Nandigram mayhem and the Kronstadt mutiny

Kaushik Guha
The Statesman, 18 May

History repeats itself. However much the saying is refuted, it still holds good for identifying certain distinctive co-relational traits in two separate sets of incidents posited in different space and time.

A remarkable parallel is observed in the way the Bolsheviks crushed the mutiny of sea-men in Kronstadt and the suppression of peasants at Nandigram on 14 March. That is not tantamount to saying one is a mirror image of the other. In fact, Kronstadt in Russia of 1921 and Nandigram of 2007 are not bound by any form of homogeneous affinity. Nevertheless, taking together the similarities and dissimilarities in the incident pattern, the representative attitude of the Left in power comes to the fore ~ the same tale of intolerance and obstinacy on the part of the apparatchiks to open a dialogue with the deprived populace of the lower rung.

The naval base of Kronstadt, situated outside the erstwhile capital Petrograd, was a hot bed of revolutionary politics in the years preceding 1917. Majority of the sailors working there sided with the Bolsheviks. Moved by their courage and zeal, Lev Trotsky described Kronstadt as the “Pride of the Revolution”. Yet within four years the faith of the sailors in Bolshevism dwindled. The sacrifice demanded by the Bolsheviks for a rosy future during the years of the worst food crisis following the seizure of power did not appeal to them. Years of violence had taken a heavy toll, leaving the sailors bitter and exhausted.

In “War Communism,” a policy adopted during the Civil War, the men of Kronstadt sensed a return to Czarist autocracy. Friends changed into foes. They revolted in unison against the power ~ elite of Kremlin.

Eighty-six years separate the gory events at Nandigram from the happenings in Kronstadt with the month being the same ~ March. On 17 March 1921, the Red Army formed by Trotsky bombarded the fortress of the mutineers. Unlike the disorganised peasants of Nandigram on 14 March 2007, the sailors were ready for an onslaught from their former comrades. They repelled the attack unleashed by the Soviet troops a number of times with the Bay of Finland acting as their Maginot Line. However, in the end they found themselves outnumbered and succumbed to the might of the state. No mercy was shown towards the mutineers. Not a survivor remained to narrate the tale of danse macabre.

The peasants of Nandigram also incurred the wrath of the ruling Left for their unwillingness to hand over the cultivable land necessary for the development of the state. They too like the sailors of Kronstadt refused to buy the idea of progress projected by the party in power. In this context, it will be pertinent to state that attrition over land between the peasants and the party has remained a common feature in different phases of development in socialist countries.

The ryots of Nandigram have seen the men in Singur buckle under pressure. So they did everything in their modest capacity to thwart extraneous assault. Roads were damaged and pits were dug up, and they too like the men in Kronstadt attempted to carve out a liberated zone free from the control of government machinery. It was subversion all right, but one should read in it a backlash of terrorism perpetuated by the impatient advocates of industrialisation. The nonchalant manner in which the Haldia Development Authority issued a circular for acquiring cultivable land to build SEZ no doubt left the tillers of the soil panic stricken. Extremism as it is often seen comes from a desperate bid for survival.

While the sailors of Kronstadt disillusioned with Bolshevik authoritarianism harboured a design of usurpation, the cultivators of Nandigram probably wanted to put pressure on the government for saving their last means of sustenance ~ the land under the plough. So although the protesters in Nandigram knew for certain that a showdown with government forces is inevitable, never did they apprehend such a terrible reprisal. Perhaps they nurtured hope ~ even after the chief minister’s pledge to remove all impediments on the road to development, the party that still swears by the peasants and proletariats would stand by them and sooner or later would come up with a deal in their favour. Many of them like the men in Kronstadt were once activists and supporters of the ruling Left and had a role in installing the party in power albeit by different means.

Tragedies in both cases could have been averted by creating a favourable climate to generate consensus on the issue of development and order. Coercion only exposes the vulnerability of a scheme or an idea. Therefore, it is necessary for the men at the top to act with patience and restraint for neutralising accumulated grievance.

Particularly for those whose ascent to power has to a large extent been levered up by forces down below. Yet everything was done rather hastily. While Lenin and Trotsky were keen to see the emergence of a new socialist order free from the evils of capitalism, the chief minister of West Bengal appeared to be overenthusiastic about industrialising the state. A strong opposition party in both cases could have stemmed the tide.

