Peasant historian T.V. Osipova believes that even with the transfer of all privately owned lands to the community, the cutting of arable land would be less than 1 tithe, as it turned out in 1918. which did not bring significant changes to the system of communal land use. The land issue in Russia was not a shortage of land, but the preservation of inefficient farming practices practiced by the community, outdated forms of land use in the provinces of central Russia. The way out was not in the expansion of peasant land ownership, but in the intensification of agricultural production, in search of new forms of farming Osipova T. From the "Great Reform to the Great Revolution" // Teaching history at school. - 2006. - No. 8. - P.6 ..

During the civil war, the influx of the urban population into the countryside intensified, and thus the land tightness increased. In the Tambov district in 1884. one village had an average of 92 households, in 1920. - 168. Over the same years, the availability of land for a cash soul decreased from 2.8 to 0.88 Kabanov V.V. Peasant economy in the conditions of "war communism" .- M., 1988.-S.57. As a result of the redistribution of land in the Saratov and Tambov provinces, the fragmentation of land and distant land increased, in some places up to 30-50 versts. In the Kozlovsky district of the Tambov province, distant lands appeared for 80 and even 100 miles.

The characteristic phenomenon of the Tambov province - distant lands and the chronic emptying of individual lands associated with it - was not overcome. About a third of all villages were villages with more than 300 households. The villages of the former state peasants reached especially large sizes, their allotments were characterized by both striped stripes and the commonality of possessions (single-plan villages). The former landowning peasants in the villages of various estates retained their main shortcomings: narrow stripes and pretentiousness of the outlines of allotments. As a result, the peasants who received the land were not able to cultivate it all because of the distance. This happened in the Kirsanovsky and Morshansky districts of the Tambov province. In the Lemeshkinsky volost of the Kamyshensky district of the Saratov province, among the reasons for undersowing in 1919. the distant land was also called, reaching here 20-30 versts Ibid. S.53-54. Even in the second half of the 1920s, the problem of land management in the Tambov province was quite acute, and during the civil war, the peasants had only begun to redistribute the land and could not solve the problem of allocating land in such a short period of time Peasant stories: the Russian village in 1920- x years. in letters and documents. - M., 2001.-S.198 .. In 1917-1918. illusions about a quick solution to problems with the land collapsed.

In the first years of Soviet power, a new type of labor land use arose - collective, which was based on joint labor and public ownership of the means of production. By the end of 1920. in the country there were 10.5 thousand collective farms, uniting 131 thousand peasant households. Their total land area was estimated at about 1.2 million hectares. Both in terms of the number of peasant households and in terms of land area, the share of collective farms was about 0.54%. These were the first sprouts of a new social system in the countryside. The bulk of the collective farms occupied plots of former landowners. The presence of a large number of estates in the Central Chernozem region and in the Volga region also led to the predominant emergence of collective farms on this basis Kabanov V.V. Peasant economy in the conditions of "war communism" .- M., 1988.- S.83-84 ..

In the Saratov province, collective farms owned 37,970 thousand acres, while state farms in the Tambov province were given 72 thousand acres, which already suffered from land shortages and distant land. S.244; Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921 - Tambov, 1994.-P.229 .. V.A. Antonov-Ovsienko, in a report to the Central Committee of the RCP (b), writes: “Not a single state farm has been set up in any way tolerably - everyone is at a loss, everyone uses peasant labor (from the bottom), and very few (Ivanovsky state farm in Tambov district) provide some substantial assistance to the village.

And the attitude towards the state farms (through them towards the Soviet power) is almost universally hostile among the peasants.

The same hostile attitude is met in most cases by collective farms, which until recently have been diligently planted: in collectivization, the Tambov province is ahead of the others, but the craving for collective farming, naturally intensified with the depletion of inventory, etc. was over the edge encouraged by various benefits, bonuses. Both in state farms and in collective farms, the former landowners, managers or courtyard people often settled. Collective farms, no less than state farms, have become a refuge for the disabled and the idlers; only a very few of them are of economic value and successfully resist the captious criticism of individual farmers. Friendly attention was paid to the land management of the collective farms and state farms, but the land management of the individual peasants had barely begun. The striped land, the distant lands oppress the Tambov peasant heavily. The issue of resettlement is perhaps the most painful issue in the province” Ibid. pp.229-230. In many respects, the position of state farms was kept at the expense of the forced labor of the peasants. Morshansk district land department dated October 26, 1918. ordered the peasants of the villages of Kamenki, Pominayki, the villages of Boyarovka and Milashki to plow the land of Soviet farms at a price of 60 rubles. for plowing with a two-share plow and 120 rubles each for a one-share plow. The land district threatened that if the order was not fulfilled, several kulaks would be shot.

Already in May 1918. there were protests of the peasants against the communes of the same place. P.346. In the report of the OGPU dated March 9, 1923, there is such an interesting fact: “The dissatisfaction of the peasants of the Tambov province is caused by the poor management of state farms. The farms of the Zemetchinsky sugar factory are worse than the peasants. Part of the land is empty. The harvest was not realized on time. In addition, at the head of this state farm and the state farm of railway workers are the former managers of the counts Dolgorukov and Vorontsov-Dashkov. Some managers have hardly changed their attitude towards the peasants and the peasants therefore look at state farms as landowners' lands "Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD. - M., 2000. - T.2. - P. 78 ..

In 1920 the fields of state farms were plowed and sown, for the most part, with the help of forced labor of deserters and peasants, who were forced by force of arms to cultivate not their own lands, but the fields of Soviet farms. So it was in the village of Melguny, where the armed guards of the neighboring sugar factory blocked all exits from the village and fired into the air, using violence, forced the peasants to go to cultivate the fields belonging to the Melgunov sugar factory. The peasants asked: “How exactly does Bolshevik socialism differ from serfdom?” Kapustin M.P. End of utopia? Past and Future of Socialism.- M., 1990.- P.132; Ovechkin V.V. Desertion from the Red Army during the Civil War // Issues of History. - 2003. - No. 3. - P. 116. Authorized executive committee T.I. Yakushin writes in his report: “Kulaks, wise men, organized in artels, freed from horse-drawn, labor service, and they are not able to cultivate the land they took for cultivation, they resort to free hiring, which, of course, seems impossible, they turn to the soviets for help. The Soviets are forcibly compelling the middle peasants to work the land for the kulak as well. The middle peasant performs all the horse-drawn service and grain distribution both for himself and for the loafers who call themselves proletarians, as a result of which there is no desire to cultivate the excess land and raise cattle, to work for people, and therefore more than half of the sown area is not sown and few cattle are bred, to which you need to pay the most serious attention.

The peasants must be given the opportunity to continue to use the land, if possible, at least in the same way that they previously used the land belonging to the Soviet economy for their work, as they used to use it from the landlord, renting, if not for cultivation, then at least for cattle pastures. And now there are cases where even this is not allowed to the peasants. It turns out that they are worse now than when the landowner was in this place. The great ideas of social revolution, for the reason indicated above, are still alien to them. They need to actually prove the good sides of the worker-peasant power "Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921 - Tambov, 1994.-S.67-68 ..

The very same economic situation of state farms was deplorable. According to the statement of the chairman of the congress, citizen Smolensky, the state farms of the Tambov province not only failed to justify since 1919. hopes placed on them, but already now they themselves presented a demand to the regional food committee for the delivery of food and seed grains in the total amount of 2 million poods. “Soviet farms have collapsed,” the first speaker on the “current situation,” citizen Nemtsov, a member of the provincial committee of the RCP, citizen Nemtsov, frankly confessed at the congress, “the proletarian-peasant management in state farms turned out to be ugly, the bread either remained not harvested under the snow or the harvested rotted.”

Thus, only 140 acres of winter crops out of 820 acres of arable land were sown at the Alexandrovsky state farm of the Tambov province, but even these results were achieved solely through the “mobilization of citizens” (i.e., the surrounding peasants). By forcibly attracting peasants to work, he removed a small part of his land and the Plavitsky state farm, Lipetsk district, Tambov province. Where the peasants cannot be mobilized for work, the situation for the state farms is completely hopeless. For example, in the Zinoviev state farm of the Usman district, out of 1,500 acres of land, it was possible to sow in the fall of 1919. only 22 acres. The harvest on the state farms of the Tambov province was much lower than the harvest on the peasant fields. Even in the Ivanovsky state farm of the Tambov district (the former estate of the princes of Leuchtenberg), which stands out for its relatively prosperous state of affairs, 168 acres of rye yielded only 6375 pounds.

Dairy farming in the state farms of the Tambov province was no better than grain farming. So, out of 67 cows, listed at the state farm "Gromok" in the Tambov district, only 26 are considered milk cows, giving a daily milk yield of 170 pounds. The picture is the same in other state farms. Cattle care is so careless that in some state farms, according to a statement at the congress of the agronomist Zolotarev, "the cattle was left unfed for several days."

“In the Znamensky state farm (Tambov district,” citizen Zolotarev said, “the horses were fed so well that from hunger they gnawed everything that was in the wooden stable. The dead horse lay in the stable for two weeks, uncleaned.

In 1920 for state farms of the province, 5,300 working horses were required, but there were only 900 heads (17%), most of them infected with scabies and falling heavily from starvation; 4000 calves are required - there are 142, for 900 horses there are only 452 sets of harnesses.

At another state farm, the commissioner was not able to determine how many seeders there were, because all of them, piled up in a heap in the yard, were covered with a mountain of snow. Ibid. P.37,48,49.. The peasants of the Tambov province, who suffered from lack of land and striped land, could not accept the vast possessions of collective farms, which already exacerbated the problem of lack of land. For many years, the peasants fought against landlordism, and in 1917-1918. It turned out that the “black redistribution” did not solve the problem of land shortage. In 1918 Collective farms arise on the basis of landownership and exploit the peasants. Hatred of landownership was transferred to the property of collective farms, and disappointment and the collapse of illusions turned into aggressiveness towards collective farms.

In 1920 the volume of surplus appropriation was simply unbearable, although both the Saratov and Tambov provinces suffered from a severe drought.

The local authorities in the Tambov region made a mistake: 46% of the surplus appropriation accounted for 3 counties, which became the focus of "Antonovshchina" Dyachkov V.L., Esikov S.A., Kanishchev V.V., Protasov L.G. Peasants and power (experience of regional study) // Mentality and agrarian development.- M., 1996.- P.153..

The food department often showed mismanagement. In the winter of 1919-1920 about 60 thousand pounds of potatoes died, 4 thousand pounds of confiscated grain were eaten by rats Kapustin M.P. End of utopia? Past and future of socialism.- M., 1990.- P.133..

Historian A.A. Ilyukhov writes: “As a result, bagmen delivered to the city and towns for 1919-1920. not less than 30 million poods of bread per year, which amounted to 64.4% of all consumed bread. The food authorities ensured the delivery of 18 million poods, or 35.6%. These figures convincingly show the real effectiveness of the food dictatorship in Russia” Ilyukhov A.A. Life in an era of change: the financial situation of urban residents. - M., 2007. - P. 148 ..

In addition, in 1920 typhoid prevailed in the Tambov province Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921 - Tambov, 1994. - P. 152 .. It is difficult to agree with the conclusion of A.M. Anfimov about the "grossbauers" as the basis of the kulak revolt in the Tambov province Anfimov A.M. The Russian village during the First World War (1914 - February 1917). - M., 1962. - P. 203 .. Firstly, the uprising was raised by the peasants of 3 counties, and not the entire Tambov province; secondly, V.V. Samoshkin claims that over 90% of the rebellious peasants belonged to the poor and middle peasants, and the backbone of the Antonov regiments were deserters Dementiev V.D. The uprising of the peasants in the Tambov region in 1920-1921: a review of the literature // History of the USSR. - 1990. - No. 6. - P. 106; thirdly, in a letter from the land surveyor of the Kirsanov Uzem Department Nasonov, it was reported that the “bandits” were dressed in rags, often barefoot, exhausted. fourthly, in some villages of the Kirsanov district, more than 80% of the male population consisted of detachments Trifonov I.Ya. Classes and class struggle in the USSR at the beginning of the NEP. - L., 1964. - Part 1. - P. 93., And some villages, having seen the atrocities of the Antonovites, did not join the detachments of the Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. - Tambov, 1994.- P.70. Consequently, not only economic motives influenced the behavior of the peasants.

The main and common cause of the discontent of the peasants was the unbearable surplus appropriation and the abuse of food detachments.

Only in the Tambov province, a peasant uprising broke out in three counties, and there was no epicenter in the Saratov province.

The policy towards religion and the Russian Orthodox Church provoked protest from the peasants of the Tambov province. The local authorities acted most harshly in this matter.

In the autumn of 1918, unrest broke out in the Tambov province. The instigators of the uprising were declared former officers and clergy. The head of the detachment for the suppression of peasant revolts reported: “Now we are catching the instigators. According to the interrogations of those arrested and according to the documents of those killed, leaders, former officers and priests were identified. In total, 6 priests were shot” Peasant movement in the Tambov province, 1917-1918. - M., 2003.- P.388 .. In Temnikovo in June 1920. there was an uprising of the townspeople and peasants of the urban environs due to the closure of monasteries. The Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka - OGPU-NKVD.- M., 2000.- V.1.- P.270 .. The decree on the separation of church and state also aroused indignation and gave rise to various rumors. In the message of the Nekrasovsky volost council of the Tambov district, there are such data: “The mood of the population is inflated, the minority is benevolent, the population relates to the masses, indicating that the orders are not issued freely locally, but from above, without freedom. The separation of the church from the state, according to the masses of the population, is like the murder of religion in the bud on the part of the Jewish nation "Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921 - Tambov, 1994. - P. 23 .. Rumors appeared in the summer of 1920. that “communists are the antecedents of the Antichrist” Ibid. P.47..

In the Usman district, such a rumor dominated that "Soviet power will exist only for 42 months, then monarchical rule will come" Ibid. P.47..

In the Tambov province, there were about 3 thousand Baptists who did not accept the ideas of the October Revolution Mitrokhin L.N. Baptism: history and modernity. - SPb., 1997. - P. 249 .. In the Saratov province there were arrests of clergy, dispersal of religious holidays, which ended in clashes with local authorities, dissatisfaction due to the removal of religious subjects from school curricula, but there were no excesses in this matter Peasant movement in the Volga region. 1919-1922 - M., 2002.- S.46-47. .

Dissatisfaction was caused by the incompetent actions of the local authorities of the peasants in the Tambov region, and in the Saratov province - the cruelty and violence of the punitive detachments.

Historian Gimpelson believes that the Soviet leading cadres of 1917-1920. were far from ideal Gimpelson E.G. Leading Soviet personnel: 1917-1920s. // Patriotic history. - 2004. - No. 6. - P. 62-63. Cheka instructor A.P. Smirnov, in a report to the chairman of the Cheka, F. Dzerzhinsky, writes: “Local councils and cells of communists, which have nothing to do with communism, get drunk to the point of impossibility, take away from citizens what falls into their hands, for which no receipts are issued, and also where they go the selected items are also not listed anywhere. In my free hours, as on my first trip, I organized rallies and meetings, which were attended by 1 thousand people or more, everywhere and everywhere there were only exclamations: “They don’t explain this to us, but we only hear “Arrest! Let's shoot! We are the authorities, therefore we are afraid” The Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD. - M., 2000. - V.1. - P.122-123.. The first part of the gubchek in the Tambov region ended up in prison. The same fate befell the second team that replaced it. All leaders of the gubchek were arrested and condemned. Samoshkin V.V. Mutiny. Antonovshchina: eve and beginning // Literary newspaper. - 1990. - No. 23. - P. 19 Dvoryanchikov, Cheremukhin, Ivanov-Pavlov became famous for their cruelty in the Saratov province.

Dvoryanchikov shot 60 innocent peasants in the village of Bakury Peasant movement in the Volga region. 1919-1922 - M., 2002. - P.83. In the telegram of the chairman of the Volskaya, uchek Vlasenko dated August 8, 1919. It is reported: “The commissioner of the regional product, Ivanov-Pavlov, by illegal wrong actions causes fermentation in the mass, is engaged in eviction, arrest of White Guard peasant families, arresting old men, women, up to infants, confiscates property, distributing it to the detachment” Ibid. P.291..

ON THE. Cheremukhin writes in the protocol of testimony that "during the period from July 1918 to September 22, he shot 130 people in the districts" Ibid. P.298..

Saratov province experienced in 1920. severe drought. Up to 6.8 poods per tithe was harvested in the Saratov province, although the average annual harvest was about 50 poods per tithe. The Saratov province was among the provinces of the Volga region and the Black Earth Center most affected by the drought Kabanov V.V. Peasant economy in the conditions of "war communism" .- M., 1988. - P. 41 .. Historian V.V. Kondrashin claims that the hungry years of 1921-1922. left an indelible mark in the memory of the peasants Kondroshin V.V. Hunger in the peasant mentality // Mentality and agrarian development. - M., - 1996. - P.123.. If in the Tambov province the peasant uprising arose primarily because of the incorrectly distributed food requisition, then in the Saratov province because of the unbearable food requisition and hunger.

Saratov and Tambov provinces were front-line, so additional duties fell on the peasants: duty, construction of fortifications Kabanov V.V. Peasant economy in the conditions of "war communism". - M., 1988. - P.194-196..

However, Tambov province suffered more than Saratov. The raid of Mamontov's troops dealt a tangible blow to the economy of the province Samoshkin V.V. Alexander Stepanovich Antonov // Questions of history. - 1994. - No. 2. - P.70.. There were quartered troops here, units of the Red Army passed through the Tambov province. The southern districts saw dozens of Red Army units that lived on pasture, little regard for the needs of the peasant economy Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. - Tambov, 1994. - P. 230 ..

In a letter from the peasants of the village of Mednoye, Tambov province, it is reported: “Remaining half-starved ourselves, nevertheless, with the most extreme exertion of our forces, we completed 85% of the apportionment. But, unfortunately, with all the ardent participation in the fate of the fatherland and in the suffering of the hungry brothers of the proletarians, we did not have enough of our forces to carry out the apportionment in the amounts presented. The reason for this was, on the one hand, a poor harvest of grain, on the other hand, the passage through our village during the mammoth allotment of military units of the Red Army, who stole a lot of spring bread and also took a lot of cattle. - M., 1998. - P. 195 ..

Viktor Druzhinovich in a letter informs V.I. Lenin: “Often when the whites occupied a certain point, such as the city of Tambov, we left huge stocks of food, textiles, footwear and other consumer goods (the military base warehouse was transferred from Tambov in advance). The population, not satisfied in these benefits, or satisfied in more than a limited number, at the sight of such huge stocks, plundered and exported by whole carts of whites, comes into terrible indignation, accompanied by curses against Soviet power ... "The peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919- 1921 - Tambov, 1994. - P.35.

From the actions of the Red Army and the White Cossacks, the state farms of Ibid. suffered greatly. P.49.. Discontent caused mobilization in the Red Army in the Tambov and Saratov provinces. Reports of the Cheka for 1918-1919. full of reports about the attack of detachments of deserters at the station, battles with the Red Army units. The Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD. - M., 2000. - T.1. - P.136,139,160,193,195,210,212,221,224. In connection with the offensive of Denikin and the White Poles, the number of deserters decreased. Ibid. P.182; Samoshkin V.V. Mutiny. Antonovshchina: eve and beginning // Literary newspaper. - 1990. - No. 23. - P.18 .. By the beginning of the rebellion (August 1920), about 110 thousand deserters remained in the Tambov province. Moreover, 60 thousand of them were hiding in just three future rebellious districts - Tambov, Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky. It was these deserters who later formed the main backbone of the Antonov regiments. Ibid. P.18.. In the reports of the Cheka from June 16-30, 1920. it is reported that there are especially many deserters in the Kirsanovsky district of the Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD. - M., 2000. - T.1. - P.253..

