Today's Topics:
1. die plattform: Out on March 8th! (+ Poster PDF) (ca, de, it,
fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. avtonom: "Political physiognomy" of the insurgent Kronstadt:
to the centenary [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
to the centenary [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. [Spain] Anarcofeminism and the butterfly effect By Rosa
Fraile - By ANA (ca, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Fraile - By ANA (ca, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, UCL AL #313 - History, 1850: The gold rush and the
forty-eight Frenchmen in exile (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
forty-eight Frenchmen in exile (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, UCL AL #313 - Ecology, 82. Biodiversity: more land
in Gonesse, less Grand Paris Express (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
in Gonesse, less Grand Paris Express (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Today's Topics:
1. anarquistas.grancanaria: Statement of support for Ruymán
Rodríguez (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Rodríguez (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Anarchist Federation Gran Canaria: A judgment by Ruyman
Rodriguez (ca) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
In a week it will be that time again & there will be international mobilizations
for women * day on March 8th. On International Women's Day, FLINT * demonstrate
worldwide for equality and against discrimination & we too would like to call on
you to support the actions in your region. Especially now in pandemic times it is
important that we come together in solidarity & organize together against
patriarchy & sexism. We are starting with a small online campaign to kick off
women's * kampftag 2021, in which we will upload an input post every day from
today on thematically on feminist content. We have also prepared a poster for you
to print out yourself, please send us photos / videos if you distribute them &
hang them up.
Demand & defend feminism!
PDF: 8MPlakatdp2
https://www.dieplattform.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/8MPlakatdp2.pdf
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/03/02/heraus-zum-8-maerz-plakat-pdf/
------------------------------
Message: 2
A century of a historical event sometimes turns out to be a borderline when it is
necessary to figure out what kind of event it was. With the Kronstadt uprising of
1921, this is especially necessary. The event is well documented, most of the
identified sources are published, we know more participants by name than in any
other event of a comparable scale in those years. And at the same time, our
knowledge of the event is a set of propaganda cliches, behind which there are
neither living participants in the uprising, nor living suppressors of it. The
information war accompanying the event buried the event itself for us. It is
worth thinking about what our era will give to descendants, in which not a fact,
but its informational echo is also important.
What did the Kronstadters want in March 1921?
The resolutions of the meetings and the appeals of the Revolutionary Committee,
known to us, refute the common point of view, according to which "Soviets without
Communists" were the main demand of the insurgents. " Izvestia of the Provisional
Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Red Armymen and Workers of the City of
Kronstadt " (hereinafter - "Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee") formulated
the slogan " Power to the Soviets, not the parties " (a separate article was
devoted to this in the March 15 issue). In addition, it is likely that the slogan
was carried to the masses not by the Revolutionary Committee itself, but by an
employee of Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee, Anatoly Lamanov, the former
chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet, a maximalist Social Revolutionary by
conviction, by the beginning of the uprising he was a member of the Bolshevik Party.
How should we understand the slogan "Power to the Soviets"? After 70 years of
what was called the Soviet power, the very idea of the power of the Soviets is
clouded. What did the Kronstadters understand by Soviet power in July 1917 and
March 1921?
As now, a century ago, the prevailing opinion was that society consists of groups
of individuals who share common interests. Then these groups, most often, were
defined as nations, and as classes. The differences between the then fashionable
ideologies, nationalism and Marxism, were based precisely on the priority of
national interests to the detriment of class interests, or vice versa.
In Russia, the peasants mobilized in 1914 perceived themselves to be natives of
this or that province more than as "Great Russians", and they thought of Germany
as one of the distant provinces. National and state interests did not find a
place in this picture of the world. And after the carnage wrought by nationalism
in the next four years, there was also a tendency among educated people to pay
more attention to class interests.
When in 1917 in Russia, with the liquidation of the monarchy, the possibility of
a new structuring of society opened up, two approaches emerged at once: the
traditional way of building a power vertical within the national boundaries, this
time based on parliamentarism, and the way of building from the bottom up
governing assemblies elected on a class basis. Since both models were democratic,
both of them immediately began to experience the deforming influence of the
traditions of the peasant community, in which democracy was present, but dissent
was rejected, so that the discussion of the issue had to end with a consensus
decision, which was easier to achieve by coercion than persuasion.
As a result of the political struggle that took place in 1917, the victors turned
out to be the party of supporters of the class approach, who announced the
construction of not only the power of the soviets, but also the dictatorship of
the proletariat. The party leader who stood at the head of this dictatorship
expressed his views on it as follows: " Everyone knows that the masses are
divided into classes ... that the classes are usually led and in most cases, at
least in modern civilized countries, by political parties; - that political
parties in the form of a general rule are governed by more or less stable groups
of the most authoritative, influential, experienced persons elected to the most
responsible positions, called leaders ... ".
By the beginning of 1921, the ruling party itself was on the verge of a split,
many party members feared that R.K.P. (b.) Was too carried away by building a
dictatorship of party leaders and broke away from the class on whose behalf the
leaders exercised this dictatorship.
All the more, the non-party workers appreciated the system of councils they
elected, but did not feel sympathy for new and new restrictions imposed by the
dictatorship of the party. It was widely believed that in the name of the
proletariat, real, living workers were put on starvation rations and attached to
enterprises. The slogan "Plants for the workers" did not prevent the factories
from being turned into places of enslavement of the workers. We can say that
these measures were temporary, but the tightening of the regime went on
increasing for three years.
I am writing here about workers. The relationship between the Bolsheviks and the
peasantry (the largest social group in Russia at that time) followed a much more
complex and steep trajectory. But we will talk about Kronstadt and Petrograd.
Despite the calculations of the Bolshevik propagandists, information about the
erosion of the Kronstadt garrison by the peasants was greatly exaggerated. And
from the demands of the rebels it is clear that the interests of the peasants
were on the periphery of their attention.
It is worth considering the content of the fateful resolution of the general
meeting of the commands of the 1st and 2nd brigades of battleships on March 1.
Some of its points are not slogans, but contain a plan of action, starting with
the main decision on the re-election of the Soviets (paragraph 1). At the same
time, this item can be considered a programmatic one. The rest of the software
requirements of the resolution are as follows:
Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, anarchists, left-wing
socialist parties (points 2 and 13);
The release of political prisoners of socialist parties, participants in the
workers 'and peasants' movements, a review of the cases of the rest of the
prisoners (points 5 and 6);
Abolition of political control bodies and armed formations of R.K.P. (b.) (Pp.
7 and 10);
Removal of barrage detachments (preventing the transport of goods) and freedom
of handicraft production, that is, steps towards freedom of trade or, as follows
from further texts, freedom of exchange (clauses 8 and 12);
Soldering equation (p. 9);
The right of the peasants to freely dispose of the land (clause 11).
Later, the Revkom, in its proclamations, supplemented this moderate platform. In
an appeal to the railway workers, the Revolutionary Committee proclaimed freedom
of assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of direct exchange between workers and
peasants, the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of the political
police (" Closure of all CHEKA "), the dissolution of the Labor Army (as a type
of slave labor), " payment in gold, and not with paper trash ". At the end of the
address, the Revkom himself summed up: " Our demands are modest. We want fewer
freedoms than there were in 1917. For this we are going to die . "
Finally, the previously mentioned article " Power to the Soviets, not to the
Parties " contains the following justification: " ... whatever party takes power,
it will not escape the role of a dictator, since, no matter how extremely
socialist it is, we will have programmatic and tactical points worked out not by
life, but created within the walls of the cabinet . "
So, the Kronstadters remained on the positions of 1917, proclaiming that power
should belong to the Soviets of workers and peasants, the workers should be given
to manage factories and factories, and the peasants - the land and crops. At the
same time, they declared that the party dictatorship, the Bolshevik monopoly on
propaganda, the political police and new forms of slave labor should be
eliminated. Political prisoners should have been released. Freedom of speech
should extend to workers and peasants, left-wing socialist parties (and the
largest of them by 1921 was R.K.P. (b.)) And anarchists. No rushing towards a
Constituent Assembly or a homogeneous socialist government was observed. There
was no demand for freedom of trade, it was only about the free exchange of
products of labor between workers' collectives, artisans and peasants.Such a
program was presented by the rebels themselves.
Kronstadt uprising
What did their opponents attribute to the rebels?
The Kronstadt events of March 1921 were superimposed on the already ongoing
information war, causing its aggravation. The world press briskly reprinted
rumors and speculations about events in Russia. In Bolshevik Russia itself, a new
propaganda campaign began with constant meetings, reports, resolutions,
proclamations and posters aimed at imposing their own interpretation of events.
The rebels published a newspaper, tried to distribute proclamations and leaflets
outside the island, and conducted regular radio broadcasts. The Bolsheviks tried
to jam the Kronstadt radio communications with the radio station "New Holland",
but not very successfully.
The interpretation by the Bolshevik propagandists of what happened in Kronstadt
on March 1 was based on the Government message of March 2, signed by the chairman
of the Labor and Defense Council Ulyanov (Lenin) and the chairman of the
Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Trotsky, which we will now
consider in detail.
Message starts, oddly enough, not with the events on the island, and with the
publication of the Paris newspaper " La Matin " ( " La Matin ", "Morning") dated
February 13, the uprising in Kronstadt. It is asserted: "The French
counterintelligence service was only slightly ahead of the events ." And further:
" Whiteguard leaflets appeared in Kronstadt and Petrograd. Notorious spies were
detained during the arrests .
So, the first message is that the speech was prepared by foreign agents.
Second: " On February 28 in Kronstadt, disturbances began on the ship"
Petropavlovsk ". A Black Hundred Socialist-Revolutionary resolution was adopted."
The second message is that forces from the Black Hundreds to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries are acting, that is, the spectrum of anti-Bolshevik
forces that has already become traditional.
Third: " A group of ex. General Kozlovsky ... ". Further: " Former General
Kozlovsky with three officers, whose names have not yet been established ... ". "
Thus, the meaning of recent events has been fully explained. This time the
tsarist general stood behind the Socialist-Revolutionaries ".
The third message is that another general's dictatorship has emerged.
This is where the narrative ends, the directive begins with three points:
" 1) Outlaw the former General Kozlovsky and his associates.
2) Declare the city of Petrograd and the Petrograd province in a state of siege.
3) Transfer all power in the Petrograd fortified area to the Petrograd Defense
Committee . "
The last step was very characteristic of the Bolsheviks throughout the civil war
- under the slogan of protecting the Soviet regime, transfer power from the
councils of deputies to a committee of appointees.
Let's analyze three sends in turn.
The first message is about a newspaper report.
People's Commissariat for Military Affairs Lev Trotsky regularly read foreign
newspapers. It was he who discovered the message about Kronstadt in the issue of
" La Maten " dated February 13. Later he talked about it himself. He described
the message as follows: " ... in a number of foreign newspapers, including in
Maten, a message about the uprising in Kronstadt appeared in mid-February, that
is, at a time when Kronstadt was completely calm ." It should be noted here that
the message was not about the uprising, it only stated that " ... in view of the
recent unrest of the Kronstadt sailors, the military Bolshevik authorities are
taking a number of measures", And then - completely unreliable message about
hundreds of those arrested. Of course, there were no hundreds of those arrested
in February, but there were reasons to write about the unrest. Chekist Vladimir
Feldman, in his report of December 10, 1920, wrote about " discontent "; in
general, there is enough evidence that the situation was far from calm.
Building cause-and-effect chains is a double-edged weapon. Already on February
24, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet declared martial law in
Petrograd because the day before the Trubovochny Zavod went on strike on
Vasilievsky Island. The factories in Petrograd went on strike before, but here
not only Vasilievsky Island, but the whole city was declared martial law. The
question can be posed: is Zinoviev's greater attention to this strike explained
by the perspicacious foresight of its consequences, or are the consequences the
result of tough actions by the Executive Committee?
If we stick to the conspiracy theory, then we can get to the assertion that the
arrests of approximately 10,000 Kronstadters after the capture of the fortress by
the Red Army were prepared by the French special services, since before that the
arrests were written in La Maten .
So, Trotsky, according to his own statement, having read in a French newspaper
about the "unrest" in Kronstadt, as the people's commissar for military and naval
affairs, instructed the command of the Baltic Fleet to take measures to prevent
the uprising. This correspondence was not found, measures, as you know, were
taken, but not sufficient.
Some of the high-ranking Bolsheviks already had a very developed spy mania. For
example, on March 9, 1921, during the Kronstadt events, Felix Dzerzhinsky wrote
to Vyacheslav Menzhinsky: " ... today an English radio telegram about the
uprising in Odessa was intercepted. So, if not, then there will be attempts . "
Lenin was obviously very impressed by the news that La Maten had announced the
uprising in Kronstadt in advance. He devoted most of his message to the Xth
Congress on the events in Kronstadt to this circumstance. Despite the expressed
interest of ordinary delegates, little was reported about Kronstadt at the
congress. Nevertheless, Lenin then returned to the February report of La Maten ,
having made a detailed survey of the latest publications of the bourgeois press.
I will cite small excerpts from this long review, since it well reveals the
situation on this front of the then information war: " Since the beginning of
March, every day the entire Western European press has been publishing whole
streams of fantastic news about the uprisings in Russia, about the victory of the
counter-revolution, about the flight of Lenin and Trotsky to the Crimea, about
the white flag on the Kremlin, about the streams of blood on the streets of
Petrograd and Moscow, about barricades in the same place, about dense crowds of
workers descending from the hills to Moscow to overthrow Soviet power, about
Budyonny's desertion to the side of the rebels, about the victory of the
counter-revolution in a whole number of Russian cities, and now one, then another
city appears, and in general, almost the majority of the provincial cities of
Russia were listed . "
Further: " We have here in Moscow representatives of big business who misled all
these rumors, and they announced how in America one group of citizens used an
unprecedented method of agitation for Soviet Russia.
This group collected from newspapers of the most diverse, for several months
everything that was said about Russia, about the flight of Lenin and Trotsky,
about Trotsky's shooting of Lenin and back, collected everything in one brochure.
The best agitation for Soviet power could not be imagined. From day to day,
information was collected about how many times Lenin and Trotsky were shot,
killed, this information was repeated every month, and then, in the end, they are
collected in one collection and published . "
The story about the brochure makes it clear that the flow of fantasy did not
begin at the beginning of March, that it lasted at least several months. This
means that the February message about the unrest in Kronstadt is not anything
special against the background of the message about the uprising in Odessa, the
separation of Saratov from Russia, or the white flag over the Kremlin.
The alternating fictions about uprisings in various cities almost exclude a
reaction to each such news, similar to Trotsky's reaction to the message about
Kronstadt, or Dzerzhinsky to the message about Odessa.
