MRR #314- Kronstadt Uprising
Felix MRR column 314

This month I'd like to talk about a record that changed my life. But first a quick aside. For many years fashion, advertising and other culture industries have pillaged the punk scene. The iconic style of punk record covers and fanzines is now part of the advertising mainstream. We see misappropriated punk iconography used all the time in fashion and advertising. There are punk band logos used out of context in designer clothing and advertising, and I'm told there was even a Code 13 t shirt on MTV. I've always hated this kind of parasytic feeding off the creativity of punk, but felt there was little I could do to protest. One group that doesn't have this problem is the Hells Angels. I don't want to support or condone the activities of the Hells Angels in any way. However, they are well known for quickly shutting down ANY use of their logo, colors or symbolism. There have been two well known incidents locally where the angels got pretty bent out of shape over this kind of thing. Most recently when a local band used a photo of a Hells Angel with their logo photoshopped onto the back of his vest to promote a show. The Angels ordered all the flyers torn down and brought to them immediately. Part of me wishes the Code 13 Fiend Club had wielded this sort of power and showed up at MTV with bats and chains and ordered all the videos destroyed and t shirts handed over.

Now, a record that changed my life. In the early 80's I was really into peace/anarcho punk. Mostly the English bands like Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, Rudimentary Peni, Conflict and the like. I used to order from Disorder, Toxic Shock, Rat Cage and other mail order houses all the releases on Crass, Spiderleg, Bluurg, Mortarhate, and Corpus Christi and follow the reviews and scene reports in this magazine. One 7” I ordered on recommendation from a friend was by the Kronstadt Uprising. This ep has yet to be re issued and it's pretty standard (but great!) noisy, pounding UK anarcho punk in the Flux/Crass tradition. While I dug the music and lyrics and the brief anarcho essay about the symbolism of the Black Flag. But what got me was the record cover, band name and title. Why was there a picture of a sailor with a rifle reaching for the sun? What did Kronstadt Uprising mean, and what was Unknown about this revolution? This being 20 odd years before google I asked the guys from local band Hate From Ignorance and found out it was something to do with the Russian revolution. I skated to the public library and started pulling books off the shelf that had never been checked out and reading voraciously. I learned that there had been an anarchist movement long before 1977.

Beyond the information on anarchism gleaned from punk 7” covers I found a book “The Anarchists” by James Joll which had a fairly informative chapter on the Russian Revolution. Many years before AK press and the internet much of the information in the early 80's about the anarchist movement dated either from the 1920s or the late 60's “new left” era. I did learn that the title Unkown Revolution came from a book by Voline a Russian anarchist who escaped after the revolution to write a history of the era in exile. The cover artwork of the Krontstadt Uprising 7” is based on a revolution era Russian propaganda poster “Red Fleet, vanguard of the Revolution” The band name refers to the uprising of the Baltic Fleet sailors against the repressive Bolshevik regime in 1921. The Baltic Fleet sailors had been some of the most radical elements in the revolution who felt betrayed at the dictatorial nature of the Bolshevik state and rose in revolt only to be crushed by Trotsky and the authoritarian Bolshevik regime.

All of this left me intrigued, in the early 1980s the USSR was still going strong and there was some minimal information about the Russian revolution taught in schools. These days I think most people under 30 know the USSR only from Saturday Night Live skits and the like. But for me as a young radical punk rocker I was fascinated with periods of unrest in the past. I read a lot about the Spanish Civil War, the radical anti war movement of the 60's (especially the Weathermen) but most of all I became fascinated with the Russian revolution.

Because of this 7” and the curiosity it imparted I wound up becoming utterly absorbed with late 19th and early 20th century Russian history. When I started to read about the Makhnovist movement first in the seminal Spain Rodriguez cartoon in Anarchy Comix, later in Arshinov and Voline's works I got really hooked. The radical anarchist movement of the revolutionary Ukraine seemed like such a contrast to the wishy washy activist scene of the early 1980s which was made up mostly of burned out hold overs from the 60s. I wound up majoring in Russian History in college and going on a study abroad term to the then USSR in 1991. Then end of the cold war and collapse of the USSR and then Russian Economy meant that there was little job market for young people educated in Russian Studies and I wound up in the construction field instead. However, I've had a keen interest in Russian history ever since those first obscure references on the Kronstadt Uprising 7”

The Russian revolution was one of the most important events of the 20th century and literally changed the course of history, briefly for the better, later for the worse. While much studied in the 20th century, it seems to be fading increasingly into obscurity today. The post soviet era seems to have lead to a “good bye to all that” mentality about the whole soviet era.

