I vaguely framed the telegrams I had promised to send for other correspondents, according to the coöperative arrangements made under the stress of many points of interest simultaneously claiming attention—telegrams to London, to Paris, and Berlin. Their substance was: “Kronstadt promises to remain quiet for the present, although ships flying red flags will meet with no hostile reception.” We were twenty minutes in crossing. We had not fairly landed when the great guns of Kronstadt boomed and the mutiny was on.
Inasmuch as I was nearer to it than any one else, I believe I was the most surprised—unless, perchance, the very men who took part in the affair. The Kronstadt uprising of August, 1906, was a bolt from the blue to the men who participated, to the workers of the military organization, and to every one who was supposedly familiar with the situation there. The flash-light from the warship playing on the fortress seemed a sort of confirmation of this.
The explanation throws a white light on the question “Why the army does not rise.”
Just before the departure of the boat for Orienbaum a telegram had been received by the central committee of the military organization. The wires having been interrupted for some time, the arrival of this telegram was accepted as evidence that the lines were in friendly hands. The telegram purported to be from Helsingfors. It stated that Sveaborg was captured and also Reval; that Sebastopol would presently fall. Further, two warships in the hands of the revolutionists were at that moment on the way from Helsingfors to Kronstadt and would arrive about daylight. In the meantime Kronstadt must rise so as to be in the hands of the revolutionists when the ships arrived in the morning.
This meant immediate action. A small number of sappers and miners were gathered together and certain outer batteries captured. Two heavy shells were fired, and these guns signaled the garrison to rise. The sappers and miners were soon reinforced by artillerymen and sailors, but nearly all of these were unarmed, having had their arms taken from them a few days before. They therefore advanced upon the arsenal. On the way the officers’ quarters were invaded and six officers killed, including an admiral. The arsenal was captured against small resistance and the men rushed up-stairs to where the guns were stored. They pulled the doors from the gun-cases, and then for the first time suspected that the telegram and the whole signal to rise was a hoax. The guns were there, but the locks had all been removed!
Unarmed sailors are no better than an unarmed mob. When the mutineers poured out into the street from the arsenal they were received by a regiment of loyal troops brought down from Peterhof that very afternoon and now hurried into action. They poured volley after volley into the men coming out of the arsenal. There was some bayonet-fighting, but the rattle of gatling guns speedily forced a surrender. The actual casualties of this night will never be known. They cannot be reckoned from without, and the government will not disclose the figures. Horrible scenes followed the slaughter. Bodies of the dead were pitched into the sea and with them some wounded who still lived. One or two of these survived, being carried by the current across the narrow stretch of water to the mainland and there washed ashore.
Several hundred arrests followed. A Duma deputy, named Anipko, a member of the Group of Toil, was taken on this occasion, and with him my friend Paul. I could never learn why these two were not executed, but instead they were both sent to Siberia. A few days later there were nineteen men shot, twelve sent to hard labor for life, one hundred and twenty others to the mines for varying terms, and four hundred and twenty-nine to prison. These five hundred and eighty men, together with those killed outright, were supposed to be the leading members of the military organization in Kronstadt at that time. Doubtless they were. A régime of repression was naturally promptly established.
Every time there is an incipient mutiny there is a renewal of oppression. Again and again during the last few years have mutinies, like the Kronstadt affair, been precipitated by the government, and always with results as disastrous to the men as satisfactory to the government. The fact that the army does not rise is no indication at all that the men are loyal to the Czar. As a whole they are not. The difficulty comes in their not being able to rise simultaneously, and in their inability to save their leaders from execution or exile long enough to lead them into battle.
The failure of Kronstadt, of Sveaborg, and of Reval did not make any appreciable impression upon the men. More of the best leaders were taken, a few hundred more lives given up, but the spirit of unrest remained. The