However, not necessarily every report of the uprising was an invention of foreign
journalists. One of the first issues of Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee
contained a report on the general uprising in Petrograd. The newspaper, probably,
did not have significant circulation outside of Kronstadt, but it is known that
the rebels actively used the radio station, and, quite likely, transmitted
messages close to publications in Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee.
The second message is about the " Black Hundred Socialist Revolutionary resolution ."
" Socialist-Revolutionary Black Hundred Resolutions"- this is the wording of
Zinoviev, which was contained in the first cipher program, which reported on the
events of February 28 on the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol in
Kronstadt. The encryption message was sent at the same time, on February 28th. It
is safe to assume that Zinoviev was not familiar with the texts of the
resolutions of "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" at that time. If the texts of the
resolutions were then or later known in Petrograd and could really be presented
as Black Hundreds, then the Bolsheviks would have published them in whole or in
part with their comments, as they did with other similar documents. This did not
happen, moreover, the resolutions have not yet been discovered. This means that
either the resolutions were lost in the course of further events on the island,
and Zinoviev did not see them either then or later, or nothing was found in
them,which could discredit battleship teams in the eyes of workers, peasants, Red
Army men and Red Navy men.
We have already examined the real resolution adopted on March 1, it may have been
too Socialist-Revolutionary for the Bolsheviks, but certainly too Bolshevik for
the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Even freedom of speech and press was proclaimed
only for the " left socialist parties ", the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries
(PSR) was excluded from this definition. As far as can be judged on the basis of
the available facts, only individual Socialist-Revolutionaries who had no contact
with the rest of the P.S.R. participated in the uprising. When representatives of
P.S.R. established contact with the rebels, they could offer cooperation only if
the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee supported the slogan of convening the
Constituent Assembly. The Revolutionary Committee did not agree to these conditions.
The third message is about General Kozlovsky and the "zolotoponniki".
The message that the uprising was allegedly organized by a former general gave
the greatest propaganda effect.
The strike movement in Petrograd had already subsided in early March, workers of
many enterprises went to work on 1, 2, or in the morning of 3 March. This means
that this happened even before the publication of the message of the Council of
Labor and Defense, which pointed to General Kozlovsky as the organizer and leader
of the uprising.
But it was this propaganda move that had a significant impact on the further
course of events, on the curtailment of strikes, on the resolutions of labor
collectives, on the stability of combat units. The political work of the
Bolsheviks soon concentrated on this very argument. The address of the Baltic
Fleet Revolutionary Troika "To all the sailors of the Baltic Fleet", published on
March 5, stated: "The troublemakers, provocateurs and agents of the Entente have
finally thrown off their masks! ". " Having accepted the services of the Judas
former Lieutenant General Kozlovsky, they occupied some of the forts of the
Kronstadt fortress ." For the sake of weight, the Revtroyka promoted Major
General Kozlovsky to Lieutenant General.
Soon, resolutions were adopted everywhere, very similar to each other, for
example, "On March 13, the city-wide meeting of the Red Army soldiers of the
Gatchina garrison, together with members of the trade unions, after hearing a
report from Comrade Podpeka and others on the current situation, decides:" We
send our contempt to the traitors of the working class s.-roar ., to the
Mensheviks and Tsarist generals, who involved the deceived Kronstadt sailors in a
criminal adventure, preparing a treacherous stab in the back of the working class
of Russia ... ".
Where do such resolutions come from? The beginning of many of them leaves no
doubt - the resolutions were passed after the propagandist's report.
So, on March 15, the newspaper Smena publishes: " Having heard the report on the
situation near Kronstadt, we, the workers 'and peasants' youth, members of the
RKSM, were taken into a detachment of the regiment of trade unions, seeing the
vile game started by the white generals and the black pack, thanks to which they
entangled and caught on the Socialist-Revolutionary Menshevik bait of the
Kronstadtites and some workers of Red Peter ... ".
On March 26, the newspaper "Red Baltic Fleet" publishes the following: " After
hearing the report of the head of the garrison, Comrade. A novel about the
Kronstadt events, we, the red sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and the Red Army
soldiers of the Novorossiysk garrison, vow to die for the red banner and act as
one in the fight against the protege of world reaction - gene. Kozlovsky ... ".
The fact that there is a former general in the fortress, of course, in Petrograd
could not but know. After the commissar of the fortress Gromov made his way to
Oranienbaum (apparently on March 2), the names of several more former officers
became known, and reliable information appeared that Kozlovsky had actively
supported the uprising. It remained to finish writing about the leading role of
Kozlovsky in the uprising, about the fact that it was he who had arrested the
commissar of the Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, etc.
The Bolsheviks understood that participation in the uprising of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists would not discredit the
uprising in the eyes of non-party people. Therefore, in the messages sent to the
outside, they talked about the Black Hundreds, generals, gold chasers, spies and
homeowners. Thus, the surname of a member of the Kronstadt Revolutionary
Committee, Tukin, was systematically distorted in order to evoke associations
with the Turkins merchant family known in Kronstadt and Petrograd.
A special gift to the Bolshevik propagandists was the arrival on March 8 in
Kronstadt, as a representative of the Red Cross, Baron Wilken, who commanded the
battleship "Sevastopol" in 1917. The story of the Red Cross mission, as soon as
it became known on the mainland, immediately overgrown with many unreliable
details. But the argument so convincing at the beginning of 1921 that aid from
international and foreign organizations inevitably imposes some political
obligations was destined to soon become inconvenient for the Bolsheviks, when
famine broke out in the Volga region, and American organizations provided their
aid to the starving.
Of course, the crudest lie was best assimilated far from Kronstadt and Petrograd.
The most indignant resolutions came from the well-fed south. Some of them were
addressed to the rebels. Some, especially the addresses of the Black Sea sailors,
reprinted "Petrogradskaya Pravda" and "Red Baltic Fleet", but they did not reach
the insurgents. Only ultimatums and texts close to them aimed at intimidation,
such as the appeal of the Petrograd Defense Committee "They knocked out", which
later the Bolsheviks themselves regarded as a political mistake, got to Kronstadt.
There is an interesting, although not entirely reliable, story about the polemics
of propagandists on both sides. On March 5, the commissar of the Krasnoflotskiy
fort, Sladkov, told Zinoviev that he had a conversation on the radio with
allegedly the chairman of the revolutionary committee, whom he called Volin, who,
however, had addressed Ivan Sladkov as "Kolka". Despite these oddities, the
conversation retold by Sladkov is very remarkable: Commissar Sladkov reproduced
propaganda tricks about a coup led by the "zolotoponnikov", to which Sladkov's
opponent insisted that "Petropavlovsk" was and will remain a red ship, that only
communists gravitating towards dictatorship were arrested, the rest work in their
places, that the "gold-chasers" flee from the fortress to the Bolsheviks, and so on.
It is impossible to say that no information about the actual state of affairs was
received upstairs. A comparatively accurate assessment of the situation in
Kronstadt was given by the Chekist Vladimir Feldman before the uprising, the
fleet commander Alexander Nemitz during the uprising and the Chekist Semyon
Agranov after the uprising. But propaganda was important to the leaders, and
propaganda does not seek the truth.
The exceptional activity of propaganda in March 1921 can be explained by many
reasons: along with the strategic position of Kronstadt, it is the programmatic
proximity of the conflicting parties, which created fluctuations in the masses,
and the peculiarities of the moment that raised the stakes in the unfolding
struggle. On March 16, in London, Leonid Krasin and Robert Horn signed a
Soviet-British trade agreement. On March 18, a peace treaty was signed in Riga
between R.S.F.S.R. and Poland. A different course of events on the banks of the
Marquisovaya Puddle could have influenced the outcome of these negotiations. But
the biggest stake was the congress of the R.K.P. (b.).
The Xth Congress was Lenin's frontal attack on the Workers' Opposition and the
supporters of democratic centralism. The struggle was for the unity of the R.K.P.
(b.). As we found out earlier, the slogans of the rebels were very moderate, not
very far from the criticism of the formed dictatorship from the supporters of the
"Workers' Opposition" and the Decists. And that is precisely why it was necessary
to present the uprising as an action radically hostile to the Bolsheviks and
workers and peasants. Only this made it possible to prevent the rebels from
joining the extreme opposition within the ruling party itself. Namely, the
internal party issues worried the Central Committee. more than the uprising of
this or that city or county.
Ivar Smilga said at the congress: " Of course, it's not that scary that in
Kronstadt Kozlovsky, in a bloc with the Right Socialist Revolutionaries,
rebelled. I would say that this does not have a decisive influence on the issue
we are now discussing, just as even the fact that there were bagpipes at the
Petrograd factories is a matter of the current moment. The question that
interests us now is the question of party building, and the danger in it is the
moment that among our Kronstadt communist comrades, according to Comrade Trotsky,
30 percent take an active part against us, 40 percent take neutral positions and
only the rest some are fighting against the Kronstadt rebels . "
The data on the split of the Kronstadt organization of R.K.P. (b.) Were then
clarified when re-registering in it, but there was a split, and there is enough
evidence that it arose even before the uprising, indeed under the influence of
internal party discussions.
What was the fate of the Kronstadt organization of the Bolsheviks against the
backdrop of discussion and uprising?
The re-registration of the Kronstadt organization of the R.K.P. (b.) In September
1920 showed a voluntary decline from 25 to 27% of the total number. This
situation could still be considered relatively favorable, according to Vladimir
Feldman's report of December 10, in the Baltic Fleet as a whole, more than 40% of
the members left the party organization.
By March 1, there were 2,126 members of the R.K.P. (b.) In Kronstadt, of which
684 were attached to the district committee, and 1,442 to the Kronstadt Political
Department (that is, most of the Kronstadt Bolsheviks were in military service),
there were also about 500 candidates. There were almost no Bolsheviks with
pre-revolutionary experience. About 85% of the Kronstadt party members in the
registration cards were listed as workers and peasants, but in fact most of them
were employees, military and civilians. That is, they "left the people" as well
as the majority of the party, and the essence of the party discussion that took
place at the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921 was precisely that the "left
of the people" party members began to lose touch with the people, from which they
went out.
At the Xth Congress of the R.K.P. (b.), Already during the uprising,
representatives of the Workers' Opposition made very alarming statements. The
leader of the group, Alexander Shlyapnikov, argued that, despite the growth of
R.K.P. (b.), Among the workers who remained in the industry, the number of party
members was decreasing. So, among the metalworkers of St. Petersburg, according
to their own words, there are not even 2% of the Bolsheviks, and more reliable
information about the number of Bolsheviks among the metalworkers of Moscow was
given by 4%.
Delegate Yuri Milonov described the dilemma faced by the party: "How can we solve
the following problem: since the peasantry is not with us, since the working
class is falling under the influence of various petty-bourgeois anarchist
elements, since it also has a tendency to move away from us, what can the
Communist Party rely on now? Here you will have to look for a way out in two
directions. Either it must be said, as some local people say, that the working
class in the revolutionary and political struggle and socialist construction is
selfish and cannot be relied on - and such a theory has been invented - or we
must say that it is impossible to rely on anyone, as Comrade Osinsky has already
tried to point out. The result is an absurd situation: we find ourselves over a
chasm, between the working class, which is infected with petty-bourgeois
prejudices, and the peasantry, which is essentially petty-bourgeois;you can't
rely on the same Soviet and party bureaucracy?".
The delegates of the Leninist Ten and the Buffer, which joined them, objected
that it was inadmissible to criticize the party and state leadership in such
terms as was done during the discussion preceding the congress. Leon Trotsky at
the convention cited " the newspaper so Zinoviev. " I suppose, "Petrograd truth":
" Autocratic power and hierarchical enterprise management system that prevails
today on the railways and which promote Tsektran, together with the People's
Commissariat scattered" eyes "around an enterprise that should frighten the
workers, pull the reins from above, and from below encourage the workers,
sometimes in the most rude form, to obey these reins - these are typical features
of the manufacturing period . "
The result was summed up in the resolution of the congress "On the unity of the
Party": in order to exclude criticism of RKP (b.) From the outside, the congress
decided not to eliminate the phenomena that caused criticism, but to limit
criticism from within. The "workers' opposition" was branded in the resolution
"On the syndicalist and anarchist deviation in our party."
One way or another, the very degeneration of R.K.P. (b.), And his criticism by
the opposition, split the Kronstadt Bolshevik organization. As we have already
said, she was not as workers 'and peasants', as she claimed, but the level of
literacy of party members was relatively high. Nor were they indifferent fellow
travelers, indifferent to the situation in the country and the party. On the
contrary, the Kronstadt Bolsheviks actively joined the discussion, but not
through abstract theorizing, but turning to personalities, finding out which of
the comrades demonstrates their bourgeoisness and in what exactly, counting the
chairs in the rooms of colleagues and the dresses of their wives. During the
discussion of the relationship between the "top and bottom", non-party
Kronstadters, who were also not an unconscious gray mass, were drawn into the
discussion. Chekist Feldman notedthat one of the reasons for the dissatisfaction
of the Balts with political work is "thirst to learn, to gain knowledge ...
especially among sailors . "
While " the newspaper so. Zinoviev ," that obey the Kronstadt Bolsheviks attached
to the District Committee, branded " absolute authority " Tsektran, most of the
organizations attached to Kronpolitotdelu, subordinate to the Commissioner of the
Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, who had already acquired appearance " fat holonogo
master " and was remembered by the shout " I will not allow the committee to breed ."
During the uprising, the split became a fact. Since March 2, the Provisional
Bureau of the Kronstadt organization of R.K.P. consisting of Yakov Ilyin, Anton
Kabanov and the chairman of the union of metalworkers Fyodor Pervushin, already
on March 3 they called on the communists to stay in their places and cooperate
with the Revolutionary Committee. During the period from 2 to 5 March, all the
Bolsheviks who did not leave the island, who declared their non-recognition of
the Revolutionary Committee, were arrested by the rebels, partly placed in the
Investigative Prison, and partly under house arrest. Thus, for almost the entire
duration of the uprising, two bureaus of the Communist Party operated in the
fortress. Members of the old bureau continued to call themselves Bolsheviks and
were in the Investigative Prison, members of the temporary bureau supported the
uprising.
