The end of the smallest and most short-lived Soviet republic!



On December 17, 1917, the smallest and most short-lived Soviet republic in history was formed:

It is the "Soviet republic of seamen and fortress builders" (Советская республика матросов и строителей), which is constituted on the - then still Russian island of Nargen, which dominates the port entrance in front of the Russian naval port of Reval (today Talinn) ...



The republiquette is often referred to as the "Soviet Republic of Nargen" or simply "Free Nargen". Today the island is called Naisssar and belongs to Estonia.

The "inhabitants" of the small Soviet republic are crews from the Russian fortress island of Kronshtadt, who lie there in winter quarters as long as the Baltic Sea is frozen over, as well as pioneer troops who had recently built a considerable fortress on the island ... :





The founders of the republic took action as soon as it became known that the island of Nargen was to be ceded by Russia to one of the Baltic states that were about to gain independence in the course of the German-Russian peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk.

The "Sailors and Shipbuilders Republic" is buying its own ferry - on which the inscription reads: "Shmert Burshui" (Смерть буршуй = "Death to the bourgeois") ...:



And they elect a proper Soviet government, the Council of People's Commissars!

The chairman is the seaman Stepan Maksimowitsch Petrishenko ...



... who belongs to the crew of the Russian battleship "Petropawlowsk" ("Peter and Paul") that the Soviets will later name after the French revolutionary "Marat" ...



Here we see again sailors with the flag of "their" mini Soviet republic ...:





But the Soviet republiquette is not granted a long life:

On February 26, 1918, German troops landed as part of the so-called "Operation Albion", which is actually intended to occupy the large Baltic islands of Saaremaa (Ösel), Hiiumaa (Dagö) and Muhu (Moon). Naissar (Nargen) is basically bagged in passing ...



... before the Germans land in Reval/Tallinn to support Estonia against the Soviets ...:



Just in time the sailors and shipbuilders manage to leave the island with the destroyer "Nowik" (Seagull) and flee to Petrograd!



They leave behind 40 comrades who - at least that's what the Germans later say - were supposedly too drunk to be able to walk.

After the founding of Estonia, the Germans handed them over to the "authorities" there - and in February 1919 all of them were shot by the Estonians.

A simple memorial today commemorates them ...:



Sailor Petrischenko, the ex-chairman of the People's Commissar, fights as a red commander with distinction (two orders of the Red Banner!) during the civil war survives and then returns afterwards to his ship "Petropavlovsk" / "Marat".

In 1921 he will be one of the leaders of the anti-communist Kronshtadt sailors' uprising, which is bloodily suppressed by the Red Army troops under War Commissioner Lev Trotsky and the later Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky ...:







Petrischenko manages to flee across the frozen Baltic Sea to Finland, where he continues his agitation against the communists (he himself was an anarcho-syndicalist)...:
When Finland had to surrender to the Red Army in 1945, Petrischenko was also on the bill presented to the Finns by the landlord Jossif Stalin, who forgot nothing and forgave nothing:

In 1945 the Finns extradite Petrischenko to the NKVD, he is immediately sent to prison in Vladimir - a few weeks later he is dead.

Before they bumped him off, the chekists quickly took a picture of him ...:



There is not much to report about Nargen / Naissar today. The fortress was bombed by the German Air Force during World War II ...



... and what Göring's bomber left over has long since been disarmed or decayed ...:



The most newsworthy are perhaps the hundreds of sea mines from the First World War (!), Which although without detonators are still rotting on the island full of explosives, and which nobody seems to be interested in ...

Fascinating stuff Martin. I've recently read "The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet" by Evan Mawdsley, which touches briefly on this short-lived enterprise. Tallin is a beautiful city.

Phil