ABSTRACT
The early spring of 1921 was a turning point for the Soviet state. The grain
requisitioning system used during the civil war had aggravated the crisis in
the countryside. Everywhere, the peasantry responded by reducing the area
of land sown for crops; peasant revolts, the most organized of which was in
Tambov, spread across European Russia, the Urals and Siberia.1 The
transport breakdown disrupted the supply of food to Moscow, Petrograd
and other urban centres, provoking worker protests. The crisis culminated
in early March in the uprising at the Kronshtadt naval base, which the Bolshevik leadership perceived as a threat to its survival. In the discussion
of worker protests in Moscow that follows, the heterogeneous character of
this movement is emphasized. Many workers were exasperated that,
although the civil war was behind them, supply problems seemed more
intractable than ever. But there were political strands in the movement, too.
Opposition to the Bolshevik monopolization of political power was wide-
spread and the demand for renewal of the soviets was popular. On the other
hand advocates of a ‘third revolution’, or any challenge to the soviet system as such, were in a tiny minority. Very few even spoke of an alternative gov-
ernment. The movement’s uneven character, and the lack of unity between
Kronshtadt and the other main urban centres, cast doubt on claims that a
revolutionary challenge was made to Bolshevik rule. The movement helped
to force the party’s hand towards the fundamental policy shift that would
soon be named NEP, though. The tenth congress, held in the first week of
March while the Kronshtadt revolt was being put down, decided to replace
grain requisitioning with a tax in kind. It also banned factions in the party and approved the further centralization of the apparatus; this, together with
the suppression of Kronshtadt and the invasion of Georgia, confirmed the
authoritarian, apparatus-centred direction that the Soviet state was to take.
