Russian Revolution
Articles about the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1921, and participants thereof.
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.
Makhno, Nestor, 1889-1934
A short biography of anarchist and guerrilla leader Nestor Makhno, who led the anarchist Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine, known as the Makhnovist movement.
This movement was the manifestation of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in the Ukraine, where it took a libertarian form and where the workers and peasants fought both the counter-revolutionary Tsarist armies and the authoritarian Bolsheviks.
Nestor Ivanovich Makhno
Born Ukraine, 27 October 1889, died France, 25 June 1934
1917-1921: The Ukrainian Makhnovist movement
The history of the revolutionary movement in the Ukraine - the anarchist Makhnovists - at the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
The revolution in the Ukraine was a libertarian revolution, and the workers and peasants fought both Tsarist reaction and Bolshevik domination.
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.
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.
The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution (Rosa Luxemburg, 1918)
Luxemburg reveals the counter-revolutionary nature and consequences of the Bolsheviks' nationalist policy of the "right of self-determination of peoples"
Originally published as Chapter II of the pamphlet The Russian Revolution, which was constituted out of notes prepared by Rosa Luxemburg in prison in 1918, and published posthumously.
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].
The 'Left' Communists' Theses on the Current Situation (Russia, 1918)
Published by the academic journal Critique, Glasgow, in 1977, this text has long been unavailable in print and apparently never before freely available online. A very important text of the Russian Revolution, showing the divisions within the Bolshevik Party in their early days in power.
Such debates on strategy were soon to be suppressed in the name of 'party discipline'; not only in the Party, but within the larger society. Soon the only place where dissidents had the freedom to criticise and debate the nature of the new ruling regime would be in some Soviet prisons.
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.
