Proclamation of the Kronstadt Rebels, 1921
With the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its emancipation. But there resulted an even greater enslavement of human personality.
The power of the police and gendarme monarchy fell into the hands of usurpers -the Communists--who, instead of giving the people liberty, have instilled in them only the constant fear of the TCHEKA, which by its horrors surpasses even the gendarme regime of Tsarism...Worst and most criminal of all is the spiritual cabal of the Communists: they have laid their hand also on the internal world of the laboring masses, compelling everyone to think according to Communist prespition.
...Russia of the toilers, the first to raise the red banner of labor's emancipation, is drenched with the blood of those martyred for the greater glory of Communist dominion. In that sea of blood the Communists are drowning all the bright promise and possibilities workers' revolution. It has now become clear that the Russian Communist Party is not the defender of the laboring masses, as it pretends to be. The interests of the working people are foreign to it. Having gained power it is now fairly only of losing it, and therefore it considers all means permissible: defamation, deceit, violence, murder, and vengeance upon the families of the rebels
There is an end to long-suffering patience. Here and there the land is lit up by the fires of rebellion in a struggle against oppression and violence Strikes of workers have multiplied but the Bolshevik police regime has taken every precaution against the outbreak of the inevitable Third Evolution.
But in spite of it all it has come, and it is made by the hands of the laboring masses. The Generals of Communism see clearly that it is the people who have risen, the people who have become convinced that the Communists have betrayed the ideas of Socialism. Fearing for their safety and knowing that there is no place they can hide in from the wrath of the workers the Communists still try to terrorise the rebels with prison, shooting, and other barbarities. But life under the Communist dictatorship is more terrible than death...
There is no middle road. To conquer or to die! The example is being set by Kronstadt, the terror of counter-revolution from the right and from the left. Here has taken place the great revolutionary deed. Here is raised the banner of rebellion against the three-year-old tyranny and oppression of Communist autocracy, which has put to shade the three hundred year old despotism of monarchism Here, in Kronstadt, has been laid the cornerstone of the Third Revolution which is to break the last cains of the worker and open the new, broad road to socialist creativeness.
This new Revolution will rouse the masses of the East and the West, and it will serve as an example of the new Socialist constructiveness, in contradiction to the governmental, cut-and-dried communist construction. The laboring masses will learn that what has been done till now in the name of the worker and peasants was not Socialism.
Without firing a single shot, without shedding a drop of blood, the first step has been take,. Those who labor need no blood. They will shed it only in self-defense...The workers and peasants march on : they are leaving behind them the utchredilka with its bourgeois regime and the Communist Party dictatorship with its Tcheka and State Capitalism, which have put the noose around the neck of the workers and threaten to strangle them to death.
The present change offers the laboring masses the opportunity of securing, at last, freely elected Soviets which will function without fear of the Party whip; they can now reorganize the governmentalized labor unions into voluntary associations of workers, peasants, and the working intelligentsia. At last is broke the police club of Communist autocracy.
The power of the police and gendarme monarchy fell into the hands of usurpers -the Communists--who, instead of giving the people liberty, have instilled in them only the constant fear of the TCHEKA, which by its horrors surpasses even the gendarme regime of Tsarism...Worst and most criminal of all is the spiritual cabal of the Communists: they have laid their hand also on the internal world of the laboring masses, compelling everyone to think according to Communist prespition.
...Russia of the toilers, the first to raise the red banner of labor's emancipation, is drenched with the blood of those martyred for the greater glory of Communist dominion. In that sea of blood the Communists are drowning all the bright promise and possibilities workers' revolution. It has now become clear that the Russian Communist Party is not the defender of the laboring masses, as it pretends to be. The interests of the working people are foreign to it. Having gained power it is now fairly only of losing it, and therefore it considers all means permissible: defamation, deceit, violence, murder, and vengeance upon the families of the rebels
There is an end to long-suffering patience. Here and there the land is lit up by the fires of rebellion in a struggle against oppression and violence Strikes of workers have multiplied but the Bolshevik police regime has taken every precaution against the outbreak of the inevitable Third Evolution.
But in spite of it all it has come, and it is made by the hands of the laboring masses. The Generals of Communism see clearly that it is the people who have risen, the people who have become convinced that the Communists have betrayed the ideas of Socialism. Fearing for their safety and knowing that there is no place they can hide in from the wrath of the workers the Communists still try to terrorise the rebels with prison, shooting, and other barbarities. But life under the Communist dictatorship is more terrible than death...
There is no middle road. To conquer or to die! The example is being set by Kronstadt, the terror of counter-revolution from the right and from the left. Here has taken place the great revolutionary deed. Here is raised the banner of rebellion against the three-year-old tyranny and oppression of Communist autocracy, which has put to shade the three hundred year old despotism of monarchism Here, in Kronstadt, has been laid the cornerstone of the Third Revolution which is to break the last cains of the worker and open the new, broad road to socialist creativeness.
This new Revolution will rouse the masses of the East and the West, and it will serve as an example of the new Socialist constructiveness, in contradiction to the governmental, cut-and-dried communist construction. The laboring masses will learn that what has been done till now in the name of the worker and peasants was not Socialism.
Without firing a single shot, without shedding a drop of blood, the first step has been take,. Those who labor need no blood. They will shed it only in self-defense...The workers and peasants march on : they are leaving behind them the utchredilka with its bourgeois regime and the Communist Party dictatorship with its Tcheka and State Capitalism, which have put the noose around the neck of the workers and threaten to strangle them to death.
The present change offers the laboring masses the opportunity of securing, at last, freely elected Soviets which will function without fear of the Party whip; they can now reorganize the governmentalized labor unions into voluntary associations of workers, peasants, and the working intelligentsia. At last is broke the police club of Communist autocracy.