From the end of 1919 the number of deserters began to decrease in the Saratov province Danilov V.P., Esikov S.A., Kanishchev V.V., Protasov L.G. Introduction // Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. - Tambov, 1994. - P..314.. The main reason for the voluntary appearance is not only Denikin's offensive, but also the use of repressive measures against the families of deserters in the retribution of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front. To all citizens of the Volga region and the Urals dated April 14, 1919. it was stated that "every family that concealed a deserter would be subject to severe liability under the laws of war" Ibid. P.224. Historian V.V. Kondrashin believes that in the first half of 1920. There were about 110,000 deserters in the territory of the Volga Military District. That is, in the Tambov province there were much more Danilov V.P., Kondroshin V.V. Introduction // Peasant movement in the Volga region. 1919-1922 - M., 2002.- P.18.

Many deserters had front-line experience in both Tambov and Saratov provinces. In June 1918 even Tambov, Borisoglebsk and Kozlov were for a short time at the mercy of the rebel mobilized peasant movement in the Tambov province, 1917-1918. - M., 2003. - S.363. Part of the front-line soldiers of the Saratov province supported the Soviet government, and many of them in 1918. voluntarily became Red Army soldiers Posadsky A.V. Peasant volunteering in the Red Army 1918 (experience of regional analysis) // Sotsis. - 2006. - No. 10. - P.133.. Another part of the front-line soldiers could not settle in the new real conditions and hated the existing order. Saratov front-line soldier P.Ya. Shapovalov writes: “You, comrades, find the decree of the times of the government wrong. But why haven't you taken care of us until now. You know very well that they let us into the winter without warm clothes and shoes, and that the unmarried have no home, no shelter, no piece of bread, and no one has prepared anything for us, and many came only skeletons; few capable of hard work. What should we do: go to the bourgeoisie to bow or act like hooligans? is this fair? And you treat us so cold-bloodedly (and so, where you don’t listen, robbery and theft are everywhere, and that under hooliganism, the heart is torn from pain). Why didn't we suffer as much as family? They spent a lot of capital on them, but we didn’t have a penny, it’s very painful and insulting for us ... But a year has passed and we don’t have to rejoice because we don’t have any means to live, and 40 years have passed and I’m single and there is no family hearth ”Letters to the authorities: 1917 -1927 - M., 1998. - P.55..

In 1921 in the Tambov province, demobilized Red Army soldiers appear, who in many ways will join the ranks of the rebels. Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. - Tambov, 1994. - P.145 .. Antonovshchina was the most striking episode in a series of peasant uprisings against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks, but workers of a few enterprises located in this peasant province also took part in the Tambov events on the side of the rebels. A certain comrade Obyedkov, apparently some kind of professional functionary, wrote in September 1920: in the Central Committee of the Union of Textile Workers, that here both the peasants and the workers are absolutely counter-revolutionary, and therefore Antonov made the first uprising at the station and the village of Sampur, where the peasants and workers, of course, joined the gang of Pavlyuchenkov S.A. War Communism in Russia: Power and the Masses. - M., 1997. - P.157. In the Saratov province, with the exception of Rtishchevo stations, such a trend was not observed. The peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. - Tambov, 1994. - P. 143 ..

Thus, the situation for an organized uprising for Borisoglebsky, Tambov, Kirsanovsky districts developed. These counties became the epicenter of the uprising. In the Saratov province, the epicenter did not work out.

In 2005, the Tambov Vendee exhibition was opened at the Tambov Regional Museum of Local Lore. It is dedicated to one of the most tragic pages in the regional and Russian history - the peasant war in the Tambov region of 1920-1921, when the new government and peaceful farmers, driven to despair by the thoughtless and cruel food policy of the Soviet state, clashed in a fierce confrontation. The authors of the exhibition raised the problem of an objective assessment of historical events. According to their plan, it is necessary to “rise above the fight”, not to blame either side, to show that there are no winners in a civil war, that bitterness at the time of the Tambov peasant uprising reached an outrageous degree, and blood flowed like a river. The exhibition features about two hundred exhibits. These are unique documents, photographs, personal belongings of participants in the events from the funds of the Tambov Regional Museum of Local Lore, the archive of the FSB in the Tambov Region, the State Archive of the Tambov Region. Most of the materials are exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition was met with skepticism. After all, for decades our compatriots were in captivity of the great historical untruth. The official Soviet historical science considered "Antonovshchina" as a kulak-Socialist-Revolutionary bandit rebellion, "taking the form of political banditry with a semi-criminal tinge." The organizers of the exhibition were asked to rearrange the accents and "show more atrocities of bandits." Based on the concept of the exhibition, the authors sought to present a significant array of documents of the two opposing sides, diverse in terms of species and thematic composition: orders, reports, leaflets, appeals. The principle of objectivity required evidence of the brutality of the hostile parties. However, in complete contradiction to the unequivocal opinion still prevailing, formed from the standpoint of Soviet historiography, documentary evidence of the atrocities of Antonov's army could not be found. There were no villages and villages burned by the rebels, there were no hostages and reprisals against the civilian population. Discipline in Antonov's army was regulated by the "Temporary Regulations on Punishments Under the Jurisdiction of Army Courts", according to which even "rude treatment of prisoners" was severely punished. The partisans were ruthless and merciless towards the "hard-stoned" communists - they executed captured commissars, red commanders, leaders of food detachments. Ordinary Red Army soldiers, after political conversations about the goals and causes of the “nationwide uprising against communist rapists,” were offered to join the ranks of the rebels; if they refused, they were given a “vacation” - a document with which they freely returned to their unit or home.

However, until now in Russia, including in the Tambov region, where the most powerful anti-communist uprising of the peasants took place in 1920-1921, they do not know, moreover, they do not want to know anything that could shake the usual position of an extremely negative attitude towards the leader of the uprising, Alexander Stepanovich Antonov and to the movement he led.

Here is just one telling example. In the old prosperous village of Parevka, Kirsanovsky district, in June 1921, in pursuance of order No. 171 of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, hostages were captured and shot. According to some sources, 86 women, old people and children, according to others - 126. In the local school museum you can see photographs of security officers, village councilors - "those who established Soviet power in the Tambov region." The well-known film director Andrei Smirnov visited the museum during the filming of the feature film “Once upon a time there was a woman”, he asked the teacher who showed him the exposition: “Where is the memory of those fellow villagers who were shot in 1921?” In response, I heard: "Well, we were taught that these are bandits."

The history of the Tambov uprising is still perceived very sharply, very painfully. People have very little knowledge about this period of our history, and what they have was obtained at a time when the peasant uprising was considered banditry. This is very sad, because the leaders of the uprising, and the ordinary soldiers of the rebel army, and all the unconquered Tambov peasantry are worthy of special memory.

“This was the last peasant war in Russia,” Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote about them, “but the Tambov staunch uprising showed that the Russian peasantry did not surrender without a fight.” Through the efforts of the great writer, “Antonovshchina” also gained international fame. In the 1990s, during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Vendée uprising in France, he was the first to draw the attention of the world community to the similarity of the uprisings of the French and Tambov peasants, who opposed the sharp intrusion of the revolutionary regimes into the interests of the rural population. Hence the expression "Tambov Vendée" appeared.

The command staff of the Tambov Gubchek. 1921

The roots of the Tambov uprising date back to the beginning of the 20th century. Then the Tambov province became one of the main areas of a powerful peasant movement against the landlords, especially in the Tambov, Borisoglebsk, Kirsanov districts. Tambov Governor V.F. von der Launitz and his closest subordinates acted as decisive suppressors of the uprisings of the peasants in 1905. It is no coincidence that the local organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries directed its terrorist activities against them, among the organizers of which were the future leaders of the party - V. Chernov, M. Spiridonova and others. Socialist-Revolutionary slogans were popular here, which became the political formulation of peasant demands. It was then that the activities of the future leader of the uprising, Alexander Stepanovich Antonov, began, he "considered himself a Socialist-Revolutionary of 1905" and was formed as a romantic revolutionary. As a member of the Tambov group of independent socialist revolutionaries, he took part in the "ex" for the needs of his party. Let's make a reservation that the “exes” of “Rumyany” or “Aspen” (this is how Antonov passed in police orientations) were bloodless. And yet in 1910 he was accused of "injuring" a gendarmerie officer and sentenced to death by hanging. His case fell on the table to the Minister of the Interior P.A. Stolypin, who reviewed the sentence and replaced capital punishment with "hard labor without a term." Antonov served hard labor in the Vladimir Central.

The events of 1917, the February Revolution, took place in the Tambov region under the sign of agitation by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The elections to the Constituent Assembly showed that 76% of the voters of the Tambov province voted for representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Social Revolutionaries led a new upsurge of the peasant revolution in the Tambov region. They were the first in Russia to direct the struggle of the peasants for the landowners' lands in a peaceful direction. The famous "Decree No. 3" of the Tambov Socialist-Revolutionary Provincial Land Committee transferred the noble estates under the control of the peasant land committees and saved their economic and cultural values ​​from pogroms. This document came out a month before the Decree on Land, which finally transferred the land of the landowners into the hands of the peasants.

The Tambov province has always been a "grain" province: on the eve of 1917, it produced more than 60 million poods of agricultural products. She fed herself, fed Russia, and supplied another 26 million pounds to the European market.

The main reason for the collision of the Tambov peasants with the new "workers' and peasants'" authorities was the circumstances of the Civil War, due to which the province turned out to be one of the main food bases of the country. The "military-communist" policy in the countryside was immediately reduced to the withdrawal from the peasants of food necessary to provide for the army and the urban population. Mobilization for military service, various kinds of duties (labor, horse-drawn, etc.) further intensified the confrontation between the peasantry and the authorities. In 1918, about 40,000 peasants took part in the uprisings against violence by the emergency organs of Soviet power. The suppression of uprisings was carried out with the use of military force and executions. It was during this period that Marina Tsvetaeva went on a “hard, humiliating, risky” trip to the Usmansky district of the Tambov province for food for the daughters of Ali and Irina, who were dying of starvation in Moscow. What she saw and experienced shocked the poetess and spilled out into tragic lines:

“Harness the blood horses to the firewood!

Drink count wines from puddles!

One-holders of bayonets and souls!

Sell ​​- by weight - chapels,

Monasteries - under the hammer - for scrapping.

Ride your horse to God's house!

Sing along with bloody swill!

Stable - in the cathedrals! Cathedrals - in the stall!

In a devil's dozen - a calendar!

We are under the mat for the word: king!

By the beginning of 1919, 50 food detachments from Petrograd, Moscow and other cities with a total number of up to 5 thousand people were operating in the Tambov province - not a single province knew such a scale of confiscations. The peasants were outraged by the arbitrariness in determining the volume of deliveries, the abuse of brute force, the neglect of the storage and use of the products confiscated from them: the bread taken according to the apportionment rotted at the nearest stations, was drunk by food detachments, and distilled into moonshine.

The situation in the village became especially tragic in 1920, when the Tambov region was struck by a drought. By the end of the year, the peasants of the three most grain-producing counties - Kirsanovsky, Tambov and Borisoglebsky - were starving, "ate not only chaff, quinoa, but also bark, nettles", there was no grain left for spring sowing. Incredible in terms of surplus appropriation of 11.5 million poods, the peasantry meant death from starvation.

Confiscation act: “Property was confiscated from the families of bandits ... a worn corset - 1, a children's dress - 1, a children's jersey - 1 ..."

How was the surplus? The methods of the pro-Darmians were inhuman and resembled the times of the Middle Ages - flogging, beatings, violence, executions. The commander of the food detachment, citizen Margolin, upon arrival in a village or volost, gathered a meeting, drove the peasants to the central square and solemnly declared: “I brought death to you, scoundrels. Look, each of my pro-Darmen has a hundred and twenty lead deaths for you scoundrels. This was followed by "foraging", when, as the documents show, "neither sheep nor chicken" were left. The peasants were flogged, put in a cold barn, lowered into a well in the cold, their beards were set on fire, etc. The village was burned. The commander of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, N. Perevedentsev, received the nickname “Burned” from the local population, because “in order to consolidate the victory and in order to punish the rebels for their stubbornness in battle,” he burned to the ground Tambov villages. There was only one thing left for people: to preemptively collect their property, take a sawn-off shotgun and go into the forest. This is how Antonov's army was replenished.

Alexander Stepanovich Antonov himself was released under an amnesty on March 4, 1917. Returning from the royal penal servitude, at first he worked in the Tambov police, then he headed the Kirsanov district police, where he enjoyed great authority. But the violence that was happening in relation to the peasantry forced Antonov to part ways with the new government. He left the post of chief of the Kirsanov militia, with a small detachment of 150 people went to the Kirsanov forests and acted exclusively against food detachments.

Local authorities, first Kirsanov, then provincial, tried to compromise Antonov. There were publications, even leaflets, where he was compared with the famous local criminal Kolka Berbeshkin. Antonov tracked down Berbeshkin's gang and destroyed it. He told the Kirsanovsky and provincial authorities that the gang had been destroyed, indicated the place where the dead bandits were buried. “In terms of the fight against the criminal element, I am ready to help the new Soviet government, but for ideological reasons I disagree with you completely, because you - the Bolsheviks - have brought the country to death, poverty and shame."

The Peasants' War of 1920-1921 grew out of an insurrectionary movement that began in the autumn of 1918. In the following months, there were outbreaks of riots in individual villages, and combat groups and partisan detachments appeared in the forest areas. "Combat squad" A.S. Antonova became the core of the rebel army.

A small uprising that broke out in mid-August 1920 in the villages of Khitrovo and Kamenka in the Tambov district, where the peasants refused to hand over their grain and disarmed the food detachment, quickly spread through the central and southeastern parts of the province under the organizing influence of the Antonov squad. However, the Center continued to receive orders to the Tambov authorities to send grain trains to Moscow, which caused growing discontent among the peasants.

The rebels formed a "peasant republic" on the territory of Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky, Tambov districts with a center in the village. Kamenka. Armed Forces A.S. Antonov combined the principles of building a regular army with partisan detachments and attracting the population for reconnaissance, transportation, etc. A network of political agencies operated in the partisan army. The organization and leadership style of the Antonovites turned out to be sufficient for conducting successful partisan-type military operations with the skillful use of natural shelters, close ties with the population and its full support, no need for deep rear areas, wagon trains, etc. The goals of the rebels were specific, the results of military operations increased the morale of the army and attracted new forces to it. The famous Socialist-Revolutionary slogan was inscribed on the battle banners of the rebels: “In the struggle you will find your right!” The influence of the Social Revolutionaries on the ideology and organization of the insurrectionary movement is undoubted. It was especially noticeable in the activities of the Union of the working peasantry, the main task of which was the overthrow of the "commissar power". The committees of the STK, there were about 300 of them, performed the functions of local civil authorities on the territory covered by the uprising.

By the beginning of 1920, Antonov became the head of the Main Headquarters of the rebel army, which numbered up to 40 thousand people (taking into account partisan methods of warfare - up to 200 thousand people). He was elected by secret ballot on an alternative basis from five candidates. To lead the peasant insurrectionary movement, special people were required who were able to lead a spontaneous, organizationally loose, mass movement without much chance of success, psychologically ready for self-sacrifice in the revolution, close to the peasant environment, who had experience in revolutionary activity. Such features were endowed with the main leaders of the Tambov uprising of 1920-1921: A.S. Antonov, I.E. Ishin, G.N. Pluzhnikov. The outstanding personal qualities of Alexander Stepanovich Antonov were also recognized by the high command of the Red Army: “Antonov is a remarkable figure with great organizational skills, an energetic experienced partisan”, “Antonov is not a criminal bandit, as he was portrayed in our press, but an old SR underground fighter, an active participant agrarian movement in the Tambov province during the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, a former political prisoner.

Initially, the Tambov leadership allotted no more than three to four weeks for the elimination of the peasant uprising. But the partisan way of conducting combat operations of the rebels made it difficult for the Soviet troops to operate. By the end of December 1920, it became obvious that it was impossible to cope with the rebel cash forces, although more than 10 thousand bayonets and cavalry were operating against the rebels.

Soviet historiography kept silent about the attitude of A.S. Antonov and the entire insurrectionary movement towards Orthodoxy. Solzhenitsyn did not accidentally call the Antonov movement the Tambov Vendée. After all, the uprising of the French peasants had a religious connotation. “May Almighty God help us to overcome the enemy and establish a government that would rule over us for the benefit of the now weeping and oppressed people ...” - these words from the leaflet of the Chief Headquarters of the partisan army testify to the deep religious feeling of the rebels. The appeal to the Red Army soldiers, in which the leader of the uprising calls on them to take the side of the rebels and calls for a campaign against Moscow, ends with the words: “God is with us!” In poems attributed to A.S. Antonov, the word Vera is everywhere with a capital letter: “For Faith, Motherland and Truth, for Faith, Freedom and Truth!”

At the beginning of 1921, the central government took decisive action against the rebel army. In late February - early March 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko. She concentrated in her hands all the power in the Tambov province. In February, a change in the general policy of the state towards the peasantry was announced - the surplus appropriation was replaced by a tax in kind. The men cried with joy, even those who were in the rebel detachments, and said: "We won." To this, Antonov told them: “Yes, guys, you won, although this victory is temporary. And we, gentlemen commanders, are covered.

Large combat-ready, technically equipped military contingents numbering 110 thousand bayonets and sabers, 4 mobile cavalry brigades, 2 air squadrons, an armored detachment, 6 armored aircraft, 4 armored trains and a landing detachment were sent to the Tambov region. A clear structure of military administration was created, the province was divided into 6 combat sectors with field headquarters and emergency authorities - political commissions.

In April 1921, a decision was made “On the liquidation of Antonov’s gangs in the Tambov province”, by which M.N. Tukhachevsky was appointed "the sole commander of the troops in the Tambov district." The strategy consisted in the complete and brutal implementation of the military occupation of the insurgent areas. The essence of this strategy is set out in the "Instructions for Combating Banditry", Tukhachevsky's order No. 130 of May 12 and order No. 171 of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 11, 1921. All villages of the Tambov province were divided into Soviet, neutral, bandit and malicious bandit. In relation to the "gangsters" and "malicious gangsters", an occupation regime was introduced. Troops entered the village. The population remaining in the village was herded to the central square, hostages were taken, two hours were given. If the men did not come out of the forest with weapons, then the hostages were shot. For disobedience, harboring "bandits" and weapons, execution also followed. Then there was the confiscation of property, the destruction of houses and the deportation of the families of the participants in the rebellion to remote provinces of Russia. The orders were carried out "severely and ruthlessly". On July 12, 1921, the commander of the troops of the province M. Tukhachevsky signed order No. 0116 on the use of chemical weapons against "bandits". Concentration camps were set up in the province. According to available data, there were 12 stationary concentration camps in the Tambov region. The largest - Tregulyaevsky - was located in the ancient, especially revered John the Baptist Monastery. There were also temporary detention camps: the area in the settlement (in Tambov it was Cathedral Square) was fenced with carts and old people, women and children were kept in an open place under the sun. In the report "On the activities of the Provincial Department of Forced Labor" we read: "A large number of children, including infants, enter the camps." The concentration camps were starving, the incidence was extremely high, "hostage children" over three years old were kept separately from their mothers.

