Kronstadt rebellion (March 1921)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

Impact

In 1939, Isaac Don Levine introduced Whittaker Chambers to Walter Krivitsky in New York City. First, Krivitsky asked, "Is the Soviet Government a fascist government?" to which Chambers assented, "You are right, and Kronstadt was the turning point." Chambers explained:

From Kronstadt during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet had steamed their cruisers to aid the Communists in capturing Petrograd. Their aid had been decisive.... They were the first Communists to realize their mistake and the first to try to correct it. When they saw that Communism meant terror and tyranny, they called for the overthrow of the Communist Government and for a time imperiled it. They were bloodily destroyed or sent into Siberian slavery by Communist troops led in person by the Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, and by Marshal Tukhachevsky, one of whom was later assassinated, the other executed, by the regime they then saved. Krivitsky meant that by the decision to destroy the Kronstadt sailors, and by its cold-blooded action in doing so, Communism had made the choice that changed it from benevolent socialism to malignant fascism.^[31]

The 1949 book The God That Failed contains Louis Fischer's definition of "Kronstadt" as the moment in which communists or fellow travelers decide not just to leave the Communist Party but to oppose it as anti-communists. Editor Richard Crossman said in the book's introduction: "The Kronstadt rebels called for Soviet power free from Bolshevik dominance" (p. x). After describing the actual Kronstadt rebellion, Fischer spent many pages applying the concept to subsequent former-communists—including himself: "What counts decisively is the 'Kronstadt'. Until its advent, one might waver emotionally or doubt intellectually or even reject the cause altogether in one's mind, and yet refuse to attack it. I had no 'Kronstadt' for many years." (p. 204).