The Kronstadt commune revisited

In 1921, the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base outside the Russian city of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) rose in rebellion against the Bolshevik regime. They formed a "revolutionary committee", published a short-lived newspaper, and even adopted a political program. The revolt was badly organized, and was soon put down by the Red Army. The leader, Petrichenko, fled to Finland. In Communist propaganda, the Kronstadt uprising is seen as counter-revolutionary. Anarchists, by contrast, support it. In their opinion, the rebellion was a protest against Bolshevik betrayal of the real ideals of the revolution.

Ida Mett's pamphlet "The Kronstadt Commune" is the classical anarchist statement on the matter. The pamphlet is available in several different editions in various languages. The original version was published in 1938 in France. Mett herself was a Russian anarchist of Jewish descent who collaborated with Nestor Makhno and Peter Arshinov, the founders of the "Platformist" current within anarchism. The pamphlet naturally enough gives the anarchist version of the events, i.e. that the Kronstadt uprising was a spontaneous rebellion against Bolshevik oppression, that it was left-wing, and that no contacts between the rebels and counter-revolutionary groups existed.

The pamphlet describes the events during the uprising, its eventual downfall, and the reactions of various non-Bolshevik groups. The program of the Kronstadt mutineers is included, and also the names of the members of the Revolutionary Committee. The pamphlet also contains a polemic against Trotsky, and reprints a short article from 1926 by Petrichenko, the leader of the uprising. Curiously, Mett also reprints a rambling article by Lenin on the subject.

Ida Mett's pamphlet has long been eclipsed by Paul Avrich's scholarly treatment of the subject, "Kronstadt 1921". Avrich gives a less rosy picture of the rebellion and its leaders, pointing out that Petrichenko collaborated with White Guards during his exile in Finland, and that there were anti-Semitic tendencies among the rebels. Judging by Avrich's account, the article by Petrichenko reprinted by Mett is disingenuous, since Petrichenko denies that the Russian Red Cross was a White Guard group, something he must have been aware of in 1926.

Be that as it may, Ida Mett's "The Kronstadt Uprising" nevertheless has a certain intrinsic interest, if only as anarchist propaganda.

(See also my review of "Kronstadt 1921" by Paul Avrich.)