The 1921 uprising of sailors, soldiers and workers of the Kronstadt naval base, who demanded freely elected soviets and civil liberties for socialist parties, ran the island through a delegates' conference and a Provisional Revolutionary Committee for about two weeks, and were crushed by the Red Army.
Kronstadt, the fortified naval base on Kotlin island in the Gulf of Finland, was a stronghold of radical sailors in 1917. In May 1917 its soviet declared itself the sole power on the island, an episode Israel Getzler calls the "Kronstadt Republic", and its sailors played a prominent part in the October revolution. By early 1921 the Civil War was effectively won, but the Bolshevik regime of "war communism" had brought famine, requisitioning of grain from peasants, the suppression of other socialist parties and the subordination of soviets to the Communist Party. Strikes broke out in Petrograd in February 1921 and were met with arrests and martial law. Peasant uprisings were spreading in the countryside.
Kronstadt had a population of about 50,000 civilians and some 26,000 sailors and soldiers in early 1921. The committee took over existing stocks of food and fuel and distributed them through rationing on an equal basis, in line with the resolution. With the island blockaded and the ice making it a siege, there was no scope for economic reform; supplies ran short within days.
The Bolshevik government denounced the revolt as a counter-revolutionary plot led by a former tsarist general, Kozlovsky, and backed by French intelligence. Paul Avrich found a memorandum by an émigré "National Centre" that anticipated a rising in Kronstadt and planned to support it, but no evidence that émigrés instigated or directed the revolt; the committee refused their offers. A second dispute concerns who the rebels were. Soviet accounts and Trotsky claimed that the revolutionary sailors of 1917 had been replaced by raw peasant recruits. Evan Mawdsley and Israel Getzler used fleet records to show that most sailors of the main ships had served since before 1918.
After an ultimatum, artillery bombardment began on 7 March and an infantry assault across the ice on 8 March failed. The Tenth Party Congress, meeting from 8 March, sent delegates to join the attack and, in the same days, replaced grain requisitioning with a tax in kind, the start of the New Economic Policy, and banned factions within the party. On the night of 16–17 March some 45,000–50,000 troops under Mikhail Tukhachevsky launched the final assault across the ice; by 18 March the revolt was crushed. Thousands of rebels fled across the ice to Finland; hundreds were shot after summary trials and thousands sent to camps. Kronstadt became a lasting dividing line between Bolsheviks and their left-wing critics, anarchists such as Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman among them.
For about two weeks a delegates' conference and a Provisional Revolutionary Committee governed the naval base on a programme of freely elected soviets and civil liberties for socialist parties, held arrested Communists without executions and published its own newspaper. The revolt coincided with, and added pressure for, the Bolsheviks' switch to the New Economic Policy.
Isolated after the Petrograd strikes were suppressed, and facing a government that refused negotiation, the island was bombarded from 7 March and stormed on 17–18 March 1921. Thousands fled to Finland; hundreds were executed and thousands imprisoned. The Tenth Party Congress simultaneously banned factions, closing the political space the rebels had demanded.
The Petropavlovsk resolution of 28 February 1921 demanded new soviet elections by secret ballot, freedom of speech and press for workers, peasants, anarchists and left socialist parties, release of socialist political prisoners, abolition of Communist political departments and 'cordon' (roadblock) detachments, equal rations, and freedom for peasants' land use.[1][2][3]
By 1921 the Kronstadt garrison consisted mostly of new peasant recruits who had replaced the revolutionary sailors of 1917.[1][2]
Avrich found an émigré memorandum that anticipated and planned to support a rising in Kronstadt, but no evidence that émigré organisations instigated or directed the revolt.[1]
The revolt was crushed by 18 March 1921, after a final assault launched on 16–17 March, while the Tenth Party Congress (8–16 March) replaced grain requisitioning with a tax in kind and banned factions within the Communist Party.[1][2][3]