd was almost hopeless. The city is in turmoil. The small garrison is demoralized. There is nothing to storm Kronstadt with. The chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Lev Trotsky, and the "winner of Kolchak" Mikhail Tukhachevsky urgently arrived in Petrograd. To storm Kronstadt, the 7th Army, which defeated Yudenich, was immediately restored. Its number is brought up to 45 thousand people. A well-functioning propaganda machine begins to work in full force.

Tukhachevsky, 1927

On March 3, Petrograd and the province were declared under a state of siege. The uprising is announced as a conspiracy of unfinished tsarist generals. Appointed chief rebel General Kozlovsky- chief of artillery of Kronstadt. Hundreds of relatives of the Kronstadters became hostages of the Cheka. Only from the family of General Kozlovsky, 27 people were seized, including his wife, five children, distant relatives and acquaintances. Almost all received camp terms.

General Kozlovsky

The rations were urgently increased for the workers of Petrograd, and the unrest in the city subsided.

On March 5, Mikhail Tukhachevsky is instructed to “suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible by the opening of the Tenth Congress of the CPSU (b).” The 7th Army was reinforced with armored trains and air detachments. Not trusting the local regiments, Trotsky called in the proven 27th division from Gomel, setting the date for the assault - March 7th.

Exactly on that day, artillery shelling of Kronstadt began, and on March 8, units of the Red Army launched an assault. The advancing Red Army soldiers were driven into the attack by barrage detachments, but they did not help either - having met the fire of the Kronstadt guns, the troops turned back. One battalion immediately went over to the side of the rebels. But in the area of ​​Zavodskaya Harbor, a small detachment of Reds managed to break through. They reached the Petrovsky Gates, but were immediately surrounded and taken prisoner. The first Kronstadt assault failed.

Panic broke out among the partymen. Hatred for them swept the whole country. The uprising is blazing not only in Kronstadt - peasant and Cossack revolts are blowing up the Volga region, Siberia, Ukraine, and the North Caucasus. The rebels smash the food detachments, the hated Bolshevik appointees are expelled or shot. Workers are on strike even in Moscow. At this time, Kronstadt becomes the center of a new Russian revolution.

Bloody Assault

On March 8, Lenin made a closed report at the congress about the failure in Kronstadt, calling the rebellion a threat that in many ways surpassed the actions of both Yudenich and Kornilov combined. The leader suggested that some of the delegates be sent directly to Kronstadt. Of the 1135 people who came to the congress in Moscow, 279 party workers headed by K. Voroshilov and I. Konev left for battle formations on Kotlin Island. Also, a number of provincial committees of Central Russia sent their delegates and volunteers to Kronstadt.

But in the political sense, the action of the Kronstadters had already brought important changes. At the Tenth Congress, Lenin announced the New Economic Policy - free trade and small-scale private production were allowed, the surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind, but the Bolsheviks were not going to share power with anyone.

From all over the country, military echelons were drawn to Petrograd. But two regiments of the Omsk Rifle Division rebelled: “We don’t want to fight against our sailor brothers!” The Red Army soldiers left their positions and rushed along the highway to Peterhof.

Red cadets from 16 Petrograd military universities were sent to suppress the rebellion. The fugitives were surrounded and forced to lay down their arms. To restore order, special departments in the troops were strengthened by Petrograd Chekists. Special departments of the Southern Group of Forces worked tirelessly - unreliable units were disarmed, hundreds of Red Army soldiers were arrested. On March 14, 1921, 40 other Red Army soldiers were shot in front of the formation to intimidate them, and on March 15, another 33. The rest were lined up and forced to shout “Give Kronstadt!”

On March 16, the Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ended in Moscow, Tukhachevsky's artillery began artillery preparation. When it finally got dark, the shelling stopped, and at 2 o'clock in the morning the infantry moved in marching columns across the ice of the bay in complete silence. Following the first echelon, the second echelon followed with a regular interval, then the third, reserve.

