The state hardens
March 1921
Kronstadt
The sailors who had been called the pride of the revolution rose against the party, and the party shelled them.
In March 1921 the garrison and crews at Kronstadt, the naval fortress off Petrograd, formed a revolutionary committee and demanded new soviet elections without Bolshevik monopoly, freedom of speech for workers and peasants, an end to War Communist requisitioning, and the release of socialist prisoners. These were not monarchists. Many had fought for October.
Trotsky and Mikhail Tukhachevsky took the fortress across the ice. Prisoners were shot or sent to camps. The rising coincided with the Tenth Party Congress, which banned factions and, at the same moment, announced the New Economic Policy. The political meaning is hard to miss: economic retreat, political lock.
Where to check it · Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917–1921; Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921; the rebels’ own Petropavlovsk resolution.