ON THE KRONSTADT REVOLT

Lenin
Published in Russian on March 26, 1921 in Petrogradskaya Pravda No. 67. Published in English on March 15, 1921 The New York Herald Tribune No. 197
Collected Works, Volume 36

SUMMARY OF A TALK WITH A CORRESPONDENT of THE NEW YORK HERALD

I believe that there are only two kinds of government possible in Russia—a Government by the Soviets or a Government headed by a tsar. Some fools or traitors in Kronstadt talked of a Constituent Assembly, but does any man in his senses believe for a moment that a Constituent Assembly at this critical abnormal stage would be anything but a bear garden. This Kronstadt affair in itself is a very petty incident. It no more threatens to break up the Soviet state than the Irish disorders are threatening to break up the British Empire.


Some people in America have come to think of the Bolsheviks as a small clique of very bad men who are tyrannizing over a vast number of highly intellectual people who would form an admirable Government among themselves the moment the Bolshevik regime was overthrown. This is a mistake, for there is nobody to take our place save butcher Generals and helpless bureaucrats who have already displayed their total incapacity for rule.

If people abroad exaggerate the importance of the rising in Kronstadt and give it support, it is because the world has broken up into two camps: capitalism abroad and Communist Russia.