The Kronstadt garrison was desperately defending itself - the streets were crossed with barbed wire and barricades. Aimed fire was fired from the attics, and when the chains of the Red Army came close, the machine guns in the basements came to life. Often the rebels launched counterattacks. By five o'clock in the evening on March 17, the attackers were driven out of the city. And then the last reserve of the assault was thrown across the ice - the cavalry, which chopped into cabbage the sailors drunk with the specter of victory. On March 18, the rebellious fortress fell.

The Red troops entered Kronstadt as an enemy city. That same night, without trial, 400 people were shot, and in the morning revolutionary tribunals began to work. The former Baltic sailor Dybenko became the commandant of the fortress. During his "reign" 2103 people were shot, and six and a half thousand were sent to camps. For this, he received his first military award - the Order of the Red Banner. And a few years later he was shot by the same authorities for ties with Trotsky and Tukhachevsky.

Features of the uprising

In fact, only a part of the sailors raised the rebellion; later, the garrisons of several forts and individual inhabitants from the city joined the rebels. There was no unity of sentiment, if the entire garrison had supported the rebels, it would have been much more difficult to suppress the uprising in the most powerful fortress and more blood would have been shed. The sailors of the Revolutionary Committee did not trust the garrisons of the forts, so over 900 people were sent to the Rif fort, 400 to Totleben and Obruchev each. Commandant of the Totleben fort Georgy Langemak, future chief engineer of the RNII and one of the "fathers" "Katyusha", categorically refused to obey the Revolutionary Committee, for which he was arrested and sentenced to death.

The demands of the rebels were pure nonsense and could not be met in the conditions of the just ended Civil War and Intervention. Let's say the slogan "Soviets without Communists": The Communists made up almost the entire State Apparatus, the backbone of the Red Army (400 thousand out of 5.5 million people), the command staff of the Red Army for 66% of the graduates of the courses of painters from workers and peasants, appropriately processed by communist propaganda. Without this corps of managers, Russia would again sink into the abyss of a new Civil War and the Intervention of fragments of the white movement would begin (only in Turkey, the 60,000-strong Russian army of Baron Wrangel was stationed, consisting of experienced fighters who had nothing to lose). The young states, Poland, Finland, Estonia, were located along the borders, which were not averse to chop off the still light brown land. They would have been supported by Russia's "allies" in the Entente.

Who will take power, who will lead the country and how, where to get food, etc. - it is impossible to find answers in the naive and irresponsible resolutions and demands of the rebels.

On the deck of the battleship "Petropavlovsk" after the suppression of the rebellion. In the foreground is a hole from a large-caliber projectile.

The rebels were mediocre commanders, militarily, and did not use all the possibilities for defense (probably, thank God - otherwise much more blood would have been shed). So, Major General Kozlovsky, commander of the Kronstadt artillery, and a number of other military experts immediately suggested that the Revolutionary Committee attack the Red Army units on both sides of the bay, in particular, capture the Krasnaya Gorka fort and the Sestroretsk area. But neither the members of the Revolutionary Committee nor the ordinary rebels were going to leave Kronstadt, where they felt safe behind the armor of battleships and the concrete of the forts. Their passive position led to a quick defeat.

During the fighting, the powerful artillery of the battleships and forts controlled by the rebels was not used to its full potential and did not inflict any special losses on the Bolsheviks.

The military leadership of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, also did not act satisfactorily. If the rebels were led by experienced commanders, the assault on the Fortress would have failed, and the attackers would have washed themselves in blood.

Both sides did not hesitate to lie. The rebels published the first issue of Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, where the main "news" was that "There is a general uprising in Petrograd." In fact, unrest in the factories in Petrograd subsided, some ships stationed in Petrograd, and part of the garrison hesitated and took a neutral position. The vast majority of soldiers and sailors supported the government.

Zinoviev, on the other hand, lied that White Guard and British agents penetrated Kronstadt, throwing gold left and right, and General Kozlovsky raised a rebellion.

