Der Kronstädter Aufstand

disappointment. The Communist State showed no intention of loosening the yoke. The same policies continued, with labor militarisation still further enslaving the people, embittering them with added oppression and tyranny, and in consequence paralising every possibility of industrial revival. The last hope of the proletariat was perishing: the con^ viction grew that the Communist Party was more interested in retaining political power than in saving the Revolution. The most revolutionary elements of Russia, the workers of Petrograd, were the first to speak out. They charged that, aside from other causes, Bolshevik centralisation, bureaucracy, and autocratic attitude toward the peasants and workers were directly responsible for much of the misery and suffering of the people. Many factories and mills of Petrograd had been closed, and the workers were literally starving. They called meetings to consider the situation. The meetings v^ere suppressed by the Government. The Petrograd proletariat, who had borne the brunt of the revolutionary struggles and whose great sacrifices and heroism alone had saved the city from Yudenitch, resented the action of the Government. Keeling against the methods employed by the Bolsheviki continued to grow, More meetings were called, with the same result. The Communists would make no concessions to the proletariat, while at the same time they were offering to compromise with the capi^ talists of Europe and America. The workers wxre indignant — they became aroused. To compel the Government to consider their demands, strikes were called in the Patronny munition works, the Trubotchny and Baltiyski mills, and in the Laferm factory. Instead of talking matters over with the dissatisfied workers, the** Workers' and Peasants' GoYern:= ment" created a v/ar=:time Komitet Oborony (Committee of Defense) with Zinoviev, the most hated man in Petrograd, as Chairman.…