Kronstadt rebels. For sixteen days in March , rebels in Kronstadt's naval fortress rose in opposition to the Soviet government which they had helped to consolidate. Disappointed in the direction of the Bolshevik government, the rebels—whom Leon Trotsky himself had praised earlier as the "adornment and pride of the revolution"—demanded a series of reforms: reduction in Bolshevik power, newly elected soviets councils to include socialist and anarchist groups , economic freedom for peasants and workers, dissolution of the bureaucratic governmental organs created during the civil war, and the restoration of civil rights for the working class.
However, he did not personally participate in the military operations or repressions which were organized by Felix Dzerzhinsky. Convinced of the popularity of the reforms they were fighting for which they partially tried to implement during the revolt , the Kronstadt seamen waited in vain for the support of the population in the rest of the country and rejected aid from the emigres.
(mh=zjGZ_xRICY9IPhHY)15.jpg "Sluts Tallinn")
Although the council of officers advocated a more offensive strategy, the rebels maintained a passive attitude as they waited for the government to take the first step in negotiations. By contrast, the authorities took an uncompromising stance, presenting an ultimatum demanding unconditional surrender on March 5. Once this period expired, the Bolsheviks raided the island several times and suppressed the revolt on March 18 after shooting and imprisoning several thousand rebels.
Supporters saw the rebels as revolutionary martyrs while the authorities saw the rebels as "agents of the Entente and counter-revolution". The Bolshevik response to the revolt caused great controversy and was responsible for the disillusionment of several supporters of the Bolshevik regime, such as Emma Goldman. While the revolt was suppressed and the rebels' political demands were not met, it served to accelerate the implementation of the New Economic Policy , which replaced war communism.
As the Russian Civil War wound down in late , the Bolsheviks presided over a nation in ruin. Their communist Red Army had defeated Pyotr Wrangel 's anti-communist White Army, and was militarily equipped to suppress outstanding peasant insurrections, but faced mass disillusionment from unbearable living conditions—famine, disease, cold, and weariness—induced by the years of war and exacerbated by the Bolshevik policy of war communism.
