Historical stories

“History must be, above all, the painting of a time, the portrait of an era.
When it is limited to being the portrait of a person or the painting of an era, of a life, only half is history. Joseph Joubert.

The mutiny of Potemkin

Ship Potemkim

 

Source: War history on line

The Russian navy in the year of the abortive revolution of 1905 still preserved the harsh conditions and brutal punishments of an earlier age. The Potemkin was a new battleship of the Black Sea fleet, commissioned in 1903, with a crew of 800. It was not a happy ship and some of the crew harboured revolutionary sympathies, in particular a forceful young non-commissioned officer named Matyushenko, who took a leading part in what followed. At sea on June 14th (June 27th, Old Style), the cooks complained that the meat for the men’s borscht was riddled with maggots. The ship’s doctor looked and decided that the maggots were only flies’ eggs and the meat was perfectly fit to eat. Later a deputation went and complained to the captain and his executive officer, Commander Giliarovsky, about worms in their soup. Their spokesman was a seaman named Valenchuk, who expressed himself in such plain language that  Giliarovsky flew into a violent rage, pulled out a gun and shot him dead on the spot. The others seized Giliarovsky and threw him overboard. As he floundered in the water he was shot and killed.

Others of the crew joined in. The captain, the doctor and several other officers were killed and the rest of the officers were shut away in one of the cabins. The Potemkin hoisted the red flag and a ‘people’s committee’ was chosen to take charge. The chairman was Matyushenko.

Matushenko nenter left photo

The ship made for the port of Odessa, where disturbances and strikes had already been going on for two weeks, with clashes between demonstrators, Cossacks and police. The trains and trams had stopped running and most of the shops had closed. People began to gather at the waterfront after the Potemkin arrived in the harbour at 6 am on the 15th. Valenchuk’s body was brought ashore by an honour guard and placed on a bier close to a flight of steps which twenty years afterwards would play an immortal and immensely magnified role in the famous ‘Odessa steps’ sequence of Sergei Eisenstein’s film. A paper pinned on the corpse’s chest said, ‘This is the body of Valenchuk, killed by the commander for having told the truth. Retribution has been meted out to the commander.’  
Citizens brought food for the seamen and flowers for the bier. As the day wore on and word spread, the crowd steadily swelled, listening to inflammatory speeches, joining in revolutionary songs and some of them sinking considerable quantities of vodka. People began looting the warehouses and setting fires until much of the harbour area was in flames.
Meanwhile, martial law had been declared and the governor had been instructed by telegram from Tsar Nicholas II to take firm action. Troops were sent to the harbour in the evening, took up commanding positions and at about midnight opened fire on the packed crowd, which had no escape route. Some people were shot and some jumped or fell into the water and drowned. The sailors on the Potemkin did nothing. The casualties were put at 2,000 dead and 3,000 seriously wounded.
Calm was quickly restored and Valenchuk was allowed a decent burial by the authorities, but the sailors’ demand for an amnesty was turned down and on June 18th the Potemkin set out to sea. The crew were hoping to provoke mutinies in other ships of the Black Sea fleet, but there were only a few minor disturbances, easily put down. The mutineers sailed west to the Romanian port of Constanza for badly needed fresh water and coal, but the Romanians demanded that they surrender the ship. They refused and sailed back eastwards to Feodosia in the Crimea, where a party landed to seize supplies, but was driven off. The Potemkin sailed disconsolately back to Constanza again, and on June 25th surrendered to the Romanian authorities, who handed the ship over to Russian naval officers.
The incident had petered out, though it caused the regime serious alarm about the extent of revolutionary feeling in the armed forces. Its most lasting legacy was Eisenstein’s film, The Battleship Potemkin, (1925) and a riveting essay in propaganda rather than history.

the abortive revolution of 1905, the Russian Black Sea Fleet was a powder keg of discontent. In the war with Japan, the Russian navy had suffered a terrible defeat at Tsushima, with over 10,000 dead or captured in two days. Morale plummeted across Russia. In June, one of the most famous mutinies in modern history occurred on the Battleship Potemkin.

The groundwork for the rebellion had begun months before, when many of the more experienced officers from the Black Sea Fleet had been transferred to the Pacific, for the Russo-Japanese War. The Potemkin was left manned mostly by recruits, and inexperienced officers; not the old salts who knew the ship and loved her. To make matters worse, the officers had little or no relationship with the senior enlisted of the crew. There were cracks in the vital chain of command.

On January 22, anger had boiled over among Russia’s working classes. Farmers, factory workers, and intellectuals rioted. They felt the government had been mistreating them, and strikes and riots were their only defense. Across the country, clashes with police and military escalated, and tensions grew among the Black Sea Fleet. 

