It is often said one should not talk bad of the deceased but...the truth is a hard citation to history.
He's the one
Who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he don't know what it means
Don't know what it means
And I say yeah...
words authored by Kurt Cobain
Lenin wanted to be revered..without having an understanding what it took to be respected...sure he could pout...outlast any political opponent till the wee hours of the morning...stubbornly holding fast to his theories particularly on social structures...and for some reason his political adversaries bowed down to this overrated and ill minded individual. A wicked opportunist of a man who would lay waste to a social revolution meant to rise the plight of the majority of Russians...to set forth upon a culture of dignity and opportunity...alas the desire of power is quenched with the blood of the disenfranchised and the weak...Lenin was a hoodlum who was destined to become a blood thirsty tyrant..a man of no morals...a weak soul; driven to demonstrate to one and all his worthiness...although history shows how shallow that pool actually was...
Conversely, Pavel Yefimovitch Dybenko had earned respect: gleaned from the many years of learned wisdom from Polish Nobles and Ukrainian Cossack ancestry. It is true that Dybenko was a "peasant", but his genetic makeup created his ability in becoming the leader of the Russian Navy. It was the Sailors whom the peoples of Russia but their faith in...who held hope in the hearts for...an armed militarily challenge to the established decaying rule. Workers and Peasants uprising have always resulted in nominal and few difficulties for authorities; easy to squash...easily crushed. For it is said that,"When one raises his fist at authorities, it is he who comes away with the bloody nose" The hopes of the Russian people lay in the armed fist of the sailors. The Russian citizenry had yet to even hear of Lenin...but they knew the old had to go, understood the path to freedom and who would lead them there.
"Our truth was simple", Pavel Dybenko
As a unit the sailors would indeed lead Russia to social change...the restructuring of her government. The sailors had faith in the enlightened minorities...believing they understood what all the blood shed was about.
It would be the enlightened minorities challenge to enact into laws the harvest fruits of the revolution. Some having heard the protestations personally and others who witnessed the brutal Moscow uprisings...the enlightened minorities knew full well the bloody struggles for dignities desired.
As for political views regarding Pavel Dybenko. Dr. Ewan Mawdsley, one of two western experts on the study of the Revolutionary Baltic Fleet (the other Dr. Norman Saul) put forth his observation that Dybenko was most likely an "informal social democrat"...Dr. Mawdsley was on to something back in 1978.
Honing their political and naval preparedness skills; the sailors...would in April of 1917 create a committee that would at once address the operational structures of the navy. This organization was deemed Tsentrobalt...the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet. A freely elected democratic body which selected Pavel Yefimovitch Dybenko its leader and Chairman.
Contradicting contemporary historians fictitious proffers that Pavel Dybenko was an illiterate cretin!
In early 1917, Dybenko helped to organize the sailors political aspirations...helped to establish their own newspaper, the Volna, authored the charter for the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet; Tsentrobalt, authored the document detailing the changes regarding the new relationship between the fleet and the Government. ...all of the above; radical and extraordinary events without the influence of the politico's or having any knowledge of who Lenin was.
The fleet as a whole were seeing the results of their efforts after decades long battle with the Tsar and the politically dominant.
In 1905 Dr. Reusneer; a Russian Professor teaching at Berlin University related the following regarding his informed and intellectual review of the happenings in Russia at the time.
"Many in Russia believed the sailors’ movement would accomplish the most important part in the approaching struggle for liberty. While others, whose lot were cast in the Old Guard, classified the sailors as rebels and murderers. In the end, the sailors convictions should have ensured them a place in Russian history as men who were heroes willing to sacrifice their lives for their country not as elements or fanatics"
After the Moscow uprisings in 1906 by Zinaida Vassilievna Konopliannikova understood
"I saw clearly that the autocratic and bureaucratic super structure rests on the armed force of the Government, and is able to maintain itself only through the constant practice of bloody terror, on the part of those steering our ship of State. And life itself has taught me as follows: you cannot create anything new without first destroying the old; if you cannot pierce and idea with a bayonet, neither can you resist the power of the bayonet with ideas only".
In 1912 Pavel Dybenko enters the Tsars fleet, and soon realizes,
"The fleet and its political view for a responsible social democracy did not derive from university trained theoretical knowledge, nor an understanding for legal opportunism's. Moreover the sailors may not have had their own printing press or enough of the elite literature thought necessary for complex thinking. Nevertheless the sailor’s classroom and their views were crafted by the many confrontations with Tsarism."
