Kronstadt uprising

Revolt in March 1921 by sailors of the Russian Baltic Fleet at their headquarters in Kronstadt, outside Petrograd (now St Petersburg). On the orders of the leading Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, Red Army troops, dressed in white camouflage, crossed the ice to the naval base and captured it on 18 March. The leaders were subsequently shot.

Following a strike by Petrograd workers February 1921, the Kronstadt sailors reaffirmed their demands for the rights obtained in theory by the Revolution of 1917. The sailors were thus labelled the ‘conscience of the Revolution’ for demanding what had been promised, but not delivered, by the Bolsheviks. These perceived them as a threat because of their detection and resentment of the growing Bolshevik monopoly of power.