THE KRONSTADT REVOLT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16450, 11 June 1921, Page 15

THE KRONSTADT REVOLT.

anti-bolshevik sailors. WOMEN PROMINENT IN REBELLION. (Hera! Correspondent “ New York Herald/’) Kronstadt has been called by the Reds “ the ornament and price or the Russian revolution ” (Kr&sa © Gordost Rossieaki Rcvoltitsie) because it was the first place in Russia to take tno side cf the Bolsheviki, so that th© latter now show ingratitude if they maintain that, the “pack cf drunken sailors, to use Trotsky’s words, who constituted the garrison of the island fortress, have no influence on tho Russian masses. For tho last six months Kronstadt has been steadily drifting into opposition to tho Soviet regime. "bis opposition was duo to various causes. Most of the sailors got extremely “fed up,” as an English bluejacket would put it. at boing cooped up in one place, especially ns that place happened to be a dreary little island without anv amusements; tho food, fuel and clothing difficulties from which ell Russia is suffering hit th© Eronstadters very hard : there was keen disillusionment nt Lenin’s failure to produce tho Socialist Paradise that ho had promised ; there was absolutely nothing to do ; and tho slack discipline led, as slack discipline always leads, to such intense discontent that a blowup of soma kind became an absolute physical necessity. MOVEMENTS RESTRICTED.

Tho sailors were net allowed to live in tho town or to visit the town often, and they objected to those restrictions on their liberty. There were 1000 men aboard tho Peiropavlovsk, but just before th© recent mutiny the number of . Communists among them had fallen to j 100. they grew to hate the civilian commissaries, and during th© last few months no commissary dared to venture aboard this vessel. The sailors of the other vessels wore stilt more anti-Bolshevik and made no secret of the fact. Nothing in their conduct and conversation so shocked rigid Communists as their replacement of the usual Bolshevist salutation of ‘ tayarhch ” (comrade) by “ brntishka ” (little brother). The heads of tho local Soviet rccro Bregmann and Hertzberg. The fiercest opponents of the Soviet regime Tver© th© women of Kronstadt. Owing to the insufficiency of the food served out free by tho Government, these women had to walk almost daily across the ico to Oranienbaum, in order to carry food tbor.c© on their own backs. This long daily walk was 1 not, however, what the women object- j c«l to most. The difficulties of getting j permits to leave Kronstadt infuriated them far more. And when they had walked seven versts to Oranienbaum they had another seven to walk to the village where they got food, and then return all the way back again, carrying what they had been able to purchase or seize, for they admitted themselves that the villagers would give nothing for money- Their principal trouble* wo?, with tho patrol of th© Extraordinary Commission on the Oranienbaum shore, which had the dtity of seizing all food products. It is tho women of Kronstadt, therefore, who deserve the principal credit for striking the first blow struck by the Russian working classes themselves against

Bolshevism. ALWAYS FOR LIBERAL RULE. There were 36,000 soldiers or sailors and 17,000 civilians in Kronstadt, and in the Czar’s time there was always two years' supply of provisions in th© island fortress, though recently theie was not more than enough for one month. They have always bcc-n fighting for what they regarded as a more liberal government for Russia, and liavo had periodical mutinies of tbo fiercest kind. Tbey mutinied against Kerensky because he was too reactionary for *” them, and swung round tho full circle and opnosed Lenin because ho is too advanced. My last visit to Kronstadt was made in 1905 on the occasion of a desperate mutiny against the Imperial Governnw-nt on the part of tho sailors. The revolt was put down by soldiers recruited in th© licarfc of Russia, and, thereto re, with no taint cf Bolshevism in their blood, and I found these soldiers lying about, everywhere on the ground, their lilies ready, watching tor the mutineers. About a- hundred of the sailors were afterward roped together. shot and then thrown into the sea, where, for days afterward, English skippers were horrified at seeing their swollen bodies tossing about on the waves. Thev died singing tho Russian Marseillaise.

I must admit that ill 1905 I sympathised with the sailors cf Kronstadt, for they were rebelling against the very worst form of government that existed in the world at that time. And they ar© doing the same thing this month. Trotsky talked of the Kronstadt sailors having been seduced from their “allegiance” to him by social revolutionaries. Mensheviki, White generals and foreign agents, hut though some of th© Left Social Revolutionaries succeeded in finding their way into Kronstadt a month ago and bringing intelligence } that a great-rising was planned throughout Russia for the end of February, an insurrection would in any case have taken place in Kronstadt tins spring. KOZLOVSKY’ AN IDEALIST. Kozlovsky, who was at tho head oi the Kronstadt mutiny, is a high-mind-ed soldier of lefty ideals and with » sincere love of that democratic liberty that ordered freedom which finds its highest expression among the British and American peoples. He does, not stand for reaction of Czar ism ; he is all for a moderate, commou-Mcase republic after the American model. He does not stand for vengeance; ho did not allow a single‘comifttSnist to be put to death in Kronstadt, not even Trotsky's blood-stained representatives in tho island fortress, Bregmann and Hertzberg. Ho did not take their women and children as hostages, though Trotsky seized and imprisoned all tho relatives he could find of the Kronstadt mutineers, including Kozlovsky's young brother, a naval eudet in Moscow. Ho told the “ Now York Herald's ” Petrograd correspondent- a month ago that for the sake of the men, women arid children for whoso safety’ he. was responsible and whom for the last two years he has seen degenerating in soul, in mind and . in body, lie had decided to strike a blow for numan liberty.

Kozlovsky let Ids subordinates send out all the wireless and other appeals that woro made by Kronstadt to the soldiers and people of Russia, lor he know the curious suspicion entertained by tbo Russian masses of all officers who havo served under tho Czar. But Tiotsky, with that uncanny intuition which he possessess.es, knew quite well who was tho leader in Kronstadt, and in the very first ukase he launched against the mutineers he declared Kozlovsky' an enemy of the “ republic,” outside the law, a betrayer of the people, a traitor for whom there would be no mercy and whose assassin would earn the highest reward that tho “proletariat ” could offer.