This text is a written version of a speech held by Cajo Brendel on the 11th of May 1971 at the Kronstadt-Kongress at the Technischen Universität Berlin (West) celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Kronstadt Commune. 

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This Kronstadt-Kongress was held on the initiative of a group of anarchist/council communist orientated editors connected to the Berlin underground-paper 'agit 883'. 

From 1969 and accellerating from the vinter 1970/1971 the general left szene of Germany went more and more into party-building along Marxist-Leninist lines. Trotzkism and maoism boomed and several groups and tendencies went either into the factories to build the Party together with the workers or into more isolated Group-building for study and propaganda of the 'true' Party-principles. A minor part begann their path into illegality and extreme terrorism.

The agit 883 held an open political line of publication and printed minor texts and messages from manu of these groups and in the spring of 1971 it also published the manifests of the RAF. Among the editors there were however disagrements with these trends. So in early 1971 they begann publishing small texts on the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 presenting opposition and criticism to the avantgardist ideas of the Party.

The project of the anniversary-conference in May was thus an attempt to counterweight the growing leninist mainstream. 

To prepare the conference a Kronstadt-Commitee was formed. This commitee circulated texts and calls for participation to all anarchist, council communist and libertarian socialist groups and circles. Through the Karin Kramer Verlag the commitee published its call for the anniversary-conference together with Ida Mett's account of the history of the Kronstadt Commune.

Making the text-version minor changes were made, i.e. notes and references were added and the style was ajusted from the original speech to that of the written word.

In 1974 this written version was published together with a speech by Johannes Agnoli from the same conference and the wellknown text on the Kronstadt Commune by Ida Mett in:

Johannes Agnoli, Cajo Brendel, Ida Mett
Die revolutionären Aktionen der russischen Arbeiter under Mauern
Die Kommune von Kronstadt
Karin Kramer Verlag
West-Berlin 1974
ISBN: 3879560099

The english version was published in

Werner Bonefeld, Sergio Tischler Visquerra
What is to be done ?
Leninism, Anti-Leninist Marxism and the Question of Revolution today.
Ashgate Publishing
2002
ISBN: 0754632318

The german e-version was saved from from 'Cajo Brendels Homepage' at the now closed partisan.net
The english e-version was saved from the now closed endpage-site.
The lay-out here was was made by Kurasje