Did the Kronstadt rebellion reflect “the exasperation of the peasantry”?
This is a common argument of Trotskyists. While rarely providing the Kronstadt demands, they always assert that (to use John Rees’ words) that the sailors “represented the exasperation of the peasantry with the War Communist regime.” [“In Defence of October”, International Socialism no. 52, p. 63] As for Trotsky, the ideas of the rebellion “were deeply reactionary” and “reflected the hostility of the backward peasantry toward the worker, the self-importance of the soldier or sailor in relation to ‘civilian’ Petrograd, the hatred of the petty bourgeois for revolutionary discipline.” The revolt “represented the tendencies of the land-owning peasant, the small speculator, the kulak.” [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 80 and p.
