If the rebels had won ...
In March of this year, the Russian media paid a lot of attention to one truly epochal event that happened exactly 90 years ago. The one that was called the Kronstadt insurgency at the time of the USSR existence, and in the post-Soviet Russia it was called the Kronstadt uprising. Accordingly, its participants from “traitors to the Motherland and the revolution” turned into “heroes, fighters for the freedom of the Fatherland”. As such, they mostly appear on television, on radio and in print publications for the past twenty-odd years.Image transformation
Well, let's try to figure out what these “heroes” were like, who spoke out against the Bolshevik government in the early spring of 1921.
It was these people in 1917 who immediately after the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II deployed on the Baltic navy, which stood in Kronstadt and Helsingfors, a real orgy of the murders of admirals and officers, as well as violence and robberies of civilians. In the spring of 1917, sailors in the Baltic Sea destroyed as many representatives of their own commanding staff as they did not die in all fleets during the three campaigns of the First World War.
Modern liberal historians, who directly, or indirectly, lay the blame on the leaders of the Bolsheviks, although all of them, without exception, were thousands of kilometers away from Russia and learned about events in the country exclusively from newspapers.
Since the spring of 1917, the Baltic Fleet has become unworkable and virtually unmanageable. The attitude of the Baltic sailors to the participation in repulsing the offensive operation of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s troops and squadrons that captured the 1917 of Ezel Island and Dago in the autumn is curious. The crews of battleships - almost 99 percent "for", submarines, minesweepers and destroyers - by 99 percent "against." Brave sailors were divided into the defencists and defeatists, depending on ... the draft of ships and their ability to pass through the Strait of Moosund.
A fairly accurate portrait of the revolutionary revolutionary war time was presented on the eve of the insurrection in the newspaper Krasny Baltiyets in the poem Ivan Ivan of Nikolai Kornev:
Half-field wearing flared
And always says: "Give!".
And work for him -
There is nothing worse.
He sleeps from morning till night
At night, he hurries to the woman.
In those days, when the USSR lived and was in good health, official historians and publicists claimed that, from 1917, the personnel of the Baltic Fleet had undergone dramatic changes. They say that the revolutionary sailors went in droves to all the numerous fronts of the Civil War, and the kulak sons and the declassed elements were called to the fleet. This is a lie of Soviet propaganda, trying to fit the real history under the communist ideology.
It will be objected to me: did the Baltic seamen play an active role on all river fleets of the Reds, did they not have teams of dozens of armored trains, etc.
Indeed, in 1918 - the beginning of 1919, only to the Volga from the Baltic fleet through the system of lakes and canals went over 20 squadrons of destroyers, minelayers and submarines. Out, of course, with their crews. But, I note, there were practically no killings of officers and other outrages in the spring of 1917 on submarines and destroyers. Only the sailors of the battleships, to a lesser extent, cruisers, "distinguished themselves" in this matter. And the composition of their crews for 1917 – 1921 almost did not change. Thus, on the battleships “Sevastopol” and “Petropavlovsk”, which were stationed in Kronstadt, over 80 percent of warriors were participants or at least sympathetic witnesses of the bloody crimes of the spring of the year 1917. And here the “scoundrels”, “sadists”, etc., suddenly become “heroes”, “commit feats in the name of Russia” ...
The course of the rebellion and its suppression are described in many publications, including in my books and articles. But let's think about what would have happened if all the forts of the Kronstadt fortress, including the Krasnaya Gorka, as well as the ships of the Baltic Fleet, joined the “pincers” from the battleships headed by the senior clerk of the battleship Petropavlovsk SM Petrichenko, standing in the harbor of Petrograd? Workers and sailors would have turned in the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Petrograd Labor Commune, Comrade Zinoviev. Well, and then in Moscow, the Soviet government would have fled to where ...
Three forces
Immediately make a reservation, we are talking about a completely crazy fantasy. But still for a moment imagine such a "cover". So what's next?
Petrichenko and Co. offered “Soviets without Communists”, and our eminent historians consider this “third way” to be quite real. But who would lead Russia along the “third way” to a bright future? Petrichenko, Makhno, Antonov, and various small batko there?
Recall that in the summer of 1918, White accepted the slogan “Give the Constituent Assembly!”. But later, gentlemen, the officers of the "wedding generals" of the "founding" were dispersed, and some were even shot. Moreover, they were set against the wall of mischief - these “politicians” did not represent any danger to whites or reds.
