This declaration by the Kronstadt Soviet was written by Trotsky after he met with the Kronstadt sailors in June to discuss how to respond to the many attacks by the Provisional Government and the bourgeois press against the naval base. It was originally published in Pravda, No. 69, June 13 (May 31) 1917. [1]
Citizens, comrades, brothers!
The name Kronstadt, borne on the glorious pages of the history of the Russian revolution, is now vilified and defamed on the pages of all bourgeois newspapers. The malicious pens of counterrevolutionary slanderers write as if we, Kronstadters, invite the people to despotism, lynch law, and anarchy, as if we carry out the torture of the tyrants and servants of Tsarism arrested by us, and finally, as if we have refused to acknowledge the authority of the Provisional Government, seceded from Russia, and established the independent Kronstadt Republic.
What a senseless lie, such pitiful and disgraceful calumny!
In Kronstadt we have not anarchy, but a sincere and firm revolutionary order. Our Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies has taken into its hands authority with regards to all local Kronstadt affairs.
We are against lynch law, against all forms of unwarranted vengeance inflicted on the captive servants of Tsarism. But we are for honest, free, impartially-organized revolutionary judgment of the criminal enemies of the people. The officers, gendarmes, and policemen arrested by us in the days of the revolution themselves declared to representatives of the Government that they cannot object to their treatment at the hands of the prison system. It is true, the Kronstadt prison buildings are awful. But these are the very same prisons that were built by Tsarism for us. We have no others. And if we have detained enemies of the people in these prisons, then this is not out of revenge, but…