Russia
1921: The Kronstadt rebellion
The history of the rising of the naval town of Kronstadt in Russia by workers and sailors supporting the original aims of the 1917 Revolution against the new Bolshevik dictatorship. The rebellion was crushed by Red Army troops under Trotsky's command.
The Kronstadt rebellion took place in the first weeks of March, 1921. Kronstadt was (and is) a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Traditionally, it has served as the base of 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, then later Leningrad, and is now St.
The Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 - Lynne Thorndycraft
The story of the Kronstadt revolt, compactly told, a decisive moment in the Bolshevik counter-revolution.
Since this pamphlet was written Israel Getzler's book Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 1983, has appeared.
1905: The Russian Revolution
A short history of the first unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905. Following the 'Bloody Sunday' massacre, a general strike paralysed the country and workers' and peasants' councils were set up.
The revolt started on January 22 when a peaceful, mildly reformist, protest march in St. Petersburg was shoot at by troops with more than 1,000 killed or injured. This day became known as "Bloody Sunday." Rather than squelch the protests, the repression fanned the flames of rebellion.
Zhelezniakov, Anatoli, 1895-1919 - stormy petrel
A short sketch of the life of a young Russian anarchist sailor who, in collaboration with the Bolsheviks and others, was on hand to disperse both the Provisional Government in October 1917 and the Constituent Assembly in January 1918.
A very slightly revised version appears as Chapter 6 of "Anarchist Portraits" by Paul Avrich, Princeton University Press, 1988.
Chapter 1 of Capitalism and Class Struggle in the USSR - (Neil Fernandez)
Chapter 1 of Neil Fernandez's Capitalism and Class Struggle in the USSR - A Marxist Theory, Ashgate, Aldershot UK, 1997, which also serves as a useful historical overview of modern radical theory. From the book's introduction:
Russia 1917 - 'N', Wildcat [UK],1985
Originally a contribution to the conference held by UK Wildcat on the Russian revolution and its implications today [i.e. 1985].
Nikiforova, Marussia, 1885-1919
A short biography of Russian anarchist guerrilla and orator Marussia Nikiforova, who fought in the Russian Civil War following the 1917 Revolution.
Born at Alexandrovsk, (now Zaphorozhye)in 1885 Maria Grigorevna Nikiforova was a worker, who had jobs as a baby sitter, sales clerk, and finally as a bottle washer in a vodka distillery.As a member of a local anarchist-communist group she was condemned to death for armed attacks on the Czarist authorities in 1905, commuted to twenty years hard labour.imprisonment.
Kronstadt '21 - Victor Serge
We reproduce an excerpt from Memoirs of a Revolutionary, (1945) by Victor Serge on the Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolshevik autocracy, its dictatorship over the proletariat. Despite Serge remaining an (albeit highly critical) Bolshevik apologist and remaining in the camp of those who claimed Kronstadt as 'a tragic necessity', he is honest enough to describe the facts of the situation in their own damning terms.
For instance, the first act of the Bolshevik hierarchy was to publicly lie about the nature of the revolt, both to loyal party members and to the rest of society; they claimed that it was a revolt of the White generals to restore the old regime. This was the first lie of many about the rebellion that have been perpetuated ever since by Bolshevik apologists.
Paul Avrich obituary - The Guardian
Obituary of Russian-American anarchist historian Paul Avrich by Stuart Christie from The Guardian, Monday April 10, 2006
Russian gas crisis boost for the nuclear lobby
The gas-dispute between Russia and Ukraine earlier this month has been a gift to the British nuclear industry, and could not have come at a better time for the pro-nuclear forces that are working over-time to secure a new generation of nuclear reactors across Britain.
In early January, Russia restricted the supply of gas to its neighbour Ukraine. The Russian state gas company, Gazprom, suddenly increased the price of gas Ukraine was paying from the heavily subsidized rate of $50 per 1,000 cubic metres to the market rate of some $230 per 1,000 cubic metres . Not surprisingly, Ukraine refused to pay.