The inmates of the remand prison were released during the street fighting in the
fortress, while the Provisional Bureau, on the other hand, was arrested. Note
that the members of the Provisional Bureau did not leave the island, unlike the
majority of the members of the Revolutionary Committee. The Chekists singled out
the investigation against the "Provisional Bureau" in a separate case, in which
14 people were involved. During the investigation, the members of the Provisional
Bureau claimed that they were guided by tactical plans aimed at keeping the
maximum number of communists at large and plotting them against the Revolutionary
Committee. Investigator Kordovsky, on the contrary, believed that the appeal of
the Provisional Bureau " changed the whole course of the rebellion and paralyzed
all underground work". The trio agreed with the investigator's arguments,
sentencing 6 people, including Ilyin, Kabanov and Pervushin to death, and the
remaining 8 communists who did not take active action - to 5 years of community
service conditionally.
During the uprising, the largest number of communists chose to leave the party,
and this was done, as a rule, demonstratively. According to the report provided
by the specially authorized Semyon Agranov to the Presidium of V.Ch.K .: " During
the rebellion, the Revolutionary Committee and the editorial board received from
800 to 900 applications for withdrawal from the RCP ." In other words,
applications were written by 37.6 to 42.3% of the organization's members. When
re-registering the party organization, it was believed that during the uprising
of R.K.P. (b.) 497 people (23.4%) voluntarily left.
When re-registering after the suppression of the uprising in R.K.P. (b.), 734
people (34.5%) were reinstated. Of these, 95 people were outside the fortress by
the beginning of March, 167 people left the island and took part in suppressing
the uprising, 327 people were arrested by the rebels, 135 people remained in
Kronstadt, but did not take part in the events on anyone's side. In addition, 211
people were expelled from the RKP (b.) Upon re-registration, and 137 people did
not go through re-registration.
The investigation did not manage to establish the facts of the activities of
organized political groups in Kronstadt, which had disintegrated in 1919 and
1920. There were only individual Mensheviks, maximalists and anarchists among the
mass of non-party and communists. According to the materials of the
investigation, Anatoly Lamanov on March 4 wrote for Izvestiya Revkom a statement
on his withdrawal from the R.K.P. (b.) And joining the Union of
Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists, but it does not follow from this that this
Union is in fortress acted. During interrogations, a member of the Revolutionary
Committee Vladislav Valk insisted that he considered himself a
Menshevik-internationalist, but denied the existence of a Menshevik cell in
Kronstadt.
Even if we admit that there were some groups of socialists or anarchists, it
should still be admitted that the most numerous and organized structures of the
party type in the rebellious fortress were the organizations of the communists,
one of which supported the uprising, the other was arrested.
As a result, contrary to popular belief, the Kronstadt uprising must be
considered an uprising of non-party and opposition communists who remained on the
platform of Soviet power, but opposed the party dictatorship. This uprising was a
direct continuation of the "Kronstadt Republic" of 1917, and the insurgents had a
program that directly dates back to the demands of July 1917.
Andrey Kalyonov
anarchist from St. Petersburg
https://avtonom.org/pages/politicheskaya-fizionomiya-vosstavshego-kronshtadta-k-stoletiyu
------------------------------
Message: 3
I don't like the so-called new normality at all. They are trying to make us
believe that what happens to us is "normal". This dominant discourse identifies
what is normal with what is common, therefore with what is good and accepted. It
is dangerous and fallacious. Its objective is that practices that are not good,
both inside and outside the workplace, are assumed to be normal and consented.
What is the use of preventing girls' feet from growing? Was this limitation of
the child, which was so normalized in the Middle Ages, good? And, after decades
of struggling to leave home and occupy the public space, what improvements does
the imposition of the telework corset on women bring us? Is it normal for 8M to
bring more pandemics and that Eva always has to eat the apple under the eyes of a
snake and Adam drooling over biting the fruit?
Brincadeiras à parte, temo que surpresas desagradáveis nos aguardem entre agora e
os próximos 8M e que queremos normalizar questões intoleráveis, por isso devemos
planejar cuidadosamente nossas ações coletivas e definir nossos objetivos e
estratégias sem demora.
The normal should be to advance against all odds towards an egalitarian and
solidary future, with a fair, feminist, sustainable and respectful planet. This
requires commitment and requires us to personally consider the day to day, taking
care of our environment and the living beings that surround us. If, based on this
individual awareness, our actions and decisions have an interesting "butterfly
effect", at the collective and organizational level this "effect" can be
tremendous. What does every breath of a woman in Central Africa cause? Would a
blink of an eye in Europe trigger a green tornado in Argentina? Well, we don't
know! But since its origins, feminism has the capacity to introduce important
disturbances in the chaotic system of this anthropocentric and patriarchal
capitalism,
It is necessary to carry out a serene reflection on what happened and its
effects, to continue talking and analyzing, to contrast opinions, to debate
everything that is necessary, with a constructive sense and a gender focus, to
present a united and strengthened anarcho-feminist front, with a clear path
marked, ready not to take a step back in the feminist struggle for equality and
emancipation.
Our movements will cause tornadoes!
Source:https://www.cnt.es/noticias/anarcofeminismo-y-efecto-mariposa/
Related content:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2021/03/01/espanha-8m-nossa-melhor-defesa-feminismo-de-classe-sindicalista-e-combativo/
anarchist news agency-ana
------------------------------
Message: 4
At the beginning of 1848, gold was found in California. From all over Europe,
fresh out of the People's Spring, thousands of people are leaving, driven by the
desire to build their socialist ideal there, and in doing so ... will participate
in American colonialism which will destroy the Indian nations. ---- In May 1848,
a Mormon named Sam Brannan galloped into San Francisco shouting "Gold has been
found in the American River!"" This declaration will trigger "the largest
movement of people from Crusades"[1]. The future California state, occupied since
1846 by the United States and sold on February 2, 1848 by Mexico, will be
completely transformed. People flock to the placers[2].
During the year, up to 40,000 dollars are wrenched every day from the sands of
rivers. We rush first from the entire west coast and then from as far as Chile,
Australia, China, even Kanaky! As of December 5, tens of thousands of people are
selling everything they have and are leaving from the east coast.
The dream of an Icaria in California
But 1848 is also the Spring of the Peoples in Europe. After two years of economic
crises, Europe is set on fire. Restoration of the Republic in France, civil war
in Switzerland, insurrection in Sicily and Milan, revolt in Glasgow, Young
Ireland movement in Dublin, barricades in Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid,
nationalist movements, social Catholics, utopian socialists (Fourierists,
Saint-Simonians) ... Europe is in turmoil and demands more freedom and social
equality. But in Paris, everything stops in June, failure is everywhere,
repression is brutal.
Among the gold diggers, a good number of ex-European revolutionaries in exile.
In such a context of disappointment and disillusion, the announcement of the
discovery of gold has an extraordinary impact. "For all defeated, persecuted,
desperate, banished revolutionaries, gold seems the promise of a new possible
world"[3].
In Paris, we no longer swear by California. Its newspapers echo the tremendous
discoveries: "Not a meter of land that does not contain gold" assures La Presse
of June 8, 1849. Private emigration companies are assembled by the dozen. Some
are commercial but others are created in the form of workers' mutual societies:
La Californie, La Ruche d'or, La Bretonne, L'Union fraternelle, etc. All this
maintained, amplified by hundreds of brochures.
The government will support the creation of a Gold Bullion Company to organize a
lottery to finance the transport of 5,000 immigrants too poor to make the
crossing. The prefect of police Carlier, who decides on departures, takes the
opportunity to get rid of troublesome young people enrolled in the national
guard, and who will leave alongside the socialist militants they had repressed a
few months before.
Advertisement for the crossing of the planet in the direction of the Californian
El Dorado.
Karl Marx will deplore then that "dreams of gold[have]replaced socialist dreams
in the Parisian proletariat" . But socialist dreams are also part of the journey.
The Icarian movement initiated by the utopian socialist Etienne Cabet, author in
1840 of Voyage en Icarie , formed the project of creating ideal cities. On
October 10, 1847, around 150 people gathered in the premises of the newspaper Le
Populaire voted on the Act of constitution of Icaria and established an Icarian
Immigration Office.
Several attempts will be made by the French in Texas, Iowa, Illinois, most of
whom fail or deviate from their goal. But if the Icaries only motivate a few
hundred departures, the gold fever is causing tens of thousands of people to
leave. "Those who then rushed from all over Europe were not simply greedy
'adventurers', but for the most part the forty-eight, among the most radical and
nostalgic, who were suffocating on the old continent, or had to flee the
repression[...]California where the revolution of 48 succeeds!"[4].
We debate in the camps
From a village of 500 inhabitants, San Francisco will become a flourishing city.
The gold diggers arrive in a muddy environment where they lack everything and
where violence, prostitution and alcoholism are omnipresent. Of the 20,000 French
gold diggers present in 1851, 5,000 remained in San Francisco, or one fifth of
the city's population. They will bring Parisian prostitutes, we will talk about
the "little Paris of the Pacific" which will not survive several fires ... The
city is trying to organize itself, for fear, according to Sam Brannan, that it
"perishes like a modern one. Sodom". He created a committee called Les
Vigilantes, armed and mobilizable. This term will be passed on to posterity to
describe the private American militias bent on taking justice into their own hands.
Europeans, Indians, Chinese: California in the 1850s.
The Sierra Nevada is gutted 70 tons of gold in 1851, there are 100,000 gold
seekers in 1852. At first, the placers make dreams and cultures telescope when
the descendants of the first Quaker pilgrims meet there. , Anabaptists,
Presbyterians, in search of a new Jerusalem, and the forty-eight Europeans,
utopian socialists all in their social experiments. And all to debate in the
camps "the world that will be born tomorrow" . "There are no pirates on one side,
mystics and socialists on the other," writes historian Michel Le Bris, "they were
all both enlightened and outlawed."[5]
But from 1850, land became scarce, the relative good understanding of the first
two years was over. The camps are grouped together by nationality, religion, even
Masonic lodge, or by socialist utopia, and distrust each other. The first
American gold diggers can no longer support the competition of this variegated
cohort from all over the Earth, while reproaching the Indians and Mexicans for
having been the first owners of California: already in 1849 near Clear Lake, in
reaction to the murder of two whites by Pomos and Wappos Indians, self-proclaimed
militias and the army engage in indiscriminate massacres: the authorities turn a
blind eye. Anti-Indian operations were financed and, in California, Indian
slavery continued until 1850.
Native people reduced to semi-slavery took part in the search for gold.
The Vigilantes and the Mokelumne Hill Rebellion
Lynching and "popular justice" are ruthless, as in the case of Juanita, a young
Mexican hanged by the crowd for having stabbed her rapist ... To regain control,
the Vigilantes militias leave San Francisco to officiate at the placers . They
first try to drive out the Chinese. Then a real murderous war is unleashed
against Chilean researchers. The California assembly passed a tax in 1850 for all
foreign miners: a license of $ 20 per month to prospect.
The French utopians of San Joaquin take up arms against the tax, decreeing
"thatthey had not brought down the monarchy in Paris to comply with the orders of
a few Yankees"[6]. It is the revolt of Mokelumne Hill: 2,000 French retreat to
the heights, organize themselves militarily and clash with the Vigilantes. They
will give up their project and will not be prosecuted, they will even be rearmed,
while in 1852 the tax passes to three dollars, reduction which will not apply to
the Chinese gold diggers ...[7]
Raousset-Boulbon's odyssey
The irreducible Gauls of Sierra Nevada decide to leave California but keep their
dream of a new republic: they go to settle in Mexico in the region of Sonora
where gold will be in abundance. Deciding to set up a settlement there, these
former forty-eighters then put themselves under the authority of the Count of
Raousset-Boulbon, a colonialist who took part in the Kabylia campaign alongside
Bugeaud.
Landed in California in 1850 and failing as a prospector and trader, he founded a
mining company in Mexico, the Compañia Restaudora del Mineral de Arizona, with
Mexican capital and the support of the French ambassador. The Mexican government
authorizes him to explore Sonora and establish mines there, in exchange he must
provide men to protect them from Indian attacks. French diplomats in Mexico do
not take a dim view of the prospect of a colony, because France already has views
on Mexico which it will invade ten years later.
European women in front of a tavern run by locals.
The local authorities, unhappy to see armed men disembark instead of simple
prospectors, unleash hostilities. The French beat the Mexican army and marched on
the town of Hermosillo but, ill, had to be repatriated to California.
Raousset-Boulbon assembles a second army and sets out again to conquer Sonora in
1854. Failure, he is shot on August 12.
So the dreams of a new world of the French gold-seeking utopians abruptly ended
... The myth of California endured throughout the century: in 1881, a Fourierist
and Saint-Simonian Icaria settled in Saint-Louis, attracted by rumor from a
popularity of socialist ideas in San Francisco, tries a new experience by
relocating to Sonoma County. Founded by Pierre Leroux (brother of Jules Leroux,
inventor of the word "socialism") and financed by Georges Sand, it will be
baptized Icaria Speranza, then will be dissolved on August 3, 1886 by the county
court of justice.
The destruction of indigenous peoples
The Gold Rush is a disaster for Native American nations. In 1846, about 150,000
natives populated California. They were no more than 35,000 in 1860: the
staggering number of new arrivals chased them from their usual hunting and
fishing areas. They respond by attacking the minors who take revenge with
murderous reprisals on their villages "culminating in a genocidal program which
claimed thousands of lives"[8]. Those who survive without access to their natural
resources die starving. " Against a backdrop of Rousseauism and
romanticism[...]man fights against nature, that is to say against the Indian,
without worrying about the economic and political implications of this future
"farmers' paradise""[9].
In 1846, about 150,000 natives populated California. They numbered 35,000 in
1860. Immigrants drove them from their hunting and fishing grounds.
The political turmoil in California led to the development of a constitution and
the creation of a state that accelerated the colonization and destruction of
indigenous peoples, including the construction of the railroad from Sacramento to
the east.
This is not the only time in history that socialist utopias have reinforced
colonial processes: the kibbutz in Palestine, the creation of workers'
cooperatives to populate European colonial territories ... The lesson to be
learned is to be wary. , even today, the possible instrumentalisation of
self-management experiences, in reality motivating colonialist and imperialist
companies.
Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Montreuil)
Validate
[1] Michel Le Bris, The Gold Fever , La Découverte, 1988.
[2] Gold present in alluvium, as opposed to gold found in a rock vein
[3] Michel Le Bris, op. cit .
[4] Michel Le Bris, La Porte d'or , Grasset, 1986.
[5] Michel Le Bris, When California Was French , Le Pré aux Clercs, 1999.
[6] "Gold rush: when the French blow a wind of revolution on" Moke Hill "", Le
Monde , July 24, 2020.
[7] Ibidem
[8] James J. Rawls, Richard J. Orsi, A golden state: mining and economic
development in Gold Rush California , UC Press, 1999.