Let me remind you that the elections to the Constituent Assembly took place after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, that is, the “administrative resource” was in the hands of Lenin. Among those elected to the "founding" of the majority - 60 percent - were the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Cadets. Bolsheviks - only 24 percent, nationalists - 12 percent, monarchists, counter-revolutionaries and patriotic officers - 0 percent - not a single delegate. According to the “principles of democracy”, these 60 percent were supposed to form a government governing democratic Russia.
One quote - for the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Cadets voted "swamp", that is, characters who slam shut shutters at the first shot, and hang out the flag of the victorious party in the morning.
But in the Petrograd garrison the Bolsheviks won - 79,2 percent, in the Moscow garrison - 79,5 percent.
Tens of thousands of officers made their way to the Don to create the Volunteer Army.
On December 1917 of the year - the time of the opening of the Constituent Assembly - the nationalist leaders (who obtained the most unfortunate 12 percent) kept no less than 700 thousand militants under arms in Finland, the Baltic States, the Crimea, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
As a result, in the Civil War there were only three forces - the Bolsheviks, the whites and the nationalists. But history has not preserved information about the combat actions of the SR corps and the Menshevik armies. The leaders of these parties scattered where, and at best, found themselves in the role of survivors under the white leaders, dads and hetmans.
Another issue is that many representatives of the nationalist movements of the former Russian Empire for the time being dressed in the toga of the socialists. Ban Pilsudski, for example, was both a socialist and a terrorist, an accomplice of Lenin's older brother, Alexander Ulyanov. Even in the seminary, Ban Petliura was considered an admirer of the socialist teaching of the highest standard. And the leaders of an independent Georgia, almost without exception, had a great revolutionary experience as members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. Only Central Asia has pumped up, where the khans, emirs, bai and basmachi leaders did not even hear about socialism.
That's what would have started then ...
By March, 1921, the situation has not changed: in Russia there were the same three forces - the Bolsheviks, the nationalists and the White Guards. And the latter were mainly abroad: in the area of the Black Sea Straits (Wrangel's army - about 60 thousand people), in Paris and Harbin.
So, we remove one dominant force from the map of the former Russian Empire - the Bolsheviks.
In the center of the country - complete chaos. There is no one to take power. No one has any organizational structures, no loyal military units, or even reputable politicians known to the country. During the three years of the Civil War, Lenin and his associates conducted a complete Bolshevization of the army and the state apparatus, but all opposition structures were mercilessly suppressed.
By March, 1921 had serious food problems in Soviet Russia, but so far there had been no massive deaths from starvation. But in the event of the collapse of the Bolsheviks, tens of millions of people would inevitably die in the country. On the very first day after the fall of the power of the Communists, without exception, all food stores would probably have been plundered. All the prodotryad, vykolachivayuschie bread from the peasants and at least feed the country, would have fled for fear of the revenge of men.
The Russian peasants in 1915 – 1917, unlike the German peasant, did not want to feed the army and the country for pennies, and in 1918 – 1920 hid bread and cattle both from the Reds and from the Whites. The former mainly obtained food through the deserts, the latter through the “self-supply” method (as in the memoirs of the first wave of emigres, the local Guard was called the looting of the local population by the White Guard “field commanders”).
The rhetorical question: would England and France wish to make chaos in Russia manageable? And now the British troops landed on the shores of the Gulf of Finland and occupied Petrograd. I note that because of the insurrections in 1919, the forts Krasnaya Gorka and the Gray Horse and in March 1921 in Kronstadt, the gun trunks of the main calibers of the Baltic battleships and fortifications were completely shot. The new ones, at varying degrees of readiness, were at the Obukhov plant, but their fine-tuning and installation would take months.
The Wrangel army, landed by the French fleet in the Crimea and in the area of Odessa, entered the Central Russia like a knife in butter. Her battle-hardened troops after the fall of the Bolsheviks there was no one to resist. And here the baron on a white horse enters the Kremlin. White stone is forced by the gallows, mass executions take place outside the city. But there is no bread anyway. The men fear for their land, taken away from the landlords, for revenge for the plundering of estates, for the murder and rape of their owners.
The second rhetorical question: would Mannerheim, Pilsudski, Petlura wait for the re-creation of the “one and indivisible”?
