Brett Knowlton wrote:
>
> No. But they were responsible for putting down the Kronstadt uprising,
> which was a reaction against stripping the soviets of their power and
> centralizing authority in the Bolshevik party. They were also responsible
> for putting down the Mahknovist movement, as Jamal mentions below:
>
Hi Brett, I wasn't going to post anymore on these issues but I owe you a response. What you say above is true. Lenin and Trotsky said they had to do it to save the revolution but it looks like they did it to save their own power since the Kronstadt sailors were not counter-revolutionaries, they were Bolsheviks. This was a very bitter moment for L&T because the Kronstadt sailors were long time champions of L&T and L&T were also champions of the sailors when they were demonized in the Tsarist press. Trotsky:
"As always happens when contradictions are intensified to the limit but he moment of explosion has not yet come, the grouping of political forces revealed itself more frankly and clearly not on fundamental questions, but on accidental side issues. One of the lightning rods for the the diversion of political passions in those days was Kronstadt...In spite of ruthless vengeances, the flame of rebellion never went out in Kronstadt. It flared up threatingly after the revolution. The name of this naval fortress soon became on the pages of the patriotic press a synonym of the worst aspect of the revolution, a synonym of Bolshevism...The Kronstadt sailors became a kind of fighting crusaders for the revolution." History of the Russian Revolution440-1.
and
"The Bolshevik orator recalled the words apoken by Trotsky in defending the Kronstadt sailors against the accusations of Tseretelli [Menshevik leader]: "When a counter-revolutionary general tries to throw a noose around the neck of the revolution, the Kadets will soap the rope and the Kronstadt sailors will come to fight and die with us."827.
Victor Serge was an anarchist, bolshevik and Trotskyist during different times. He was the first to write about Stalin's prison camps.
'Conquered City' is a novel, part 3 of his victory in defeat and defeat in victory trilogy.I recommend all his book especially Memoirs of a Revolutionary.Here's the blurb from the back of "Conquered City",
"1919-1920. Revolutionary Petrograd sees its darkest days. While teh Civil War rages, revolutionaries are trapped by their situation into destroying their own comrades. City and Revolution are saved...but who or what has conquered?"
Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
> I would like to make a question. Where is your source of 90% illiteracy
> in Russia before 1917?
Its from Trotsky. I will try and find the exact cite.
> levels. The fault of this disaster can be put only in the Bolsheviks,
> but their policies (confiscations, war communism) were partially res-
> ponsible by economic ruin.
The fault of the civil war lies with the Bolsheviks? 20+ countries invaded. The Bolsheviks didn't have many choices.
The early USSR experience should be used
> as justification for a gradual approach in the transition to socialism
> (not to mention the need for democracy). I disagree from writers like
> Trotsky and E. Hobsbawn who said the Soviet Revolution wouldn't be
> succeded withouth a International Revolution.
Then you agree with Stalin and Bukharin that socialism is possible in a single backward country? An international revolution may not have made the USSR utopia, but it would have helped.
Sam Pawlett