Word: bolsheviks
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Falsely, perhaps, Soviet authorities had felt they could depend on the Kronstadt sailors to uphold the gains of the Bolshevik victory. Inveterate enemies of Tsarist autocracy, the sailors had risen decisively against both Nicholas and the mildly reformist Provisional Government. They had propelled the Communists to victory at the Winter Palace, and the valiant support which they rendered the fledgling regime during the stormy days after the October insurrection had prompted Minister of War Leon Trotsky to hail them as "the pride and glory of the revolution...
...devastating civil war was soon to erode the new government's political base and deprive it of popular support. Less than two months after the seizure of power, the remains of the Tsarist army, soon to be joined by 14 foreign powers, attacked the Bolshevik regime and plunged Russia into a state of physical and economic desolation. Those who had lived with hope and excitement through the days of Lenin's victory could not help feeling betrayal and disgust at the severe, quasi-dictatorial methods which the government now employed to deal with an increasingly desperate situation. The miniscule rations...
...outset, at least. they sought no breach with the party, but rather unity on the basis of the programs for which they and the party had struggled for so long. The sailors' echo of Lenin's slogan, "All power to the Soviets" represented a threat to the Bolshevik government under siege, but in the insurgents view the party itself, under less adverse conditions, would have stood for no less...
This somewhat mystifying reluctance to extend the revolt negates the official Bolshevik reaction to the initial uprising-that it was a reactionary plot. It is possible, in fact, that the Soviets believed the Whites were behind it all, particularly in the early days of the two-week revolt when reliable information was hard to come by, when local newspapers were reporting fallacious rebel bombardments of the mainland and, in one case, a sailors' seizure of Petrograd. But it is precisely this spontaneous characteristic of the revolt, its self-imposed locality, its conformity, in fact, with the Bolshevik catchword 'soviet,' that...
...dilemma is worthy of attention because it poses the difficulty that must accompany the inclusion of "democracy" and "centralism" into a single thread of political practice. The Kronstadters argument, of course, was that the revolution had really begun with the promise of autonomous soviets; the Bolshevik hard-liners had supposed that the soviets must compromise their independence in favor of a more central and powerful body. Lenin, throughout his political career, had woven a course between these two extremes, holding that the people's choice would probably be the right choice, and if that were not the case, that public...