As most of us know the Tsarist regime of the early 20th century was a somewhat medieval anachronism in a rapidly modernizing Europe. The revolution of 1905 rent open the social fabric to reveal the level of unrest and desperation on the part of the peasants and workers. At the same time it showed that the regime could only maintain it's grip on power through a massive repressive apparatus. The disastrous Russian experience in the First World War only heightened the unrest and further exposed the bankruptcy of the old regime. Few were surprised in 1917 when the Tsar was toppled. The revolution was genuinely popular and came from the bottom up. The upper classes tried to maintain control of the situation through a bourgeois democratic provisional government, but by July of 1917 popular unrest was pushing towards and overthrow of the new order in the name of the Soviets. The misappropriation of the term Soviet is one of the great injustices of the revolutionary era. The Soviet (the word means “council”) was originally a local body of democratic self government. An instrument through which common people recently enfranchised, could elect representatives to municipal and national decision making bodies that would directly represent the people. There was a mass movement towards workers control of industry and peasant seizure of the land from the nobility. The authoritarian Bolshevik party of Lenin opporunistically rode the wave of popular unrest by co opting the slogan “all power to the soviets” Lenin was probably the most masterful politician of the 20th century and had an amazing knack for sensing the popular will, and figuring a way to launch his fringe authoritarian party into power by telling people what they wanted to hear.

The Bolsheviks seized power in a coup d'etat in November 1917 overthrowing the provisional government in the name of the soviets. However, soon after gaining power they began to institute repressive measures and stifle the democratic institutions they claimed to represent. It is often forgotten that some of the first victims of the “Red Terror” were not the representatives of the old regime, but the Bolsheviks' critics on the left, the most radical anarchists and social revolutionaries who dared to criticize the centralizing, authoritarian and anti democratic nature of the new regime. In the spring of 1918 civil war broke out in Russia that was to continue until 1921. This war, little known in the west, was perhaps more influential on the course of Russian history than the revolution itself. While most histories focus on the civil war as one between “white” reaction and the “red” Bolsheviks, there was considerable unrest in the land from people who resisted both the restoration of the old regime and the new dictatorship. Foremost among these was the partisan movement led by Nestor Makhno in the southern Ukraine.

Makhno had been imprisoned for radical activities after the 1905 revolution and was only released after 1917. He returned to his home village in Ukraine and began to help the local people organize and overthrow the existing regime there. This social revolution spread and soon much of the area around the village of Gulyai Polye was effectively liberated from control of any outside government or authority. In this area a radical social experiment took place not to be repeated until the Spanish Revoution and never since. Society was reorganized on democratic principles with the people governing themselves. Because this happened during a time of war, there was less than a year for the revolution to develop before the people had to take up arms first against the “white” counter revolutionaries, then against the “red” Bolsheviks who sought to re exert Moscow's control over Ukraine. The Makhnovist movement was crushed but a few of it's principle organizers escaped into exile leaving a document of this fascinating era.

In 1921 the aforementioned Kronstadt sailors, who had been the vanguard of the revolution, rebelled in the name of “soviets without communism” giving voice to the will of many Russian people who had risen up against the authority of the Tsarist order only to see it replaced by the dictatorial Bolshevik regime. The uprising was brutally crushed and Russia descended into authoritarian one party rule for decades.

Since I have long been fascinated by this era I'd like to recommend a few books that anyone who wants to learn more might check out.

Paul Avrich has written a number of books, The Russian Anarchists, Kronstadt 1921, and Russian Rebels which give a sympathetic and comprehensive overview to the libertarian left movement in Russia. For a more general study of the Russian Revolution the classic is WH Chamberlain's two volume series, although quite dated, it's still a good read. More contemporary and readable would be W. Bruce Linconl's Trilogy In War's Dark Shadow, Passage Through Armageddon, and Red Victory. Perhaps the most current and well though out single volume though is Orlando Figes “A Peoples Tragedy”. Figes was in the papers recently when his research materials on the Stalinist regime were confiscated by Putin's Chekists in St. Petersburg. There are a number of good books about the Makhnovist movement notably Skidra's “Anarchy's Cossack” and the memoirs of Arshinov and Voline who were participants. Ewan Mawdsley's book is probably the best single volume study of the Russian Civil War. Once you start to delve into the Russian revolution and Civil War you will find enough areas of interest to keep you reading for many years, here I am over 20 years after having my curiosity stoked by a 7” cover still writing about it.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1984

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