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Tambov Rebellion
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The Tambov Rebellion of 1919–1921 was one of the largest and well organized peasant rebellions against the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War . The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and a part of Voronezh Oblast, less than 300 miles southeast of Moscow. One of rebellion leaders was a former official of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Alexander Antonov, and therefore in Soviet history it was named the Antonovschina.
rebellion was caused by the forceful confiscation of grain by the Bolshevik authorities (policy known as prodrazvyorstka).
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Encyclopedia
The Tambov Rebellion of 1919–1921 was one of the largest and well organized peasant rebellions against the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War . The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and a part of Voronezh Oblast, less than 300 miles southeast of Moscow. One of rebellion leaders was a former official of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Alexander Antonov, and therefore in Soviet history it was named the Antonovschina.
Background
The rebellion was caused by the forceful confiscation of grain by the Bolshevik authorities (policy known as prodrazvyorstka). In 1920 the requisitions were increased from 18 million to 27 million poods in the region, whereas peasants reduced the grain production knowing that anything they did not consume themselves will be immediately confiscated. To fill the state quotas meant a death by starvation . The revolt began on 19 August 1920 in a small town of Khitrovo where a military requisitioning detachment looted everything on its path and "beat up old men of seventy in full view of the public" .
As a distinctive feature of this rebellion among the many of these times, it was led by a political organization, the Union of Toiling Peasants (Soyuz Trudovogo Krestyanstva). A congress of Tambov rebels abolished Soviet power and decided to create a Constituent Assembly under equal voting, and to return all land to the peasants.
The Tambov uprising was one of the main reasons Bolsheviks abandoned the prodrazverstka (forced expropriation of grain) policy, changing it to prodnalog (essentially, a grain/food tax). On February 2, 1921, the Bolshevik Party decided to tailor a special message targeting peasants from the region, announcing the retirement of the old grain policy. This was done ahead of the X Party Congress, where the measure was officially adopted. The announcement started circulating in the Tambov area on February 9, 1921.
Timeline
Alexander Antonov, a radical member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, had sided with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he became disenchanted with them after the Bolshevik's requisition of grain policy was implemented in 1918. Antonov became a popular hero to the people of the Tambov region of central Russia where he started his campaigns.
In October 1920 the peasant army numbered over 50,000 fighters, and was joined by numerous deserters from the Red Army. The rebel militia was highly effective and infiltrated even the Tambov Cheka . Alexander Schlichter, Chairman of the Tambov Gubernia Executive Committee, contacted Lenin, who ordered Red Army reinforcements for the area. In January 1921 peasant revolts spread to Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan, and Siberia.
The seriousness of the uprising called for the creation of the "Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Bolshevik party for liquidation of banditry in the Tambov Gubernia". Nearly 100,000 soldiers were sent in, including special Cheka detachments. The army used heavy artillery and armored trains. The Red Army under Tukhachevsky used to take and execute without trial, civilian hostages. Tukhachevsky and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko signed an order, dated June 12 1921, that stipulated:
Chemical weapons were used "from end of June 1921 until apparently the fall of 1921", by direct order from leadership of Red Army and Communist party Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with the poison gas
Seven Concentration camps were set up. At least 50,000 people were interned, mostly women, children, and elderly, some of them were sent there as hostages. The mortality rate in the camps was 15-20 percent a month.[2]
The uprising was gradually quelled in 1921. Antonov was killed in 1922 during an attempt to arrest him. Total losses among the population of Tambov region in 1920-1922 resulting from the war, executions, and imprisonment in concentration camps were estimated as at least 240,000 [3].
External links
- , including the text of commands given to the red army concerning the use of war gases, taking and executing hostages, deporting of peasant families to Concentration camps.
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See also
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