#bolsheviks
A column of demonstrators at the Aleksandrovskii railway station.
Unknown author, March 1917, Moscow.
Isaak Brodskiy. Vladimir Lenin at the Rally of Putilov Plant Workers in May 1917.
1929. State Historical Museum, Moscow.
In February 1917 strikes at the factory contributed to setting in motion the chain of events which led to the February Revolution. In 10 March 1919 at protest rally in the factory striking workers condemned the Bolshevik government in a resolution claiming “…the Bolshevik government is not the authority of the proletariat and peasants, but the authority of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party…”. When Lenin came to Petrograd to give a speech on 13 March the workers demanded his resignation and when Zinoviev tried to address the workers he was greeted with shouts: “Down with the Jew!”. Strikers barricaded themselves in the factory which was stormed by the Cheka to suppress the strike and about 200 workers were executed.
After the October Revolution it was renamed Red Putilovite Plant (zavod Krasny Putilovets), famous for its manufacture of the first Soviet tractors, Fordzon-Putilovets, based on the Fordson tractor. The Putilov Plant was famous because of its revolutionary traditions. In the wake of Sergey Kirov’s 1934 assassination, the plant was renamed Kirov Factory No. 100.
You may find more information about the factory here.
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Bolshevik forces attack across the ice towards Kronstadt.
March 8 1921, Kronstadt–The call for a partial democratization of the soviets by the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base was treated as a mortal threat to the revolution by the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Trotsky was sent to Petrograd, issued an ultimatum to the sailors, and took whatever family members he could find as hostages. On March 7, Bolshevik artillery began firing on Kronstadt, and on the wee hours of March 8, under cover of a snowstorm, infantry under Tukhachevsky attacked across the ice. It was worried that their loyalty was shaky, so behind them were Cheka and specially-picked units to make sure they did not flee. To the south of the island, artillery from Kronstadt blew holes in the ice and many of the attacking infantry fell into the freezing water. Some reached the island in the north, but were outnumbered and quickly repulsed.
On the morning of March 8th, the fourth anniversary of the start of the February Revolution, the sailors on Kronstadt were able to celebrate a victory over the Bolsheviks. Their own version of Isvestiapulled now punches in a statement that day:
By carrying out the October Revolution the working class had hoped to achieve its emancipation. But the result has been an even greater enslavement of human beings. The power of the monarchy, with its police and its gendarmerie, has passed into the hands of the Communist usurpers, who have given the people not freedom but the constant fear of torture by the Cheka, the horrors of which far exceed the rule of the gendarmerie under tsarism…
Sources include: Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy; W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory.
A friend of mine, @cheesymovie graduated high school and she loves world history but especially USSR history so as a gift I made her own Soviet propaganda poster
ваше здоровье!