Terror, repression, the most severe suppression measures, the military superiority of the "Reds" predetermined the defeat of the uprising. In the summer of 1921, Antonov's main forces were defeated. In late June - early July, he issued the last order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to divide into groups and hide in the forests or go home. The uprising broke up into a number of small, isolated pockets, which were liquidated before the end of the year.

After the defeat of the uprising A.S. Antonov did not escape from the province. He probably did not give up hope for the revival of the movement. Together with his brother Dmitry, he hid in the Kirsanov and Tambov forests for another year. By that time, his two sisters Valentina and Anna had already been arrested. Their fate is unknown, they disappeared somewhere in the cellars of Gubchek.

The civil wife of A. Antonov - Natalya Katasonova - became one of the first prisoners of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp.

Death overtook the Antonov brothers not far from their native places. They took the last battle on June 24, 1922 in the village of Nizhny Shibryai, Borisoglebsk district. The Antonovs were killed during an operation developed by the anti-banditry department of the Tambov gubchek. Alexander was 33 years old, Dmitry - 28 years old. Their bodies were brought to Tambov, to the former Kazan Monastery of the Theotokos, where the Tambov provincial "cheerleader" was located, and put on display for three days in order to show that the Antonovs no longer exist, and the uprising was finally suppressed. They were buried somewhere on the banks of the Tsna River. There are various testimonies about the place of burial, but so far no one has been researching this issue. Even the memorial sign at the site of the foundation stone, where it was supposed to erect a monument to the leader of the last peasant war in Russia, Alexander Stepanovich Antonov, periodically disappears. In December 2010, he disappeared again.

The consequences of the terrible events of 1920-1921 are catastrophic. Tambov province was liquidated as an administrative unit. The number of killed, shot, deported rebels and members of their families after ninety years has not been named. I think we are talking about several hundred thousand. Persecution for belonging to the Antonov movement continued for many more years. They flared up with renewed vigor in the 1930s, when the tormented Tambov peasantry opposed collectivization. The salt of the Russian land, the keepers of Orthodox traditions and the national way of life, the great workers - the farmers, the breadwinners of the country were destroyed. At the official state level, this fact has not been recognized. The archives are still not fully open. But the worst thing is oblivion and lies: the Tambov rebels in this long-suffering land are memorized as bandits.

Order of the commander of the troops M.N. Tukhachevsky on the use of chemical weapons against the rebels*

G.A. Abramova, Chief Researcher of the Tambov Regional Museum of Local Lore

(photos courtesy of Galina Abramova)

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* The signature under the document was soiled after Tukhachevsky himself was convicted as "the head of an extensive military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army" and shot in 1937.

The peasant war in the Tambov province in 1920-1921, better known as "Antonovshchina" - the largest fact of the entire post-October history of the Tambov Territory - with its scale, political resonance and consequences, was an event of great all-Russian significance. A powerful social explosion forced the state authorities to urgently search for fundamentally new ways out of the deep social crisis in which the country found itself.

The interpretation of Antonovism as an anti-Soviet kulak-Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion was far from historical truth and, due to its inferiority, inevitably gave rise to questions that it could not convincingly, consistently answer. Why did the movement, defined as "political banditry", become so massive and entail a radical change in all politics in the countryside? If "war communism" has outlived itself, then were the Tambov peasants not right in the historical sense, who subjected it to criticism with weapons?

The vast, populous region (about 4 million people lived on an area of ​​​​about 55 thousand square kilometers), with fertile land and grain prosperity, has always been a source of human and material resources. Due to the circumstances of the civil war, Tambov region became one of the main food bases of the republic. Proximity to the Center and relative remoteness from the main fronts favored the movement of food supplies here, and with them the whole complex of the most acute problems in relations between the peasantry and the state.

The Tambov province was "grain" and therefore experienced the brunt of the food dictatorship and the "crusade" for bread. By October 1918, 50 food detachments from Petrograd, Moscow, Cherepovets and other cities with a total number of up to 5 thousand people were operating in the province - not a single province knew such a scale of confiscations. Up to 40 thousand people then took part in peasant uprisings against violence from the food detachments and commanders.

There was no shortage of combustible material for a social explosion in the Tambov province. Here, as in all of Russia, the war and revolutions produced profound changes in the structure and psychology of society. The masses of people knocked out of their usual social existence, but having mastered the psychology of "a man with a gun", were a breeding ground for any kind of discontent. It is worth considering that almost half of the men from the Tambov village served in the army and returned home not only with the determination to act in their own way, but also with weapons. It is not surprising that in the Tambov forests already in 1918 - 1919. many "greens" and "deserters" were hiding, evading military mobilization. In June 1918, even Tambov and Kozlov were for a short time at the mercy of the mobilized rebels. In December, the gubernia executive committee telegraphed to Moscow to the effect that "there was a widespread movement of peasants in the gubernia" and that "the situation is very serious." The local authorities insisted on the assistance of the Center with military forces and leadership. As a result, by the end of 1918, about 12 million poods of grain were harvested from the 35 million poods of the "task".

The motives of dissatisfaction were not limited to the surplus appropriation or the arbitrariness of the provincial "Robespierres". By the end of 1918 - the beginning of 1919, the first experiments in the organization of socialist agriculture belong. Attempts to induce the peasants to go over to the social cultivation of the land even then often resulted in forced collectivization, which provoked uprisings. However, the main problem in relations between the Soviet government and the peasantry remained bread, food dictatorship.

The suppression of peasant uprisings from the very beginning was carried out with all determination, not stopping at the use of military force and executions. The justification for harsh uncompromisingness and even cruelty was the real threat of starvation for millions of people and the conditions of the beginning civil war, on the fronts of which the fate of the revolution was decided. Accordingly, the Bolshevik ideology defined the meaning of the struggle for grain as a struggle for socialism, interpreted peasant protests against the forcible seizure of grain as "kulak", and attempts at armed resistance as "banditry". All this terminology has firmly entered the official language and all Soviet documentation of 1918-1922.

Peasant War 1920 - 1921 in the Tambov province. grew out of an insurrectionary movement that began in the autumn of 1918. The subsequent development of events was marked by constant outbreaks of riots in individual villages and the appearance in forest areas of combat groups and partisan detachments, referred to in Soviet documentation as "bands". Among the latter, from the beginning of 1919, the "gang" of A.S. Antonov was actively operating in the Kirsanov district. The documents of 1919 - the first half of 1920, which make up the "Eves" section in the collection, are interesting in at least two respects: firstly, they show how the forces and centers of the future mass uprising were formed, combat detachments arose, leaders were put forward, as dynamics the movement reflected the course of the requisitioning campaigns, which were becoming more and more overwhelming; secondly, they testify that throughout almost all this time the situation was not irreparable, there was still an opportunity to prevent a social explosion. In this regard, A.S. Antonov’s letter to the Kirsanov Uyezd Committee of the RCP (b) in February 1920 is very significant, in which, on behalf of the combat squad, he declared to “comrade communists” that “we are always ready to give you a hand in the fight against criminality help." Evidence of possible interaction and cooperation, a genuine union of the revolutionary forces of the city and the countryside on the verge of 1919-1920. can be found in the actions of F.K. Mironov, and I.I. Makhno, and other leaders of the peasant revolution. However, in all cases, the main condition for the realization of this possibility was a change in the Soviet policy in the countryside, primarily the abolition of the surplus appropriation.

Understanding the need to revise the policy towards the peasantry began to emerge in the Bolshevik leadership. In the same February 1920, L.D. Trotsky submitted proposals to the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on replacing the surplus appropriation with a tax in kind, which actually led to the abandonment of the policy of "war communism". These proposals were the results of a practical acquaintance with the situation and mood of the village in the Urals, where Trotsky found himself in January-February as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. His memo "Basic Questions of Food and Land Policy" began with a fundamental conclusion about the "inefficiency of food policy, built on the selection of surpluses in excess of the consumer norm", because it "pushes the peasant to work off the land only to the extent of his family's needs." Trotsky warned: "Food resources threaten to dry up, against which no improvement in the requisition apparatus can help." Moreover, the preservation of the surplus appropriation "threatens to completely undermine the economic life of the country." It was proposed to overcome the process of "economic degradation": 1) "replacing the withdrawal of surpluses by a certain percentage deduction (a kind of income tax in kind), so that a larger plowing or better processing still represents a benefit", and 2) "by establishing a greater correspondence between the distribution of industrial products to the peasants and the amount of grain poured by them, not only in volosts and villages, but also in peasant households. As is known, this was the beginning of the New Economic Policy in the spring of 1921. Of course, the conditions of the civil war had not yet been eliminated, the inevitability of new military clashes remained obvious, but the limit of the possibilities of the peasant economy had already been exhausted. After the defeat of the main forces of the counter-revolution in the East and South of Russia, after the liberation of almost the entire territory of the country, a change in food policy became possible, and, given the nature of relations with the peasantry, necessary. Unfortunately, the proposals of L.D. Trotsky were rejected by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). The delay in the abolition of the surplus for a whole year had tragic consequences, as there could not have been an Antonovshchina as a massive social explosion.

The chronicle of the events of the Antonovshchina is known in general terms and is recreated in detail by published documents. Having flared up in mid-August 1920 in the villages of Khitrovo and Kamenka in the Tambov district, where the peasants refused to hand over their grain and disarmed the food detachment, the fire of the uprising spread through the province like dry straw, with a speed incomprehensible for the local authorities, since they habitually believed that they were dealing with bandit gangs, not popular indignation. Already in August-September 1920, the Antonovites captured Tambov with a horseshoe, being only 15-20 versts from the provincial center. Their number reached about 4 thousand armed rebels and about tens of thousands of people with pitchforks and scythes.

It is difficult to reproach the Tambov leadership for underestimating the danger that threatened it. Operational headquarters for the fight against banditry were immediately created. Already at the beginning of September, the provincial committee and the provincial executive committee delegated A.G. Schlikhter to Moscow for a personal report, noting that "it was not possible to timely crush the insurrectionary movement, which has now grown to enormous proportions and tends to grow, capturing new territories." Demanding the sending of reliable troops, they warned: "Otherwise, we will not carry out the apportionment."

Another significant episode also belongs to this time. On September 27, 1920, V.I. Lenin asked the deputy of the People's Commissariat for Food and Beverage, N.P. Bryukhanov: is the allotment of 11.5 million pounds for the Tambov province correct - "shouldn't it be knocked off?" However, on September 28, a telegram was sent to Tambov with instructions to urgently send two grain routes to Moscow, 35 wagons each. Two days later, Tambov reported on the implementation of an emergency government order. Some time later, on October 19, 1920, Lenin, in a note to the chairman of the Cheka, F.E. Dzerzhinsky, and the commander of the Cheka, V.S. Kornev, categorically demanded: let me know what measures are being taken. More energy must be shown and more strength must be given."

Initially, the Tambov leadership allotted no more than three to four weeks for the elimination of the peasant uprising. The partisan way of conducting combat operations of the rebels, who managed to hide under the onslaught of the Red Army units and simply dissolve in the peasant environment, the pulsating nature of the movement made it difficult to assess the effectiveness of military measures. In his report to V.I. Having visited Tambov at the end of December, Kornev, in his own words, was convinced of the impossibility of coping with the insurgent cash forces. At this time, more than 10 thousand bayonets and sabers were already operating against the rebels.

And subsequently, in official documents, more than once it was stated about the decline or defeat of the uprising, but it revived again.

There is no doubt about the good organization of the rebels, who formed a kind of "peasant republic" on the territory of Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky, Tambov districts with a center in the village of Kamenka. The armed forces of A.S.Antonov combined the principles of building a regular army (2 armies consisting of 21 regiments, a separate brigade) with irregular armed detachments. According to some information, the Antonovites did not practice mobilization into their ranks, attracting the population only for protection, transportation, etc. Such a structure was not durable, between the "atamans" there was often a battle of ambitions common for such formations. But for the time being, this was compensated by the initiative of the commanders, the flexible partisan tactics of sudden attacks and rapid withdrawals.

It would be a profound mistake to idealize a peasant war - a "Russian rebellion", although not senseless, but undoubtedly merciless. It caused significant damage to the economy of the Tambov region. The rebels destroyed communications, damaged railways, smashed state farms and communes, and killed communists and Soviet employees with particular fury. They executed more than 2,000 Soviet and party workers alone (22). Objectively speaking, in terms of cruelty, both sides were not inferior to each other, and cruelty remains cruelty, no matter who it comes from.

February 1921 became the most important milestone in the chain of events. By this time, the insurrectionary movement had reached its greatest extent, and began to resonate in the border districts of the Voronezh and Saratov provinces. From the same time, the Soviet government also took decisive action against the Antonovites. The liquidation of the fronts against Poland and Wrangel allowed her to move large and combat-ready military contingents, equipment, including artillery, armored parts, and aircraft to the Tambov region. The tactics of actions against the rebels have also changed. Instead of separate, not connected by a single plan of operations, a clear structure of military command was created. The entire province was divided into six combat areas with field headquarters and emergency authorities - political commissions.

In late February - early March 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko, also included the secretary of the provincial committee of the RCP (b) B.A. Vasiliev, chairman of the provincial executive committee A.S. Lavrov, as well as the commander and head of the political department of the army in the Tambov region and authorized by the Cheka. The Plenipotentiary Commission concentrated all power in the Tambov province in its hands. Its resolutions and appeals are among the most important documents in the fight against Antonovism and are widely represented in the collection.

The all-party discussion on the eve of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) on the problems generated by "war communism" led to the appearance in Tambov of two major representatives of the central leadership - N.I. Bukharin and A.V. Lunacharsky. The first participated in the work of the X Provincial Party Conference (January 28 - 30, 1921), the second - the State of Emergency of the Provincial Congress of Soviets (January 31 - February 4). According to the speeches of delegates from local organizations, from various institutions, they could get an idea of ​​​​the actual scale and nature of the Antonovshchina as a mass peasant uprising and a rapidly growing threat to the very existence of the Soviet system. They also saw that the provincial leadership, party and Soviet, torn apart by endless and pernicious strife, was unable to cope with the situation.

The statements and actions of N.I. Bukharin in Tambov and in the first days after returning from there need a special study. Now we can say with accuracy only about the following: Bukharin's return to Moscow took place on January 31 or February 1. And already on February 1, among the notes of V.I. Lenin, a list of questions appeared for the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on February 2:

"So, tomorrow we will put

• 1) Bukharin's report
• 2) Shklovsky..."

As the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Party dated February 2, 1921, testify, it actually opened with this report. The very form of the quoted Leninist entry reflects the situation of some kind of tense conversation with someone, most likely with Bukharin.

The content of Bukharin's report remains unknown. But the resolution adopted on the basis of its discussion, to some extent, reflects the position of the speaker. It manifests itself, in our opinion, in statements to the effect that “the political situation and the uprising of the peasants undoubtedly require ... the most serious attention to the rapid holding of food gatherings in those places where the peasants suffered especially from crop failure ...” The persistent development of this the topics in the ruling, up to and including "catering", are unusual for such documents and most likely come from the speaker. Among the peculiarities of Bukharin's position is the decision to send a commission from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to Tambov "for political leadership and to help comrades in the fight against the peasant uprising", and not to create another revolutionary military council that was proposed. The practical decisions of the Politburo on the report of N.I. Bukharin were of an extraordinary nature - they had to be carried out "today", "in the most urgent manner" ...

The second at the meeting of the Politburo on February 2 was the report of the commission on the issue of assistance to the peasantry who suffered from crop failure, which was not mentioned at all in Lenin's record of the agenda of this meeting. Decisions on this issue have not been prepared. E. A. Preobrazhensky, A. D. Tsyurupa and A. M. Lezhava were instructed to “work out a draft resolution and submit it to the secretariat by 10 a.m. today for questioning all members of the Politburo by telephone.”

For the topic of this collection, it is especially important to order N.I. Bukharin, E.A. Preobrazhensky and L.B. Kamenev "to develop and finally approve the text of the appeal on behalf of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee signed by Comrade Kalinin to the peasants of Tambov province. in order to distribute only in this province, not printed in the newspapers. It was, however, clear that the handling of the announcement of the termination of the collection of surplus appropriations on behalf of the highest body of state power could not be limited to the Tambov region. Concealment of the very possibility of canceling the surplus appropriation would serve as a detonator for even greater social explosions in the countryside. An appeal to the Tambov peasantry was distributed on behalf of the provincial executive committee and the provincial committee of the RCP (b) on February 9, 1921. Its essence was to abolish the surplus appropriation and allow the local trade exchange of agricultural products. This was done a month before the Tenth Party Congress, which replaced the apportionment with a solid tax in kind and allowed freedom of trade (and almost a month before the Kronstadt rebellion).

Be that as it may, the inertia of the war not only continued to dictate the behavior of both sides, but even more embittered, brought their confrontation to an extreme degree. At the end of April 1921, the Central Commission for Combating Banditry heard a report from Antonov-Ovseenko, chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, on the political and economic situation in the Tambov province. It became clear that "recently there has been no improvement and even deterioration in places." On April 26, Lenin submitted a proposal to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party, and on the 27th a decision was made "On the liquidation of Antonov's gangs in the Tambov province", by which M.N. Tukhachevsky was appointed "the sole commander of the troops in the Tambov district, ... responsible for the liquidation of the gangs .. .". The resolution contained a direct directive to carry out this task "no later than within a month." The appointment of an outstanding military leader as the head of the suppression of the peasant uprising would inevitably have a very negative political resonance. Therefore, an attempt was made to carry out this appointment without publicity. Together with him, some other military leaders who distinguished themselves in the civil war arrived in the Tambov region - N.E. Kakurin, I.P. Uborevich, G.I. Kotovsky ... At the same time, G.G. Yagoda and V. .V.Ulrich. The number of Soviet troops in the Tambov region was constantly growing: by January 1, 1921 - 11,870, February 1 - 33,750, March 1 - 41,848. By the summer, it exceeded 100 thousand Red Army soldiers.

The military defeat of Antonovshchina began. The strategy consisted in the complete and brutal implementation of the military occupation of the insurgent areas, which had already been undertaken by the predecessors of the new leadership. The essence of this strategy was set out with the utmost clarity in Tukhachevsky's order N130 of May 12, which was widely known within the Tambov region, and in order N171 of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 11, 1921. This regime included the occupation of the territory by troops, a management appointed from above (district political commissions and rural revolutionary committees, which included representatives of the army, the check and party organizations), the destruction of farms and the destruction of the houses of the rebellion participants and their families, the taking of hostages (by individuals and whole families), the creation of concentration camps and repressions up to and including execution for disobedience, for harboring " bandits" and weapons.

Horrible was order N171, which introduced executions of hostages in "bandit" villages until complete submission, extradition of "bandits" and active participation in the fight against "banditry". The documents of the collection about the practice of implementing this order cannot be read without a shudder: "Nothing happens without executions. Executions in one village do not affect another until the same measure is carried out in them."