[9] Philippe Jacquin, Le Mythe de l'Ouest , Autrement, 1993.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1850-La-ruee-vers-l-or-et-les-quarante-huitards-francais-en-exil
------------------------------
Message: 5
After the abandonment in 2019 of the Europacity project in the face of the
mobilization for agricultural land in the Triangle de Gonesse, the battle has not
yet been won. Sunday January 17 a rally took place against the guard of the Grand
Paris Express and the ZAC project in progress. ---- This Sunday, January 17, we
were nearly 500 people gathered in the Triangle de Gonesse in Val-d'Oise (95), to
defend these fertile agricultural lands against the work of the Grand Paris
Express station. Despite the snowfall the day before, the mobilization was a
success. It must be said that the urgency is there, the Société du Grand Paris
having announced the resumption of work for mid-February 2021.
Coveted, these lands were first threatened by the mega-project Europacity, a huge
shopping and leisure center abandoned in 2019 by Macron. They are now in danger
in the face of the urbanization of a 110 hectare ZAC and the creation of the line
17 station. The government speeches announcing the fight for biodiversity and
against the artificialization of soils have been forgotten! Scanned the calls of
scientists and those of the Citizen's Climate Convention to prevent any further
attacks on agricultural land! And this with the support of the government but
also of local elected representatives.
Sign for the defense of the lands of Gonesse. Demonstration against Europacity.
Paris, October 5, 2019.
cc Martin Noda / Hans Lucas / Red photo library
An assembly of struggles opened on the 17th, bringing together different groups
such as No au T4 (Fight against the extension of Roissy airport), Vigilance JO
2024, Save the wind area (see article on page 15).
Highlight of the day: The Oath of the Triangle[1]was read by a Gonessian - Julien
Vermignon -, a market gardener - Alain Crochot, from Cergy - and an author -
Marie Desplechin - then signed by all those present ( to sign it ).
This oath is a title of co-ownership committing his or her owner to defend these
lands and the living people who inhabit them. Many elected officials and
activists also took the oath: deputies, elected municipal officials,
representatives of trade unions and parties. This day ended with a stroll towards
the old base of the site, blocked in 2019 by the Collectif pour le Triangle de
Gonesse (CPTG).
The CARMA project as an alternative
The government would now have the possibility of choosing a real future project
for the Triangle and its inhabitants: the CARMA project. The latter proposes the
creation of a food belt north of the Ile-de-France region, in order to relocate
agricultural production. Unlike off-ground projects which only propose
transferring jobs in tension from one ZAC to another, this project focuses on a
diversification of the professions offered, in line with the qualifications and
expectations of the inhabitants (hotels and restaurants including school,
logistics, driving vehicles etc.). In December, the municipality of Montreuil
embarked on this approach by choosing to subsidize it.
We are soon celebrating the tenth anniversary of our collective and we will not
let go !
Siamak Shoara and Mélanie Antin, members of the Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse
Validate
[1] To sign it: oathdutriangle.agirpourlenvironnement.org
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?82-Biodiversite-plus-de-terres-a-Gonesse-moins-de-Grand-Paris-Express
------------------------------
Rodriguez (ca) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
In a week it will be that time again & there will be international mobilizations
for women * day on March 8th. On International Women's Day, FLINT * demonstrate
worldwide for equality and against discrimination & we too would like to call on
you to support the actions in your region. Especially now in pandemic times it is
important that we come together in solidarity & organize together against
patriarchy & sexism. We are starting with a small online campaign to kick off
women's * kampftag 2021, in which we will upload an input post every day from
today on thematically on feminist content. We have also prepared a poster for you
to print out yourself, please send us photos / videos if you distribute them &
hang them up.
Demand & defend feminism!
PDF: 8MPlakatdp2
https://www.dieplattform.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/8MPlakatdp2.pdf
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/03/02/heraus-zum-8-maerz-plakat-pdf/
------------------------------
Message: 2
A century of a historical event sometimes turns out to be a borderline when it is
necessary to figure out what kind of event it was. With the Kronstadt uprising of
1921, this is especially necessary. The event is well documented, most of the
identified sources are published, we know more participants by name than in any
other event of a comparable scale in those years. And at the same time, our
knowledge of the event is a set of propaganda cliches, behind which there are
neither living participants in the uprising, nor living suppressors of it. The
information war accompanying the event buried the event itself for us. It is
worth thinking about what our era will give to descendants, in which not a fact,
but its informational echo is also important.
What did the Kronstadters want in March 1921?
The resolutions of the meetings and the appeals of the Revolutionary Committee,
known to us, refute the common point of view, according to which "Soviets without
Communists" were the main demand of the insurgents. " Izvestia of the Provisional
Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Red Armymen and Workers of the City of
Kronstadt " (hereinafter - "Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee") formulated
the slogan " Power to the Soviets, not the parties " (a separate article was
devoted to this in the March 15 issue). In addition, it is likely that the slogan
was carried to the masses not by the Revolutionary Committee itself, but by an
employee of Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee, Anatoly Lamanov, the former
chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet, a maximalist Social Revolutionary by
conviction, by the beginning of the uprising he was a member of the Bolshevik Party.
How should we understand the slogan "Power to the Soviets"? After 70 years of
what was called the Soviet power, the very idea of the power of the Soviets is
clouded. What did the Kronstadters understand by Soviet power in July 1917 and
March 1921?
As now, a century ago, the prevailing opinion was that society consists of groups
of individuals who share common interests. Then these groups, most often, were
defined as nations, and as classes. The differences between the then fashionable
ideologies, nationalism and Marxism, were based precisely on the priority of
national interests to the detriment of class interests, or vice versa.
In Russia, the peasants mobilized in 1914 perceived themselves to be natives of
this or that province more than as "Great Russians", and they thought of Germany
as one of the distant provinces. National and state interests did not find a
place in this picture of the world. And after the carnage wrought by nationalism
in the next four years, there was also a tendency among educated people to pay
more attention to class interests.
When in 1917 in Russia, with the liquidation of the monarchy, the possibility of
a new structuring of society opened up, two approaches emerged at once: the
traditional way of building a power vertical within the national boundaries, this
time based on parliamentarism, and the way of building from the bottom up
governing assemblies elected on a class basis. Since both models were democratic,
both of them immediately began to experience the deforming influence of the
traditions of the peasant community, in which democracy was present, but dissent
was rejected, so that the discussion of the issue had to end with a consensus
decision, which was easier to achieve by coercion than persuasion.
As a result of the political struggle that took place in 1917, the victors turned
out to be the party of supporters of the class approach, who announced the
construction of not only the power of the soviets, but also the dictatorship of
the proletariat. The party leader who stood at the head of this dictatorship
expressed his views on it as follows: " Everyone knows that the masses are
divided into classes ... that the classes are usually led and in most cases, at
least in modern civilized countries, by political parties; - that political
parties in the form of a general rule are governed by more or less stable groups
of the most authoritative, influential, experienced persons elected to the most
responsible positions, called leaders ... ".
By the beginning of 1921, the ruling party itself was on the verge of a split,
many party members feared that R.K.P. (b.) Was too carried away by building a
dictatorship of party leaders and broke away from the class on whose behalf the
leaders exercised this dictatorship.
All the more, the non-party workers appreciated the system of councils they
elected, but did not feel sympathy for new and new restrictions imposed by the
dictatorship of the party. It was widely believed that in the name of the
proletariat, real, living workers were put on starvation rations and attached to
enterprises. The slogan "Plants for the workers" did not prevent the factories
from being turned into places of enslavement of the workers. We can say that
these measures were temporary, but the tightening of the regime went on
increasing for three years.
I am writing here about workers. The relationship between the Bolsheviks and the
peasantry (the largest social group in Russia at that time) followed a much more
complex and steep trajectory. But we will talk about Kronstadt and Petrograd.
Despite the calculations of the Bolshevik propagandists, information about the
erosion of the Kronstadt garrison by the peasants was greatly exaggerated. And
from the demands of the rebels it is clear that the interests of the peasants
were on the periphery of their attention.
It is worth considering the content of the fateful resolution of the general
meeting of the commands of the 1st and 2nd brigades of battleships on March 1.
Some of its points are not slogans, but contain a plan of action, starting with
the main decision on the re-election of the Soviets (paragraph 1). At the same
time, this item can be considered a programmatic one. The rest of the software
requirements of the resolution are as follows:
Freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, anarchists, left-wing
socialist parties (points 2 and 13);
The release of political prisoners of socialist parties, participants in the
workers 'and peasants' movements, a review of the cases of the rest of the
prisoners (points 5 and 6);
Abolition of political control bodies and armed formations of R.K.P. (b.) (Pp.
7 and 10);
Removal of barrage detachments (preventing the transport of goods) and freedom
of handicraft production, that is, steps towards freedom of trade or, as follows
from further texts, freedom of exchange (clauses 8 and 12);
Soldering equation (p. 9);
The right of the peasants to freely dispose of the land (clause 11).
Later, the Revkom, in its proclamations, supplemented this moderate platform. In
an appeal to the railway workers, the Revolutionary Committee proclaimed freedom
of assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of direct exchange between workers and
peasants, the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of the political
police (" Closure of all CHEKA "), the dissolution of the Labor Army (as a type
of slave labor), " payment in gold, and not with paper trash ". At the end of the
address, the Revkom himself summed up: " Our demands are modest. We want fewer
freedoms than there were in 1917. For this we are going to die . "
Finally, the previously mentioned article " Power to the Soviets, not to the
Parties " contains the following justification: " ... whatever party takes power,
it will not escape the role of a dictator, since, no matter how extremely
socialist it is, we will have programmatic and tactical points worked out not by
life, but created within the walls of the cabinet . "
So, the Kronstadters remained on the positions of 1917, proclaiming that power
should belong to the Soviets of workers and peasants, the workers should be given
to manage factories and factories, and the peasants - the land and crops. At the
same time, they declared that the party dictatorship, the Bolshevik monopoly on
propaganda, the political police and new forms of slave labor should be
eliminated. Political prisoners should have been released. Freedom of speech
should extend to workers and peasants, left-wing socialist parties (and the
largest of them by 1921 was R.K.P. (b.)) And anarchists. No rushing towards a
Constituent Assembly or a homogeneous socialist government was observed. There
was no demand for freedom of trade, it was only about the free exchange of
products of labor between workers' collectives, artisans and peasants.Such a
program was presented by the rebels themselves.
Kronstadt uprising
What did their opponents attribute to the rebels?
The Kronstadt events of March 1921 were superimposed on the already ongoing
information war, causing its aggravation. The world press briskly reprinted
rumors and speculations about events in Russia. In Bolshevik Russia itself, a new
propaganda campaign began with constant meetings, reports, resolutions,
proclamations and posters aimed at imposing their own interpretation of events.
The rebels published a newspaper, tried to distribute proclamations and leaflets
outside the island, and conducted regular radio broadcasts. The Bolsheviks tried
to jam the Kronstadt radio communications with the radio station "New Holland",
but not very successfully.
The interpretation by the Bolshevik propagandists of what happened in Kronstadt
on March 1 was based on the Government message of March 2, signed by the chairman
of the Labor and Defense Council Ulyanov (Lenin) and the chairman of the
Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Trotsky, which we will now
consider in detail.
Message starts, oddly enough, not with the events on the island, and with the
publication of the Paris newspaper " La Matin " ( " La Matin ", "Morning") dated
February 13, the uprising in Kronstadt. It is asserted: "The French
counterintelligence service was only slightly ahead of the events ." And further:
" Whiteguard leaflets appeared in Kronstadt and Petrograd. Notorious spies were
detained during the arrests .
So, the first message is that the speech was prepared by foreign agents.
Second: " On February 28 in Kronstadt, disturbances began on the ship"
Petropavlovsk ". A Black Hundred Socialist-Revolutionary resolution was adopted."
The second message is that forces from the Black Hundreds to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries are acting, that is, the spectrum of anti-Bolshevik
forces that has already become traditional.
Third: " A group of ex. General Kozlovsky ... ". Further: " Former General
Kozlovsky with three officers, whose names have not yet been established ... ". "
Thus, the meaning of recent events has been fully explained. This time the
tsarist general stood behind the Socialist-Revolutionaries ".
The third message is that another general's dictatorship has emerged.
This is where the narrative ends, the directive begins with three points:
" 1) Outlaw the former General Kozlovsky and his associates.
2) Declare the city of Petrograd and the Petrograd province in a state of siege.
3) Transfer all power in the Petrograd fortified area to the Petrograd Defense
Committee . "
The last step was very characteristic of the Bolsheviks throughout the civil war
- under the slogan of protecting the Soviet regime, transfer power from the
councils of deputies to a committee of appointees.
Let's analyze three sends in turn.
The first message is about a newspaper report.
People's Commissariat for Military Affairs Lev Trotsky regularly read foreign
newspapers. It was he who discovered the message about Kronstadt in the issue of
" La Maten " dated February 13. Later he talked about it himself. He described
the message as follows: " ... in a number of foreign newspapers, including in
Maten, a message about the uprising in Kronstadt appeared in mid-February, that
is, at a time when Kronstadt was completely calm ." It should be noted here that
the message was not about the uprising, it only stated that " ... in view of the
recent unrest of the Kronstadt sailors, the military Bolshevik authorities are
taking a number of measures", And then - completely unreliable message about
hundreds of those arrested. Of course, there were no hundreds of those arrested
in February, but there were reasons to write about the unrest. Chekist Vladimir
Feldman, in his report of December 10, 1920, wrote about " discontent "; in
general, there is enough evidence that the situation was far from calm.
Building cause-and-effect chains is a double-edged weapon. Already on February
24, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet declared martial law in
Petrograd because the day before the Trubovochny Zavod went on strike on
Vasilievsky Island. The factories in Petrograd went on strike before, but here
not only Vasilievsky Island, but the whole city was declared martial law. The
question can be posed: is Zinoviev's greater attention to this strike explained
by the perspicacious foresight of its consequences, or are the consequences the
result of tough actions by the Executive Committee?
If we stick to the conspiracy theory, then we can get to the assertion that the
arrests of approximately 10,000 Kronstadters after the capture of the fortress by
the Red Army were prepared by the French special services, since before that the
arrests were written in La Maten .
So, Trotsky, according to his own statement, having read in a French newspaper
about the "unrest" in Kronstadt, as the people's commissar for military and naval
affairs, instructed the command of the Baltic Fleet to take measures to prevent
the uprising. This correspondence was not found, measures, as you know, were
taken, but not sufficient.