- The "heroic" leadership of the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee, headed by Petrichenko, realizing that the jokes were over, as early as 5 o'clock in the morning on March 17, left by car across the ice of the bay to Finland. Following them rushed a crowd of ordinary sailors and soldiers.

The result was the weakening of the positions of Trotsky-Bronstein: the beginning of the New Economic Policy automatically pushed Trotsky's positions into the background and completely discredited his plans for the militarization of the country's economy. March 1921 marked a turning point in our history. The restoration of statehood and the economy began, an attempt to plunge Russia into a new Time of Troubles was stopped.

Rehabilitation

In 1994, all participants in the Kronstadt uprising were rehabilitated, and a monument was erected to them on the Anchor Square of the fortress city.

Kronstadt mutiny March 1-18, 1921 - the speech of the sailors of the Kronstadt garrison against the Bolshevik government.

The Kronstadt sailors enthusiastically supported the Bolsheviks in 1917, but in March 1921 they rebelled against what they saw as a communist dictatorship.

The Kronstadt uprising was brutally suppressed by Lenin, but it led to a partial reassessment of economic development plans in a more progressive direction: in 1921, Lenin developed the foundations of the New Economic Policy (NEP).

... We were led by youth on a saber campaign, We were thrown by youth on the Kronstadt ice ...

In the relatively recent past, the poem, the lines from which are given above, was included in the compulsory curriculum for Russian literature in high school. Even making an adjustment for revolutionary romance, it must be admitted that the poet clearly exaggerates with regard to the fatal role of "youth". Those who "threw people on the Kronstadt ice" had very specific names and positions. However, first things first.

The opening of access to archival documents kept behind seven seals makes it possible for us to answer questions in a new way about the cause of the Kronstadt rebellion, about its goals and consequences.

Prerequisites. Reasons for the rebellion

By the early 1920s, the internal situation of the Soviet state remained extremely difficult. The lack of workers, agricultural implements, seed stock and, most importantly, the policy of surplus appropriation had extremely negative consequences. Compared with 1916, the sown areas were reduced by 25%, and the gross harvest of agricultural products decreased by 40–45% compared with 1913. All this became one of the main reasons for the famine in 1921, which struck about 20% of the population.

No less difficult was the situation in industry, where the decline in production resulted in the closure of factories and mass unemployment. The situation was especially difficult in large industrial centers, primarily in Moscow and Petrograd. In just one day, on February 11, 1921, 93 Petrograd enterprises were announced to be closed until March 1, among them such giants as the Putilov factory, the Sestroretsk arms factory, and the Triangle rubber factory. About 27 thousand people were thrown into the street. Along with this, the norms for issuing bread were reduced, and some types of food rations were canceled. The threat of famine approached the cities. The fuel crisis worsened.

The rebellion in Kronstadt was far from the only one. Armed uprisings against the Bolsheviks swept through Western Siberia, Tambov, Voronezh and Saratov provinces, the North Caucasus, Belarus, Gorny Altai, Central Asia, the Don, and Ukraine. All of them were suppressed by force of arms.

"Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" 1921

Unrest in Petrograd, speeches in other cities and regions of the state could not go unnoticed by the sailors, soldiers and workers of Kronstadt. 1917, October - Kronstadt sailors were the main force behind the coup. Now those in power were taking measures to ensure that the wave of discontent did not engulf the fortress, in which there were about 27 thousand armed sailors and soldiers. An extensive information service was created in the garrison. By the end of February, the total number of informants reached 176 people. Based on their denunciations, 2,554 people were suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.

But this could not prevent an explosion of discontent. On February 28, the sailors of the battleships Petropavlovsk (renamed Marat after the suppression of the Kronstadt mutiny) and Sevastopol (renamed the Paris Commune) adopted a resolution in the text of which the sailors designated as their goal the establishment of truly people's power, and not party dictatorship . The resolution called on the government to respect the rights and freedoms that were proclaimed in October 1917. The resolution was approved by the majority of the crews of other ships. On March 1, a rally was held on one of the Kronstadt squares, which the command of the Kronstadt naval base tried to use in order to change the mood of the sailors and soldiers. Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet D. Vasiliev, Commissar of the Baltic Fleet N. Kuzmin and head of the Soviet government M. Kalinin went up to the podium. But those gathered supported by an overwhelming majority the resolution of the sailors of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol.

