Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko

Who was Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko?

Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko, was a Russian revolutionary, an anarcho-syndicalist politician, one of the main leaders of the Third Russian Revolution, the head of the Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress-Builders of Nargen and in 1921, de facto leader of the Kronstadt Commune, and the leader of the revolutionary committee which led the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921.

Petrichenko was born in 1892 in the village of Nikitenka in Kaluga Governorate to a family of peasants. Two years after his birth his family moved to Alexandrovsk, where Stepan graduated from City College and joined the local ironworks as a metalworker. In 1913 Petrichenko was called up for military service with the Russian navy, where he was assigned to the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk, part of the Baltic Fleet.

During the February Revolution in Russia, he had been with the fleet at the Estonian island Nargen. In December 1917, it was proclaimed a Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress-Builders of Nargen. A republic under the red-black flag of anarcho-syndicalism was launched with eighty-two navy troops guiding hundreds of indigenous islanders.