Some of the high-ranking Bolsheviks already had a very developed spy mania. For
example, on March 9, 1921, during the Kronstadt events, Felix Dzerzhinsky wrote
to Vyacheslav Menzhinsky: " ... today an English radio telegram about the
uprising in Odessa was intercepted. So, if not, then there will be attempts . "
Lenin was obviously very impressed by the news that La Maten had announced the
uprising in Kronstadt in advance. He devoted most of his message to the Xth
Congress on the events in Kronstadt to this circumstance. Despite the expressed
interest of ordinary delegates, little was reported about Kronstadt at the
congress. Nevertheless, Lenin then returned to the February report of La Maten ,
having made a detailed survey of the latest publications of the bourgeois press.
I will cite small excerpts from this long review, since it well reveals the
situation on this front of the then information war: " Since the beginning of
March, every day the entire Western European press has been publishing whole
streams of fantastic news about the uprisings in Russia, about the victory of the
counter-revolution, about the flight of Lenin and Trotsky to the Crimea, about
the white flag on the Kremlin, about the streams of blood on the streets of
Petrograd and Moscow, about barricades in the same place, about dense crowds of
workers descending from the hills to Moscow to overthrow Soviet power, about
Budyonny's desertion to the side of the rebels, about the victory of the
counter-revolution in a whole number of Russian cities, and now one, then another
city appears, and in general, almost the majority of the provincial cities of
Russia were listed . "
Further: " We have here in Moscow representatives of big business who misled all
these rumors, and they announced how in America one group of citizens used an
unprecedented method of agitation for Soviet Russia.
This group collected from newspapers of the most diverse, for several months
everything that was said about Russia, about the flight of Lenin and Trotsky,
about Trotsky's shooting of Lenin and back, collected everything in one brochure.
The best agitation for Soviet power could not be imagined. From day to day,
information was collected about how many times Lenin and Trotsky were shot,
killed, this information was repeated every month, and then, in the end, they are
collected in one collection and published . "
The story about the brochure makes it clear that the flow of fantasy did not
begin at the beginning of March, that it lasted at least several months. This
means that the February message about the unrest in Kronstadt is not anything
special against the background of the message about the uprising in Odessa, the
separation of Saratov from Russia, or the white flag over the Kremlin.
The alternating fictions about uprisings in various cities almost exclude a
reaction to each such news, similar to Trotsky's reaction to the message about
Kronstadt, or Dzerzhinsky to the message about Odessa.
However, not necessarily every report of the uprising was an invention of foreign
journalists. One of the first issues of Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee
contained a report on the general uprising in Petrograd. The newspaper, probably,
did not have significant circulation outside of Kronstadt, but it is known that
the rebels actively used the radio station, and, quite likely, transmitted
messages close to publications in Izvestia of the Revolutionary Committee.
The second message is about the " Black Hundred Socialist Revolutionary resolution ."
" Socialist-Revolutionary Black Hundred Resolutions"- this is the wording of
Zinoviev, which was contained in the first cipher program, which reported on the
events of February 28 on the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol in
Kronstadt. The encryption message was sent at the same time, on February 28th. It
is safe to assume that Zinoviev was not familiar with the texts of the
resolutions of "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" at that time. If the texts of the
resolutions were then or later known in Petrograd and could really be presented
as Black Hundreds, then the Bolsheviks would have published them in whole or in
part with their comments, as they did with other similar documents. This did not
happen, moreover, the resolutions have not yet been discovered. This means that
either the resolutions were lost in the course of further events on the island,
and Zinoviev did not see them either then or later, or nothing was found in
them,which could discredit battleship teams in the eyes of workers, peasants, Red
Army men and Red Navy men.
We have already examined the real resolution adopted on March 1, it may have been
too Socialist-Revolutionary for the Bolsheviks, but certainly too Bolshevik for
the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Even freedom of speech and press was proclaimed
only for the " left socialist parties ", the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries
(PSR) was excluded from this definition. As far as can be judged on the basis of
the available facts, only individual Socialist-Revolutionaries who had no contact
with the rest of the P.S.R. participated in the uprising. When representatives of
P.S.R. established contact with the rebels, they could offer cooperation only if
the Kronstadt Revolutionary Committee supported the slogan of convening the
Constituent Assembly. The Revolutionary Committee did not agree to these conditions.
The third message is about General Kozlovsky and the "zolotoponniki".
The message that the uprising was allegedly organized by a former general gave
the greatest propaganda effect.
The strike movement in Petrograd had already subsided in early March, workers of
many enterprises went to work on 1, 2, or in the morning of 3 March. This means
that this happened even before the publication of the message of the Council of
Labor and Defense, which pointed to General Kozlovsky as the organizer and leader
of the uprising.
But it was this propaganda move that had a significant impact on the further
course of events, on the curtailment of strikes, on the resolutions of labor
collectives, on the stability of combat units. The political work of the
Bolsheviks soon concentrated on this very argument. The address of the Baltic
Fleet Revolutionary Troika "To all the sailors of the Baltic Fleet", published on
March 5, stated: "The troublemakers, provocateurs and agents of the Entente have
finally thrown off their masks! ". " Having accepted the services of the Judas
former Lieutenant General Kozlovsky, they occupied some of the forts of the
Kronstadt fortress ." For the sake of weight, the Revtroyka promoted Major
General Kozlovsky to Lieutenant General.
Soon, resolutions were adopted everywhere, very similar to each other, for
example, "On March 13, the city-wide meeting of the Red Army soldiers of the
Gatchina garrison, together with members of the trade unions, after hearing a
report from Comrade Podpeka and others on the current situation, decides:" We
send our contempt to the traitors of the working class s.-roar ., to the
Mensheviks and Tsarist generals, who involved the deceived Kronstadt sailors in a
criminal adventure, preparing a treacherous stab in the back of the working class
of Russia ... ".
Where do such resolutions come from? The beginning of many of them leaves no
doubt - the resolutions were passed after the propagandist's report.
So, on March 15, the newspaper Smena publishes: " Having heard the report on the
situation near Kronstadt, we, the workers 'and peasants' youth, members of the
RKSM, were taken into a detachment of the regiment of trade unions, seeing the
vile game started by the white generals and the black pack, thanks to which they
entangled and caught on the Socialist-Revolutionary Menshevik bait of the
Kronstadtites and some workers of Red Peter ... ".
On March 26, the newspaper "Red Baltic Fleet" publishes the following: " After
hearing the report of the head of the garrison, Comrade. A novel about the
Kronstadt events, we, the red sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and the Red Army
soldiers of the Novorossiysk garrison, vow to die for the red banner and act as
one in the fight against the protege of world reaction - gene. Kozlovsky ... ".
The fact that there is a former general in the fortress, of course, in Petrograd
could not but know. After the commissar of the fortress Gromov made his way to
Oranienbaum (apparently on March 2), the names of several more former officers
became known, and reliable information appeared that Kozlovsky had actively
supported the uprising. It remained to finish writing about the leading role of
Kozlovsky in the uprising, about the fact that it was he who had arrested the
commissar of the Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, etc.
The Bolsheviks understood that participation in the uprising of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists would not discredit the
uprising in the eyes of non-party people. Therefore, in the messages sent to the
outside, they talked about the Black Hundreds, generals, gold chasers, spies and
homeowners. Thus, the surname of a member of the Kronstadt Revolutionary
Committee, Tukin, was systematically distorted in order to evoke associations
with the Turkins merchant family known in Kronstadt and Petrograd.
A special gift to the Bolshevik propagandists was the arrival on March 8 in
Kronstadt, as a representative of the Red Cross, Baron Wilken, who commanded the
battleship "Sevastopol" in 1917. The story of the Red Cross mission, as soon as
it became known on the mainland, immediately overgrown with many unreliable
details. But the argument so convincing at the beginning of 1921 that aid from
international and foreign organizations inevitably imposes some political
obligations was destined to soon become inconvenient for the Bolsheviks, when
famine broke out in the Volga region, and American organizations provided their
aid to the starving.
Of course, the crudest lie was best assimilated far from Kronstadt and Petrograd.
The most indignant resolutions came from the well-fed south. Some of them were
addressed to the rebels. Some, especially the addresses of the Black Sea sailors,
reprinted "Petrogradskaya Pravda" and "Red Baltic Fleet", but they did not reach
the insurgents. Only ultimatums and texts close to them aimed at intimidation,
such as the appeal of the Petrograd Defense Committee "They knocked out", which
later the Bolsheviks themselves regarded as a political mistake, got to Kronstadt.
There is an interesting, although not entirely reliable, story about the polemics
of propagandists on both sides. On March 5, the commissar of the Krasnoflotskiy
fort, Sladkov, told Zinoviev that he had a conversation on the radio with
allegedly the chairman of the revolutionary committee, whom he called Volin, who,
however, had addressed Ivan Sladkov as "Kolka". Despite these oddities, the
conversation retold by Sladkov is very remarkable: Commissar Sladkov reproduced
propaganda tricks about a coup led by the "zolotoponnikov", to which Sladkov's
opponent insisted that "Petropavlovsk" was and will remain a red ship, that only
communists gravitating towards dictatorship were arrested, the rest work in their
places, that the "gold-chasers" flee from the fortress to the Bolsheviks, and so on.
It is impossible to say that no information about the actual state of affairs was
received upstairs. A comparatively accurate assessment of the situation in
Kronstadt was given by the Chekist Vladimir Feldman before the uprising, the
fleet commander Alexander Nemitz during the uprising and the Chekist Semyon
Agranov after the uprising. But propaganda was important to the leaders, and
propaganda does not seek the truth.
The exceptional activity of propaganda in March 1921 can be explained by many
reasons: along with the strategic position of Kronstadt, it is the programmatic
proximity of the conflicting parties, which created fluctuations in the masses,
and the peculiarities of the moment that raised the stakes in the unfolding
struggle. On March 16, in London, Leonid Krasin and Robert Horn signed a
Soviet-British trade agreement. On March 18, a peace treaty was signed in Riga
between R.S.F.S.R. and Poland. A different course of events on the banks of the
Marquisovaya Puddle could have influenced the outcome of these negotiations. But
the biggest stake was the congress of the R.K.P. (b.).
The Xth Congress was Lenin's frontal attack on the Workers' Opposition and the
supporters of democratic centralism. The struggle was for the unity of the R.K.P.
(b.). As we found out earlier, the slogans of the rebels were very moderate, not
very far from the criticism of the formed dictatorship from the supporters of the
"Workers' Opposition" and the Decists. And that is precisely why it was necessary
to present the uprising as an action radically hostile to the Bolsheviks and
workers and peasants. Only this made it possible to prevent the rebels from
joining the extreme opposition within the ruling party itself. Namely, the
internal party issues worried the Central Committee. more than the uprising of
this or that city or county.
Ivar Smilga said at the congress: " Of course, it's not that scary that in
Kronstadt Kozlovsky, in a bloc with the Right Socialist Revolutionaries,
rebelled. I would say that this does not have a decisive influence on the issue
we are now discussing, just as even the fact that there were bagpipes at the
Petrograd factories is a matter of the current moment. The question that
interests us now is the question of party building, and the danger in it is the
moment that among our Kronstadt communist comrades, according to Comrade Trotsky,
30 percent take an active part against us, 40 percent take neutral positions and
only the rest some are fighting against the Kronstadt rebels . "
The data on the split of the Kronstadt organization of R.K.P. (b.) Were then
clarified when re-registering in it, but there was a split, and there is enough
evidence that it arose even before the uprising, indeed under the influence of
internal party discussions.
What was the fate of the Kronstadt organization of the Bolsheviks against the
backdrop of discussion and uprising?
The re-registration of the Kronstadt organization of the R.K.P. (b.) In September
1920 showed a voluntary decline from 25 to 27% of the total number. This
situation could still be considered relatively favorable, according to Vladimir
Feldman's report of December 10, in the Baltic Fleet as a whole, more than 40% of
the members left the party organization.
By March 1, there were 2,126 members of the R.K.P. (b.) In Kronstadt, of which
684 were attached to the district committee, and 1,442 to the Kronstadt Political
Department (that is, most of the Kronstadt Bolsheviks were in military service),
there were also about 500 candidates. There were almost no Bolsheviks with
pre-revolutionary experience. About 85% of the Kronstadt party members in the
registration cards were listed as workers and peasants, but in fact most of them
were employees, military and civilians. That is, they "left the people" as well
as the majority of the party, and the essence of the party discussion that took
place at the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921 was precisely that the "left
of the people" party members began to lose touch with the people, from which they
went out.
At the Xth Congress of the R.K.P. (b.), Already during the uprising,
representatives of the Workers' Opposition made very alarming statements. The
leader of the group, Alexander Shlyapnikov, argued that, despite the growth of
R.K.P. (b.), Among the workers who remained in the industry, the number of party
members was decreasing. So, among the metalworkers of St. Petersburg, according
to their own words, there are not even 2% of the Bolsheviks, and more reliable
information about the number of Bolsheviks among the metalworkers of Moscow was
given by 4%.
Delegate Yuri Milonov described the dilemma faced by the party: "How can we solve
the following problem: since the peasantry is not with us, since the working
class is falling under the influence of various petty-bourgeois anarchist
elements, since it also has a tendency to move away from us, what can the
Communist Party rely on now? Here you will have to look for a way out in two
directions. Either it must be said, as some local people say, that the working
class in the revolutionary and political struggle and socialist construction is
selfish and cannot be relied on - and such a theory has been invented - or we
must say that it is impossible to rely on anyone, as Comrade Osinsky has already
tried to point out. The result is an absurd situation: we find ourselves over a
chasm, between the working class, which is infected with petty-bourgeois
prejudices, and the peasantry, which is essentially petty-bourgeois;you can't
rely on the same Soviet and party bureaucracy?".
The delegates of the Leninist Ten and the Buffer, which joined them, objected
that it was inadmissible to criticize the party and state leadership in such
terms as was done during the discussion preceding the congress. Leon Trotsky at
the convention cited " the newspaper so Zinoviev. " I suppose, "Petrograd truth":
" Autocratic power and hierarchical enterprise management system that prevails
today on the railways and which promote Tsektran, together with the People's
Commissariat scattered" eyes "around an enterprise that should frighten the
workers, pull the reins from above, and from below encourage the workers,
sometimes in the most rude form, to obey these reins - these are typical features
of the manufacturing period . "
The result was summed up in the resolution of the congress "On the unity of the
Party": in order to exclude criticism of RKP (b.) From the outside, the congress
decided not to eliminate the phenomena that caused criticism, but to limit
criticism from within. The "workers' opposition" was branded in the resolution
"On the syndicalist and anarchist deviation in our party."
