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 Meanwhile the Bolsheviki concentrated in Petrograd large military forces from the provinces and also ordered to the city its most trusted Communist regiments from the front. Petrograd was put under “extraordinary martial law.” The strikers were overawed, and the labor unrest crushed with an iron hand.

The Kronstadt sailors were much disturbed by what was happening in Petrograd. They did not look with friendly eyes upon the Government’s drastic treatment of the strikers. They knew what the revolutionary proletariat of the capital had had to bear since the first days of the Revolution, how heroically they had fought against Yudenitch, and how patiently they were suffering privation and misery. But Kronstadt was far from favoring the Constituent Assembly or the demand for free trade which made itself heard in Petrograd. The sailors were thoroughly revolutionary in spirit and action. They were the staunchest supporters of the Soviet system, but they were opposed to the dictatorship of any political party.

The sympathetic movement with the Petrograd strikers first began among the sailors of the warships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol—the ships that in 1917 had been the main support of the Bolsheviki. The movement spread to the whole fleet of Kronstadt, then to the Red Army regiments stationed there. On February 28 the men of Petropavlovsk passed a resolution which was also concurred in by the 8