Tambov Rebellion
The Tambov Rebellion (1920-1922) was one of the largest uprisings of the peasantry and landowners against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, comparable only in magnitude and organization to the Revolution. Makhnovist. It would go down in Soviet history as the Antónovschina (Анто́новщина) after the name of its leader, Aleksandr Antonov, former member of the Social-Revolutionary Party.
Background
Antónov had been sentenced to twenty years in prison in 1904 for blowing up a train, but received an amnesty from the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, returning to his native Tambov governorate. He served as police chief in Kirsanov until after the October Revolution. As the Provisional Government refused to debate the agrarian problem he joined the left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries.
The landowners hated the Bolsheviks for their forced requisitions of crops as part of war communism. These put the villagers at the limit of survival, since the Bolsheviks did not consider their nutritional needs when demanding their quotas. Another source of hatred was the forced conscriptions that caused numerous fugitives. In the summer of 1919, Antonov fled to the forest for forming a gang that murdered several Bolshevik activists. Thus guerrillas emerged like the one Antonov commanded in the fall, formed by deserters from the Red Army, Socialist Revolutionaries and peasants who resisted the requisitions in the forests. Their first acts were to assassinate officials especially hated by the population and raid state farms. They killed more than 200 government grain collectors and during the following year their forces grew without stopping, going from the initial 150 to 6,000 by the beginning of the year. summer of 1920, but it would have to wait until after the defeat of Anton Denikin's White Army for there to be a true mass uprising. The other leaders of this force were his younger brother, Dmitri Stepanovich Antonov, and the Socialist-Revolutionary Pyotr Mikhailovich. Tokmakov.
Rebellion breaks out
On August 19, 1920, a rebellion broke out in Tambov Oblast. The insurgent peasants were organized through the Union of Peasant Workers (Soyuz Trudovyj Krestyán, Союз Трудовый Крестьян, STK). Possessing their own political program gave them a strength and coherence that others lacked. peasant uprisings. However, this movement was still based on the fed up of the population but without having a clear idea of how to replace the government. Instead, Antonov dreamed of marching on Moscow and ending communist power. They counted with 14,000 or 18,000 men, "deserters for the most part." Of these, five to seven thousand had firearms. On the other hand, according to other sources, at the end of the month the rebels were six groups totaling 4,000 men with a dozen machine guns and several artillery pieces. As the communist authorities were busy with the Polish-Soviet War and Pyotr Wrangel's offensive in the Taurids, they only had 3,000 unreliable troops in that oblast. The first to suffer the Fury of the villagers were the detachments in charge of requisitioning the grains.
The rebels tried to march on the city of Tambov. A "crowd of pieds-nus" of all sexes and ages, which grew like a snowball and was joined by some red deserters, headed as a kind of "pilgrimage" to the city., but it was dispersed by machine guns just ten kilometers from its objective.
At the end of October, the head of the VOJR in the Tambov governorate, Vasili Kornev, faced the blues in a series of battles. According to his letters, he killed 3,000, wounded 300, and captured 1,000 along with numerous weapons, ammunition, and supplies (such as a telephone and a field kitchen). His casualties were 90 dead and less than 200 wounded. In any case, he was blamed for the rebellion and removed. Some sources say that the blues were barely 8,000 cavalry in November.
Soon the Tambov, Saratov, Penza and part of Voronezh oblasts were in arms. A territory populated by more than three million people, 90% farmers and artisans. The region was densely populated, with rich lands and full of forests that offered many jobs, especially since they had appropriated the lands in 1917 and expelled the owners, but the demands of the Bolshevik government and the Russian civil war prevented them from taking advantage, which only encouraged the insurrection. The seriousness of the armed uprising forced the creation of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the Russian Central Executive Committee of the Bolshevik Party for the Liquidation of Banditry in the Tambov Province.
Although the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (SR) had inspired the movement, its leaders never fully agreed with its postulates and no important member of the Socialist-Revolutionaries was among them, the persecution suffered after their failed uprising prevented them from doing so.