One way or another, the very degeneration of R.K.P. (b.), And his criticism by
the opposition, split the Kronstadt Bolshevik organization. As we have already
said, she was not as workers 'and peasants', as she claimed, but the level of
literacy of party members was relatively high. Nor were they indifferent fellow
travelers, indifferent to the situation in the country and the party. On the
contrary, the Kronstadt Bolsheviks actively joined the discussion, but not
through abstract theorizing, but turning to personalities, finding out which of
the comrades demonstrates their bourgeoisness and in what exactly, counting the
chairs in the rooms of colleagues and the dresses of their wives. During the
discussion of the relationship between the "top and bottom", non-party
Kronstadters, who were also not an unconscious gray mass, were drawn into the
discussion. Chekist Feldman notedthat one of the reasons for the dissatisfaction
of the Balts with political work is "thirst to learn, to gain knowledge ...
especially among sailors . "
While " the newspaper so. Zinoviev ," that obey the Kronstadt Bolsheviks attached
to the District Committee, branded " absolute authority " Tsektran, most of the
organizations attached to Kronpolitotdelu, subordinate to the Commissioner of the
Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, who had already acquired appearance " fat holonogo
master " and was remembered by the shout " I will not allow the committee to breed ."
During the uprising, the split became a fact. Since March 2, the Provisional
Bureau of the Kronstadt organization of R.K.P. consisting of Yakov Ilyin, Anton
Kabanov and the chairman of the union of metalworkers Fyodor Pervushin, already
on March 3 they called on the communists to stay in their places and cooperate
with the Revolutionary Committee. During the period from 2 to 5 March, all the
Bolsheviks who did not leave the island, who declared their non-recognition of
the Revolutionary Committee, were arrested by the rebels, partly placed in the
Investigative Prison, and partly under house arrest. Thus, for almost the entire
duration of the uprising, two bureaus of the Communist Party operated in the
fortress. Members of the old bureau continued to call themselves Bolsheviks and
were in the Investigative Prison, members of the temporary bureau supported the
uprising.
The inmates of the remand prison were released during the street fighting in the
fortress, while the Provisional Bureau, on the other hand, was arrested. Note
that the members of the Provisional Bureau did not leave the island, unlike the
majority of the members of the Revolutionary Committee. The Chekists singled out
the investigation against the "Provisional Bureau" in a separate case, in which
14 people were involved. During the investigation, the members of the Provisional
Bureau claimed that they were guided by tactical plans aimed at keeping the
maximum number of communists at large and plotting them against the Revolutionary
Committee. Investigator Kordovsky, on the contrary, believed that the appeal of
the Provisional Bureau " changed the whole course of the rebellion and paralyzed
all underground work". The trio agreed with the investigator's arguments,
sentencing 6 people, including Ilyin, Kabanov and Pervushin to death, and the
remaining 8 communists who did not take active action - to 5 years of community
service conditionally.
During the uprising, the largest number of communists chose to leave the party,
and this was done, as a rule, demonstratively. According to the report provided
by the specially authorized Semyon Agranov to the Presidium of V.Ch.K .: " During
the rebellion, the Revolutionary Committee and the editorial board received from
800 to 900 applications for withdrawal from the RCP ." In other words,
applications were written by 37.6 to 42.3% of the organization's members. When
re-registering the party organization, it was believed that during the uprising
of R.K.P. (b.) 497 people (23.4%) voluntarily left.
When re-registering after the suppression of the uprising in R.K.P. (b.), 734
people (34.5%) were reinstated. Of these, 95 people were outside the fortress by
the beginning of March, 167 people left the island and took part in suppressing
the uprising, 327 people were arrested by the rebels, 135 people remained in
Kronstadt, but did not take part in the events on anyone's side. In addition, 211
people were expelled from the RKP (b.) Upon re-registration, and 137 people did
not go through re-registration.
The investigation did not manage to establish the facts of the activities of
organized political groups in Kronstadt, which had disintegrated in 1919 and
1920. There were only individual Mensheviks, maximalists and anarchists among the
mass of non-party and communists. According to the materials of the
investigation, Anatoly Lamanov on March 4 wrote for Izvestiya Revkom a statement
on his withdrawal from the R.K.P. (b.) And joining the Union of
Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists, but it does not follow from this that this
Union is in fortress acted. During interrogations, a member of the Revolutionary
Committee Vladislav Valk insisted that he considered himself a
Menshevik-internationalist, but denied the existence of a Menshevik cell in
Kronstadt.
Even if we admit that there were some groups of socialists or anarchists, it
should still be admitted that the most numerous and organized structures of the
party type in the rebellious fortress were the organizations of the communists,
one of which supported the uprising, the other was arrested.
As a result, contrary to popular belief, the Kronstadt uprising must be
considered an uprising of non-party and opposition communists who remained on the
platform of Soviet power, but opposed the party dictatorship. This uprising was a
direct continuation of the "Kronstadt Republic" of 1917, and the insurgents had a
program that directly dates back to the demands of July 1917.
Andrey Kalyonov
anarchist from St. Petersburg
https://avtonom.org/pages/politicheskaya-fizionomiya-vosstavshego-kronshtadta-k-stoletiyu
------------------------------
Message: 3
I don't like the so-called new normality at all. They are trying to make us
believe that what happens to us is "normal". This dominant discourse identifies
what is normal with what is common, therefore with what is good and accepted. It
is dangerous and fallacious. Its objective is that practices that are not good,
both inside and outside the workplace, are assumed to be normal and consented.
What is the use of preventing girls' feet from growing? Was this limitation of
the child, which was so normalized in the Middle Ages, good? And, after decades
of struggling to leave home and occupy the public space, what improvements does
the imposition of the telework corset on women bring us? Is it normal for 8M to
bring more pandemics and that Eva always has to eat the apple under the eyes of a
snake and Adam drooling over biting the fruit?
Brincadeiras à parte, temo que surpresas desagradáveis nos aguardem entre agora e
os próximos 8M e que queremos normalizar questões intoleráveis, por isso devemos
planejar cuidadosamente nossas ações coletivas e definir nossos objetivos e
estratégias sem demora.
The normal should be to advance against all odds towards an egalitarian and
solidary future, with a fair, feminist, sustainable and respectful planet. This
requires commitment and requires us to personally consider the day to day, taking
care of our environment and the living beings that surround us. If, based on this
individual awareness, our actions and decisions have an interesting "butterfly
effect", at the collective and organizational level this "effect" can be
tremendous. What does every breath of a woman in Central Africa cause? Would a
blink of an eye in Europe trigger a green tornado in Argentina? Well, we don't
know! But since its origins, feminism has the capacity to introduce important
disturbances in the chaotic system of this anthropocentric and patriarchal
capitalism,
It is necessary to carry out a serene reflection on what happened and its
effects, to continue talking and analyzing, to contrast opinions, to debate
everything that is necessary, with a constructive sense and a gender focus, to
present a united and strengthened anarcho-feminist front, with a clear path
marked, ready not to take a step back in the feminist struggle for equality and
emancipation.
Our movements will cause tornadoes!
Source:https://www.cnt.es/noticias/anarcofeminismo-y-efecto-mariposa/
Related content:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2021/03/01/espanha-8m-nossa-melhor-defesa-feminismo-de-classe-sindicalista-e-combativo/
anarchist news agency-ana
------------------------------
Message: 4
At the beginning of 1848, gold was found in California. From all over Europe,
fresh out of the People's Spring, thousands of people are leaving, driven by the
desire to build their socialist ideal there, and in doing so ... will participate
in American colonialism which will destroy the Indian nations. ---- In May 1848,
a Mormon named Sam Brannan galloped into San Francisco shouting "Gold has been
found in the American River!"" This declaration will trigger "the largest
movement of people from Crusades"[1]. The future California state, occupied since
1846 by the United States and sold on February 2, 1848 by Mexico, will be
completely transformed. People flock to the placers[2].
During the year, up to 40,000 dollars are wrenched every day from the sands of
rivers. We rush first from the entire west coast and then from as far as Chile,
Australia, China, even Kanaky! As of December 5, tens of thousands of people are
selling everything they have and are leaving from the east coast.
The dream of an Icaria in California
But 1848 is also the Spring of the Peoples in Europe. After two years of economic
crises, Europe is set on fire. Restoration of the Republic in France, civil war
in Switzerland, insurrection in Sicily and Milan, revolt in Glasgow, Young
Ireland movement in Dublin, barricades in Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid,
nationalist movements, social Catholics, utopian socialists (Fourierists,
Saint-Simonians) ... Europe is in turmoil and demands more freedom and social
equality. But in Paris, everything stops in June, failure is everywhere,
repression is brutal.
Among the gold diggers, a good number of ex-European revolutionaries in exile.
In such a context of disappointment and disillusion, the announcement of the
discovery of gold has an extraordinary impact. "For all defeated, persecuted,
desperate, banished revolutionaries, gold seems the promise of a new possible
world"[3].
In Paris, we no longer swear by California. Its newspapers echo the tremendous
discoveries: "Not a meter of land that does not contain gold" assures La Presse
of June 8, 1849. Private emigration companies are assembled by the dozen. Some
are commercial but others are created in the form of workers' mutual societies:
La Californie, La Ruche d'or, La Bretonne, L'Union fraternelle, etc. All this
maintained, amplified by hundreds of brochures.
The government will support the creation of a Gold Bullion Company to organize a
lottery to finance the transport of 5,000 immigrants too poor to make the
crossing. The prefect of police Carlier, who decides on departures, takes the
opportunity to get rid of troublesome young people enrolled in the national
guard, and who will leave alongside the socialist militants they had repressed a
few months before.
Advertisement for the crossing of the planet in the direction of the Californian
El Dorado.
Karl Marx will deplore then that "dreams of gold[have]replaced socialist dreams
in the Parisian proletariat" . But socialist dreams are also part of the journey.
The Icarian movement initiated by the utopian socialist Etienne Cabet, author in
1840 of Voyage en Icarie , formed the project of creating ideal cities. On
October 10, 1847, around 150 people gathered in the premises of the newspaper Le
Populaire voted on the Act of constitution of Icaria and established an Icarian
Immigration Office.
Several attempts will be made by the French in Texas, Iowa, Illinois, most of
whom fail or deviate from their goal. But if the Icaries only motivate a few
hundred departures, the gold fever is causing tens of thousands of people to
leave. "Those who then rushed from all over Europe were not simply greedy
'adventurers', but for the most part the forty-eight, among the most radical and
nostalgic, who were suffocating on the old continent, or had to flee the
repression[...]California where the revolution of 48 succeeds!"[4].
We debate in the camps
From a village of 500 inhabitants, San Francisco will become a flourishing city.
The gold diggers arrive in a muddy environment where they lack everything and
where violence, prostitution and alcoholism are omnipresent. Of the 20,000 French
gold diggers present in 1851, 5,000 remained in San Francisco, or one fifth of
the city's population. They will bring Parisian prostitutes, we will talk about
the "little Paris of the Pacific" which will not survive several fires ... The
city is trying to organize itself, for fear, according to Sam Brannan, that it
"perishes like a modern one. Sodom". He created a committee called Les
Vigilantes, armed and mobilizable. This term will be passed on to posterity to
describe the private American militias bent on taking justice into their own hands.
Europeans, Indians, Chinese: California in the 1850s.
The Sierra Nevada is gutted 70 tons of gold in 1851, there are 100,000 gold
seekers in 1852. At first, the placers make dreams and cultures telescope when
the descendants of the first Quaker pilgrims meet there. , Anabaptists,
Presbyterians, in search of a new Jerusalem, and the forty-eight Europeans,
utopian socialists all in their social experiments. And all to debate in the
camps "the world that will be born tomorrow" . "There are no pirates on one side,
mystics and socialists on the other," writes historian Michel Le Bris, "they were
all both enlightened and outlawed."[5]
But from 1850, land became scarce, the relative good understanding of the first
two years was over. The camps are grouped together by nationality, religion, even
Masonic lodge, or by socialist utopia, and distrust each other. The first
American gold diggers can no longer support the competition of this variegated
cohort from all over the Earth, while reproaching the Indians and Mexicans for
having been the first owners of California: already in 1849 near Clear Lake, in
reaction to the murder of two whites by Pomos and Wappos Indians, self-proclaimed
militias and the army engage in indiscriminate massacres: the authorities turn a
blind eye. Anti-Indian operations were financed and, in California, Indian
slavery continued until 1850.
Native people reduced to semi-slavery took part in the search for gold.
The Vigilantes and the Mokelumne Hill Rebellion
Lynching and "popular justice" are ruthless, as in the case of Juanita, a young
Mexican hanged by the crowd for having stabbed her rapist ... To regain control,
the Vigilantes militias leave San Francisco to officiate at the placers . They
first try to drive out the Chinese. Then a real murderous war is unleashed
against Chilean researchers. The California assembly passed a tax in 1850 for all
foreign miners: a license of $ 20 per month to prospect.
The French utopians of San Joaquin take up arms against the tax, decreeing
"thatthey had not brought down the monarchy in Paris to comply with the orders of
a few Yankees"[6]. It is the revolt of Mokelumne Hill: 2,000 French retreat to
the heights, organize themselves militarily and clash with the Vigilantes. They
will give up their project and will not be prosecuted, they will even be rearmed,
while in 1852 the tax passes to three dollars, reduction which will not apply to
the Chinese gold diggers ...[7]
Raousset-Boulbon's odyssey
The irreducible Gauls of Sierra Nevada decide to leave California but keep their
dream of a new republic: they go to settle in Mexico in the region of Sonora
where gold will be in abundance. Deciding to set up a settlement there, these
former forty-eighters then put themselves under the authority of the Count of
Raousset-Boulbon, a colonialist who took part in the Kabylia campaign alongside
Bugeaud.
Landed in California in 1850 and failing as a prospector and trader, he founded a
mining company in Mexico, the Compañia Restaudora del Mineral de Arizona, with
Mexican capital and the support of the French ambassador. The Mexican government
authorizes him to explore Sonora and establish mines there, in exchange he must
provide men to protect them from Indian attacks. French diplomats in Mexico do
not take a dim view of the prospect of a colony, because France already has views
on Mexico which it will invade ten years later.
European women in front of a tavern run by locals.
The local authorities, unhappy to see armed men disembark instead of simple
prospectors, unleash hostilities. The French beat the Mexican army and marched on
the town of Hermosillo but, ill, had to be repatriated to California.