Tsentralka, the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Organisation of the Black Sea Fleet, was essentially a secret union of sailors within the fleet. They wanted to organize widespread mutinies to take advantage of the disturbances, but no dates had been officially set. By June, sailors were ready for revolution. Tensions came to a head on the 27th.

Food in the Black Sea Fleet had always been subpar. The sailors were often fed basic rations and were expected to work long hard hours. 

The battleship Potemkin, a 378-foot ship with 18 officers and 705 enlisted men, was on target- practice maneuvers. Her crew was served Borscht, with rancid maggot infested meat. The sailors, disgusted by the food, refused to eat it. The ship’s second in command, Ippolit Giliarovsky threatened to shoot the men who refused to eat it.

Summoning the marine guards, he cornered the most vocal troublemakers. The marines laid a tarpaulin out on the deck in front of the conspirators to protect it from the sailors’ blood. The intimidation backfired, as the mutiny’s leaders convinced their marine comrades to join them. 

A riot broke out, and Grygoriy Vakulenchuk, a socialist and a member of Tsentralka, rushed to the armory, handing out rifles to 30 of the mutinous sailors. He approached the deck with an armed force, and firing began. He killed Lieutenant Neupokoyev but was aiming for Giliarovsky, who returned fire, mortally wounding Vakulenchuk. 

Led by another revolutionary, Afanasi Matyushenko, the sailors pushed forward, killing Giliarovsky and the captain Evgeny Golikov.Grygoriy Vakulenchuk.

Seven of the eighteen officers on board were killed, and the rest were locked in a cabin. The sailors assumed command of the ship, led by a twenty-five man peoples’ committee. 

After they had raised a red flag, which Vakulenchuk had hidden, they began firing rifles at the officers on board a nearby torpedo boat, the Ismail. The torpedo boat attempted to flee, but her mooring line became entangled in her anchor chain. Three shots from the Potemkin’s guns knocked out her funnel, and the captain immediately surrendered.

In under an hour, the revolutionaries were in control of the battleship, as well as a torpedo boat. They wished to join the revolution on shore, which was quickly spreading through the city of Odessa. They arrived there that evening, around 2200.

The city was in chaos. Riots, strikes, and protests had broken out across the industrial and dock districts. The police and cossacks were trying desperately to control the situation but were overpowered by superior numbers. The revolutionary council on the Potemkin, however, refused to put any men ashore until the rest of the Black Sea Fleet joined them. They were concerned that if they left the battleship, she would be vulnerable to counterattack by ships loyal to the Czar.

The next day, on June 28, her crew captured the military transport ship the Vekha.

On the 29th, a group of sailors went ashore with Vakulenchuk’s body. The people of Odessa, in the midst of the riots, flocked to the revolutionary’s funeral.

A mass political demonstration developed with the participants calling for revolution and destruction of the monarchy. It turned into an increasingly violent protest. 

The army, which was helping the police to quell violence in the city, attacked the demonstrators. The Potemkin responded by firing two 6- inch shells at the military headquarters in the city. The shots missed, but the message struck home: the Potemkin was here to stay, and she backed the workers.

The people of Odessa responded by supporting the battleship. They sent any food they could spare to the sailors. Then word came that the Russian government had dispatched two squadrons of battleships to Odessa. 

The first turned away, but the second, made up of the Rotislav and the Sinop, approached. The Potemkin responded by steaming between the two ships, whose commanders failed to give the order to fire.

The Potemkin then headed out to meet the first squadron. One of the ships, the Dvenadsat Apostolov, attempted to ram the revolutionary battleship, but her crew, unwilling to kill fellow sailors, refused to obey orders. 

The admiral in command, Aleksander Krieger, ordered his ships to withdraw but the crew of the Georgii Pobedonosets mutinied and joined the Potemkin. The two ships now sailed back to Odessa. 

The next morning, July 1, the Georgii Pobedonosets’ sailors mutinied again, and loyalist members subdued the revolutionaries. They beached the ship in Odessa harbor, acting as a barricade against other ships. The Potemkin was without a port.

Over the next six days, the Potemkin searched for a port, which would supply her with much-needed coal and fresh water, but she was continually denied access. Finally, the crew struck a deal with the mayor of Constanța, Romania. They agreed to be given asylum in exchange for disarming themselves, knowing they had little choice.

The ten days of the Potemkin’s mutiny were a brief, but incredibly important part of Russia’s history. It was one of the first major military rebellions in 20th century Russia and acted as a prelude to the 1917 revolutions, which overthrew the Czar. 

The 1905 revolution, while successful in some areas, ultimately failed. The Potemkin’s memory was immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin.

EmblemPotenkin movie

 

The Potemkin

With affection,

Ruben