On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the ‘October Revolution’, where the Bolsheviks seized control of a popular uprising, there can still be found those who celebrate the events as a victory of ‘workers control’. Ida Mett’s account was among the first to expose such illusions. The sailors of Kronstadt had been instrumental in aiding the Bolsheviks to power, but by 1921 they had become disillusioned with the direction that events were taking. Frustrated by worsening economic conditions and by the Bolsheviks increasingly brutal attempts at centralising power, the sailors and soldiers of Kronstadt put forward a series of demands designed to win back the control and autonomy that had been promised.
The Kronstadt uprising of 1921 was one of the most important yet often overlooked events of the Russian civil war. The bloody suppression of the rebels by the ‘government of the workers and peasants’ marked the final blow to any hopes of a genuine popular revolution based on democratic self-management. Ida Mett dispels the myths of the Bolsheviks and provides a dramatic and engaging account of the events that made clear the true nature of the ‘proletarian’ dictatorship.
Originally published in French in 1938, and in English by the libertarian socialist group ‘Solidarity’ in 1967, this contemporary account which includes documents from the actual participants has been restored and revived for the next generation of social revolutionaries.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface
Introduction by Murray Bookchin
Preface to Solidarity Edition
Introduction to the French Edition
The Kronstadt Events
Background to the Kronstadt Insurrection
Petrograd on the Eve of Kronstadt
Analysis of the Kronstadt Programme
Mass meetings and Bolshevik slanders
Mass Meetings
The Provisional Committee
Bolshevik Slanders
Effects on the Party Rank and File
Threats, Bribes and Skirmishes
Threats and Bribes
Support in Petrograd
First Skirmishes
Demoralisation in the Red Army
Reorganisation
The Final Assault
The Balance Sheet
What They Said at the Time
The Anarchists
The Mensheviks
The Right S.R.S.
The Left S.R.S.
Lenin’s Views
Petrichenko’s Evidence
Kronstadt: Last Upsurge of the Soviets
Trotsky’s Accusations
The Bolshevik Interpretations
Rosa Luxemburg’s Views
A Third Soviet Revolution
Circa l’autore
Ida Mett was born as Ida Markovna Gilman on July 20th, 1901 in Smorgon in the Russian Empire (now Smarhon’, Belarus). Predominantly Jewish, the small industrial town was a hotbed of radicalism. Ida became an anarchist while studying medicine in Moscow. She was soon arrested for ‘anti-Soviet activities’ and was expelled from the country in 1924.
In Paris she became involved with the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, which included the great fighter Nestor Makhno, his sometime collaborator Peter Arshinov, and fellow anarcho-syndicalist Nicolas Lazarévitch, who she later married. As well as editing the journal, Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause), Mett was one of the co-authors of the Group’s controversial but influential ‘Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)’ – the Platform.
Ida served as secretary of the local gas workers’ union, all the time writing and agitating, being arrested many times. After the Fall of France in 1940, Mett was briefly interned by the Vichy regime in Rieucros camp. She spent the rest of the war in La Garde-Freinet, a quiet mountain village near the Côte d’Azur.
During the events of May 1968, she and her husband could be found on the streets of Paris discussing her experiences with a new generation of radicals. She died on June 27th, 1973, aged 71.
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