Throughout the tumultuous year of 1917, the Baltic Fleet sailors stationed on the island-fortress of Kronstadt numbered among the Bolsheviks’ most important allies. Their moral and material support for the Party during the events of October earned them the moniker “the pride and glory of the Revolution.”

By the spring of 1921, the sailors’ ardor for Bolshevism had cooled. Widespread hunger, material deprivation, and dictatorial repression drove Kronstadt’s erstwhile “red” sailors into open rebellion against the Soviet state. The response from Lenin’s government was swift … and brutal. The dispatch of the short-lived uprising made clear that the Bolsheviks would tolerate no challenge to their rule.