The methods of suppressing the peasant uprising, especially Order No. 171, provoked a protest in the upper strata of the Bolshevik leadership as well. For the first time, the collection publishes two important documents that shed light on the finale of the fight against Antonovism: a letter from A.I. From Lenin's documents published earlier, it was only known that on July 16, at the morning meeting of the Politburo, Rykov asked Lenin, and Lenin promised "in two hours" to send a number of the Tambov newspaper with some order from unknown Antonov. The publishers of these documents stipulated that they "failed" to establish the name of this newspaper, and, consequently, the reason for the exchange of notes at the said meeting. Later we learned that it was about the issue of the Kozlovskaya district newspaper "Nasha Pravda" of June 18, 1921 with order N171. Now we know that at a meeting of the Politburo some kind of substantive conversation took place and a resolution was adopted according to which Rykov forwarded to Trotsky a newspaper with the text of the order of June 11th.

In the minutes of the Politburo meeting of July 16, where an exchange of notes took place between Lenin and Rykov, we find paragraph 8 "Comrade Rykov's statement" and a very vague decision on this statement: "To refer the issue raised by Comrade Rykov to the Commission for Combating banditry with the participation of Comrade Trotsky, instructing her to take the final decision by unanimity.

Meanwhile, in a letter published by Rykov, it was reported that a proposal was made to the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to cancel the order and recall Antonov-Ovseenko and Tukhachevsky from Tambov. Rykov was instructed to prepare a report on these proposals, and he asked Trotsky, chairman of the RVSR, "to consider the matter urgently and notify me."

On July 19, 1921, the commission for the fight against banditry, chaired by L.D. Trotsky (an exceptional case), decided to "cancel the order" and on the same day "transfer it by direct wire for publication in Tambov publications." The decision to release Tukhachevsky "with his return to the Western Front" was taken by the Commission at a meeting on July 17, 1921, i.e. on the second day after the first conversation about order N171 at the Politburo. Soon Antonov-Ovseenko was also recalled.

N.I. Bukharin played a very active role in making these decisions. In the midst of their discussions - on July 17 - V.I. Lenin sent him the report of the commander-in-chief of the Red Army S.S. Kamenev with the defense of the methods of struggle used by Tukhachevsky in the Tambov province, and the recognition of the expediency of their use in other areas. On the first page of the report there is an entry: "Secret to Bukharin. Return, having read from line to line as punishment for alarmism ... Lenin."

The overwhelming military superiority, first of all, and then the beginning of the country's transition to the New Economic Policy, predetermined the defeat of the uprising. The mood of the peasantry also gradually changed in favor of Soviet power. Caught between the millstones of war, exhausted by terror, requisitions, the need to constantly adapt to a changing environment, it most of all needed a peaceful life, the opportunity to work every day in its economy.

In the summer of 1921, Antonov's main forces were defeated. In late June - early July, he issued the last order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to divide into groups and hide in the forests or even go home. The uprising broke up into a number of small, isolated pockets, which were liquidated before the end of the year.

Of particular interest are the characters of the peasant war in the Tambov region, especially its leaders. For Soviet historiography, they were adventurers, criminal types, who, by deceit and fear, carried the peasants along with them. The very term "Antonovism" had a distinctly accusatory meaning, although it involuntarily stuck out the figure of the ringleader. It is also worth recalling that the personal files of Antonov activists were closed from researchers. The compilers of the collection of documents tried to partially overcome this shortcoming by highlighting in a special section (5th) investigative materials about individual figures of the Tambov uprising.

An objective basis for peasant uprisings existed wherever they arose - in the Volga region, Western Siberia, on the Don, and so on. But far from everywhere, peasant uprisings reached the level of the formation of many thousands of partisan armies and a developed structure of political administration - and this was what distinguished Antonovism most of all. Its peculiarity was largely due to the presence of relevant leaders, their "quality". This encourages you to take a closer look at them.

In Russia at that time, there were quite a few big figures opposed to the Bolshevik dictatorship, primarily from among the Socialist-Revolutionaries. However, the leadership of the insurgent movement required completely different personality traits than for a politician. We needed people who, firstly, were able to lead a spontaneous, organizationally loose, mass movement without much chance of success, therefore, they were psychologically ready for self-sacrifice in the revolution, as they understood it; secondly, they would be close to the peasant environment and would be recognized by it as "their own"; thirdly, past revolutionary experience mattered. Such features were endowed with the main leaders of the Tambov uprising of 1920-1921. A.S.Antonov, A.E.Ishin, G.N.Pluzhnikov.

It is characteristic that even after the defeat of the uprising, A.S. Antonov did not leave the province, probably did not leave hope for the revival of the movement. Death overtook him not far from his native places.

The heroic feat of the Soviet people at the front and in the rear during the Great Patriotic War is immortal. A significant contribution to the common cause of victory was made by the working people of Siberia in general and Novosibirsk in particular. In Siberia, which became a deep rear in wartime conditions, government investments were concentrated. The XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, when approving the third five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the country, pointed to the need for accelerated development of industry in Western Siberia. The plan allocated about 8 billion rubles for the industrial development of the region. Over 60% of these funds were directed to mechanical engineering, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, and the chemical industry. Factories producing the means of production had to develop at a faster pace.

In Novosibirsk, in the third five-year plan, the share of production of means of production in the total volume of industry in the city amounted to 23.3%. Large-scale mechanical engineering and chemistry were predominantly developed. In connection with the new prospects, it was planned to build a number of new industries: an automobile plant, a turbogenerator, a machine tool, a metallurgical plant, and a tin plant. The output of the machine-building and metal-working industry in Novosibirsk was to be increased eightfold over the five-year period.

A start was made on the construction of new enterprises in the city: a tin plant, a plant for boring machines, a tool plant, a turnout plant, a drilling equipment plant, a cotton factory, and a poultry plant. Clothing factories are being expanded and reconstructed, including the factory named after. Central Committee of the trade union of garment workers, model and shoe, saddlery. Gross industrial output of the city in 1940 increased by 83% compared to 1937.

The city improved. Since 1937, a water supply system has been built on the left bank, and the length of tram lines has increased. By 1939, there were already 82 schools in the city, in which 54,528 schoolchildren studied.

The war interrupted the peaceful creative work of the country. Siberians also joined the ranks of the defenders of the Motherland from its first day.

The contribution of Novosibirsk to the defeat of the enemy was invaluable. "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" - the city lived with this slogan. Already in the first 3-4 months of the war, all the established large plants and factories, enterprises of machine building, wood processing, light and food industries were transferred to the production of military products.

Immeasurably great difficulties lay in receiving, locating and putting into operation new factories dismantled and transferred to the rear of the country from places temporarily occupied by the enemy. During the first five months of the war, 322 industrial enterprises arrived in Siberia, as well as equipment for large power plants (the Kashirskaya and Leningradskaya thermal power plants and others).

From June to November 1941, Novosibirsk received 50 evacuated factories and, along with them, tens of thousands of workers and members of their families, the population of the front-line territories and regions. In the most difficult conditions of the harsh Siberian winter, in the presence of the most difficult material and organizational problems, unprecedented work was done to recreate the displaced factories in Novosibirsk and to fulfill orders from the front ahead of schedule. Equipment from various machine-building and metallurgical plants, strategic materials, raw materials, food, and vehicles arrived in the city.

Sibmetallstroy (Sibselmash), which was still under construction, received several large factories on its territory. The plant immediately turned into the largest enterprise in the country and began to receive government orders for the manufacture of defense products. There were not enough workers, tools, various building materials. Assistance was provided to the plant: 3 thousand workers came here, materials, raw materials, fuel were received. The plant did a lot on its own, manufacturing equipment, tools, and various equipment. A few months later, 5,634 machine tools were installed at the plant, and by the end of 1941, 580 wagons with military equipment were sent to the front.

The speed of putting enterprises into operation was ensured by the simultaneous construction of workshops and the installation and debugging of plant equipment.

The construction of a metallurgical plant as part of Sibmetallstroy began as early as 1940. But the front needed sheet steel, and the State Defense Committee decided in September 1941 to create a new metallurgical plant on the basis of the Sibmetallstroy group of workshops, which was already launched on May 2, 1942. gave a thin steel strip in the cold rolling shop. In December 1942, a hot-rolling shop was put into operation, and in the spring of 1943, another cold-rolled shop began to operate. During the war years, the plant produced for the first time in the country chrome-plated steel, rolled sheets of electrolytic cladding. So the Novosibirsk plant named after I.I. A. N. Kuzmina (the first director of the plant), who mastered the production of special steels of several grades. For the exemplary fulfillment of government tasks, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Sibmetallstroy plant was awarded the Order of Lenin.

The construction of the tin plant began at the end of 1940; its launch was planned for 1942, but the plant was completed and put into operation in December 1941.

Quickly, within less than two months, is put into action

Sestroretsk Tool Plant named after Voskova: On August 8, 1941, the first echelon with its equipment arrived, and already on September 15, the first products were issued. The plant was located on the construction site of Sibstroyput, where, along with the installation of equipment and the laying of power lines, a large construction was carried out. The plant staff was replenished with 350 students of vocational schools; students of the Institute of Railway Transport participated in construction work after classes at the university and on weekends.

In 1941, the Kuskovsky chemical plant arrived in Novosibirsk from the Moscow region. On the eve of the new 1942, the plant had already issued the first products for the front.

During the war years, the aviation industry was re-created in Novosibirsk. Thousands of workers, technicians, engineers were sent to the machine-building plant (the former mining equipment plant), equipment from evacuated enterprises arrived.

In October 1942, the Krasnodar Machine-Tool Plant named after V.I. Gray hair. He began to recover at the construction site of the plant of boring machines. Back in February 1942, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to speed up the construction of a plant for heavy and boring machine tools in Novosibirsk in order to develop a base for heavy machine tool building in the country. In August, the People's Commissar of Machine Tool Building A. I. Efremov renamed the enterprise into a plant for heavy machine tools and hydraulic presses - "Tyazhstankogidropress" (now the plant named after A. I. Efremov). In May 1943, the first two hydraulic presses with a pressure of 100 tons were made. In June of this year, the first two machines are assembled here - a longitudinal planer and a boring machine, cast from cast iron obtained at the plant itself. In 1945, the plant produced 34 serial machines for the recovering enterprises of the country.

In total, during the war years, 16,000 different machine tools were assembled and installed at the factories of Novosibirsk. In 1942, the gross output of the entire industry of Novosibirsk increased by 4 times in comparison with 1941. In the city, enterprises of the radio engineering and chemical industries, instrument-making and tool factories were created anew.

The share of Novosibirsk as a center of mechanical engineering has especially increased. In terms of industrial output, the city significantly exceeded the Altai Territory and Omsk Region combined. The share of mechanical engineering and metalworking in 1945 in the total industrial production of Novosibirsk was already about 80% (against 23.3% before the war). The number of workers employed only in mechanical engineering reached tens of thousands of people. In the chemical industry in Novosibirsk, the volume of gross output during the war period increased by more than 15 times. From 1940 to 1945 the number of workers and employees in Novosibirsk increased from 80.9 thousand to 148.6 thousand people.

In connection with the rapid industrial growth of the city during the war years, the most complex energy problems arose. The power shortage in Novosibirsk at the end of 1942 exceeded 50,000 kW. During the war years, the left-bank CHPP-2 increased electricity generation by 5 times, heat output by the station increased by 7 times. In the first year of the war, the left-bank CHPP-3 was built, which gave electricity in the autumn of 1942, on the eve of the victory on the Volga. Several more less powerful power plants were put into operation, at which the evacuated equipment of the Kashirskaya and Stalinogorskaya state district power stations was installed. The capacity of Novosibirsk power plants increased several times during the war years. The average annual increase in electricity was 34%, and in 1942 it reached 75%.

The country's scientists played an important role in drawing up and implementing the plan for restructuring the national economy on a war footing. From the first days of the war, the scientific personnel of Novosibirsk, together with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, subordinated their work to the requirements of wartime. In September 1941, the Commission of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the leadership of Academician V. L. Komarov began its work on mobilizing the resources of the Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan for the needs of the country's defense. On July 19, 1941, the Scientific Council for the mobilization of regional resources was created under the Novosibirsk Regional Executive Committee, headed by the Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee, I. G. Grishin. The evacuated enterprises had to be accommodated, new cooperative relations established with others, supplied with raw materials, electricity, heat, etc. Scientists worked on the problems of organizing industrial production, improving the work of railway and water transport.

During the war years, collectives of institutes in Moscow, Leningrad, and Dnepropetrovsk were housed in six Novosibirsk universities. The work of scientists was coordinated by the Committee of Scientists, established in January 1942 under the chairmanship of the well-known aerohydrodynamics scientist Academician S. A. Chaplygin. Three corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 64 doctors of sciences, 19 professors and about 400 associate professors and candidates of sciences worked in the city.

Since 1942, the commission of the Academy of Sciences in Western Siberia was headed by Academicians A. A. Skochinsky and I. P. Bardin. In 1943, the commission sent 28 complex detachments to Siberia, consisting of more than 600 scientists, to study and solve various problems for the needs of defense. The conclusions of the commission were reported to the GKO of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, to the State Planning Committee of the USSR, to the Novosibirsk Regional Party Committee.

The commission raised the question of organizing a permanent academic institution in Siberia—the West Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In March 1943, Academicians L. D. Shevyakov and A. A. Skochinsky conferred with I. G. Grinoshin, chairman of the Novosibirsk Oblast Executive Committee, on organizing a center of science. In October 1943, the Council of People's Commissars allowed the Academy of Sciences to organize the West Siberian branch as part of four institutes: mining and geological, chemical and metallurgical, transport and energy, and medical and biological. In May 1944, the first scientific session of the West Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences took place, at which Novosibirsk scientists reported on the past year of work of the new scientific center of Siberia.

With heroic labor in the rear, the Novosibirsk people, together with the entire Soviet people, brought the joyful Victory Day closer. Despite huge difficulties and hardships, the city went to victory, full of optimism and plans for a peaceful future. Its industry grew stronger, science received a significant base, the culture of the city developed.

From the first days of the war, the unfinished building of the Opera and Ballet Theater took into its walls the values ​​of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Leningrad Military Artillery and Ethnographic Museums, the museum-palaces of the cities of Pushkin and Pavlovsk, the Hermitage and the State Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkin, museums of Novgorod,

Kalinin, Sevastopol (panorama "Defense of Sevastopol" art. F. A. Rubo, which was restored in Novosibirsk by the restorers of the Tretyakov Gallery). Everything was carefully preserved, and in 1944,. cultural values ​​began to return to their cities.

Even in the most difficult days of the war against fascism, in the autumn of 1942, during the fighting on the Volga and in the Caucasus, the government decides to complete the construction of the opera and ballet theater in Novosibirsk and the Council of People's Commissars includes this construction among the priorities.

The most profound manifestation of the boundless love of the peoples of the USSR for their socialist homeland, their close unity around the Communist Party, selfless devotion to the ideas of the Great October Revolution and their readiness to defend its conquests with their breasts was the volunteer movement, which embraced millions of Soviet patriots during the Great Patriotic War. This mass all-people movement is further evidence of the just nature of the struggle waged by the Soviet people against the German fascist invaders, the most aggressive force of international imperialism.

The multi-million detachment of volunteers that joined the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces during the Great Patriotic War is an eloquent historical fact, a living confirmation of Lenin's words that "they will never defeat the people in which the workers and peasants ... defend their own, Soviet power is the power of the working people."

The volunteer movement of the period of the Great Patriotic War deserves an independent and in-depth study as the brightest page in the heroic folk epic. The study of the history of volunteering is a matter of studying the destinies of millions of the most ardent patriots of the Soviet Motherland. The importance of this issue is undeniable. Its broad coverage can be successfully used in the military-patriotic education of Soviet youth, in the formation of high moral and political qualities of the builders of communism.

Not everything has been done in the study of the history of volunteerism and volunteer formations during the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, it is known that during the war there were more than 4 million people in volunteer formations and the people's militia. And this is far from complete. Of the volunteers, about 2 million people, already in the summer and autumn of 1941, fought with the enemy in various sectors of the Soviet-German front. Not a single war, not a single army in the world has known such an influx of volunteers.

The volunteer movement also gained wide scope in Siberia. From the very first days of the war, tens of thousands of Siberian volunteers courageously fought the enemy in many units and formations of the active army. In the city of Novosibirsk in the first (four months of the war) more than 9 thousand requests to send them to the front. During the first week of the war, Komsomol members and youth of the Omsk region filed 8866 applications with a similar request to the military commissariats.

Often, military units and subunits formed to be sent to the front were called communist or Komsomol-youth, since a large number of the best sons of Siberia, communists and Komsomol members, poured into their composition. In the city of Krasnoyarsk, for example, as early as 1941, separate Komsomol youth volunteer ski battalions were created. Similar units were formed in Altai, Novosibirsk, Omsk and other regions of Western and Eastern Siberia.

In the ranks of the volunteers, the first, as elsewhere, were the communists. From the Novosibirsk region in July - October 1941, more than 17 thousand party members left for the front. By the middle of 1942, about 150,000 Siberian communists were fighting in the army, the vast majority of them were volunteers.

The influx of applications from the working people of Siberia with a request to be sent to the front did not stop throughout the war. Volunteers were sent by the military commissariats to the formed units, units and formations. They went to the front with almost every new formation, and often battalions of submachine gunners, skiers, communications units, tank destroyers, scouts, snipers, etc. were completely formed from them.

The tireless activity of the party and Soviet bodies, purposeful party political work, the personal example of the communists, and the close connection of home front workers with their countrymen at the front throughout the war played a big role in increasing the combat capability of the Siberian volunteer formations and ensuring their victories at the fronts.

In the summer of 1942, when the situation on the Soviet-German front became more complicated, the Siberians, like the entire Soviet people, did everything possible to increase assistance to the Red Army. At defense enterprises, they increased the production of military products. The flow of applications with a request to send volunteers to the front also increased.

Supporting the patriotic movement of the working people, the 7th Plenum of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held on July 2-4, 1942, decided to form the Siberian Volunteer Division and to recruit volunteers who wanted to take up arms to defend the Motherland. Party organizations were asked to lead this patriotic movement, to ensure that the plans for the production of military products were overfulfilled and, using these additional resources, to arm and send volunteer soldiers to the front.

In a letter to the commander of the Siberian Military District, Lieutenant General K. V. Medvedev and the Secretary of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) M. V. Kulagin, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, Colonel General E. A. Shchadenko reported that the proposal to form a volunteer division was accepted by the State Defense Committee, who recommended that it be staffed with the most trained command personnel with combat experience. This GKO instruction was carried out. Only the 150th division included about 12% of the soldiers who had combat experience. More than 70 people of them had military orders and medals, including the first commander of this division, Colonel N. A. Guz, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for participating in the defense of Sevastopol.

The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the State Defense Committee, having approved the initiative of the Siberians, gave permission for the formation of a division, which was assigned the military number of the 150th rifle division. The first secretary of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, M. V. Kulagin, called on the Siberians to do everything so that in terms of the number of fighters this volunteer formation was a division, and in terms of armament, an army, so that this Siberian division would return to the Guards. The Bureau of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, by its resolution of July 8, 1942, confirmed the decision of the plenum to have at least 50% of communists and Komsomol members in the volunteer division.