Raousset-Boulbon assembles a second army and sets out again to conquer Sonora in
1854. Failure, he is shot on August 12.
So the dreams of a new world of the French gold-seeking utopians abruptly ended
... The myth of California endured throughout the century: in 1881, a Fourierist
and Saint-Simonian Icaria settled in Saint-Louis, attracted by rumor from a
popularity of socialist ideas in San Francisco, tries a new experience by
relocating to Sonoma County. Founded by Pierre Leroux (brother of Jules Leroux,
inventor of the word "socialism") and financed by Georges Sand, it will be
baptized Icaria Speranza, then will be dissolved on August 3, 1886 by the county
court of justice.
The destruction of indigenous peoples
The Gold Rush is a disaster for Native American nations. In 1846, about 150,000
natives populated California. They were no more than 35,000 in 1860: the
staggering number of new arrivals chased them from their usual hunting and
fishing areas. They respond by attacking the minors who take revenge with
murderous reprisals on their villages "culminating in a genocidal program which
claimed thousands of lives"[8]. Those who survive without access to their natural
resources die starving. " Against a backdrop of Rousseauism and
romanticism[...]man fights against nature, that is to say against the Indian,
without worrying about the economic and political implications of this future
"farmers' paradise""[9].
In 1846, about 150,000 natives populated California. They numbered 35,000 in
1860. Immigrants drove them from their hunting and fishing grounds.
The political turmoil in California led to the development of a constitution and
the creation of a state that accelerated the colonization and destruction of
indigenous peoples, including the construction of the railroad from Sacramento to
the east.
This is not the only time in history that socialist utopias have reinforced
colonial processes: the kibbutz in Palestine, the creation of workers'
cooperatives to populate European colonial territories ... The lesson to be
learned is to be wary. , even today, the possible instrumentalisation of
self-management experiences, in reality motivating colonialist and imperialist
companies.
Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Montreuil)
Validate
[1] Michel Le Bris, The Gold Fever , La Découverte, 1988.
[2] Gold present in alluvium, as opposed to gold found in a rock vein
[3] Michel Le Bris, op. cit .
[4] Michel Le Bris, La Porte d'or , Grasset, 1986.
[5] Michel Le Bris, When California Was French , Le Pré aux Clercs, 1999.
[6] "Gold rush: when the French blow a wind of revolution on" Moke Hill "", Le
Monde , July 24, 2020.
[7] Ibidem
[8] James J. Rawls, Richard J. Orsi, A golden state: mining and economic
development in Gold Rush California , UC Press, 1999.
[9] Philippe Jacquin, Le Mythe de l'Ouest , Autrement, 1993.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1850-La-ruee-vers-l-or-et-les-quarante-huitards-francais-en-exil
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Message: 5
After the abandonment in 2019 of the Europacity project in the face of the
mobilization for agricultural land in the Triangle de Gonesse, the battle has not
yet been won. Sunday January 17 a rally took place against the guard of the Grand
Paris Express and the ZAC project in progress. ---- This Sunday, January 17, we
were nearly 500 people gathered in the Triangle de Gonesse in Val-d'Oise (95), to
defend these fertile agricultural lands against the work of the Grand Paris
Express station. Despite the snowfall the day before, the mobilization was a
success. It must be said that the urgency is there, the Société du Grand Paris
having announced the resumption of work for mid-February 2021.
Coveted, these lands were first threatened by the mega-project Europacity, a huge
shopping and leisure center abandoned in 2019 by Macron. They are now in danger
in the face of the urbanization of a 110 hectare ZAC and the creation of the line
17 station. The government speeches announcing the fight for biodiversity and
against the artificialization of soils have been forgotten! Scanned the calls of
scientists and those of the Citizen's Climate Convention to prevent any further
attacks on agricultural land! And this with the support of the government but
also of local elected representatives.
Sign for the defense of the lands of Gonesse. Demonstration against Europacity.
Paris, October 5, 2019.
cc Martin Noda / Hans Lucas / Red photo library
An assembly of struggles opened on the 17th, bringing together different groups
such as No au T4 (Fight against the extension of Roissy airport), Vigilance JO
2024, Save the wind area (see article on page 15).
Highlight of the day: The Oath of the Triangle[1]was read by a Gonessian - Julien
Vermignon -, a market gardener - Alain Crochot, from Cergy - and an author -
Marie Desplechin - then signed by all those present ( to sign it ).
This oath is a title of co-ownership committing his or her owner to defend these
lands and the living people who inhabit them. Many elected officials and
activists also took the oath: deputies, elected municipal officials,
representatives of trade unions and parties. This day ended with a stroll towards
the old base of the site, blocked in 2019 by the Collectif pour le Triangle de
Gonesse (CPTG).
The CARMA project as an alternative
The government would now have the possibility of choosing a real future project
for the Triangle and its inhabitants: the CARMA project. The latter proposes the
creation of a food belt north of the Ile-de-France region, in order to relocate
agricultural production. Unlike off-ground projects which only propose
transferring jobs in tension from one ZAC to another, this project focuses on a
diversification of the professions offered, in line with the qualifications and
expectations of the inhabitants (hotels and restaurants including school,
logistics, driving vehicles etc.). In December, the municipality of Montreuil
embarked on this approach by choosing to subsidize it.
We are soon celebrating the tenth anniversary of our collective and we will not
let go !
Siamak Shoara and Mélanie Antin, members of the Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse
Validate
[1] To sign it: oathdutriangle.agirpourlenvironnement.org
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?82-Biodiversite-plus-de-terres-a-Gonesse-moins-de-Grand-Paris-Express
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
On March 24, the exemplary Spanish democracy will celebrate a new farce, a trial
for another police and judicial set-up that only seeks to hide another case of
torture by the State Security Forces and Bodies. The prosecution requests 1 year
and 6 months in jail, in addition to a 770 euro fine, to our colleague Ruymán
Rodríguez for allegedly having kicked a civil guard in the barracks where he was
being held and tortured after an illegal arrest. ---- The trial is framed,
suspiciously, in an aggravated repressive wave that has ended with Pablo Hasel
and Elgio convicted for their letters, and with several detainees in the protests
that have been organized as a result of it in several cities of the State. Faced
with increasing inequality, the absence of a future and opportunities, and
uncertainty, the State's response is to arm itself and strike. At the same time,
in the Canary Islands, the "most progressive government in history" locks up
thousands of migrants in authentic concentration camps under inhuman conditions,
violating their rights as human beings. Meanwhile, the fascist discourse is
reproduced, generating a favorable terrain for its growth and normalization.
We do not expect anything from a judicial system that will never go against its
own agents. And much less when it is an anarchist who is judged. A clumsy and
shabby montage by some civil guards who got scared when our colleague began to
vomit blood is enough for the prosecution. They do not care that the detention
was illegal: everything is part of the efforts of the State, with the
collaboration of some related media, to overthrow the self-managed project of "La
Esperanza", which for 9 years has sheltered more than 200 people and that has
been replicated in other parts of the island.
We have uncovered the miseries of the institutions beyond their expectations. We
have rehoused more people in the Canary Islands than the public administrations
put together and we have politicized and organized "that mob and that mob," as
the Civil Guards called them while they tortured our comrade. That is why, in
their clumsiness and ignorance, they prosecute our partner; because they believe
that once beheaded, the serpent will die. What they don't understand is that the
FAGC and IACS don't work with leaders. They do not fit in their square head of
hierarchical officials that we are the organized response to the need of
thousands of people that none of their laws and repressive bodies will be able to
appease: life and dignity.
We refuse, however, that our brother ends up in jail for having literally left
his health and life so that hundreds of families have a roof, so that they can
receive health care, so that they can eat. They will have us in front. For this
reason, the affiliates of the Tenant Union of Gran Canaria call on all groups and
individuals in the State and the rest of the world to show their solidarity with
our partner. Because their struggle, like that of so many others who are already
in jail, is everyone's and their destiny can also be everyone's.
Freedom for Ruymán!! Enough of police repression!!
Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria
Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria
https://sindicatodeinquilinasgc.noblogs.org/2021/03/03/comunicado-de-apoyo-a-ruyman-rodriguez/
https://www.facebook.com/anarquistas.grancanaria/posts/3246838762084105
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Message: 2
In a few weeks I will be tried and also, undoubtedly, convicted. I am accused of
a crime of " attack on authority " (poetic, for an anarchist) and I am asked for
a minimum of 1 year and 6 months in prison and 770 bucks of fine. All this for
supposedly having kicked a civil guard in 2015 in the barracks where I was
detained and tortured in order to intimidate me and destabilize the self-managed
housing project of the «La Esperanza» Community , located in the Gran Canaria
municipality of Guía. . ---- I will not waste time in claiming my innocence or
similar nonsense, and even less when there are companions and companions who at
the moment, as I write, are already in jail. Besides, it would be useless. That I
will be damned is as certain as that tomorrow the sun will rise. An attempt will
be made with this (if I want to avoid, it seems, the execution of the sentence)
to keep me " calm " and without fussing for a few years and, if possible, to
teach my back a Canarian anarchism and an insular movement for the right to the
home that has been bothering you for too long beyond your means.
And then they say that we anarchists are naive ... If they think that the
conviction of the militants and the need for the evicted can be stifled with
laws, trials and convictions, they have not understood anything. Even the
founders of Roman Law themselves assumed it: necessitas caret lege ( " necessity
lacks law " ). No paper or bar has ever been able to crush the survival instinct
and the urge to get food, shelter and shelter. My conviction won't make it either.
Having said that, I would like to use this episode as a pretext to share some
reflections on the judicial system and its mechanisms.
The first is the act of judgment itself. Entering a room where you are going to
be processed for the first time is like taking part in a kind of overwhelming
ritual. The overloaded liturgy, the archaic language, the dehumanized atmosphere,
the ridiculous clothing, everything necessary to create a solemn atmosphere that
overwhelms the victim and makes him prey to anguish and guilt. The feeling is
like approaching a sacrificial altar where a high priest can decide, at will,
your fate. Although all this is adorned with the bureaucratic paraphernalia of
the modern era, the event is tremendously similar to what a shaman might
celebrate by consulting the spirits about the guilt of the offenderor an
inquisitor demanding that he confess the truth before God: people in absurd
disguises assume a role of supreme authority and decide on the destiny of others
based on a formula, written or not, which for the accused acquires a certain
supernatural character.
Experience or political training can gradually crack the magical aspect of the
chiringuito. Seeing the protagonists moments after the trial with their robes in
hand, laughing at what happened in the courtroom, talking about football while
pissing in the courtroom toilets or hurrying a carajillo while smoking on a
nearby terrace, takes away a bit of rigor. To the subject. As with the arrests in
the police station, over time you come to understand that everything is a little
theater, a huge, pathetic, comical and at the same time dramatic farce. Adult
people, proud of symbols and uniforms, protected by rank, more or less convinced
of the role they play and that they have turned a comic opera, a tragic carnival,
into a respectable profession that their children can show off at school. If they
didn't have the power to destroy the lives of others,
But all this circus is based on the sacred text of civil society from the
Hammurabi Code: the law.
Whether or not companies need a written code to regulate themselves can be a
matter of debate. That this code is chosen by a minority based on their
interests, imposed on the majority and enforced through compulsion or violence,
seems to me much less debatable. Whenever we anarchists raise the ridiculousness
of a vertically imposed code governing our lives, we are asked what we would do
with crimes, violence, etc. of any State). The reality is that criminal codes
have been around for centuries and have never been able to mitigate or suppress
human violence; hopefully they have refined it.
The Spanish Penal Code, like all punitive codes in the rest of the world, is only
based on the defense of two elementary principles: protecting private property
(all articles on theft, trespassing, usurpation, etc., derive from there 1 ) and
guarantee that the State, and not any private individual, is the sole holder of
the monopoly of violence (to use the expression of Max Weber). The state has no
interest in suppressing violence; he only wants to control it and make sure that
no one disputes the privilege of its application. That, above moral issues, is
the foundation from which all the articles that penalize the use of violence
between third parties emanate.
Even when this is admitted, we will continue to insist on what is the anarchist
alternative to laws, prisons, police and the judiciary. Many colleagues, before
and better than me, have bequeathed us elaborate answers in this regard 2 . With
less time and lights, I can only say that I do not know the perfect and
definitive solution , because perhaps there is not. I only know that the Spanish
State has almost the largest prison population in the EU with one of the lowest
crime rates 3. I only know that crimes related to the violation of private
property would lose their reason for being if we had a society where wealth was
shared by everyone and was not held in the hands of a minimum percentage of the
population. I only know that a large part of the prisoners in Spanish prisons are
held for moral crimesthat perhaps tomorrow they will not be, such as those
related to drugs (just as in his day adultery was no longer punishable). I only
know that natural human phenomena such as migration are considered illegal and
that locking up thousands of people in subhuman conditions on that pretext, as is
happening right now in the Canary Islands, seems to be something perfectly legal.
I only know that in the Spanish State it is a crime to blaspheme God, to outrage
the flag, the king or the autonomous communities, to make distasteful comments
about terrorism (of course, far-right or State terrorism is excluded) and that
there are people prosecuted or imprisoned for jokes, songs, plays, performances
or for burning symbols. I only know that professional police forcesThey have
existed for centuries and have only served to maintain the privileges of the
ruling class, safeguard inequality, persecute poverty, repress political dissent
and impose a vertical violence far superior to any horizontal violence. I only
know that prisons show a serious state of social immaturity, where the State,
turned into an ignorant and cruel father, solves the problems of its son, the
disruptive individual, locking him in a dark room until he learns his lesson. I
only know that after millennia with all kinds of sentences, life sentences or
death sentences, the violence has not diminished one iota. I just know that there
might never be a curefor human violence, but perhaps it would not be wrong to
analyze what percentage of atrocious acts are a reflection of the society where
they occur; try other models of society and learning where perhaps men are not
taught to violate women is part of our nature and our privileges; experiment,
perhaps, with other forms of conflict resolution that do not involve adding more
violence to violence or burying problems, even when those problems are human
beings, under the rug.
As humans we suffer a cognitive dissociation that tears us apart from the inside.
Two morals have been grafted onto us: one superficial (the one that publicly
defines what is good or bad) and the other deep (the one that intimately defines
what is good or bad), the same ones that allow us to repeat that " killing is
bad. "while we are able to rationalize as acceptable that a soldier or policeman
can shoot someone. We have been educated to internalize individual violence as a
phenomenon disconnected from social, economic and governmental violence. We have
been indoctrinated so that wars, heteropatriarchy, evictions, dismissals, labor
exploitation, institutional racism, torture and police charges, seem to us
violence of a more acceptable, logical, rational nature than spontaneous violence
by the individuals. They have taught us that there are laws of blood -such as
those relating to property and obedience- that must be complied with, and paper
laws -such as those that speak of the social responsibility of States- that can
be ignored without consequences. We have become accustomed to companies,
Despite this certain and harsh conclusion, the real, sensitive world, far from
artifice and mind control measures, can make its way even if they throw you into
the most infectious hole. All we need is to learn to reduce the official world to
its proper dimension, powerful when it comes to brute force, but fake, fictitious
and painful in its purest expression. Everything is limited to the fact that a
group of people, believers in the principle of authority that establishes that
some people are superior to others, disguises themselves as judges and policemen
to force us to do what another group of people, who disguise themselves as
politicians, write periodically in a book that dictates what is a crime and what
is not, and all this to safeguard the heritage of another small group of people
who have spent centuries disguising themselves as owners, monopolizing what
belongs to everyone and dictating what the rest of the disguised people do. You
cannot take something like this seriously, although unfortunately because of that
practical joke people lose their freedom, their health, physical and mental,
years of life or even life itself.
