judith wrote: What is Kronstadt 1921?
Kronstadt was (and presumably still is) a Russian naval base and centre of radical dissent. Russian naval sailors rebelled against their Tsarist officers in 1905 (cf Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin) and again in 1917, and then against the Bolsheviks in 1921, when the rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed. It is often cited as evidence that the seeds of Stalinism were already present under Lenin and Trotsky.
In 1938, Trotsky wrote on the subject: "I am ready to recognize that civil war is no school of humanism. Idealists and pacifists always accused the revolution of "excesses". But the main point is that "excesses" flow from the very nature of the revolution which in itself is but an "excess" of history."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkronstadt.htm (scroll down).