A new episode of Revolutions Podcast out: 10.93- The Kronstadt Rebellion: Poetically, or ominously, coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the Paris Commune...

Recently, when commenting on these episodes about The Civil War, I've frequently found myself saying, "I had no idea about any of this."

However with the Kronstadt Rebellion, I had some idea.

If memory serves, I first heard about Kronstadt when reading Lenin by John Haney.  I subsequently used the information I got from that book to critique Chris Harman's portrayal of the Kronstadt Rebellion in A People's History of the World.  To quote myself from 2008: 

The Krostadt rebellion in 1921 is also portrayed purely in economic terms, with the Krostadt rebels portrayed as too impatient to realize that their impoverishment was temporarily beyond the control of the Bolshevik government. Nowhere does it mention that the Kronstadt sailors were also fighting for freedom of speech and the press for all socialist groups, the re-establishment of secret ballots, and the independence of trade unions.

When I went back to school at the University of Melbourne, and was hanging out with anarchist and Trotskyist groups, I heard the Krostadt Rebellion mentioned frequently.  The anarchists would always mention it as a way to attack the Trotskyists.  

So I knew something aabout Kronstadt.  I didn't know any of the details, mind you, but I knew Kronstadt was coming eventually.

Emma - Goldman also makes an appearance in this episode.

A few months ago, I noticed that Alexander Berkman's account of the Russian Revolution was on Mike Duncan's Bibliography.  (Berkman was Emma Goldman's travelling companion). So I grew hopeful that Mike Duncan was going to include the whole saga of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman: the red scare of 1919, Berkman and Goldman getting deported to Russia, and subsequently meeting with Lenin.  However, here Emma Goldman is simply dropped into the narrative, with no explanation of how she got to Russia.  

And I think, chronologically, the Kronstadt Rebellion happened after Goldman and Berkman met with Lenin, which probably means that meeting has been skipped over now.  Which probably means, unfortunately, Emma Goldman is going to have a much reduced part in the narrative then I initially hoped for. (To be fair to Mike Duncan, there's been a lot of stuff he's had to cover in the Russian Civil War.)

Also, last week I made the comment that Trostky wasn't always the nice libertarian Socialist many people think he was.  But I was still really shocked to learn this week that Trotsky had wanted to use chemical weapons on the Kronstadt soldiers!

I also didn't know about the comparisons between the Kronstadt Rebellion and the Paris Commune.  That was interesting to learn.