Read Interpretations A and B and answer the question.
Interpretation A: from an account by a sailor who took part in the Kronstadt Rising, written in a refugee camp in Finland in 1921. (Written for practice.)
In 1917 we sailors were the first to fight for Soviet power. By 1921 we saw what that power had become. Our families in the villages wrote that the food squads had taken everything, and the workers of Petrograd were striking for bread. We asked only for what the revolution had promised: soviets elected freely by secret ballot, free speech for workers and peasants, and an end to the rule of the commissars. For this the Communists called us traitors and sent their army across the ice against us.
Interpretation B: from a Soviet history textbook for secondary schools, published in Moscow in 1950. (Written for practice.)
In March 1921 a counter-revolutionary mutiny broke out at Kronstadt. It was organised by Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and former Tsarist officers, with the help of foreign spies, who hoped to use the fortress to open the road to Petrograd for the imperialists. Most of the heroic sailors of 1917 had left to fight at the fronts, and their place had been taken by new recruits from the villages who were easily misled. The Party acted decisively: Red Army units and delegates of the Tenth Party Congress crossed the ice and crushed the mutiny.
Which interpretation gives the more convincing opinion about the Kronstadt Rising? Explain your answer based on your contextual knowledge and what it says in Interpretations A and B.
Model answer
Interpretation A gives the more convincing opinion, although Interpretation B contains some accurate details.
Interpretation A is supported by what we know about the rising. The Kronstadt sailors had been some of the Bolsheviks' strongest supporters in 1917, and Trotsky had praised them as the 'pride and glory' of the revolution. By 1921 they had real grievances: requisitioning squads were seizing grain in the villages many of them came from, and in February 1921 hungry workers in Petrograd went on strike. The resolution they passed on the battleship Petropavlovsk demanded new elections to the soviets by secret ballot, freedom of speech and of the press for workers, peasants and left-wing socialists, and the release of socialist prisoners. These were socialist demands based on the promises of 1917, not calls for the return of the Tsar, exactly as A says. The Bolsheviks did denounce them as traitors and sent troops under Tukhachevsky across the frozen Gulf of Finland.
Interpretation B is partly accurate. There were some former Tsarist officers at Kronstadt, such as General Kozlovsky, and émigré groups abroad hoped to use the rising. Many sailors were recent recruits from peasant villages, although historians disagree about how many of the men of 1917 were still there. Delegates from the Tenth Party Congress did join the attack. But there is little evidence that the rising was organised by Whites or foreign spies; it grew out of local anger at War Communism. B's language of 'mutiny' and 'imperialists' is propaganda, which is not surprising in a censored school textbook published under Stalin in 1950.
Overall A is more convincing. Its author was one-sided and wanted to justify himself, but his account of the causes and aims of the rising matches the sailors' own demands and the crisis of 1921, whereas B's claim of a foreign-backed plot is not supported by the evidence.
Explanation
The Kronstadt rising grew out of anger at War Communism and one-party rule among sailors who had backed the Bolsheviks in 1917; Soviet histories later called it a White plot. Level 4 needs both interpretations tested against specific knowledge, such as the Petropavlovsk demands and the background of the sailors, with a sustained judgement.
