More important still, the use of force by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government against workers and sailors will have a reactionary effect upon the international revolutionary movement and will everywhere result in incalculable harm to the Social Revolution. Comrades Bolsheviki, bethink yourselves before it is too late. Do not play with fire: you are about to make a most serious and decisive step. We hereby submit to you the following proposition: Let a Commission be selected to consist of five persons, inclusive of two Anarchists. The Commission is to go to Kronstadt to settle the dispute by peaceful means. In the given situation this is the most radical method. It will be of international revolutionary significance. _Petrograd_, ALEXANDER BERKMAN. _March 5, 1921._ EMMA GOLDMAN. PERKUS. PETROVSKY. But this protest was ignored. On March 7th Trotsky began the bombardment of Kronstadt, and on the 17th the fortress and city were taken, after numerous assaults involving terrific human sacrifice. Thus Kronstadt was “liquidated” and the “counter-revolutionary plot” quenched in blood. The “conquest” of the city was characterized by ruthless savagery, although not a single one of the Communists arrested by the Kronstadt sailors had been injured or killed by them. Even before the storming of the fortress the Bolsheviki summarily executed numerous soldiers of the Red Army whose revolutionary spirit and solidarity caused them to refuse to participate in the bloodbath. Several days after the “glorious victory” over Kronstadt Lenin said at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia: “The sailors did not want the counter-revolutionists, but they did not want us, either.” And--irony of Bolshevism!--at that very Congress Lenin advocated free trade--a more reactionary step than any charged to the Kronstadt sailors. Between the 1st and the 17th of March several regiments of the Petrograd garrison and all the sailors of the port were disarmed and ordered to the Ukraina and the Caucasus. The Bolsheviki feared to trust them in the Kronstadt situation: at the first psychological moment they might make common cause with Kronstadt. In fact, many Red soldiers of the Krasnaya Gorka and the surrounding garrisons were also in sympathy with Kronstadt and were forced at the point of guns to attack the sailors.