Our country is enduring a difficult moment.

Hunger, cold and economic ruin have held us in

an iron vice these three years already. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has
become separated from the masses, and shown itself unable to lead her from her state of
general ruin. It has not faced the reality of the disturbances which in recent times have
occurred in Petrograd and Moscow. This unrest shows clearly enough that the party has lost
the faith of the working masses. Neither has it recognized the demands presented by the
workers. It considers them plots of the counterrevolution. It is deeply mistaken.

This unrest, these demands, are the voice of the people in its entirety, of all laborers. All
workers, sailors and soldiers see clearly at the present moment that only through common
effort, by the common will of the laborers, is it possible to give the country bread, wood, and
coal, to dress the barefoot and naked, and to lead the Republic out of this dead end.

The Provisional Revolutionary Committee forbids any and all arbitrary searches in the town,
and brings to the general attention that certificates for the right of search are issued with the
signature of the President and Secretary of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, and are
invalid without the seal of the battleship Petropavlovsk. It is ordered that during searches of
organizations, of whatever party, nothing is to be removed, nor stolen. All must be preserved
entire, as the people's property.

Kronstadt is now enduring a moment of tense struggle for freedom. An attack by the
Communists can be expected any minute, with the goal of seizing Kronstadt, and again
fastening us to their authority, which brings us only to hunger, cold and ruin. We all, to the
last man, will staunchly defend the freedom achieved by us. We shall not allow them to seize
Kronstadt, and if they should attempt to do so by force of arms, we will give them a worthy
repulse.

Therefore, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee forewarns citizens not to give in to panic
and fear if it becomes necessary to hear shooting. Only calm and restraint will give us victory.

Then reports from various places were given by comrade sailors who had broken through to
Kronstadt from Petrograd, Strelna, Peterhof and Oranienbaum. From their information it is seen that
the populace and workers of these towns are being kept by the Communists in total unawareness of
what is being done in Kronstadt. Provocative rumors are being let out to the effect that some kind of
gang of White Guards and generals is running things in Kronstadt.
The entire assembly took place under this slogan, "Victory or Death."

"I recognize that the policy of the Communist Party has led the country to a dead end because the
party has become bureaucratized, learned nothing, and not wanted to learn and to listen to the voice
of the masses, whom it has tried to tie to its own will. We remember the at least 150 million
peasantry, that freedom of speech, and an expanded call to construction of the country by means of
changed electoral methods will bring the country from hibernation, they entirely give their support
at the present critical moment when the future of the reconstruction of Russia which has been begun
by the Revolutionary Soviet depends only on its vigilance and energy, and I no longer consider myself
a member of the R.C.P., but entirely give my support to the resolution taken at the general town
meeting of the 1st of March, and ask that my strength and knowledge be used.*

At the end of 1919, official reports were published in 'Izvestiia of the Central Executive
Committee' that Maximalists participated in organizing the blowing up of the Moscow
Department of the R.C.P., and in armed expropriations in the South, including the murder of
collective farmers. I, considering terror against Socialist Parties to be unacceptable, left the
ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Maximalists because of these reports.

Recently I received information from a completely trustworthy source that this was all one of
the means of party struggle by the Communists, and that the court was forced to acquit the
Maximalists. The press, located in the partisan hands of the Communists, was studiously
silent about this.

In strength of the above, I ask that I no longer be considered a candidate member of the
Communist Party. I am returning to the ranks of the Union of SR-Maximalists, the slogan of
which has always been, is and shall be, "Power to Soviets, and not Parties."

A. LAMANOV