But no matter how much damage they do to us, they will never be able to erase a
crude evidence: their laws, even those of blood, are written on paper and we must
be certain that one day, sooner or later, it will rain.
From here, and by way of conclusion, I just want to offer my gratitude to all
the colleagues and to all the groups that in one way or another have expressed
solidarity with my personal situation. I can never thank you enough. You have
made it possible for me to continue active in a front of struggle as unfortunate
but necessarily public and visible as the one faced by the Anarchist Federation
of Gran Canaria and the Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria. Also to my colleagues
from both organizations, to my colleagues from daily fatigue, for being there
when the easiest thing was not to be, for helping me pick up the pieces. Thank
you all.
Just remember that if these bastards forbid us to breathe, they'll only get one
thing: disobedience, at least twelve times a minute. Breathe hard, my friends.
Ruyman Rodriguez
North Africa, late year 1 of the pandemic dystopia
__________________
1 Even crimes against public health and all those related to drug trafficking
have no other pillar than the defense of private property: the illegalization of
alcohol between 1920-1933 in the USA (the so-called " Prohibition " ) caused the
rise of organized crime causing a product such as alcohol to reach an exorbitant
price and thus yield huge profits for smugglers. Today, it is clear, the
legalization of drugs would lower their price and cause large-scale drug
trafficking to lose huge dividends. As long as drugs are illegal, their price
will not fall and the profit margin of the big traffickers, who also have the
right to have their private property protected, will be maintained.
2 The list of works would turn this humble reflection into an academic
bibliography. Piotr Kropotkin's classic Prisons (1887) is sufficient for those
interested .
3 Violeta Aguado, " Spain has fewer crimes than the European average but more
people incarcerated " ( El D iario.es ), April 21, 2016.
https://anarquistasgc.noblogs.org/post/2021/03/03/un-juicio/#more-2881
------------------------------
Message: 1
On March 24, the exemplary Spanish democracy will celebrate a new farce, a trial
for another police and judicial set-up that only seeks to hide another case of
torture by the State Security Forces and Bodies. The prosecution requests 1 year
and 6 months in jail, in addition to a 770 euro fine, to our colleague Ruymán
Rodríguez for allegedly having kicked a civil guard in the barracks where he was
being held and tortured after an illegal arrest. ---- The trial is framed,
suspiciously, in an aggravated repressive wave that has ended with Pablo Hasel
and Elgio convicted for their letters, and with several detainees in the protests
that have been organized as a result of it in several cities of the State. Faced
with increasing inequality, the absence of a future and opportunities, and
uncertainty, the State's response is to arm itself and strike. At the same time,
in the Canary Islands, the "most progressive government in history" locks up
thousands of migrants in authentic concentration camps under inhuman conditions,
violating their rights as human beings. Meanwhile, the fascist discourse is
reproduced, generating a favorable terrain for its growth and normalization.
We do not expect anything from a judicial system that will never go against its
own agents. And much less when it is an anarchist who is judged. A clumsy and
shabby montage by some civil guards who got scared when our colleague began to
vomit blood is enough for the prosecution. They do not care that the detention
was illegal: everything is part of the efforts of the State, with the
collaboration of some related media, to overthrow the self-managed project of "La
Esperanza", which for 9 years has sheltered more than 200 people and that has
been replicated in other parts of the island.
We have uncovered the miseries of the institutions beyond their expectations. We
have rehoused more people in the Canary Islands than the public administrations
put together and we have politicized and organized "that mob and that mob," as
the Civil Guards called them while they tortured our comrade. That is why, in
their clumsiness and ignorance, they prosecute our partner; because they believe
that once beheaded, the serpent will die. What they don't understand is that the
FAGC and IACS don't work with leaders. They do not fit in their square head of
hierarchical officials that we are the organized response to the need of
thousands of people that none of their laws and repressive bodies will be able to
appease: life and dignity.
We refuse, however, that our brother ends up in jail for having literally left
his health and life so that hundreds of families have a roof, so that they can
receive health care, so that they can eat. They will have us in front. For this
reason, the affiliates of the Tenant Union of Gran Canaria call on all groups and
individuals in the State and the rest of the world to show their solidarity with
our partner. Because their struggle, like that of so many others who are already
in jail, is everyone's and their destiny can also be everyone's.
Freedom for Ruymán!! Enough of police repression!!
Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria
Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria
https://sindicatodeinquilinasgc.noblogs.org/2021/03/03/comunicado-de-apoyo-a-ruyman-rodriguez/
https://www.facebook.com/anarquistas.grancanaria/posts/3246838762084105
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Message: 2
In a few weeks I will be tried and also, undoubtedly, convicted. I am accused of
a crime of " attack on authority " (poetic, for an anarchist) and I am asked for
a minimum of 1 year and 6 months in prison and 770 bucks of fine. All this for
supposedly having kicked a civil guard in 2015 in the barracks where I was
detained and tortured in order to intimidate me and destabilize the self-managed
housing project of the «La Esperanza» Community , located in the Gran Canaria
municipality of Guía. . ---- I will not waste time in claiming my innocence or
similar nonsense, and even less when there are companions and companions who at
the moment, as I write, are already in jail. Besides, it would be useless. That I
will be damned is as certain as that tomorrow the sun will rise. An attempt will
be made with this (if I want to avoid, it seems, the execution of the sentence)
to keep me " calm " and without fussing for a few years and, if possible, to
teach my back a Canarian anarchism and an insular movement for the right to the
home that has been bothering you for too long beyond your means.
And then they say that we anarchists are naive ... If they think that the
conviction of the militants and the need for the evicted can be stifled with
laws, trials and convictions, they have not understood anything. Even the
founders of Roman Law themselves assumed it: necessitas caret lege ( " necessity
lacks law " ). No paper or bar has ever been able to crush the survival instinct
and the urge to get food, shelter and shelter. My conviction won't make it either.
Having said that, I would like to use this episode as a pretext to share some
reflections on the judicial system and its mechanisms.
The first is the act of judgment itself. Entering a room where you are going to
be processed for the first time is like taking part in a kind of overwhelming
ritual. The overloaded liturgy, the archaic language, the dehumanized atmosphere,
the ridiculous clothing, everything necessary to create a solemn atmosphere that
overwhelms the victim and makes him prey to anguish and guilt. The feeling is
like approaching a sacrificial altar where a high priest can decide, at will,
your fate. Although all this is adorned with the bureaucratic paraphernalia of
the modern era, the event is tremendously similar to what a shaman might
celebrate by consulting the spirits about the guilt of the offenderor an
inquisitor demanding that he confess the truth before God: people in absurd
disguises assume a role of supreme authority and decide on the destiny of others
based on a formula, written or not, which for the accused acquires a certain
supernatural character.
Experience or political training can gradually crack the magical aspect of the
chiringuito. Seeing the protagonists moments after the trial with their robes in
hand, laughing at what happened in the courtroom, talking about football while
pissing in the courtroom toilets or hurrying a carajillo while smoking on a
nearby terrace, takes away a bit of rigor. To the subject. As with the arrests in
the police station, over time you come to understand that everything is a little
theater, a huge, pathetic, comical and at the same time dramatic farce. Adult
people, proud of symbols and uniforms, protected by rank, more or less convinced
of the role they play and that they have turned a comic opera, a tragic carnival,
into a respectable profession that their children can show off at school. If they
didn't have the power to destroy the lives of others,
But all this circus is based on the sacred text of civil society from the
Hammurabi Code: the law.
Whether or not companies need a written code to regulate themselves can be a
matter of debate. That this code is chosen by a minority based on their
interests, imposed on the majority and enforced through compulsion or violence,
seems to me much less debatable. Whenever we anarchists raise the ridiculousness
of a vertically imposed code governing our lives, we are asked what we would do
with crimes, violence, etc. of any State). The reality is that criminal codes
have been around for centuries and have never been able to mitigate or suppress
human violence; hopefully they have refined it.
The Spanish Penal Code, like all punitive codes in the rest of the world, is only
based on the defense of two elementary principles: protecting private property
(all articles on theft, trespassing, usurpation, etc., derive from there 1 ) and
guarantee that the State, and not any private individual, is the sole holder of
the monopoly of violence (to use the expression of Max Weber). The state has no
interest in suppressing violence; he only wants to control it and make sure that
no one disputes the privilege of its application. That, above moral issues, is
the foundation from which all the articles that penalize the use of violence
between third parties emanate.
Even when this is admitted, we will continue to insist on what is the anarchist
alternative to laws, prisons, police and the judiciary. Many colleagues, before
and better than me, have bequeathed us elaborate answers in this regard 2 . With
less time and lights, I can only say that I do not know the perfect and
definitive solution , because perhaps there is not. I only know that the Spanish
State has almost the largest prison population in the EU with one of the lowest
crime rates 3. I only know that crimes related to the violation of private
property would lose their reason for being if we had a society where wealth was
shared by everyone and was not held in the hands of a minimum percentage of the
population. I only know that a large part of the prisoners in Spanish prisons are
held for moral crimesthat perhaps tomorrow they will not be, such as those
related to drugs (just as in his day adultery was no longer punishable). I only
know that natural human phenomena such as migration are considered illegal and
that locking up thousands of people in subhuman conditions on that pretext, as is
happening right now in the Canary Islands, seems to be something perfectly legal.
I only know that in the Spanish State it is a crime to blaspheme God, to outrage
the flag, the king or the autonomous communities, to make distasteful comments
about terrorism (of course, far-right or State terrorism is excluded) and that
there are people prosecuted or imprisoned for jokes, songs, plays, performances
or for burning symbols. I only know that professional police forcesThey have
existed for centuries and have only served to maintain the privileges of the
ruling class, safeguard inequality, persecute poverty, repress political dissent
and impose a vertical violence far superior to any horizontal violence. I only
know that prisons show a serious state of social immaturity, where the State,
turned into an ignorant and cruel father, solves the problems of its son, the
disruptive individual, locking him in a dark room until he learns his lesson. I
only know that after millennia with all kinds of sentences, life sentences or
death sentences, the violence has not diminished one iota. I just know that there
might never be a curefor human violence, but perhaps it would not be wrong to
analyze what percentage of atrocious acts are a reflection of the society where
they occur; try other models of society and learning where perhaps men are not
taught to violate women is part of our nature and our privileges; experiment,
perhaps, with other forms of conflict resolution that do not involve adding more
violence to violence or burying problems, even when those problems are human
beings, under the rug.
As humans we suffer a cognitive dissociation that tears us apart from the inside.
Two morals have been grafted onto us: one superficial (the one that publicly
defines what is good or bad) and the other deep (the one that intimately defines
what is good or bad), the same ones that allow us to repeat that " killing is
bad. "while we are able to rationalize as acceptable that a soldier or policeman
can shoot someone. We have been educated to internalize individual violence as a
phenomenon disconnected from social, economic and governmental violence. We have
been indoctrinated so that wars, heteropatriarchy, evictions, dismissals, labor
exploitation, institutional racism, torture and police charges, seem to us
violence of a more acceptable, logical, rational nature than spontaneous violence
by the individuals. They have taught us that there are laws of blood -such as
those relating to property and obedience- that must be complied with, and paper
laws -such as those that speak of the social responsibility of States- that can
be ignored without consequences. We have become accustomed to companies,
Despite this certain and harsh conclusion, the real, sensitive world, far from
artifice and mind control measures, can make its way even if they throw you into
the most infectious hole. All we need is to learn to reduce the official world to
its proper dimension, powerful when it comes to brute force, but fake, fictitious
and painful in its purest expression. Everything is limited to the fact that a
group of people, believers in the principle of authority that establishes that
some people are superior to others, disguises themselves as judges and policemen
to force us to do what another group of people, who disguise themselves as
politicians, write periodically in a book that dictates what is a crime and what
is not, and all this to safeguard the heritage of another small group of people
who have spent centuries disguising themselves as owners, monopolizing what
belongs to everyone and dictating what the rest of the disguised people do. You
cannot take something like this seriously, although unfortunately because of that
practical joke people lose their freedom, their health, physical and mental,
years of life or even life itself.
But no matter how much damage they do to us, they will never be able to erase a
crude evidence: their laws, even those of blood, are written on paper and we must
be certain that one day, sooner or later, it will rain.
From here, and by way of conclusion, I just want to offer my gratitude to all
the colleagues and to all the groups that in one way or another have expressed
solidarity with my personal situation. I can never thank you enough. You have
made it possible for me to continue active in a front of struggle as unfortunate
but necessarily public and visible as the one faced by the Anarchist Federation
of Gran Canaria and the Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria. Also to my colleagues
from both organizations, to my colleagues from daily fatigue, for being there
when the easiest thing was not to be, for helping me pick up the pieces. Thank
you all.
Just remember that if these bastards forbid us to breathe, they'll only get one
thing: disobedience, at least twelve times a minute. Breathe hard, my friends.
Ruyman Rodriguez
North Africa, late year 1 of the pandemic dystopia
__________________
1 Even crimes against public health and all those related to drug trafficking
have no other pillar than the defense of private property: the illegalization of
alcohol between 1920-1933 in the USA (the so-called " Prohibition " ) caused the
rise of organized crime causing a product such as alcohol to reach an exorbitant
price and thus yield huge profits for smugglers. Today, it is clear, the
legalization of drugs would lower their price and cause large-scale drug
trafficking to lose huge dividends. As long as drugs are illegal, their price
will not fall and the profit margin of the big traffickers, who also have the
right to have their private property protected, will be maintained.
2 The list of works would turn this humble reflection into an academic
bibliography. Piotr Kropotkin's classic Prisons (1887) is sufficient for those
interested .
3 Violeta Aguado, " Spain has fewer crimes than the European average but more
people incarcerated " ( El D iario.es ), April 21, 2016.
https://anarquistasgc.noblogs.org/post/2021/03/03/un-juicio/#more-2881
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