The Military Council of the Siberian Military District addressed the Altai and Krasnoyarsk Territorial Committees, the Omsk Regional Party Committee with a proposal to discuss the issue of the initiative of the Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kuzbass people. Their patriotic initiative was immediately taken up by the party organizations of Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul and Omsk. Based on this, the command of the Siberian Military District on July 7, 1942 gave orders to form separate volunteer rifle brigades: the 1st Altai, 2nd Omsk and 3rd Krasnoyarsk. Later they were assigned numbers, respectively: 74th, 75th and 78th.

After the announcement of the formation of these volunteer formations, many thousands of applications began to come from Siberians to enroll them as volunteers. By August 10, 42,307 applications were received in the Novosibirsk Region alone, including 8,313 from communists and 8,494 from Komsomol members, which exceeded the division's staff strength, and in total, 3.3 times more applications were submitted than was necessary. Approximately the same situation turned out to be in the Altai, Krasnoyarsk Territories and the Omsk Region. Therefore, at the end of August, a decision was made to form another volunteer brigade, a separate engineer battalion and a separate communications battalion.

To select the most trained volunteers, special commissions were created from representatives of party, Soviet, trade union, Komsomol organizations and military registration and enlistment offices. The solution of complex issues of armament and material and technical supply of volunteer formations was handled by special troikas created in the regional and regional committees of the party. These formation bodies, together with the military registration and enlistment offices, not only created corps formations, but also took care of its replenishment during the fighting at the front.

Particular concern was shown for the qualitative staffing of the corps with political workers, the strengthening of the party and Komsomol stratum, and the development of effective party political work. Only among the political workers of the 150th division were 30 secretaries of city committees and district committees of the CPSU (b), 12 senior officials of the regional committee and city committees, 22 heads of political departments of the MTS, 23 heads of departments of district committees and city committees of the party, 8 party organizers of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), 65 secretaries of party bureaus , heads of trade union and economic organizations. For political work in the Altai Volunteer Brigade came 5 people from the apparatus of the Altai Regional Committee of the Party, 8 people from the Regional Council. The percentage of communists and Komsomol members was high in the corps. Before the corps entered the battle, almost 40% of the communists and Komsomol members were among its personnel.

Thus began the history of the 6th (later the 19th Guards) Siberian Volunteer Rifle Corps, one of the largest volunteer formations of the Great Patriotic War, which in an unusually short time joined the active army.

The corps went through a combat path from the Moscow region to the shores of the Baltic. It consisted of: the 150th Volunteer Rifle Division, formed in the Novosibirsk region, which later became the 22nd Guards, 74th Altai and 91st Siberian separate rifle brigades, merged and later transformed into the 56th Guards Rifle Division, 75 -I Omsk and 78th Krasnoyarsk separate volunteer brigades, transformed into the 65th Guards Rifle Division, and other volunteer units and subunits.

The Volunteer Corps of Siberians began its glorious journey on November 25, 1942, with participation in the breakthrough of the powerful German defense near the city of Bely as part of the troops of the Kalinin Front. Here, the Siberians acted heroically and were distinguished by irresistibility in the offensive, steadfastness in defense. They increased their military glory in February-March 1943 in the battles to defeat the main forces of the German Army Group Center. On February 23, 1943, participating in the Kholmsko-Loknensky operation, parts of the corps, after a short fire attack, attacked the enemy on a front 28 km long. As a result of intense fighting, which lasted until March 7, 1943, the Siberians inflicted enormous damage on the enemy:

two Nazi infantry divisions were completely defeated, up to 8 thousand soldiers and officers were destroyed. 156 bunkers, 133 machine guns, several tanks, many trophies were captured. Parts of the corps liberated over 45 settlements 18 . As well as under the city of Bely, in this operation the Siberian volunteers showed high morale, steadfastness, courage and heroism. Here, as part of the 91st brigade of Siberians, Alexander Matrosov accomplished his immortal feat.

From March 1943, by order of the command, parts of the corps switched to active defense and until April 1, 1943 stubbornly held the occupied line on the front with a length of 43 km - in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlements of Ivakovo, Berezovka, Borki, Kosovishchi and further along the river. Chernushka.

For the heroism and military skill shown in the battles, the corps was transformed into the 19th Guards. Continuing their glorious path under the banners of the guards, Siberian volunteers distinguished themselves as part of the shock group of the 10th Guards Army of the Western Front in the Smolensk direction - near Yelnya, Spas-Demensk, during the capture of the Gnezdilovsky heights and near the city of Orsha. Here, the commander of the machine-gun platoon of the 257th Guards Rifle Regiment, Lieutenant Aleksei Vasilyevich Sosnovsky, a native of Krasnoyarsk, stepped into immortality. During the battle in the Spas-Demensky region, machine gunners, having suppressed the fire of an enemy mortar battery, rushed into hand-to-hand combat. Many Nazis were exterminated in this battle. With the surviving 6 fighters, A. V. Sosnovsky broke into the height. When, in an unequal battle with enemies who were striving to regain their abandoned positions at any cost, all his fighters died, a wounded young officer, bleeding, blew himself up with the last grenade along with the advancing fascists. For this feat, communist A. V. Sosnovsky was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Increasing its fighting traditions of the guards, the corps fulfilled the tasks assigned to it and cleared the way for further advancement - to the city of Yelnya. In these battles, only from August 6 to August 20, 1943, parts of the tank and one motorized division of the enemy were completely destroyed, exterminated from above. 10 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, 27 guns, up to 300 machine guns, over 2 thousand rifles, 30 mortars and many other military equipment were captured.

On August 30, 1943, having captured the city of Yelnya by storm, the corps continued to pursue the enemy south of the city of Smolensk. By September 17, 1943, the Siberians captured the settlements of Novoselki, Panskoye, Lyady and Bolotov. The 56th Guards Volunteer Division distinguished itself here. She quickly moved forward cut the line of the Smolensk-Roslavl railway and contributed to the main grouping of the Western Front to capture the city of Smolensk, for which she was noted by order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and she was given the honorary name Smolenskaya.

During the one-year stay at the front, the soldiers of the 19th Guards Corps traveled a combat path with a total length of over 1,000 km. In these battles, the military skill of the Siberian volunteers became even stronger. Many soldiers and officers of the corps showed heroism and fearlessness in battle. During the attack on August 8, 1943, the Red Army soldier Makarov met 12 German soldiers at the junction of trenches. The soldier did not have grenades. Wasting no time, he launched his bayonet. In an unequal hand-to-hand fight, the brave Siberian destroyed 6 Nazis. When, having been wounded, the brave warrior was almost exhausted, his comrades arrived to help him. The remaining Nazis were destroyed by them. In total, during this day, the guards of the corps destroyed 2,600 fascist invaders.

On the same August day, the commander of the calculation of the easel machine gun of the guard, Sergeant V. A. Borisopolets, distinguished himself. The commander himself was shell-shocked, and his calculation disabled, but the courageous Siberian managed to repel several German counterattacks. When his machine gun was damaged, the guardsman, showing resourcefulness, replaced the body of the machine gun from another and repelled 3 more counterattacks by the Nazis. The Communist machine gunner Baratbol Kashibaev, the Red Army soldier Chernomutov, who destroyed a bunker with 11 Nazis with an anti-tank grenade, and many other soldiers acted just as skillfully.

Guards Red Army soldier Pyotr Kokorin, during an attack on enemy tanks, knocked out a self-propelled gun and set fire to a fascist tank with well-aimed fire from an anti-tank rifle. After the battle, he told a war correspondent: "It was not without reason that I was taught to shoot in such a way as to hit for sure. I learned this well and ... I am destroying the German reptile."

Volunteer guards acted just as courageously in all subsequent battles. In the award sheet on the guards of the private 257th Guards Regiment of the 65th Guards Division Pankin Nikolai Ivanovich, it is noted that Private Pankin N.I. a true guardsman, sparing neither strength nor life. Having met a bunker on the way to advance, which interfered with our infantry, comrade. Pankin, on his own initiative, risking his life, crawled forward and, coming from the rear, blew it up with an anti-tank grenade, destroyed 3 enemy machine gunners and thereby opened the way for the unit to advance. March 22, 1945 comrade. Pankin N.I. was mortally wounded. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War II degree.

Thousands of similar examples of the actions of Siberian volunteers can be cited. Many soldiers, like the communists I.P., Teterenkov, I.A. Zavadsky and others, boldly took command of a platoon or company when the commander failed, and ensured the completion of a combat mission.

Various forms of party-political work played an important role in increasing the stamina, courage, and combat skills of the Siberians. The most effective form was the personal example of commanders, political workers, and communists. Political workers of the Siberian Volunteer Corps - envoys of the Siberian party organizations - have always shown exceptional courage in battle. So, in the volunteer rifle brigade formed in Altai, the deputy company commanders for political affairs, senior lieutenants Sokolov, Abramov, Kuzmenkov, Butsko and others distinguished themselves in battles. Being wounded, Sokolov and Kuzmenkov did not leave the battlefield and fought to the last breath. They died a heroic death.

The 2nd battalion, where Captain Derkach was the deputy for political affairs, especially distinguished himself. This unit destroyed more than 1 thousand invaders. In the battle near the village of Samsonikha, the Siberian battalion was surrounded by the enemy and for 5 days repulsed fierce counterattacks, and then broke out of the encirclement, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. For courage and steadfastness, 517 of his soldiers were presented for awards.

Volunteer soldiers fought just as bravely in other units. The newspaper of the 19th Guards Volunteer Corps "Into the Battle for the Motherland" on March 19, 1943 called:

"Beat the Germans like a battery of senior lieutenant Barakhovsky!" In battles with the Nazis, artillerymen under the command of a Siberian destroyed a battery of 105-mm guns, 2 mortar batteries, 2 tanks, 4 vehicles, dozens of ammunition carts, more than 500 Nazis, smashed 12 bunkers and dugouts, 14 buildings with the invaders in them.

The motherland highly appreciated the military deeds of Siberian volunteers. Only for the feats accomplished during the crossing of the Dnieper, Omsk volunteers became Heroes of the Soviet Union: Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Petrovich Budarin, whose regiment was one of the first to cross the Dnieper, Lieutenant Vasily Ivanovich Zakharov, nurse Vera Sergeevna Kosheleva and many others.

For heroism and courage shown in battles with the Nazis, Siberian volunteers also became holders of the Golden Star: Vasily Gavrilovich Tikhonov, a miner from Khakassia, who was awarded the high title of Hero back in September 1941 as one of the first fearless pilots who bombed Berlin; 19-.year old; communist, intelligence officer Alexei Emelyanovich Tolmachev - for crossing the Western Dvina, destroying and capturing more than 75 Nazis; Aleksey Porfiryevich Sibiryakov (posthumously) - for heroism during the assault on the city of Koenigsberg and the destruction of the guns of the battery he commanded, 60 wagons with fascists, 40 steam locomotives and the capture of up to 150 invaders; Omsk, artilleryman Vladimir Alekseevich Goloskov and many others.

Unfortunately, the question of which of the Siberians, who received the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union, went to the front voluntarily, has not yet been fully investigated, so that the exact number of Heroes-volunteers can be named.

Siberian girls also fought courageously as part of the Siberian volunteer formations. So, before being sent to the front, only as part of the 150th division there were 136 junior commanders, and 142 ordinary soldiers. At the same time, by decision of the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League of November 9, 1942, girls, mainly Komsomol members, aged 19 to 25 were selected exclusively on a voluntary basis to form a volunteer rifle brigade.

On October 4, 1943, the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to send female volunteers to replenish the Novosibirsk Volunteer 22nd Guards Division to work in medical, headquarters, logistics and communications units. This replenishment was recruited within ten days.

For heroism at the front, many patriots received military awards. Siberian volunteers were well aware of the feat of Maria Pavlenko, a member of the party, a sanitary instructor in one of the Novosibirsk regiments. Only in a day of battle under heavy enemy fire, she assisted 60 soldiers and commanders, carried many seriously wounded from the battlefield on her girlish shoulders. For courage and fearlessness, M. Pavlenko was awarded the Order of Lenin.

Medical instructor, Komsomol member Valya Primachenko, seeing that the commander was wounded, boldly took command of the company and repulsed the German counterattack. She carried 50 wounded from the battlefield with their weapons.

There were many Siberian volunteers in the ranks of the people's avengers. They came to the partisan detachments by different roads, but they differed in one thing - heroism, courage and courage. As archival documents testify, even at the beginning of the war, hundreds of the best, most courageous communist volunteers and pupils of the Lenin Komsomol were sent behind enemy lines from different regions of Siberia.

In July 1942, a group of Siberian partisans during the Civil War made a trip to their Belarusian brethren and shared their experience with them. I. V. Gromov, a former commander of a partisan formation in Altai, advised the formation of enlarged partisan detachments, and L. A. Reshetnikov, a former commissar of a partisan division, outlined his plan for organizing party political work among partisans and the local population. The old Bolsheviks Ya. S. Zamuraev, V. V. Zagumenny, I. P. Gullever and others rendered great help to the Byelorussian comrades.

Three months later, a large group of volunteers turned to the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with a request to send them to fight in the ranks of the people's avengers. The bureau of the regional committee supported the noble initiative of the red partisans. 100 veterans and 20 Komsomol volunteers left for the Kalinin region and Belarus. Among them were the old Bolsheviks I. M. Sitnikov, N. F. Pesikov, S. D. Ashurkov, A. N. Danilov with his Komsomol son Kim and others.

One group of our fellow countrymen, after landing behind enemy lines, fought along its rear for about 800 km. The detachments "Sibiryak", "Bolshevik" and others were created. They later entered the partisan brigade "Forward", which operated in Western Belarus. The fighters of this brigade derailed 29 German echelons, destroyed more than 1.5 thousand Nazis, captured 880, blew up 30 tanks and 51 vehicles on mines.

Siberian partisans bravely fought in the Vyazma region, in the Kalinin and Smolensk regions. Back in the autumn of 1941, a partisan detachment under the command of the Siberian Filimonov, numbering 1,000 hardened fighters, provided great assistance to army units in the Vyazemsky operation, and then, having made a raid behind enemy lines, went to Belarus.

Volunteer Siberians acted heroically in the partisan detachments. M. I. Kutuzova, A. V. Suvorov and others. Suvorov was entirely formed from Siberians. It was headed by I. Kuznetsov, and A. Pyatygin was the commissar. On May 23, 1943, this detachment was transferred by air over the front line to the Vitebsk region. More than 200 km he went through the rear and inflicted great damage on the invaders, defeating more than one of their garrison. Siberian volunteers also fought valiantly in the illustrious division of twice Hero of the Soviet Union S. A. Kovpak. The commander of the cavalry division of this division, A.N. Lenkii, in July 1943 broke into the city of Spalat, Ternopil region, with his horsemen, and destroyed a battalion of Nazi guard troops. For this feat, the Siberian was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The Siberian S.P. Tutuchenko also became a Hero of the Soviet Union. He, with a group of 16 fighters, shot 60 fascists at close range, captured a serviceable car from them and, having destroyed several more small groups of the enemy, escaped from the encirclement and joined the division.

In the ranks of Siberian partisans, Vera Voloshina from Kemerovo, an associate of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, N.V. Pronkin from Novosibirsk, commissar of the Vperyod brigade, his fellow countryman, foreman P.F. Parshenkov, who accounted for 4 blown up enemy echelons, 4 vehicles , 9 tanks, 2 guns, 116 Nazis killed.

A vivid example of the persistent work of Siberians in preparing and sending new reinforcements to the front, including from volunteers, is the activity of the 23rd reserve rifle brigade, formed in June 1941 in Novosibirsk. For a year and a half, she prepared and sent 706 combat units to the front with marching companies and battalions. In total, during this time, thousands of fighters left for the active army, including 40,462 skiers. Only in the 150th Novosibirsk Rifle Division were sent 644 junior commanders and 95 people. middle command staff from among the volunteers.

On all fronts, wherever the patriotic warriors from Siberia fought against the Nazi hordes, at the call of the Communist Party and at the behest of their hearts, they voluntarily took up arms in order to protect the socialist Fatherland from the enslavers, the glory of their feats of arms thundered. It is not for nothing that the song is composed, in which there are mean, but full of deep meaning words: "... A Siberian fought near Moscow, and he ended the war in Berlin!"

Siberian volunteers made a worthy contribution to the cause of victory over the enemy, showed stamina, courage and heroism in battles, inflicted significant damage on the fascist invaders. The command of the 19th Siberian Guards Volunteer Corps in the final letter-report to fellow countrymen dated July 6, 1945, exhibited at the Museum of Military Glory of Siberian Warriors, reported that during the battles with the Nazis, the guardsmen of the corps destroyed more than 80 thousand German soldiers and officers, 211 tanks, 950 guns, 566 mortars, 4200 machine guns and other equipment. Many trophies were captured, including: self-propelled guns - 58, cannons - 310, mortars - 490, machine guns - 1737, rifles and machine guns - 5700, motor vehicles - 712, horses - 3500, wagons - 1100 , more than 15 thousand soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. This is far from a complete combat score of Siberian volunteers during the Great Patriotic War.

BACKGROUND AND COURSE OF THE PEASANT UPRISING IN THE TAMBOV REGION

The main reason for the uprising was the "military-communist" policy of surplus appropriation carried out by the Bolsheviks in the countryside during the Civil War, i.e. forcible expropriation from the peasants with the help of the armed forces (food detachments) of bread and other foodstuffs necessary for the existence of the Red Army and the urban population. This policy was accompanied by the mobilization of peasants for military service, various duties (labor, horse-drawn, etc.). The Khlebnaya Tambov province experienced the brunt of the surplus appraisal. By October 1918, 50 food detachments from Petrograd, Moscow and other cities, numbering up to 5 thousand people, were operating in the province. Not a single province knew such a scale of confiscations. After the bread was raked out clean, it often disappeared on the spot: it rotted at the nearest railway stations, was drunk on food by food detachments, and was distilled into moonshine. Peasants everywhere were forced to choose between resistance and starvation. To this was added the robbery and closing of churches, which forced the patriarchal Orthodox peasantry to defend their shrines.

The first and most massive form of resistance to the surplus appraisal was the reduction by the peasant of his farm. If in 1918 in the black-earth and “grain” Tambov province, one farm accounted for an average of 4.3 acres of sowing, then in 1920 - 2.8 acres. The fields were sown in the sizes necessary only for personal consumption.

The situation in the countryside deteriorated especially sharply in 1920, when a drought struck the Tambov region, and the surplus remained extremely high. According to one of the organizers of the suppression of the uprising, V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko, the peasantry fell into complete decline, and in a number of districts of the Tambov province, the inhabitants "ate not only chaff, quinoa, but also bark, nettles."

The uprising broke out spontaneously in the middle of August 1920 in the villages of Khitrovo and Kamenka in the Tambov district, where the peasants refused to hand over their grain and disarmed the food detachment. Within a month, popular indignation engulfed several districts of the province, the number of rebels reached 4,000 armed insurgents and about 10,000 people with pitchforks and scythes. On the territory of Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky and Tambov counties, a kind of "peasant republic" was formed with a center in the village of Kamenka.

