Pablo Valcárcel’s story “The Thousand Revolutions of Kronstadt” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 14 June 2019.
The story of Kronstadt’s ill-fated rebellion is one I’ve been fascinated with for a few years now. Since I first read about it, it struck me as being the pivotal moment in the Soviet Revolution, one signaling the abandonment of a lot of the revolution’s idealism.
One can’t help but to wonder whether Soviet Russia would be a very different country had they succeeded. Sadly, as it is, it only served as a grim prelude to what most anarchist revolutions would undergo during the rest of the 20th Century (e.g. The purging of Anarchists by Communists during the Spanish Civil war comes to mind).
Beyond the historical facts, another seed that helped to spring this tale into being was Boris Pasternak’s classic Doctor Zhivago. Not only does Pasternak pull off a compelling love story with the revolution as a backdrop, but I must thank him for the inspiration regarding one of the central themes of my story (i.e. ‘Life isn’t to be postponed’).
The final inspiration comes from the German Neofolk band Rome. It was their poetic-musical piece “The Chronicles of Kronstadt” that sparked the idea for the Futurographer’s grim cartographical approach of using their own deaths as milestones.
Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.