What Was Kronstadt Shot For? What For? For Demanding People’s Power: The Commune against the State

• In Event: Revolutionary Life beyond the State

Abstract

In my short talk, I will try to illuminate a road not taken – the radical alternative to the Soviet centralization of power in the early 1920s embodied in the Kronstadt commune (1917-1921). Based on the insurgent newspaper Izvestiya and the ego-documents of the rebellion (letters, memoirs, interviews), I will outline the Kronstadt libertarian vision of the commune and briefly discuss how it was amplified in the international anarchist memory. I will also show how the 1921 Kronstadt Uprising split the memory of the Paris Commune into two rival – pro- and anti-statist – traditions, which I will juxtapose relying on Hannah Arendt’s and Judith Butler’s theory of assembly.

Author

• Victoria Buyanovskaya, U of Wisconsin-Madison