The beginning of the uprising

Not having the required number of loyal troops, the government did not dare to act aggressively at that time. Kalinin departed for Petrograd in order to begin preparations for repression. At that time, a meeting of delegates from various military units by a majority of votes expressed no confidence in Kuzmin and Vasiliev. To maintain order in Kronstadt, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee (VRC) was created. Power in the city without a single shot passed into his hands.

The members of the VRC sincerely believed in the support of their workers in Petrograd and the whole country. Meanwhile, the attitude of the workers of Petrograd towards the events in Kronstadt was far from unequivocal. Some of them, under the influence of false information, negatively perceived the actions of the Kronstadters. To a certain extent, rumors did their job that a tsarist general was at the head of the "rebels", and that the sailors were only puppets in the hands of the White Guard counter-revolution. Not the last role was played by the fear of "purges" by the Cheka. There were also many who sympathized with the uprising and called for support for it. Such sentiments were characteristic primarily of the workers of the Baltic shipbuilding, cable, pipe factories and other urban enterprises. However, the most numerous group was made up of those who were indifferent to the Kronstadt events.

Who did not remain indifferent to the unrest was the leadership of the Bolsheviks. The delegation of Kronstadters, which arrived in Petrograd to explain the demands of the sailors, soldiers and workers of the fortress, was arrested. On March 2, the Council of Labor and Defense declared the uprising a "mutiny" organized by the French counterintelligence and the former tsarist general Kozlovsky, and the resolution adopted by the Kronstadters was "Black Hundred-Socialist-Revolutionary." Lenin and company were quite effective in using the anti-monarchist sentiments of the masses to discredit the rebels. To prevent the possible solidarity of the Petrograd workers with the Kronstadters, on March 3, a state of siege was introduced in Petrograd and the Petrograd province. In addition, there were repressions against the relatives of the "rebels", who were taken as hostages.

Bolsheviks attack Kronstadt

The course of the uprising

In Kronstadt they insisted on open and public negotiations with the authorities, but the position of the latter from the very beginning of the events was unequivocal: no negotiations or compromises, the rebels must be punished. Parliamentarians sent by the rebels were arrested. On March 4, an ultimatum was presented to Kronstadt. The MRC rejected him and decided to defend himself. For help in organizing the defense of the fortress, they turned to military specialists - staff officers. Those were offered, without waiting for the storming of the fortress, to go on the offensive themselves. In order to expand the base of the uprising, they considered it necessary to capture Oranienbaum, Sestroretsk. But the proposal to be the first to act as the first MRC decisively rejected.

Meanwhile, those in power were actively preparing to suppress the "rebellion". First of all, Kronstadt was isolated from the outside world. 300 delegates of the Congress began to prepare for a punitive campaign against the rebellious island. In order not to walk on the ice alone, they set about recreating the recently disbanded 7th Army under the command of M. Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to prepare an operational plan for the assault and "suppress the rebellion in Kronstadt as soon as possible." The assault on the fortress was scheduled for March 8. The date was not chosen by chance. It was on this day that, after several postponements, the 10th Congress of the RCP (b) was to open. Lenin understood the need for reforms, including the replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind, allowing trade. On the eve of the congress, relevant documents were prepared in order to submit them for discussion.

Meanwhile, just these questions were among the main ones in the demands of the Kronstadters. Thus, the prospect of a peaceful resolution of the conflict could appear, which was not included in the plans of the Bolshevik elite. They needed a demonstrative reprisal against those who had the audacity to openly oppose their government, so that others would be disrespectful. That is why it was precisely on the opening day of the congress, when Lenin was to announce a turn in economic policy, that it was supposed to deliver a merciless blow to Kronstadt. Many of the historians believe that since that time the Communist Party began its tragic path to dictatorship through mass repression.