Climax of the rebellion
On November 5, two to six thousand blues, most on horseback, attacked the Sampur railway station in two coordinated groups, capturing a cannon, some machine guns and numerous revolvers and rifles. They failed in their attempt to sabotage the railway lines and quickly withdrew. At that time, Bolshevik reports said that two thousand partisans were still in the Novokhoper forests, near the station. The main source of information that the peasants had about what happened On other fronts they were red prisoners. In that month the Bolsheviks in the region were barely 5,000.
At the peak of their power, thanks to their strong popular support, the blues between October 1920 and January 1921 mobilized 50,000 partisans. In February it would be 30,000 to 70,000, but it was probably 20,000 or 40,000. Others speak of 20,000 full-time combatants and the same number part-time. Around 6,000 would be mounted, hindering government troops, whose lack of mobility undermined their effectiveness.
They never formed an "organized guerrilla army." Due to this, most of their actions were impulsive assaults orchestrated by each band against the Bolshevik detachments in charge of requisitioning grain or repressing the villagers, a lack of coordination that, added due to their poor weapons and training and the lack of a clear political program, was decisive for their defeat.
They were organized into two armies divided into a total of 21 regiments. The guerrillas were based on the old tactic of attacking unexpectedly where they were not expected and fleeing immediately afterwards thanks to their superior knowledge of the terrain and mobility of their cavalry. Each village was in charge of equipping and maintaining a group of these combatants, which was easy since many were locals defending their communities. That localism also worked against them, being too closed in on themselves prevented them from seeking allies in other peasant movements. or march against the big cities, whose control was what worried the Bolsheviks because their source of support was the industrial proletariat.
By the end of the year the blues had achieved one of the main objectives, the reds had stopped sending units to their territories to requisition grain. The officials of the uyezd towns south of Tambov were incapable of such action, their resources were destined only to garrison the villages under their control, but the north was at peace, as it was not a large food-producing region, it never experienced requisitions. nor did the revolt start. The lack of heavy weapons prevented the rebels from taking over the cities for a long time, which became refuges for communists and government officials. During that December, reinforcements from the Cheka began to arrive, which reached have 3,500 combatants in the area. Two months later, its leader, Félix Dzerzhinski, would arrive to direct its operations.
During that time, garrison officers and local communist militants complained about the increasing abandonment of Moscow, from where fewer and fewer supplies and reinforcements were being sent to them. In reality, the military circles of the Red Command had decided to concentrate on a great pacification campaign in Tambov: as soon as their troops flooded the province, the movement would soon be put to an end. Furthermore, it was increasingly difficult to help them because their main communication links, the armored trains, were continually attacked in the area. During the winter of 1920-1921, the food reserves in many towns were exhausted, such as in Kozlov and Morshank, towns located on the limits of the rebel zone and whose communist garrison saw the majority of its inhabitants leave or dedicate themselves to the black market to survive.
On January 23, 1921, 250 mounted cadets of the 6th Volche-Karachán regiment managed to defend the town of Borisoglebsk from a significant rebel contingent. For the communists it was key to keep that town and Kirsanov in their hands, since it was their bastions in the middle of the fields controlled by the blues. During that month the red authorities demobilized 4,000 locals who served in communist garrisons for not trusting They immediately joined the partisans. On March 20, a general amnesty was announced for anyone who surrendered. During the two weeks that he ruled, about 3,000 blues capitulated, but very few had weapons in hand. They began to fight. draw up lists of hostages, take the first hostages, try to turn the poor peasants against the kulaks and reduce the required grain quotas (on the advice of Nikolai Bukharin). By then, Bolshevik power had disappeared from almost the entire region. despite having 32,500 infantry soldiers and 8,000 cavalry plus machine guns and cannons in the area.
The blues were able to mobilize large field armies. On April 11, Antonov assembles 5,000 blues and launches a pincer attack on Rasskázovo (an hour earlier he launched a diversionary attack on Nizhne-Spasskoe with a small force). The garrison was made up of a company of infantry, a unit of communist militants, a machine gun platoon, the Volga Infantry Brigade, arriving in January from Saratov, and the 2nd. Cheka regiment and quickly collapsed. Their objective was achieved: a cannon with two or three hundred rounds, eleven machine guns, four hundred rifles, one hundred thousand ammunition, eighty telephones and 50 verst of cable). On April 24 they gathered at the village of Kobiaki five to ten thousand fighters under the command of "Vaska Karás" (identified as Vasili V. Nikitin-Koroliov) and Vasili F. Selianski. Not everyone participated in the battle. They intended to take the town of Kirsanov, whose garrison was a Moscow infantry brigade led by the cavalry commander V. I. Dmitrenko. A day later they launched two equally unsuccessful assaults, abandoning 22 machine guns, small arms and ammunition of the victors. Pursued by the enemy cavalry, the blues had 2,000 dead in the following days according to estimates by the communist government.
