Page 33 - The Chief Culprit

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The First Contact

If a revolutionary shake-up of Europe is to begin, it will be in Germany . . . and a victory
of the revolution in Germany will secure the victory of the international revolution.
—J S, WORKS

he crushing of Tukhachevski’s army in the summer of 1920 in Poland created un-
pleasant consequences for Russian Communists. e Russian people, whom the
T Communists, it seemed, had succeeded in drowning in blood and completely
subordinated to their control, suddenly made a last-resort attempt to rid themselves of the
Communist dictatorship. At that moment, Lenin and Trotsky were making preparations for
a new world war. On December 22, 1920, Lenin advised his fellow party members: “We
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ended one line of wars, we must prepare ourselves for the second.” Lenin was ready for any
sacrifice in the name of war: “We are severely lacking in everything, yet we are no poorer than
Viennese workers. Viennese workers die, starve—their children also die, starve—but they do
not have the most important thing that we possess: hope. ey die, oppressed by capitalism,
they find themselves in a position to make sacrifices, but their sacrifices are not like ours. We
sacrifice for the sake of the war that we are waging against the entire capitalist world.” 2
However, the Russian people demanded peace, not world domination. St. Petersburg,
the “cradle of the revolution,” experienced one workers’ strike after another. e workers
demanded bread and freedom. e Bolsheviks crushed the workers’ demonstrations, but
in March 1921 all of a sudden the Baltic fleet intervened on the workers’ behalf. e sail-
ors of the seaport city of Kronstadt (a naval base), the same ones who gave power to Lenin
and Trotsky, now sought their freedom from Communist rule. ey demanded that the
Soviets (the workers’ and peasants’ councils, the basic organizing units of society created by
the Communists) be purged of Communists. In addition, the nation experienced a wave of
peasant uprisings. In the forests of the Tambov region, peasants formed an anti-Communist
army—well organized, but poorly armed.

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