If you watch it closely, history has a way of eerily repeating itself in detail. And if you don't watch it, you just become that repetition.
In 1921 the world was still reeling from the shock waves of WWI and the Bolshevik economy was collapsing in the midst of the Russian Civil War. In that year the number of peasant uprisings in Russia rose to over a hundred because Bolshevik policy was threatening starvation.
The worker strikes in Petrograd caused the Russian anarchist revolutionaries consisting of sailors, soldiers and civilians stationed in the Kronstadt naval fortress base of Kotlin Island (Gulf of Finland) to investigate the situation. Petrograd was only 30 miles away. Trotsky had called these sailors "the pride and glory of the Russian Revolution."
The investigative findings of these darlings of Trotsky led to a call on the Bolshevik forces for immediate new elections. They demanded freedom of speech and press for workers, peasants, anarchists, and all Left Socialist Parties; the liberation of all political prisoners and workers and peasants imprisoned. It was a demand for equality of voice across the board within the civil war situation to guarantee that the direction taken by Russia would reflect the true desires of the people.
The Bolsheviks responded by calling Trotsky's darlings French spies and "Black Hundreds": any anti-Bolshevik force. The Red Army led by Trotsky attacked Kronstadt resulting in many thousands being killed in battle, summarily executed afterward, or imprisoned. From that point on no dissent was allowed in Red Russia and the Trotsky-Lenin-Stalin nightmare unfolded. We know where it went.
The Kronstadt anarchists were the true Russian Revolutionaries. The true friends of Russia and the world.
Today, at the heart of the Syrian Civil War, in the three cantons of Jazira, Afrin, and Kobane lying on the Turkey-Syria border, the anarchists of Rojava are successfully building a community of equality of voice. Originally Kurds in resistance to Turkish oppression and now multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, they are building their community in the heart of a civil war that is threatening to become a global war. They are the true friends of Kurdish, Syrian, and all other peoples of the world. They are fighting in alliance with Russia. So once again the forces controlling Russia are confronted with the questions and demands raised by a relatively small group of anarchists fighting bravely by their side.
I am giving my support to Putin and in Syria. But if he betrays Rojava as Kronstadt was betrayed, the ghost of Rojava will track him down just as the ghost of Kronstadt tracked down the Soviet giant. Just as the ghosts of all the true freedom fighters ever betrayed by the USA are now tracking down that giant.
You cannot escape the ghost who knows you for what you are. No one escapes history.