Reconquest campaign
On April 26, Lenin commissioned generals Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Ieronim Uborevich to subdue the revolt. The political coordination of the operations was in charge of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko. Georgy Zhukov obtained his first decoration in this campaign.
On May 6, Tukhachevsky announces his pacification campaign. That month a powerful army of 30,000, 50,000, or 100,000 Red soldiers arrived in the southern part of the oblast. The plan was to "flood the rebellion area with troops." They included regular forces, Chinese "internationalists," and Hungarians and detachments of the Cheka, the ChON and the VOJR, although the decisive contingents were the numerous cadets and horsemen who arrived. They were supported by 70 pieces of heavy artillery, hundreds of machine guns, 3 armored units, an airplane, armored trains and chemical weapons left over from World War I arsenals.
On May 31, seven armored vehicles under the command of General Iván Fedkó surprised 3,000 blues in the town of Dve Sestritsy and dispersed them with heavy casualties. Two infantry brigades and one of veteran cavalry under the command of General Grigori Kotovski were assigned to the Tambov sector. During the first two weeks of May 15,000 Red Army officers concentrated in Tambov to prepare the campaign. On June 1, Fedkó with three vehicles armed with machine guns, Kotovski's horsemen and the cavalry brigade M. D. Kovalov's Siberian forces attacked Antonov and the 3,000 partisans with whom he occupied Elan by surprise at dawn. Although the rebels managed to repel the armored vehicles with their rifles, they fled before Kovaliov's cavalry. On the 6th, the armored vehicles under the command of Fedkó achieved a new victory near Chernyshovo. Between June 1 and 9, three Bolshevik forces led by Uborevich launched a coordinated attack with seven armored vehicles against the rebel stronghold of the Tambov uyezd, near the village of Kamenka, facing 2,000 blues led by Antonov and Boguslavski in six battles. 800 partisans die. The region between Tambov and Kirsanov was pacified. These three forces intended to converge on Rzhaka: Dmitrenko's cavalry brigade (2,000 men from the Sampur station in the Tambov uyezd), Kotovski's cavalry brigade (1,000 soldiers from Lomovis station in Kirsanov uyezd) and 14a. cavalry brigade (1,000 cavalry across the Vorona River from Karái-Púshkino in the Kirsanov uyezd). Two weeks later, the rebel commander Aleksandr Boguslavski died in combat. Tokmakov, Karás and Selyansky met the same fate. At the end of June the rebellion was practically defeated.
By the month of September they had been reduced to a thousand due to the massive arrival of red troops. At the end of that year there were no more than 4,000 blue left on the warpath. With almost all of their leaders dead, the last Parties took refuge in swamps and forests under constant persecution.
The Antonov brothers and several of their last followers died in combat against a Red detachment on June 24, 1922 in the village of Nizhny Shibriai, where they hid their few personal possessions. The Cheka wanted to arrest them and set fire to the house where they took refuge and when they tried to flee they shot them down. By then their movement was reduced to a few parties.
Consequences
Usually the relatives of the rebels were used as hostages, others were held at random and in some cases it was entire villages. Between 50,000 and 100,000 villagers were interned in concentration camps and the majority ended up in the more than one hundred gulags created by the communist state. Relatively few were freed or executed, "barely" 15,000 are shot. In any case, mass executions of suspected villagers and prisoners were frequent in the towns.
Some villages were burned completely. Property confiscated from arrested and exiled families was handed over to supporters or collaborators of the regime. The activities of the Cheka, the incorporation of thousands of locals into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (with the benefits that it implied) and the concessions of the NEP helped the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1921 to calm the situation, especially the end of grain requisitions.
The total number of deaths was 240,000, mainly civilians.