At the head of the uprising stood the tradesman of the city of Kirsanov, the former volost clerk and people's teacher, the Left Social Revolutionary Alexander Stepanovich Antonov (1889–1922). In his biography there was a fighting Social Revolutionary past, imprisonment during the years of tsarism, command over the militia of the Kirsanovsky district after the February Revolution. He voluntarily left the post of head of the district police because of his rejection of the communist dictatorship and the policy pursued by the authorities towards the peasantry. In the autumn of 1918, Antonov formed a "military squad" and began an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. His detachment became the organizational core of the partisan army.

Under the command of Antonov, the rebel forces grew rapidly. This was facilitated by the clarity of the goals of the uprising (slogans of death to the communists and a free peasant republic), successful military operations in favorable geographical conditions (a large number of forests and other natural shelters), flexible partisan tactics of sudden attacks and rapid withdrawals. In February 1921, when the insurrectionary movement reached its peak, the number of fighters reached 40 thousand people, the army was divided into 21 regiments and a separate brigade. The rebels smashed state farms and communes, spoiled the railways. The uprising began to go beyond the local framework, finding a response in the border districts of the neighboring Voronezh and Saratov provinces.

Moscow was forced to pay the most serious attention to this uprising. In late February - early March 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was formed, headed by V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko, which concentrated all power in the Tambov province in its hands. Large military contingents, equipment, including artillery, armored parts and aircraft, were removed from the fronts that ended the hostilities. The entire province was divided into six combat areas with field headquarters and emergency authorities - political commissions.

Without waiting for the decisions of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) to replace the surplus tax with the tax in kind, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on February 2, 1921 instructed N.I. Bukharin, E.A. Preobrazhensky and L.B. Kamenev "to develop and approve the text of the appeal ... to the peasants of the Tambov province in order to distribute it only in this province, without publishing it in the newspapers. The appeal announcing the abolition of the surplus and the permission of the local trade exchange of agricultural products began to be distributed on February 9th.

On April 27, 1921, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) adopted a resolution “On the liquidation of Antonov’s gangs in the Tambov province”, according to which M.N. Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the operation. Together with him, famous military leaders N.E. Kakurin, I.P. Uborevich, G.I. Kotovsky arrived in Tambov region. G.G. Yagoda, V.V. Ulrikh, Ya.A. Levina were sent from the punitive bodies. The number of Red Army soldiers increased to 100 thousand people.

The military defeat of the so-called Antonovshchina began. The brutal military occupation of the insurgent areas was carried out, the destruction of farms and the destruction of the houses of the participants in the rebellion and their families, the taking of hostages, including from among children, the creation of concentration camps and repressions up to execution for disobedience, for harboring "bandits" and weapons, i.e. . the terror of the civilian population was organized. During the suppression of the uprising, Tukhachevsky destroyed many villages and villages with the use of artillery, armored vehicles and poison gases.

In the summer of 1921, Antonov's main forces were defeated. In late June - early July, he issued the last order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to divide into groups and hide in the forests. The uprising broke up into isolated pockets, which were to be liquidated before the end of the year. Antonov and his group were destroyed in June 1922.

Encyclopedia "Circumnavigation"

RED TERROR

Order of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the beginning of the

repressive measures against individual bandits and their families

N 171, Tambov

Political commissions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

fast calming of the edge. Soviet power consistently

is being restored, and the working peasantry

moves on to peaceful and calm work.

Antonov's gang was defeated by decisive actions of our troops,

scattered and caught singly.

In order to finally eradicate the SR-bandit roots and

in addition to the previously issued orders, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee

orders:

1. Citizens who refuse to give their names should be shot on the spot

without trial.

2. Villages in which weapons are hidden, by the authority of the political commission or

district political commission to announce the verdict on the seizure of hostages

and shoot those in case of non-surrender of weapons.

3. If a hidden weapon is found, shoot on the spot

without trial senior worker in the family.

4. The family in whose house the bandit took refuge is subject to arrest

and expulsion from the province, its property is confiscated, a senior worker

in this family is shot without trial.

5. Families hiding family members or property of bandits,

treated as bandits, and the senior worker of this family

shoot on the spot without trial.

6. In the event of the flight of the bandit's family, the property of such should be distributed among

peasants loyal to Soviet power, and burn the houses left

or disassemble.

7. This order is to be enforced severely and ruthlessly.

Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Antonov-Ovseenko

Commander of the troops Tukhachevsky

Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee Lavrov

Secretary Vasiliev

Read at rural gatherings.

GATO. F.R.-4049. Op.1. D.5. L.45. Typographic copy.

Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921, "Antonovshchina": documents and materials.

PROGRAM AND SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE REBELLIONS

By mid-January 1921, the organization of the uprising took shape. In five counties, up to 900 village committees were created, elected by gatherings, united by volost, then district, county and, finally, provincial committees of the Unions of the Labor Peasantry (STK). The armed forces of A.S.Antonov combined the principles of building a regular army (2 armies consisting of 21 regiments, a separate brigade) with irregular armed detachments. Particular attention was paid to the formulation of political, propaganda work among the peasants. A network of political agencies operated in the army, which absorbed the fragments of the defeated Socialist-Revolutionary organizations. The agitation was of a simplified nature (mainly slogans like "Death to the communists!" and "Long live the working peasantry!"), but productively played up the difficulties experienced by the countryside (see the STK leaflet "Why the Bolsheviks Cannot Defeat Antonov").

The main task of the STK was "the overthrow of the power of the communist Bolsheviks, who brought the country to poverty, death and disgrace." Among the political goals in the STK Program were the equality of all citizens without division into classes (in one of the options - "excluding the house of the Romanovs"). It was supposed to convene a Constituent Assembly to "establish a new political system", and before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the creation of a provisional government "on an elective basis", but without the Bolsheviks. Some representatives of the STK supplemented this program with such demands as declaring "an end to the civil war" as the goal of the "armed struggle", as well as "the emancipation of people and horses in the name of equality, brotherhood and freedom."

The economic program coincided with the program recommended by the letter of the Central Committee of the AKP dated May 13, 1920. It included the partial denationalization of industry, leaving large-scale industry, especially coal and metallurgical industries, "in the hands of the state"; "workers' control and state supervision over production"; "implementation of the law on the socialization of land in its entirety." "Free production" was proclaimed in handicraft industry; supplying food and other essentials to "the population of towns and villages through cooperatives"; "regulation of prices for labor and products of production" in state industry; "admission of Russian and foreign capital" to restore economic life. (We will see later these ideas at the basis of the Bolshevik NEP, it was another interception by the "party of power" of the Socialist-Revolutionary slogans, as in 1917.)

An analysis of the structure and activities of the STC shows their democratic nature, both in terms of the method of election and composition. Even the KGB reports do not deny the benevolent attitude of the peasantry towards the STK as the future organs of democracy. In the very structure of the STK, elements of the future party are guessed (centralism, meetings of supporters of the STK, possibly membership in them). The STK Committee performs the main functions of the authority. In the military field, he organizes replenishment of volunteers, organizes the collection of money, food and clothing for the partisans, organizes medical care for them and assistance to their families. He, through the "commandant's office", is in charge of quartering the rebels, changing horses, organizing communications and reconnaissance.

In support of the Committee, in order to fight against small parties of the "Reds", a "vohra" is organized (internal security in the amount of 5 to 50 people per village). The STK Committee also carries out general economic and administrative work. Many decisions and actions of the STK are copied by the Soviet ones: political commissars and political departments in A. Antonov's army units and formations, the strictest "accounting and control", severe punishments for misconduct "according to the laws of revolutionary times." The similarities in the organization and ideology of the revolutionary forces opposing each other were manifested in many ways, up to the appeal "comrade" and the red banner. (From the interrogations of the Antonovites, the popular expression of our bodies went - "The Tambov wolf is your comrade!")

To lead the insurgent movement, people were required psychologically ready for self-sacrifice. Such features were endowed with the main leaders of the Tambov uprising of 1920-1921. A.S.Antonov, A.E.Ishin, G.N.Pluzhnikov, who came out "from the bottom" and gave themselves entirely to the revolution. Antonov himself was a man of immediate, "direct action", ready to carry out both "terrorist attacks" and "exes" for the sake of high ideals. Antonov's fighting Socialist-Revolutionary past helped him become the chief of police in the Kirsanovsky district. He had to fight the "agrarian terror", disarm the echelons of Czechoslovak troops passing through Kirsanov in May 1918. Perhaps these weapons came in handy later, but according to another version, Antonov was armed by Moscow, who was looking for support in the local police against the disloyal leadership of the province.

The concreteness of the goals, as well as the victorious results of the actions, raised the morale of the "People's Army" and attracted new forces to it. The numbered regiments for all the time were created up to the 21st and, in addition, Antonov was constantly accompanied by a "special regiment" and personal protection - "Parevskaya Hundred". The number of fighters reached in February 1920. up to 40,000, of which a significant part from the fronts of the imperialist and civil wars. In addition to the "field" troops, there were also units of "vokhra" numbering up to 10,000 people.

But this was the limit of the growth of the uprising. By the beginning of May, the number of "Antonovites" had dropped to 21,000, both as a result of the decisive actions of the Red Army that had begun, and in connection with the abolition of the surplus appraisal. But the main reason was the onset of the spring season: the rebels, almost without exception, were from local peasants. In the "Fortnight of voluntary appearance of bandits", which fell at the end of March-beginning of April (the period of preparation for field work), up to 6 thousand Antonovites appeared and went home. All the rank-and-file participants were released (even though very few surrendered their weapons), and the "organizers" received a reduced sentence.

Y. Solozobov. The Tambov wolf is your citizen! The lessons of the Tambov uprising.

TAMBOV SONGS

A crow barks on an oak tree -

Communist! Pull the trigger!

At the last hour, funeral,

Let's take a walk for a while.

Oh share-not share, dry prison,

Valley, aspen, dark grave.

A crow barks on an oak tree -

Communist! Fire! Fire!

At the last hour, funeral

Moonshine smells like a corpse.

Genuine fragment of the song of the participants of the peasant uprising of the 20s. 20th century in the Tambov region ("Antonovtsev"). Heard by Mark Sobol in the mid-30s.

Of those that appeared during the 1970-1980s. works devoted to the peasant movement of 1920-1921, it should be noted the research of D.L. Golinkova, Yu.A. Shchetinova, A.Ya. Pereverzeva. The works are devoted to the problems of participation of right and left SRs in the organization of peasant uprisings; activities of the Communist Party in 1917-1921.

In 1987-1991. articles by V.V. Samoshkin, S.A. Pavlyuchenkov, D. Feldman, dedicated to the Antonov rebellion.

S.A. Pavlyuchenkov investigated the causes of the uprising, the military organization of the rebels, the transition to the NEP and its impact on the peasantry. V.V. Samoshkin made a great contribution to the study of the prerequisites for the uprising - it was he who determined the number of deserters in the Tambov province and three southeastern counties by the beginning of the uprising in 1920. D. Feldman paid attention in his article to military methods of eliminating the uprising. V.V. Samoshkin questioned the thesis about the kulak-SR rebellion in the Tambov province during this period, and S.A. Pavlyuchenkov and D. Feldman examine these events as a peasant uprising, and not a rebellion, where one of the main driving forces was the fists. However, interest arose only in the events in the Tambov province, and the peasant movement in the Saratov province in 1920-1921. has not attracted the attention of researchers.

1990s period is the most fruitful in the study of the peasant movement in 1920-1921. Articles by V.P. Danilova, V.L. Dyachkova, S.A. Esikova, V.V. Kanishcheva, V.V. Samoshkina, D. Seltser, L.G. Protasov allowed a different look at the Tambov events in 1920-1921, the peasant historian V.V. Kondrashin deals with the problems of the peasant movement in 1920-1921 in the Volga region. The focus of the work is the problem of the participation of the Central Committee of the AKP and the Tambov Social Revolutionaries in organizing uprisings, the structure and functioning of the Antonov STK, the biography of A.S. Antonov and his role in the uprising, abuses of local authorities and excesses in the surplus appropriation, the impact of peasant uprisings on the transition to the NEP, repressive and military methods of suppressing uprisings, the number of deserters in the Volga region.

In 1994 a collection of documents was published under the editorship of V.P. Danilov “Peasant uprising in the Tambov province: in 1919-1921 “Antonovshchina”: Documents and materials. The value of the collection lies in the presence of a significant number of documents of the rebels, which makes it possible to trace the dynamics of the peasant movement and the level of political and military organization of the Antonovites. In 1994 in the journal Rodina, thanks to P. Aptekar, the publication of documents on the suppression of the uprising in the Tambov region with the help of chemical weapons appeared. Of interest are the memoirs of V.M. Chernov "Before the Storm", which contains material not only about the activities of the leader of the right forces in the Tambov province, but also information about the functioning of populist circles at the end of the 19th century. and about the acquaintance of Chernov and Sletov. In 1996 A three-volume collection of documents “The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries” appeared, which contains materials on the problem of the participation of the Central Committee of the AKP in organizing anti-Soviet uprisings. In 1998 a collection of documents was published under the editorship of A.Ya. Livshin and I.B. Orlov "Letters to the authorities: 1917-1927".

In the 2000s research work flows into the publication of collections of documents. In 2005, a monograph by V.V. Samoshkin "Antonov uprising" appeared. The main advantage of the study is a huge factual material. Through the efforts of the peasant historian V. Danilov and the sociologist T. Shanin, a series of collections of documents on the peasant movement “The Peasant Revolution in Russia. 1902-1922". The most significant and of interest are the collections of documents “The Peasant Movement in the Volga Region. 1919-1922: Documents and materials", "Peasant movement in the Tambov province, 1917-1918". In 2000 a collection of documents "The Soviet Village through the Eyes of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD" was published in 4 volumes. In 2001 edited by S.S. Kryukova appeared in print a collection of documents “Peasant stories: Russian village in the 1920s. in letters and documents”, which contains interesting materials that tell about the socio-economic consequences of the Antonov rebellion for the Tambov village. In these collections, most of the documents are published for the first time. Collections of documents of the series “Peasant Revolution in Russia. 1902-1922" are scientific thematic complex publication of documents.

Foreign historiography is not rich in ideas and works. The most famous book is by the American historian O. Radkey, but its merits have to be assessed with restraint: the author depicts the clash of "good" and "evil", compensates for the lack of historical specifics by glorifying the peasant element. An example of scientific objectivity is the article by S. Singleton, which uses the memoirs of the former "Antonovite" M. Fomichev (Lidina). A number of provisions and assessments made by the author, primarily about the attitude of the AKP to the "Antonovshchina", deserve recognition or attention, due to their reasoning and originality. Of interest is the monograph by O. Figes “Peasant Russia, Civil War. The village of the Volga region during the years of the revolution (1917-1921)”, in which much attention is paid to the problem of the peasant movement.

The range of sources for studying the peasant movement in the Saratov and Tambov provinces in 1920-1921 is varied. First, these are collective and personal peasant documents. The collective ones include resolutions and orders of the general meeting of citizens of the village, volost. Personal appeals include peasants' appeals to local authorities - district or provincial, and there are also appeals to V.I. Lenin, M.I. Kalinin, to the Presidium of the Cheka, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The second type of sources are declarations, programs, appeals, orders, leaflets of insurgent armies and detachments. The third type of sources is documents of local authorities. In turn, materials are subdivided into party and Soviet materials, with subdivisions into provincial, district, and volost ones; independent groups make up the materials of local food, police, emergency and military authorities. Another type of sources are documents of the Central Power. It is represented by separate documents of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the Council of People's Commissars, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the People's Commissariat of Food, as well as independent groups of materials from power structures of power: army bodies, troops of the VOKhR / VNUS and bodies of the Cheka. Fifthly, the documents of the Socialist-Revolutionary Parties. Sixthly, the memoirs and memoirs of the red commanders who suppressed the uprisings, the revolutionaries.

The base of sources for studying the peasant movement is wide and colorful, which aroused the interest of researchers in these problems.

My work is based on general methodological principles (objectivity, historicism, complexity) and analytical methods widely used in the social sciences: analysis and synthesis, comparison, generalization, etc.

The purpose of this work is a comparative analysis of the peasant movement in the Saratov and Tambov provinces in 1920-1921, on the basis of which regional features are revealed.

To solve it, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: firstly, to analyze the causes, prerequisites and scope of the peasant movement of 1920-1921; secondly, to study the programs, organization, classification of leaders, and tactics for eliminating the peasant movement.

The set goal and objectives predetermined the structure of the work. It consists of an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion.

ChapterI. Causes, prerequisites, scope of the peasant movement in 1920-1921. in the Saratov and Tambov provinces and the military organization of the rebels.

1.1. The position and struggle for their rights of the peasantry of the Saratov and Tambov provinces in the pre-revolutionary period.

Saratov and Tambov provinces were agrarian, purely peasant provinces.

In the Tambov province at the beginning of the 20th century, about 92% of the population were peasants. At the end of the 19th century, the population of the Saratov province was 1.6-1.8 million people, but only about 200 thousand were city dwellers, and the rest came from peasants. At the beginning of the 20th century, the ratio of urban population to peasants did not change. In the Saratov and Tambov provinces, industry was poorly developed. In the Saratov province, the working class comprised only 1.6% of the total population. Both provinces were the grain granaries of Russia, so many problems in the agricultural sector were reflected here most sharply and vividly. Historian B.N. Mironov writes: “As a result, by 1901, the surplus of labor in the countryside reached 23 million. By 1914, 32 million, which amounted to 52 and 56% of the total number of workers in the countryside.”

The demographic rise to the limit exacerbated the problem of agrarian overpopulation in the Tambov province. According to some estimates, already in 1890 more than 40% of the rural population turned out to be "superfluous". The authorities tried to change the situation by organizing the resettlement of the peasantry in the eastern regions of the country with large land resources. However, migration processes did not alleviate the acuteness of the demographic situation. By 1897 260 thousand rural residents left the province, almost a tenth of the population of the Tambov region at that time. In 1906-1914. about 100 thousand peasants (about 3% of the population of the region) left the Tambov province, which clearly could not alleviate the tension of the land issue in the Tambov region. On the contrary, it increased due to the fact that the natural increase in the population of the region blocked the mechanical migration movement. In 1912 alone, the excess of births over deaths in the Tambov province amounted to 100 thousand people, i.e. was equal to the number of all immigrants from the province during the period of the Stolypin reform. The migration of the peasantry outside the province was largely due to the fact that the Tambov cities, which until the beginning of the twentieth century. remained mainly administrative centers and could not accept any significant number of the rural population.

In the first twenty years after the reform of 1861. in the Tambov region, virgin and fallow lands were intensively plowed up, forests were cut down, ravines were filled up. The proportion of arable land began to approach the exorbitant figure of 80%, minimizing the area under forests and fodder lands. According to agrarians (A.A. Kaufman, A.V. Chayanov and others), a rational three-field economy requires an area of ​​meadows and pastures, at least equal to the arable one. In the Tambov province, by the beginning of the twentieth century. arable land was 9 times more than pasture land. The deterioration of the environmental situation in the province, its impact on the economy and living standards of the Tambov peasantry was quickly noticed by contemporaries. So, in the report of Senator Mordvinov, who audited the Tambov province in 1870, there were clear signs of a decrease in peasant welfare associated with the depletion of the fertility of the land, due to its disorderly and predatory cultivation, and a decrease in the number of draft animals.