Back in 1918, the first one stated that "he would not sheathe his sword until all of Karelia became Finnish." The baron did not forget about the 1919 agreement of the year with General Yudenich, according to which the Kola Peninsula was completely relegated to Great Finland. By the way, the majority of the Finnish Seim considered as original lands of this “power” fair chunks of the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions.
In the same 1918, Mr. Pilsudski put forward the idea of uniting Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, including Smolensk, and also Ukraine into a single federation. Who was to lead this state, implied by itself. After the collapse of the Bolsheviks, there was no one in the east who was well trained and armed by the French Polish army. Lithuania, Belarus, Smolensk, she would take possession relatively easily. But in Ukraine, the Poles would have had to tinker badly with Makhno and other chieftains.
From 1918, Georgian socialists also claimed the Sochi area right up to Novorossiysk. True, Denikin's troops stopped these inclinations, but the ambitions remained.
Turkish-Azerbaijani nationalists, again with 1918, made plans for the creation of an empire within the Transcaucasus, the Caucasus, the entire Volga region with Kazan, as well as Central Asia. However, in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the separatists were some “natural hares”, about which even few historians know.
So, in August 1917, the conference in Tomsk adopted a resolution “On the autonomous structure of Siberia” within the federation and approved the white and green flag of the future state. And in October of the same year, the 1-th Siberian Regional Congress voted to create legislative, executive and judicial branches independent of the center in the vast expanses of the Urals, and also wished to have its own Duma and cabinet of ministers.
Although Admiral Kolchak, and then the Bolsheviks, sent the Siberian "regionalists" (as the separatists called themselves), the desire to secede from them by March 1921 did not disappear at all. And now, when there was neither Kolchak, nor Lenin ...
The Mountain Republic existed in the North Caucasus in 1918 – 1920. And in October, 1919-th Kuban regional council actually announced its independence. Her delegation concluded a treaty in Paris with the Mountain Republic, which was regarded by the Denikin authorities as “treason against Russia”. The 1-th article of this document stated the following: "The Government of Kuban and the Government of the Republic of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus mutually recognize the state sovereignty and full political independence of the Kuban and the Union of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus."
October 25 1919, the year Denikin issued an order for the arrest and surrender to the military field court of all those who signed the agreement with the Mountain Republic. The Kuban region was included in the rear area of the White Guard Caucasian Army. By order of Denikin, one of the leaders of the separatists, A.I. Kalabukhov, was publicly hanged on the Fortress Square of Ekaterinodar. Anton Ivanovich did not embarrass even his spiritual rank.
I'm not talking about the Far East, where Baron Ungern declared himself the Great Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan, and Ataman Semenov became an independent ruler (from everyone except the Japanese).
The third rhetorical question: could Wrangel with his 60-thousandth army suppress all nationalists?
Let me remind you that the baron had a rather strong opposition in his own troops, and the monarchists were supporters of the groups headed by the grand dukes Nikolai Nikolayevich, Kirill Vladimirovich and Dmitry Pavlovich, and they could not tolerate any kind of “Yaloros” there.
In the 1921 year, as in the midst of the Civil War, the White Guards had no clear program, it was replaced by the idea of “uncertainty”: they say, we take Moscow and we will think how to live. In addition, in 1918 – 1919, White had two rather popular leaders - Kolchak and Denikin. But Kolchak, by March of 1921, had long been lying at the bottom of the Angara (or in a grave on its shore, as some claim now), and Denikin had become a political corpse and was writing memoirs abroad.
So, in the event of the collapse of Bolshevism, two great powers would inevitably appear on the territory of the former empire: Great Finland - from Murmansk to Vologda and from the Gulf of Bothnia to Arkhangelsk and Rzeczpospolita within the boundaries of Grand Duke Vitovt - “from mozh to mozh”.
What would happen in the south of Russia is logically impossible to predict. Crimea could become Tatar, Turkish or even Italian, good, they claimed it from the XIV century? Would the “Great Turan” arise from Baku to Kazan and Tashkent? I do not know. I am sure of one thing: in these areas the war would have been going on for years, as in the Far East and Siberia. The main thing is that Russia would lose these regions for good.
There is no doubt that in the course of this civil strife former subjects of the Russian Empire would have died much more than during the Great Patriotic War.
- Alexander Shirokorad
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