Shelling of the Kronstadt forts

First assault

It was not possible to take the fortress immediately. Suffering heavy losses, the punitive troops retreated to their original lines. One of the reasons for this was the mood of the Red Army, some of which showed open defiance and even supported the rebels. With great effort, even a detachment of Petrograd cadets, considered one of the most combat-ready units, was forced to advance.

Unrest in the military units created the danger of the uprising spreading to the entire Baltic Fleet. Therefore, it was decided to send "unreliable" sailors to serve in other fleets. For example, six echelons with sailors of the Baltic crews were sent to the Black Sea in one week, which, according to the command, was an “undesirable element”. To prevent a possible rebellion of sailors along the route, the Red government strengthened the protection of railways and stations.

Last assault. Emigration

In order to improve discipline in the troops, the Bolsheviks used the usual methods: selective executions, detachments and accompanying artillery fire. The second assault began on the night of March 16. This time the punitive units were better prepared. The attackers were dressed in winter camouflage, and they were able to covertly approach the positions of the rebels across the ice. There was no artillery preparation, it was more problems than good, polynyas were formed that did not freeze, but were only covered with a thin crust of ice, immediately covered with snow. So the offensive proceeded in silence. The attackers covered a 10-kilometer distance by the predawn hour, after which their presence was discovered. A battle began that lasted almost a day.

1921, March 18 - the headquarters of the rebels decided to destroy the battleships (together with the captured communists who were in the holds) and break through the ice of the bay to Finland. They gave the order to lay several pounds of explosives under the gun turrets, but this order caused indignation (because the leaders of the rebellion had already crossed into Finland). On the Sevastopol, the "old" sailors disarmed and arrested the rebels, after which they released the communists from the holds and radioed that Soviet power had been restored on the ship. After some time, after the start of the artillery shelling, Petropavlovsk also surrendered (which most of the rebels had already left.)

Forts of Kronstadt 1855

Outcomes and consequences

On the morning of March 18, the fortress was in the hands of the Bolsheviks. The exact number of victims among those who stormed is still unknown. The only guide can be the data contained in the book "Secrecy Removed: Losses of the USSR Armed Forces in Wars, Combat Actions and Military Conflicts". According to them, 1912 people were killed, 1208 people were injured. There is no reliable information about the number of victims among the defenders of Kronstadt. Many of those who died on the Baltic ice were not even interred. With the melting of ice, there was a danger of contamination of the waters of the Gulf of Finland. At the end of March in Sestroretsk, at a meeting of representatives of Finland and Soviet Russia, the issue of cleaning up the corpses left in the Gulf of Finland after the battles was decided.

Several dozen open trials were held against those who took part in the "mutiny". The testimonies of witnesses were falsified, and the witnesses themselves were often selected from among former criminals. The performers of the roles of the Socialist-Revolutionary instigators and "spies of the Entente" were also discovered. The executioners were upset because of the failure to capture the former general Kozlovsky, who was supposed to provide a "White Guard trace" in the uprising.

Attention is drawn to the fact that the fault of the majority of those who found themselves in the dock was their presence in Kronstadt during the uprising. This is explained by the fact that the "rebels", who were captured with weapons in their hands, were shot on the spot. With particular predilection, the punitive organs persecuted those who had left the RCP(b) during the Kronstadt events. Extremely cruelly dealt with the sailors of the battleships "Sevastopol" and "Petropavlovsk". The number of executed crew members of these ships exceeded 200 people. In total, 2,103 people were sentenced to capital punishment, 6,459 people were sentenced to various terms of punishment.

There were so many convicts that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) had to deal with the issue of creating new concentration camps. In addition, in the spring of 1922, a mass eviction of the inhabitants of Kronstadt began. A total of 2514 people were expelled, of which 1963 were "kron-rebels" and members of their families, while 388 people were not connected with the fortress.