FLIGHT OF THE KRONSTADT BOLSHEVIKS FROM THE RANKS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

    A completely characteristic letter on departure from the party is that of Mariia Nikolaevna Shatel, a teacher. "My comrade students of the labor, military and naval schools! I have lived for almost thirty years with a deep love for the people. I have carried light and knowledge, as well as I was able, wherever it was awaited, and wherever needed for the present moment. The Revolution of 1917 increased my strengths by giving my work free range, and I continued to serve my ideal with great energy. The teachings of Communism, with its slogan, 'All for the People,' captured me with their purity and beauty. Thus, in February of 1920, I became a candidate member of the R.C.P. (Russian Communist Party). But with the 'first shot,' I was shaken by the thought that I might be considered a participant in spilling the blood of innocent victims. They have fired at a peaceful populace, at my deeply beloved children, of whom there are 6 or 7 thousand in Kronstadt. I came to feel that it is not within my strength to hold faith in, and profess to a party which has disgraced itself by a bestial act. Therefore, with this first shot I ceased to consider myself a candidate member of the R.C.P."

    "Comrade rank and file Communists," writes member of the R.C.P. (bolsheviks) Rozhali, a sailor from the minelayer Narov, in his 'Appeal to All Honest Communards.' "Look about, and you will see that we have entered a terrible swamp, led by a little bunch of Communist bureaucrats. Under a Communist mask, they have built warm nests for themselves in our Republic. I, as a Communist, call on you to drive from us those false Communists who incite us to fratricide. We rank and file Communists, in no way guilty, suffer the rebukes of our comrade non-party workers and peasants because of them. I look with horror on the situation which has been created."

    "Will the blood of our brothers really be spilled for the interests of those Communist bureaucrats? Comrades, come to your senses, and do not submit to the provocations of those Communist bureaucrats who push us to slaughter. Drive them away, for a true Communist must not limit his ideas. He must walk hand in hand with the entire laboring mass."

    However, this address "to all honest Communards," laying out a unique theory of the division of Communists into honest and dishonest ones, was not of course able to influence the psychology of a significant number of Kronstadt's Communists. And in response, declarations of departure from the party, from "honest Communards," poured in to the Prov. Rev. Com and Izvestiia.

    "We the undersigned," runs one such declaration, "members of the R.C.P., declare that, finding the party's tactics to be fundamentally incorrect, and that it is completely bureaucratized and absolutely separated from the masses, we are leaving its ranks. Before all the laboring people, we brand those who remain in its ranks with the shame of criminals and murderers. Follow us to honest battle against the insane fanatics, and tell yourself, 'Victory or Death for the glory of the laborers.'" Under this typical letter appear the signatures of thirteen soldiers of the Fortress Air Defense.

    Such letters arrived at 'Izvestiia of the Prov. Rev. Com.' and the Revolutionary Committee in great number. In them was contained the most murderous, most terrible truth about Bolshevism. Under the blows of this criticism, impartial and penitent, the building of Russian Communism, constructed on lies and slanders, was destroyed in the imaginations of rank and file Communists. And the more strongly the Bolsheviks bombarded the revolutionary town, the stronger became the flight from the ranks of the Communist Party. 'Izvestiia of the Prov. Rev. Com.,' and the Committee itself, were swamped by the declarations.

    "There is such a mass of these declarations," said Izvestiia, "that due to insufficiency of space in the paper, it is necessary to print them in small bunches in the order of arrival. Those quitting the party are sailors, soldiers, deceived workers, and that part of the intelligentsia which was foolish enough to believe in garish slogans and inflammatory speeches. What does this flight mean? Fear of vengeance from the laboring people? No. A thousand times no. When it was noted to a woman worker appearing today with a declaration of departure from the party that there were many such as herself fleeing the party, she answered with indignation, 'Our eyes have been opened, but we aren't fleeing. The bright red blood of laborers, coloring the icy cover of the Gulf of Finland for the benefit of some insane leaders who are defending their own power has opened the people's eyes...'"

    True, the Communists showed their "gratitude" to the trusting rebels. It was later necessary for the Provisional Revolutionary Committee [Petrichenko in "Zritel," N^o 189, p. 1] to admit that many of the 'repentant' Communists, "even before the capture of the first section of the town of Kronstadt, were shooting off rockets and sending various signals to the shore. When the chekists fell on the fortress, the Communists destroyed part of our communications, and turned against us!!..."

    There were, of course, not a few who had truly abandoned Bolshevism.

    Peace loving Kronstadt pitied its adversaries, who were often driven to the attack by Bolshevik machine guns. It addressed the units sent against it to their death over the ice of the Gulf of Finland with words of forgiveness, sympathy and love. It could do none else, and be no other. For between them and their cruel enemy the Defense Committee lay not only the blood red ice of the Gulf. Not only different beliefs divided them. Between them lay a moral abyss. There were two completely different worlds, irreconcilable by their very beings. In the history of the Civil War, the Kronstadt movement occupies its own special place, illumined by the highest humanity.

    The truth is, Kronstadt in those days was the symbol of a Russia tired of the blood and insanity of recent years. And this its purity, this its integrity, this its highest humanity, could not fail but attract all sympathies. Even the socialist parties of Western Europe, stupefied by Bolshevik lies, and frightened by numerous experiences with Russian military adventures, for the first time in three years of civil war began to openly and boldly express their sympathies for this town which had rebelled against the Bolsheviks.

    Kronstadt also defeated Bolshevism in the International.

    And the Soviet authorities, lying and slandering against Kronstadt, turned for sympathy in those days not to the world proletariat, but to... the governments of the imperialist and capitalist countries. Its representatives abroad made any concession to England and Poland, any compromise with them, if only to have free hands for dealing with the rebellious town.

    This moral purity, this aspiration for a Russia once again awakened to humanity, was the most remarkable feature of Kronstadt.