What does Kronstadt mean?
The debate in Solidarity about Kronstadt has been between those who utterly condemn the suppression and see it as the beginning of the Stalinist Thermidor and the end of workers’ self rule in Russia; those who absolutely defend the suppression and see it as guaranteeing the survival of the workers’ revolution for a little longer; and those who see it as a tragic mistake and in retrospect the first signs of an “emergent totalitarianism” whilst still defending the good intentions of the Bolsheviks and asserting their fallibility. Victor Serge was in the latter camp. Paul Hampton ( Solidarity 230...