1915 Okhrana report. This report focused on the political activity of the Petrograd Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and concluded that the political circles of the fleet arose independently and outside of the influence of the politico’s in Petrograd
Naval Officers were aware of such activities and recalled
the conditions under which the sailors of the Baltic Fleet acted during this
revolutionary period:
Lt. B. Roustam Bek recalled,
“…from a purely strategically point of view, actions
required great secrecy; therefore for a certain period there was almost no
information about it. Nonetheless, the
part played by the Baltic Fleet during the Revolution was of great
importance. It must not be forgotten that the victory of the Revolutions in February, March, and in October 1917, was due chiefly to the activity, firmness and self sacrifice of the members of the Baltic Fleet. The
period from 1905 to 1917 represented a solid history of repeated revolts and
rebellions by the determined sailors in their efforts to overthrow the existing
social structureIsrael Getzler Russian Historian wrote,
"...it was in its commune like self government that Tsetrobalt really came into its own, realizing the radical, democratic and egalitarian aspirations of its garrisons and working people, their insatiable appetite for social recognition, political activity and public debate, their pent up yearning for education, integration and community. Almost overnight, the ship's crews, the naval and military units and the workers created and practiced a direct democracy of base assemblies and committees.
All the above attest to the independence the sailors of Tsentrobalt had enjoyed...free from tyrannical rule and governed by a democratic ideal.
During the following months in the middle of 1917...history reveals a rich confrontation between Pavel Dybenko of Tsentrobalt and Alexsander Kerensky of the Provisional Government. The final disassociation came to pass at the 2nd All Naval Congress in September although Tsentrobalt had indeed served notice to the Government during the previous April. The finale raised the curtain during Kerensky's arrival at Gatchina with General Krasnov in charge of the Cossack regiments. A well known last cry of discontent was spoken from Kerensky's lips as he shared with General Krasnov that it was Dybenko who was his enemy!
With that Kerensky fled...whisked away in a diplomat vehicle while disguised as a sailor.
(there is an exaggerated version of the fight and that is Kerensky escaped dressed as a nurse)
Concomitantly...the black raven of the Bolshevik party shows up...a woman whose deception to
Great October and Russians who had sacrificed so much; was only exceeded by Lenin himself.
Her name was Alexsandra Kollontai and contemporary historians paint a picture of her being an intellectual and a woman who desired and fought toward equal rights for Russian women. Which is absolutely correct and in the year 1917, Kollontai would become of one Lenin's closest compatriot and ardent supporters.
Alexsandra Kollontai would move a nation into the arms of Lenin
Lenin knew too well the path to power lay in the hand of the sailors...and that his "resurrection would be impossible without the force of the Baltic Fleet".
The literal seduction of Pavel Dybenko by Lenin and the Bolsheviks would be key in convincing Dybenko that Lenin and his band of "professional revolutionists" held the desires of the decades long sacrifice by the Russian people close to their chest.
The sexual seduction by Alexsandra Kollontai and the political seduction by the likes of Anton-Ovseenko, Kollontai, Izmailov, Trotsky, Kamenev, Lunarcharsky, Proshian, Martov, Raskolnikov and many others proved monumental in swaying Dybenko into supporting Lenin.
The Bolsheviki elite propagandized the relationship between Kollontai and Dybenko as the "romance of the revolution". Bolsheviki men like Antonov Ovseenko and Raskolnikov memorialized Dybenko in their writings recognizing his "Charismatic" and "Political" skills. Trotsky does the same in his writings regarding the recruitment of the Petrograd Garrison referring to Dybenko's speech to the garrison as "a fresh and keen wind"...Dybenko speaks at the Northern Regional Congress in September detailing the current relationship between the Provisional Government and that Tsentrobalt stood in the ready to not only determine the form of government in Russia but to also defend Russia from outside enemies...i.e. Germany.
Chairman Pavel Dybenko and the sailors of Tsentrobalt honorable political viewpoints will be co-opted by Lenin and his Bolsheviks. The year 1917 see's Lenin's political acumen, Lenin will speak to and print out decree after decree promising the people of Russia's every imagined and desired goal attainable.
The legal mandate of Tsentrobalt and the lack of recognition by the Provisional Government, led by its appointed leader Alexsander Kerensky...resulted in allowing for the continuation of discontent and ill opinion of Government by the sailors. The mindset that Dybenko and Tsentrobalt would be accepting of ill treatment by Government and its desired reversion to the Tsars subservience demands...will prove to be the Governments and Kerensky's demise.
By September of 1917, Pavel Dybenko and the sailors of Tsentrobalt have already rejected the Provisional Government and Alexander Kerensky. A political void was created allowing for the opportunist Lenin to waltz into power as the winner by consolation.
Great October comes to pass...a new dawn had arrived which places Dybenko in the vanguard of bringing to the Russian people the hopes of the many generations who sought for, fought for and died for the ideas of social change that would benefit the majority of all Russians.
Unfortunately the fruits gained by Great October would be systematically destroyed by Lenin and his inner circle...Russian G.P. Maximoff wrote that Lenin indeed had propagated the largest fraud ever perpetuated upon the Russian people. American Noam Chomsky wrote that Lenin (after Great October) immediately began to dismantle the various soviets that emerged during the year 1917.
Tsentrobalt...the sailors soviet would be no different...Lenin moves to destroy the "armed fist" that allowed for him and the Bolsheviks to attain power...In a short three months, Lenin and his confederates will move to rid themselves of Dybenko...the "hero" of the revolution.
The following writing takes us to Dybenko's Waterloo and his removal from government. Culminating in the fabricated and false allegations known as the events of February 23rd, 1918.
