Talk:Kronstadt rebellion
From Academic Kids
Wow! Finally a Wikipedia article that really makes an attempt to give a fair hearing to all interpretations of an historical event!
is there a copy'right' vio. if the site...http://www.infoshop.org/ is 'copyleft'? resolve:add a 'link' to the site?
- If the page is copyleft I guess it's fine, seeing as the page was put together by some bunch of anarchos I can't see anyone minding, but can any other wiki legal-eagles advise? AFAIK the original source link should go in the edit summary box, i'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong?? quercus robur 14:45, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)
resubmit:
The Kronstadt rebellion took place in March, 1921. Kronstadt is a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. It served as the base for the Russian Baltic Fleet, and to guard the approaches to the city of St. Petersburg (which during the first world war was re-named Petrograd).
<p>At the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia was exhasted and ruined. The droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the famine during that last year added the final chapter to the disaster. In the years following the originally "bloodless" October Revolution, epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general breakdown of the economy and society had taken approximately twenty million lives. War Communism might have saved the Soviet government in the course of the Civil War, but it also helped to wreck the national economy. With private industry and trade proscribed and the state unable to perform these functions on a sufficient scale, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62 per cent of the prewar acreage, and the harvest yield was only about 37 percent of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million during the same span of time. The exchange rate of an American dollar, which had been two rubbles in 1914, rose to 1,200 in 1920.
<p>The unbearable situation led to uprisings in the countryside and to strikes and violent unrest in the factories. In urban areas, a wave of spontaneous strikes occurred and in late February a general strike broke out in Petrograd. In solidarity with the workers of Petrograd, the naval crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol adopted a resolution which demanded a number of issues: free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, assembly and organisation, in addition to the equalisation of wages, the end of restricted travel and the ability of workers to bring food into the city.
<p>In March 1921, the Kronstadt naval base, celebrated by the Communists as one of the sources of the October Revolution, rose in rebellion against Communist rule. The Communist Government responded with an ultimatum on March 2nd. They asserted that foreign intelligence sources and ex-Tsarist officers were the leaders and organisers of this 'counter-revolution'.
<p>The Communist government attacked on March 7th. By March 17th, the Kronstadt revolt was crushed by the Red Army, though not easily, having themselves suffered casualties in the thousands.
<p>Although Red Army units ruthlessly suppressed the uprising, the general disatisfaction with Bolshevik rule could not have been more forcefully expressed. And it was against this background of utter devastation and discontent that Lenin, who, besides, had finally to admit that a world revolution was not imminent, proceeded in the spring of 1921 to inaugurate his New Economic Policy in place of War Communism. Once more Lenin proved to be the realist who had to overcome considerable doctrinaire opposition to have his views prevail in the party and, therefore, in the entire country.
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Further Reading
A History of Russia, N.V. Riasanovsky; [4th ed.]
From their website they don't mind as long as you reference the source. Secretlondon 12:28, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)