N.P. Oganovsky wrote that with a three-field system of agriculture, the population becomes crowded with a density of 40 people per square verst. For the Tambov province, which was mostly in the black earth zone, he raised this figure to 50-55 people. Already by 1880. The province has crossed that line. And in 1917. The population density on peasant lands was almost twice the norm. It is also necessary to take into account such a "vital" indicator as the population of settlements. It, in our opinion, largely explains the natural-historical prerequisites for increased socio-political activity of the peasants of certain areas of the Tambov province during the period of the peasant revolution - Borisoglebsk district and the steppe parts of Tambov, Kirsanov and Kozlovsky districts. In the first of them, the average population of settlements at the beginning of the 20th century. Passed over 1000 people. In the Tambov, Kirsanov and Kozlovsky districts, on average, it was at the general provincial level of 700-800 people.

The relaxation of human tension in the steppe regions was limited by the difficulties of resettlement from large riverside villages to dry upland areas, where huge funds were required for the construction of ponds, wells, wells, forest plantations, etc.

In the forest-steppe and steppe districts, the decrease in allotments occurred sharply, the extensive tradition of managing was overcome very little, there was almost no waste, in general, the severity of the demographic and environmental crises was higher, which pushed the peasantry of the “sedentary” areas to a decisive struggle for the missing natural resources. In all the major outbreaks of the agrarian-peasant revolution in the first decades of the twentieth century. invariably, the most active were the peasants of Borisoglebsky Kirsanovsky, Kozlovsky and Tambov counties.

Prominent historian - peasant expert A.I. Anfimov writes about the brutal exploitation of peasants by landowners in the Saratov and Tambov provinces.

Even the landownership of the big capitalists, many of whom bought land and at the same time became landlords, can by no means always be classified as capitalist property. So, the peasants of the village of Lavrovo, Tambov district, in a petition for the "highest name" complained that the famous banker L.S. Polyakov “bought land from our two adjacent serfs: from Mr. Voeikov and Oznodishin ... 3,000 acres of land, currently he sells land for one acre 25 rubles per 1 crop, he does not accept such an amount in money, but each family has to earn money by field work for cheap fee; consumption for rural livestock is not allowed at all.

At the beginning of the XX century. In the Tambov province, the labor system prevailed over the capitalist one. For 30 years (1864-1894), the payment to the peasants for working off circles not only did not increase, but, on the contrary, decreased in the last five years by an average of 83.8% of the initial payment.

Taking into account some increase in prices for piece work in 1880-1894. payment to peasants in 1890-1894. will be only 81.9%. The real decline in prices was even greater due to the depreciation of the ruble. Finally, in order to imagine how the oppression of the latifundia over the peasants increased towards the end of the 19th century, we add to what has been said that in the last five years the Stroganov economy has almost completely switched to cultivating the land in circles.

Some landlords showed utter selfishness and a desire to profit at the expense of the peasants, to harm them. Police Department reports show:

“Rklitsky Vladimir Ivanovich, the owner of the dacha, fined the peasants and brought them to court for petty trifles. IN AND. Rklitsky plowed under the sowing of sunflowers that particular area in the common dacha, which from time immemorial served the peasants for cattle pasture. 43% of arable land in the Saratov province was in feudal lease for one sowing and half. To a large extent, long-term leases had the same character. First, in the province, the transfer of leased land to peasants was widely developed at prices that exceeded those at which peasants rented land from landowners. So, peasants rented land from owners for an average of 7 rubles 67 kopecks, and from large tenants - 9 rubles 04 kopecks each. Secondly, in many cases, long-term leases included leases for one crop rotation (2-3 years), which differed little in terms from short-term leases.

Nevertheless, the combination of capitalist economy with working off, sharecropping and land leasing remained predominant. This applies even to farms with industrial processing of products. So in the estate of Prince. L.D. Vyazemsky (Balashovsky district) with its own distillery “almost 1/3 of the plowed area is rented out by the economy to the peasants of the village of Arkadak ... Usually a small part of the land, about 1/3 of the total, is rented for money, at a price of 12-15 rubles. for a tithe, the greater part is rented out for working off.

We read further that “by handing over most of it for work, the economy wins by providing itself with working hands in hot weather, and this is very important in view of the huge area of ​​economy potato crops that require a lot of working hands.”

Historian A.M. Anfimov claims that in the Tambov province there was a layer of rich peasants - "grossbauers". The researcher's calculations show that the smaller group of farms with inventory in the Tambov province is much richer than the same group in the Kursk, Oryol, Ryazan and Tula provinces. The inventory farms of the Tambov province had 10 times more seeders and 6 times more reapers than the inventory farms of 4 neighboring provinces. In general, in the Tambov province, in the presence of a huge number of non-inventory farms, amounting to 86.2%, there were 1.5 times more seeders than in 4 neighboring provinces combined. There were almost as many zhneeks in the province as in 4 provinces. Activity in the revolution of 1905-1907. middle peasants and rich peasants showed. It is this stratum that will most painfully perceive the lack of land and the actions of Soviet power.

It is no coincidence that the peasant uprisings that began in 1902. black earth provinces of Ukraine, spread to Tambov villages and villages. Here they found prepared and socio-economic, and natural-historical, and socio-psychological soil. In the next 20 years, the struggle of the Tambov peasants against the landowners and any forms of dependence and oppression almost did not fade, having only a different degree of breadth, mass character and intensity. Single peasant uprisings in the Tambov province were a constant phenomenon of village activity in the 1111-11X centuries. New quality of the peasant movement in 1902-1903. manifested itself in the fact that the performance of the peasants of one village on the most ordinary occasion served as a detonator for the performance of peasants in neighboring villages. Thus, an all-peasant anti-landlord front was formed. A variation of the struggle of the peasants for the land was the arson of the landowners' houses and other buildings. Recalling his note on the events that followed the Poltava-Kharkov uprising of 1902. Acting Director of the Police Department A.A. Lopukhin wrote: “During this time, in many districts of the Saratov, Penza, Kherson and Kyiv provinces, systematic arsons by peasants of landlord estates took place. In the Saratov province, the peasants set fire to the estate of the landowner Ermolaev 16 times in one summer, and in the Tambov province, the estate of the state secretary Bezobrazov was set on fire 11 times within 5 months.

The peasant conviction that the land should belong to those who cultivate it with their own labor during the years of the revolution of 1905-1907. not only manifested itself in the mass seizure of landowners' lands, but also gave rise to a programmatic political demand for their complete and gratuitous confiscation. In terms of the number of landlord estates destroyed, the Tambov province was among the leaders in Russia. The peasants accumulated experience in the struggle, it was during this period that the future leaders of the peasant movement of 1920-1921 declare themselves: Antonov, Semenov, Pluzhnikov, etc. They not only actively participated in political life, got acquainted with the programs of various political parties, but many of them went through hard labor and prison schools. The main components in the mechanism of revolutionary violence aimed at the elimination of landlord domination in the countryside were already formed during the first revolution. The ruling class of Russia not only did not draw the proper conclusions, but did not want to understand the causes of the revolution. In the Tambov province, Prince B. Vyazemsky confiscated thousands of hectares of pastures from village communities as punishment for participating in riots in 1905. Such actions only heated up the socio-psychological atmosphere in the countryside. The decisive moment was 1917. The fall of "weak" tsarism, as it were, untied the hands of the peasants to seize the landlords' land. In September, October 1917, more than a thousand landowners' estates were looted and burned, most of them in the Tambov, Saratov, Orel, Tula, Ryazan, Voronezh, Penza provinces.

It was not a historical accident that it was in the Tambov province, in its Kozlovsky district, in the first days of September 1917. the fire of a general peasant uprising flared up. In a short time, more than a hundred estates were burned in a number of counties.

The elements of the "black" (i.e. general) redistribution swept the village. All attempts by government agencies to stop the devastating movement were in vain. Neither the Socialist-Revolutionary exhortations nor the troops helped, although detachments of Cossacks and Junkers were sent from Moscow in September in addition to the cavalry regiments in Tambov, Kirsanov and Borisoglebsk.

However, it was not the army that could relatively pacify the Tambov village, but the adoption of “Decree No. 3”, which was the direct predecessor of the Leninist decree on land (adopted on October 26 (November 8), 1917 by the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets). This act was published on September 13, signed by the heads of all the highest provincial institutions - from the chairmen of the Soviets of Peasants', Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies to the provincial commissar of the Provisional Government. Imbued with the idea of ​​land socialism, he transferred the landowners' savings under the jurisdiction of the land and food committees for the subsequent transfer of land and household equipment to the peasants on a leasehold basis. The meaning of this document in the literature is often misinterpreted as an attempt to save the landowners and deceive the peasants. In fact, it was for the peasants a direct guide to immediate action.

At the same time, "Decree No. 3" helped the Social Revolutionaries, who held all the levers of provincial government in their hands, to direct the agrarian movement, although not immediately, into the mainstream of legality and relative organization. The Tambov peasants actually took the lands of the landowners themselves, even before the Decree on Land.

Thus, in the pre-revolutionary years in the Tambov province, a center of peasant resistance to power was formed: Borisoglebsky, Tambov, Kirsanovsky, Kozlovsky counties. Traditions of anti-government struggle have developed, based on the aversion of the peasants to any exploitation and the conviction that the land should belong only to those who cultivate it. A whole galaxy of leaders and organizers appeared, people from the peasant and petty-bourgeois environment in the Saratov and Tambov provinces. The detachment of peasant leaders in the Tambov province was more numerous, but both in the Tambov and Saratov provinces they had connections with the party of socialist revolutionaries. In the Saratov province, the center of resistance of the peasantry did not take shape.

1.2. Causes and prerequisites for the emergence of the peasant movement in 1920-1921.

Peasant historian T.V. Osipova believes that even with the transfer of all privately owned lands to the community, the cutting of arable land would be less than 1 tithe, as it turned out in 1918. which did not bring significant changes to the system of communal land use. The land issue in Russia was not a shortage of land, but the preservation of inefficient farming practices practiced by the community, outdated forms of land use in the provinces of central Russia. The way out was not in the expansion of peasant land ownership, but in the intensification of agricultural production, in search of new forms of farming.

During the civil war, the influx of the urban population into the countryside intensified, and thus the land tightness increased. In the Tambov district in 1884. one village had an average of 92 households, in 1920. - 168. Over the same years, the availability of land for the cash soul decreased from 2.8 to 0.88. Consequently, the influx of population into the countryside had a strong effect on the emergence of an absolute or relative shortage of land. As a result of the redistribution of land in the Saratov and Tambov provinces, the fragmentation of land and distant land increased, in some places up to 30-50 versts. In the Kozlovsky district of the Tambov province, distant lands appeared for 80 and even 100 miles.

The characteristic phenomenon of the Tambov province - distant lands and the chronic emptying of individual lands associated with it - was not overcome. About a third of all villages were villages with more than 300 households. The villages of the former state peasants reached especially large sizes, their allotments were characterized by both striped stripes and the commonality of possessions (single-plan villages). The former landowning peasants in the villages of various estates retained their main shortcomings: narrow stripes and pretentiousness of the outlines of allotments. As a result, the peasants who received the land were not able to cultivate it all because of the distance. This happened in the Kirsanovsky and Morshansky districts of the Tambov province. In the Lemeshkinsky volost of the Kamyshensky district of the Saratov province, among the reasons for undersowing in 1919. the distant land was also called, reaching here 20-30 versts. Even in the second half of the 1920s, the problem of land management in the Tambov province was quite acute, and during the civil war, the peasants had just begun to redistribute the land and could not solve the problem of allocating land in such a short period of time. In 1917-1918. illusions about a quick solution to problems with the land collapsed.

In the first years of Soviet power, a new type of labor land use arose - collective, which was based on joint labor and public ownership of the means of production. By the end of 1920. in the country there were 10.5 thousand collective farms, uniting 131 thousand peasant households. Their total land area was estimated at about 1.2 million hectares. Both in terms of the number of peasant households and in terms of land area, the share of collective farms was about 0.54%. These were the first sprouts of a new social system in the countryside. The bulk of the collective farms occupied plots of former landowners. The presence of a large number of estates in the Central Chernozem region and in the Volga region also led to the predominant emergence of collective farms on this basis.

In the Saratov province, collective farms owned 37,970 thousand acres, while state farms in the Tambov province were given 72 thousand acres, which already suffered from land shortages and distant land. V.A. Antonov-Ovsienko, in a report to the Central Committee of the RCP (b), writes: “Not a single state farm has been set up in any way tolerably - everyone is at a loss, everyone uses peasant labor (from the bottom), and very few (Ivanovsky state farm in Tambov district) provide some substantial assistance to the village.

And the attitude towards the state farms (through them towards the Soviet power) is almost universally hostile among the peasants.

The same hostile attitude is met in most cases by collective farms, which until recently have been diligently planted: in collectivization, the Tambov province is ahead of the others, but the craving for collective farming, naturally intensified with the depletion of inventory, etc. was over the edge encouraged by various benefits, bonuses. Both in state farms and in collective farms, the former landowners, managers or courtyard people often settled. Collective farms, no less than state farms, have become a refuge for the disabled and the idlers; only a very few of them are of economic value and successfully resist the captious criticism of individual farmers. Friendly attention was paid to the land management of collective farms and state farms, but the land management of individual peasants had barely begun. The striped land, the distant lands oppress the Tambov peasant heavily. The issue of resettlement is perhaps the most painful issue in the province.” In many respects, the position of the state farms was kept at the expense of the forced labor of the peasants. Morshansk district land department dated October 26, 1918. ordered the peasants of the villages of Kamenki, Pominayki, the villages of Boyarovka and Milashki to plow the land of Soviet farms at a price of 60 rubles. for plowing with a two-share plow and 120 rubles each for a one-share plow. The land district threatened that if the order was not fulfilled, several kulaks would be shot.

In 1920 the fields of state farms were plowed and sown, for the most part, with the help of forced labor of deserters and peasants, who were forced by force of arms to cultivate not their own lands, but the fields of Soviet farms. So it was in the village of Melguny, where the armed guards of the neighboring sugar factory blocked all exits from the village and fired into the air, using violence, forced the peasants to go to cultivate the fields belonging to the Melgunov sugar factory. The peasants asked: “How exactly does Bolshevik socialism differ from serfdom?” . Authorized executive committee T.I. Yakushin writes in his report: “Kulaks, wise men, organized in artels, freed from horse-drawn, labor service, and they are not able to cultivate the land they took for cultivation, they resort to free hiring, which, of course, seems impossible, they turn to the soviets for help. The Soviets are forcibly compelling the middle peasants to work the land for the kulak as well. The middle peasant performs all the horse-drawn service and grain distribution both for himself and for the loafers who call themselves proletarians, as a result of which there is no desire to cultivate the excess land and raise cattle, to work for people, and therefore more than half of the sown area is not sown and few cattle are bred, to which you need to pay the most serious attention.

The peasants must be given the opportunity to continue to use the land, if possible, at least in the same way that they previously used the land belonging to the Soviet economy for their work, as they used to use it from the landlord, renting, if not for cultivation, then at least for cattle pastures. And now there are cases where even this is not allowed to the peasants. It turns out that they are worse now than when the landowner was in this place. The great ideas of social revolution, for the reason indicated above, are still alien to them. They need to prove in practice the good sides of the worker-peasant power.

The very same economic situation of state farms was deplorable. According to the statement of the chairman of the congress, citizen Smolensky, the state farms of the Tambov province not only failed to justify since 1919. hopes placed on them, but already now they themselves presented a demand to the regional food committee for the delivery of food and seed grains in the total amount of 2 million poods. “Soviet farms have collapsed,” the first speaker on the “current situation,” citizen Nemtsov, a member of the provincial committee of the RCP, citizen Nemtsov, frankly confessed at the congress, “the proletarian-peasant management in state farms turned out to be ugly, the bread either remained not harvested under the snow or the harvested rotted.”

Thus, only 140 acres of winter crops out of 820 acres of arable land were sown at the Alexandrovsky state farm of the Tambov province, but even these results were achieved solely through the “mobilization of citizens” (i.e., the surrounding peasants). By forcibly attracting peasants to work, he removed a small part of his land and the Plavitsky state farm, Lipetsk district, Tambov province. Where the peasants cannot be mobilized for work, the situation for the state farms is completely hopeless. For example, in the Zinoviev state farm of the Usman district, out of 1,500 acres of land, it was possible to sow in the fall of 1919. only 22 acres. The harvest on the state farms of the Tambov province was much lower than the harvest on the peasant fields. Even in the Ivanovsky state farm of the Tambov district (the former estate of the princes of Leuchtenberg), which stands out for its relatively prosperous state of affairs, 168 acres of rye yielded only 6375 pounds.

Dairy farming in the state farms of the Tambov province was no better than grain farming. So, out of 67 cows, listed at the state farm "Gromok" in the Tambov district, only 26 are considered milk cows, giving a daily milk yield of 170 pounds. The picture is the same in other state farms. Cattle care is so careless that in some state farms, according to a statement at the congress of the agronomist Zolotarev, "the cattle was left unfed for several days."

“In the Znamensky state farm (Tambov district,” citizen Zolotarev said, “the horses were fed so well that from hunger they gnawed everything that was in the wooden stable. The dead horse lay in the stable for two weeks, uncleaned.

In 1920 for state farms of the province, 5,300 working horses were required, but there were only 900 heads (17%), most of them infected with scabies and falling heavily from starvation; 4000 calves are required - there are 142, for 900 horses there are only 452 sets of harnesses.

At another state farm, the commissioner was not able to determine how many seeders were in it, because they were all piled up in a heap in the yard, covered with a mountain of snow. The peasants of the Tambov province, suffering from lack of land and striped land, could not accept the vast possessions of collective farms, which already exacerbated the problem of land shortage. For many years, the peasants fought against landlordism, and in 1917-1918. It turned out that the “black redistribution” did not solve the problem of land shortage. In 1918 Collective farms arise on the basis of landownership and exploit the peasants. Hatred of landownership was transferred to the property of collective farms, and disappointment and the collapse of illusions turned into aggressiveness towards collective farms.

In 1920 the volume of surplus appropriation was simply unbearable, although both the Saratov and Tambov provinces suffered from a severe drought.

The local authorities in the Tambov region made a mistake: 46% of the surplus appraisal accounted for 3 counties, which became the focus of Antonovshchina.

The food department often showed mismanagement. In the winter of 1919-1920 about 60,000 poods of potatoes perished, and 4,000 poods of confiscated grain were eaten by rats.

Historian A.A. Ilyukhov writes: “As a result, bagmen delivered to the city and towns for 1919-1920. not less than 30 million poods of bread per year, which amounted to 64.4% of all consumed bread. The food authorities ensured the delivery of 18 million poods, or 35.6%. These figures convincingly show the real effectiveness of the food dictatorship in Russia.

In addition, in 1920 typhus dominated in the Tambov province. It is difficult to agree with the conclusion of A.M. Anfimov about "grossbauers" as the basis of the kulak revolt in the Tambov province. Firstly, the uprising was raised by the peasants of 3 districts, and not of the entire Tambov province; secondly, V.V. Samoshkin claims that over 90% of the rebellious peasants belonged to the poor and middle peasants, and the backbone of the Antonov regiments were deserters; thirdly, in a letter from the land surveyor of the Kirsanovsky land department, Nasonov, it was reported that the “bandits” were dressed in rags, often barefoot, and emaciated; fourthly, in some villages of the Kirsanovsky district, over 80% of the male population consisted of detachments, and some villages, having seen the atrocities of the Antonovites, did not join the detachments. Consequently, not only economic motives influenced the behavior of the peasants.