In the Soviet Union of 1921 when the revolt in Kronstadt broke out, the opposition had already been smashed into smithereens by the Bolsheviks. Cheka, the official intelligence agency, was propelled to hunt down non-Bolshevik activists of different shades. By wiping out the opposition through persecution, the Bolsheviks thus could assuredly trample on any form of dissent without any unsavoury repercussion. Atrocities in Kronstadt would have come to light much earlier had there been a party to challenge the hegemony of the Bolsheviks.

Even within a democratic set-up with a single party ruling a state for 30 years, a socialist monolith of gigantic proportion has evolved in course of time. In West Bengal, the opposition exists only in name, to say the least. Credit should go to former chief minister Jyoti Basu for rendering harmless the remonstrations and cutting the adversaries to size.

The Left Front has all along upheld the dominance of the CPI-M with the partners coexisting as mere appendages. The accepted gospel within the Front seems to be ~ all are equal but some are more equal than others. What gives the apparatchiks a sense of security is that protest against misrule is yet to assume a holistic character so necessary to disrupt the balance of power. This concentration of power allows the Big Brother to ride roughshod over others.

One of the tactics employed to deal with antagonism in any form by the Leftists in power both in West Bengal and former Soviet Union is to implicate the trouble-makers with ideas or activities feared by the general people.

To malign the mutineers the Bolshevik leaders of 1921 alleged that the whole thing was a handiwork of a few White Guards to dislodge the party from power. Even Lenin, who incidentally spoke very little on the uprising, commented on the existence of a nexus between the White Guards and the mutineers. Isac Deutscher in his biography of Trotsky published as early as 1954 rebuffed the White Guard story which was later corroborated by Soviet historian Dimitri Volkaganov. Now it is generally accepted that dissident Bolsheviks led by a few anarchists took up arms against the government.

The ruling elite in West Bengal resorted to the same kind of malicious propaganda to isolate the agitators of Nandigram from the concerned and thinking citizens of the state. The movement in the initial stage was accused of having a pro-Muslim bias holding the Jamaat Ulema-e-Hind responsible for raking up the trouble. Perhaps the intention was to nip the protest in the bud ~ an idea that eventually backfired bringing to light the sinister design of the ruling clique.

Little difference exists in the form of justification rendered by the Bolshevik leaders and their followers ruling West Bengal after the massacre. The tone of remorse evident in Trotsky’s speech delivered at the victory parade on 3 April 1921 appears to be quite unpretentious: “We waited long for our blinded sailor-comrades to see with their own eyes where the mutiny led.” However, one wonders whether his comrades at the top shared the same feelings towards the mutineers. For Trotsky it was without doubt a painful compulsion ~ many among the mutineers were once his close associates and a rupture was the last thing he wanted. For others this was an action to guard their own power can be exemplified by the bloody purges of the thirties.

According to the Leftist rulers of West Bengal, breaking the resistance in Nandigram was necessary to impose the rule of law. There is a similarity of temper between Trotsky’s atonement of guilt and Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s hand-raising helplessness to legitimise the crackdown. Both of them said that their patience withered away with time and they were forced to take extreme steps to check further deterioration of the situation.

Lenin remarked that the mutiny in Kronstadt came like a sudden flash of lightning that illumined the reality around. He must have realised that the whole country was in ferment and however spurious the Kronstadt mutiny might be made to appear, it was in fact a timely signal for the things to happen in future.

So pragmatic it was for the Bolsheviks to abandon the dogmatism of “War Communism” for a policy liberal enough to meet the need of the hour. Even before the mutiny was crushed, a package of reforms known a “New Economic Policy” was announced on 15 March 1921 from the Kremlin.

The Bolsheviks, it seems, were never hesitant to adjust their doctrinal position whenever they smelt any threat to their power. It was in the thirties that this power struggle assumed supreme which ultimately ended in the bloody victory of Stalin over others. The spectre of Kronstadt continued to haunt the Bolsheviks in different forms.

The Left Front in West Bengal, if its version is to be believed, is making an all-out endeavour to push industrialisation as a policy for meeting the challenges of a new world order. The think-tank of the party, like the Bolsheviks of the twenties, is desperately trying to wriggle out of the straight-jacket and in the process turning against those who mattered in the past. Certainly a discernible change is in the offing. The bloody resistance at Nandigram comes as a pointer to the fact that there would be a number of clashes in future between the forces of globalisation and those opposing them. Like the mutiny in the Soviet Union 86 years before, Nandigram too is carrying the dark flies of guilt.

(The author taught Russian language at Jadavpur University. He is at present working as an Assistant-Coordinator in Sahitya Akademi, Kolkata)