Therefore it was determined by the sailors and the garrison of Kronstadt to detain Kuzmin and Vassilev and to take precautions that no supplies be faraway from the city. Kozlovsky was previous and decrepit and of no affect no matter with the sailors or the garrison. When he realized that the native garrison had expressed sympathy with the strikers, he fully misplaced his head and had ordered a machine-gun positioned at the Astoria for his protection. Had I lost the grit that had sustained me all by the years of fighting against each injustice and every wrong? Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they have been of the devil’s giving, for he was what the vulgar call a white witch-a cunning man, and such like.-Now, good sir, I perceive you might be impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own method, how have you ever warrant to assume that he can tell it in yours? Facing Zinoviev and pointing his finger instantly at him, the man thundered: “It is the cruel indifference of yourself and of your occasion that drove us to strike and that roused the sympathy of our brother sailors, who had fought side by aspect with us in the Revolution. They’re responsible of no different crime, and you know it. Consciously you malign them and call for his or her destruction.” Cries of “Counter-revolutionist! Traitor! Shkurnik! Menshevik bandit!” turned the meeting into a bedlam.
The others on the platform moved uneasily of their seats. My thoughts reverted to another occasion where the spirit of vengeance and hate had run amok — the eve of registration, June 4, 1917, at Hunts Point Palace, New York. The presence of Sasha, for whom the Kronstadt sailors had made such a valiant stand when he was in danger of extradition to California, in 1917, and of me, whom the sailors knew by fame, would have added weight to the decision, they declared. I knew all that, as did also Sasha, however I could not believe that Lenin and Trotsky actually thought the Kronstadt men responsible of counter-revolution or able to cooperating with White generals, as charged in Lenin’s order. I agreed with him that Lenin and Trotsky might have been misled by Zinoviev, who was nightly telephoning to the Kremlin detailed studies about Kronstadt. It was my first alternative in Russia to hear Trotsky.
He had change into panicky at the primary symptoms of discontent proven by the Petrograd employees. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, proper from the opening scene during which Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing a mattress, with Marion in a bra. They had been strongly opposed to the autocratic perspective of the Petrograd authorities towards the starving strikers, but at no time had the gathering proven the least opposition to the Communists. The men who addressed the gathering had been beyond cause or attraction. The rationale for it was that at the meeting Kuzmin had denounced the sailors as traitors, and the Petrograd strikers as shkurniky, and had declared that henceforth the Communist Party “would combat them to a end as counter-revolutionists.” The delegates had also learned that Kuzmin had given orders for the elimination of all food and munitions from Kronstadt, thereby nearly dooming the town to starvation. Extraordinary martial regulation was declared over the entire Petrograd Province, and none but specially authorized officials could go away the city. We felt elated over the splendid solidarity of the Kronstadt sailors and soldiers with their placing brothers in Petrograd and we hoped that a speedy termination of the trouble would soon outcome, due to the mediation of the sailors.