The main and common cause of the discontent of the peasants was the unbearable surplus appropriation and the abuse of food detachments.

Only in the Tambov province, a peasant uprising broke out in three counties, and there was no epicenter in the Saratov province.

The policy towards religion and the Russian Orthodox Church provoked protest from the peasants of the Tambov province. The local authorities acted most harshly in this matter.

In the autumn of 1918, unrest broke out in the Tambov province. The instigators of the uprising were declared former officers and clergy. The head of the detachment for the suppression of peasant revolts reported: “Now we are catching the instigators. According to the interrogations of those arrested and according to the documents of those killed, leaders, former officers and priests were identified. In total, 6 priests were shot. In Temnikovo in June 1920. there was an uprising of townspeople and peasants of the city environs due to the closure of monasteries. The decree on the separation of church and state also aroused indignation and gave rise to various rumors. In the message of the Nekrasovsky volost council of the Tambov district, there are such data: “The mood of the population is inflated, the minority is benevolent, the population relates to the masses, indicating that the orders are not issued freely locally, but from above, without freedom. The separation of church and state, in the opinion of the mass of the population, is, as it were, the murder of religion in the bud by the Jewish nation. There were rumors in the summer of 1920. that "communists are the antecedents of the Antichrist."

In the Usman district, such a rumor dominated that "Soviet power will exist only for 42 months, then monarchical rule will come."

In the Tambov province, there were about 3 thousand Baptists who did not accept the ideas of the October Revolution. In the Saratov province, there were arrests of clergy, dispersal of religious holidays, which ended in clashes with local authorities, dissatisfaction with the removal of religious subjects from school curricula, but there were no excesses in this matter.

Dissatisfaction was caused by the incompetent actions of the local authorities of the peasants in the Tambov region, and in the Saratov province - the cruelty and violence of the punitive detachments.

Historian Gimpelson believes that the Soviet leading cadres of 1917-1920. were far from ideal. Cheka instructor A.P. Smirnov, in a report to the chairman of the Cheka, F. Dzerzhinsky, writes: “Local councils and cells of communists, which have nothing to do with communism, get drunk to the point of impossibility, take away from citizens what falls into their hands, for which no receipts are issued, and also where they go the selected items are also not listed anywhere. In my free hours, as on my first trip, I organized rallies and meetings, which were attended by 1 thousand people or more, everywhere and everywhere there were only exclamations: “They don’t explain this to us, but we only hear “Arrest! Let's shoot! We are the authorities, therefore we are afraid. The first composition of the gubchek in the Tambov region ended up entirely in prison. The same fate befell the second team that replaced it. All leaders of the gubchek were arrested and condemned. In the Saratov province, Dvoryanchikov, Cheremukhin, Ivanov-Pavlov became famous for their cruelty.

Dvoryanchikov shot 60 innocent peasants in the village of Bakury. In the telegram of the chairman of the Volskaya, uchek Vlasenko dated August 8, 1919. It is reported: “The commissioner of the regional product, Ivanov-Pavlov, by illegal wrong actions causes fermentation in the mass, is engaged in eviction, arrest of White Guard peasant families, arresting old people, women, up to infants, confiscates property, distributing it to the detachment.”

ON THE. Cheremukhin writes in the protocol of testimony that "during the period from July 1918 to September 22, he shot 130 people in the counties."

Saratov province experienced in 1920. severe drought. Up to 6.8 poods per tithe was harvested in the Saratov province, although the average annual harvest was about 50 poods per tithe. The Saratov province was among the provinces of the Volga region and the Chernozem Center most affected by the drought. Historian V.V. Kondrashin claims that the hungry years of 1921-1922. left an indelible mark on the memory of the peasants. If in the Tambov province the peasant uprising arose primarily because of the improperly distributed surplus appropriation, then in the Saratov province it was due to excessive surplus appropriation and famine.

Saratov and Tambov provinces were front-line, so additional duties fell on the peasants: duty, construction of fortifications.

However, Tambov province suffered more than Saratov. The raid of Mamontov's troops dealt a tangible blow to the economy of the province. There were quartered troops here, units of the Red Army passed through the Tambov province. The southern counties saw dozens of Red Army units living on pasture, little regard for the needs of the peasant economy.

In a letter from the peasants of the village of Mednoye, Tambov province, it is reported: “Remaining half-starved ourselves, nevertheless, with the most extreme exertion of our forces, we completed 85% of the apportionment. But, unfortunately, with all the ardent participation in the fate of the fatherland and in the suffering of the hungry brothers of the proletarians, we did not have enough of our forces to carry out the apportionment in the amounts presented. The reason for this was, on the one hand, a poor harvest of bread, on the other hand, the passage through our village during the mammoth allotment of military Red Army units, who stole a lot of spring bread and also took a lot of cattle.

Viktor Druzhinovich in a letter informs V.I. Lenin: “Often when the whites occupied a certain point, such as the city of Tambov, we left huge stocks of food, textiles, footwear and other consumer goods (the military base warehouse was transferred from Tambov in advance). The population, not satisfied in these benefits, or satisfied in more than a limited number, at the sight of such huge stocks, plundered and exported by whole carts of whites, comes into terrible indignation, accompanied by curses against Soviet power ... ".

State farms suffered greatly from the actions of the Red Army and White Cossacks. Discontent caused mobilization in the Red Army in the Tambov and Saratov provinces. Reports of the Cheka for 1918-1919. full of reports about the attack of detachments of deserters at the station, battles with the Red Army units. In connection with the offensive of Denikin and the White Poles, the number of deserters decreased. By the beginning of the rebellion (August 1920), about 110 thousand deserters remained in the Tambov province. Moreover, 60 thousand of them were hiding in just three future rebellious districts - Tambov, Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky. It was these deserters who later formed the main backbone of the Antonov regiments. In the reports of the Cheka from June 16-30, 1920. deserters are reported to be especially numerous in Kirsanov Uyezd.

From the end of 1919 the number of deserters began to decline in the Saratov province. The main reason for the voluntary appearance is not only Denikin's offensive, but also the use of repressive measures against the families of deserters in retribution of the RVS of the Eastern Front. To all citizens of the Volga region and the Urals dated April 14, 1919. it was argued that "every family that concealed a deserter would be subject to severe liability under the laws of war". Historian V.V. Kondrashin believes that in the first half of 1920. There were about 110,000 deserters in the territory of the Volga Military District. That is, in the Tambov province there were much more of them.

Many deserters had front-line experience in both Tambov and Saratov provinces. In June 1918 even Tambov, Borisoglebsk and Kozlov were for a short time at the mercy of the rebel mobilized. Part of the front-line soldiers of the Saratov province supported the Soviet government, and many of them in 1918. voluntarily became Red Army soldiers. The other part of the front-line soldiers could not settle in the new real conditions and hated the existing order. Saratov front-line soldier P.Ya. Shapovalov writes: “You, comrades, find the decree of the times of the government wrong. But why haven't you taken care of us until now. You know very well that they let us into the winter without warm clothes and shoes, and that the unmarried have no home, no shelter, no piece of bread, and no one has prepared anything for us, and many came only skeletons; few capable of hard work. What should we do: go to the bourgeoisie to bow or act like hooligans? is this fair? And you treat us so cold-bloodedly (and so, where you don’t listen, robbery and theft are everywhere, and that under hooliganism, the heart is torn from pain). Why didn't we suffer as much as family? They spent a lot of capital on them, but we didn’t have a penny, it’s very painful and insulting for us ... But a year has passed and we don’t have to rejoice because we don’t have any means of life, and 40 years have passed and I’m single and there is no family hearth.

In 1921 in the Tambov province, demobilized Red Army soldiers appear, who in many ways will join the ranks of the rebels. Antonovshchina was the most striking episode in a series of peasant uprisings against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks, but workers from a few enterprises located in this peasant province also took part in the Tambov events on the side of the rebels. A certain comrade Obyedkov, apparently some kind of professional functionary, wrote in September 1920: in the Central Committee of the Union of Textile Workers, that here both the peasants and the workers are absolutely counter-revolutionary, and therefore Antonov made the first uprising at the station and the village of Sampur, where the peasants and workers, of course, joined the gang. In the Saratov province, with the exception of Rtishchevo stations, such a trend was not observed.

Thus, the situation for an organized uprising for Borisoglebsky, Tambov, Kirsanovsky districts developed. These counties became the epicenter of the uprising. In the Saratov province, the epicenter did not work out.

1.3. The scope of the peasant movement and the military

rebel organization.

It flared up in mid-August 1920. in the villages of Khitrovo and Kamenka of the Tambov district, where the peasants refused to hand over their grain and disarmed the food detachment, the fire of the uprising spread throughout the province like dry straw, with a speed incomprehensible to the local authorities, since they habitually believed that they were dealing with bandit gangs, and not popular indignation . Already in August - September 1920. Antonov horseshoe captured Tambov, being only 15-20 miles from the provincial center. Their number reached about 4 thousand armed insurgents and about ten thousand people with pitchforks and scythes.

There is no doubt about the good organization of the rebels, who formed a kind of "peasant republic" on the territory of Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky, Tambov districts with a center in the village of Kamenka.

Armed Forces A.S. Antonov considered the principles of building a regular army with irregular armed detachments. Historian S.A. Pavlyuchenkov believes that the Antonovites had horses and weapons for 20 thousand people and therefore could change the personnel of their two armies three times, giving rest to those tired of fighting. A.S. Antonov was a selective Wolf Division, parts of which wore blue clothes, obviously emphasizing their difference from white, red and green with this color. Historian M. Frenkin believes that the rebels had weapons for 2.5 - 3 thousand. Human . A.S. Antonov, being the head of the militia, accumulated a lot of weapons. Front-line soldiers sometimes returned from the war not only with combat experience, but also with weapons. It was not uncommon for people to join the ranks of the Antonov regiments with their own firearms. As a result of victories over the Red Army units, the rebels received the necessary weapons. At the Saburovo station, a freight train was taken by the rebels, which contained a lot of ammunition. At one time, the Antonovites were armed with artillery and armored vehicles recaptured from the enemy. The number of weapons during the uprising depended on the victories and defeats of the rebels. If the rebels were defeated, then not only did they not get captured weapons, but many of the rebels left the Antonov regiments with their rifles and sawn-off shotguns.

Based on the territorial system, a number of rebel regiments were created. On paper, there were exact states, but in reality the regiments were simply a bunch of varying degrees of organization (from 2 to 7 squadrons), different numbers (from 200 to 2000 sabers) and weapons (a significant part were almost without weapons), most on horseback, on foot in the form exceptions. The headquarters developed precise orders and instructions. Under the regiments, there was a horse reconnaissance, a machine-gun team, horse communications, a well-established office, an economic unit, a commission for replacing horses, a wagon train, a field court, and a political department.

Such a structure did not differ in strength between the “atamans”, often there was a struggle of ambitions common for such formations. But for the time being, this was compensated by the initiative of the commanders, the flexible partisan tactics of sudden attacks and rapid withdrawals. The tactic is manifested in the fact that the battle with the Red Army units is openly accepted only in those cases when they are in a hopeless situation, often they make surprise raids on the villages of the volost and villages occupied by the Red Army

In general, the organization and leadership style of the Antonovites turned out to be

sufficient to conduct successful military operations of the partisan type in the conditions of the three forest districts of the Tambov region - in the presence of excellent natural shelters, with the closest connection with the population and its full support, with no need for deep rear areas, wagon trains, etc. The concreteness and visibility of the goals and results of military operations increases the morale of the army and attracts new forces to it: the number of fighters in the Antonov army in February 1920. reached 40 thousand. By the beginning of May, their number had decreased to 21 thousand, as a result of the decisive actions of the Red Army that had begun. In the "Fortnight of the voluntary appearance of bandits" up to 6 thousand Antonovites appeared and went home en masse ..

Antonov detachments made campaigns in the Voronezh, Penza, Saratov provinces. True, these campaigns were of a “provisional” nature aroused hatred and resistance from the peasants.

In the Saratov province, the insurrectionary movement took place on three levels.

In the Saratov province, detachments of Sapozhkov, Pyatakov, Popov, Vakulin, Serov, Aistov, Sarafankin operated.

These detachments did not create a command structure. Partisan detachments avoided clashes with units of the Red Army, but they took cities with battle. Sapozhkov tried to take the city of Novouzensk, Vakulin took the city of Kamyshin, Popov - Khvalynsk. The detachments included not only peasants, but also recruits from the Saratov province, Cossacks. The rebel groups were poorly armed. There is even a shortage of cartridges in Sapozhkov's detachment. To the Saratov province in 1921. Antonov detachments penetrated and even threatened the provincial capital.

At the second level of the insurgent movement are small detachments that operated on the territory of one county or province. The partisans were armed with rifles and checkers, partly with hunting rifles and pitchforks, there were few machine guns. Cartridges and weapons were obtained partly from the inhabitants who hid them during the retreat of the Ural Cossacks, partly by disarming small Red Army units, police and looting warehouses. Many of these detachments had a multinational composition: Cossacks, Russians, Kalmyks. It was not uncommon for the detachment to be followed by women and children. The threat of starvation was especially acute. The third level of resistance is the fight against food detachments. In the Saratov province, women were the most active. Only in the spring of 1921. along with women, demobilized Red Army soldiers began to oppose the food detachments. Sometimes deserters came out with the women. However, these performances did not pose a particular threat.

There were no "women's riots" in the Tambov province. If in the Tambov province the communists were destroyed, then in the Saratov province they took an active part in the peasant movement. In the Saratov province, a large-scale peasant movement did not work out because of the multinational composition, the ambitions of the leaders of the rebel detachments and the famine that swept the Saratov province. In the Tambov province in 1920. Russians accounted for 94.85%, and in the Saratov province - 78.85%. Russians, Kalmyks, Astrakhan Cossacks, Mordovians, Tatars, Ukrainians lived in the Saratov province.

Documents of local authorities and reports of the Cheka testify to the easy suppression of local peasant uprisings in Mordovian and Tatar villages in 1919-1920, because the neighboring villages were inhabited by Russians, and they did not support the uprisings.

The rebel detachments often acted together, however, they did not try to create an insurgent army like Antonov's.

The threat of starvation forced the peasants to resist not only the food detachments, but also the rebels. If the peasants are fighting the insurgent detachments, then naturally the scope of the uprising will be much less.

Thus, the scope of the peasant movement in the Tambov province was much wider, stronger, went beyond the boundaries of the Tambov region. In the Saratov province, only scattered detachments operated, which did not pose a particular threat compared to the Antonov regiments.

Chapter 2

2.1. rebel programs.

Presumably in November-December 1920. the program and charter of the "Union of the working peasantry" were drawn up. His first task, he set, was to overthrow the power of the communist Bolsheviks, who had brought the country to poverty, death and disgrace, with the help of volunteer partisan detachments leading an armed struggle.

In the short program, the political goals were most clearly formulated. The two most popular tasks among the peasant masses were put forward in the first place: the elimination of the division of citizens into classes by the authorities and the immediate cessation of the civil war and the establishment of a peaceful life. The first problem was well expressed by the peasant N. Kretov in a letter to comrade M.I. Kalinin in 1920: “It is painful to see that the abyss separating the city of the proletariat from the peasantry is expanding more and more, and the hatred of one worker for another is becoming more and more aggravated. The city becomes the enemy of the village, the village becomes the enemy of the city. The worker does not understand the peasant, and the peasant cannot understand the worker. If this enmity stems from the convictions of the proletarian of the city that the peasantry lives too uterine life and is far behind the proletarian in terms of political development, then after all, the peasantry cannot be responsible for this backwardness ... The peasantry is en masse accused of moonshine, speculation, harboring deserters and bread . Yes! This sin is behind him. Is the city proletariat without sin in this? I don't understand: what does the honest toilers of the earth have to do with it - the poor peasants? Let the personality itself be responsible for what he did, but an honest worker-peasant must be a friend of the proletarian.

Prior to the convocation of the Constituent Assembly in the center and in the localities, it was planned to create a temporary elected government from representatives of various parties and unions fighting the communists. In the program of the Antonov STK, this paragraph had an addition: until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, voluntary partisan detachments are not disbanded. The document proclaimed freedom of speech, press, conscience, unions and assembly, free self-determination of the peoples of the former empire, universal and compulsory literacy. In the economic part, the Socialist-Revolutionary views were also traced. One of the main provisions was "the implementation of the law on the socialization of land in its entirety."

Being supporters of public ownership of the means of production, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, did not seek to force events, intending to preserve small-scale private production for a long period. The STK program also provided for the preservation and development through state lending of small peasant farming, handicraft industry, partial denationalization of factories and plants. The Socialist-Revolutionary idea of ​​creating a wide network of all kinds of cooperation to meet the needs of the working people was reflected in the point of the program of the "Union" on satisfying the basic necessities of the population of the city and countryside with the help of cooperatives. An important place in the concept of socialism of the AKP was assigned to distribution relations. “In a certain sense,” wrote V.M. Chernov, - we can talk about the primacy of distribution over production in our worldview. The study, accounting of resources, control over distribution, according to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, should have become the main function of the state. The STK program also provided for the establishment of workers' control and state supervision over production, the regulation of prices for labor and products of production of state enterprises. The program testifies to the indisputable influence of the Socialist-Revolutionary ideology on its content, although in a much simplified form, brought to the level of understanding by the peasant masses. Most clearly, specifically, were formulated by the compilers of momentary, sore problems to the detriment of long-term tasks. There were also differences from the AKP program, primarily on tactical issues. If the Socialist-Revolutionary STK put forward as a priority the task of preparing the masses to fight the regime mainly by means of a "sentence" movement, then the "Antonov" one - an immediate uncompromising war with the Bolsheviks - rapists, which meant further absolutization of terror as a tactical means, to which Antonov and many from his entourage were committed from the beginning of their revolutionary activities.

The charter of the "Union" determined that its members could be persons of both sexes who had reached the age of 18 and had the guarantee of two members of the STK. The collective entry into the "Union" of entire settlements was also allowed. In this case, the protocol and the list of those who entered were subject to approval by the volost congress of the STK. Persons who were members of communist or monarchist parties were not allowed to join the organization. Members of the "Union" who did not observe discipline, compromised themselves with immoral behavior, theft, murder, arson, etc., were subject to exclusion from it. Attention is drawn to the great rights of elective committees of all levels in comparison with the general meetings of members of the "Union", the absence of rigid centralization in the structure of the organization. In the Charter of the STK, a prominent place is given to moral requirements, which has always been characteristic of the Socialist-Revolutionary movement. The study of the Charter does not allow us to speak of the STK as a party in the strict sense of the word. This was a mass peasant organization, similar to the Soviets, in their original, popular understanding. Probably, its creation can be seen as an attempt to put into practice the slogan "Soviets without communists!"

In the Declarations of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Five and the Revolutionary Military Council, the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionary ideology is also noticeable. Political parties are accepted by the new revolutionary government, with the exception of the Black Hundred Monarchist Party. The rebels accepted small private property in the land and factory areas, but did not recognize big capital. They allowed the concentration of capital and land only in the hands of artels and cooperative organizations. In paragraph eleven of the Declaration of the Revolutionary Military Council, the rebels recognized the principle of self-determination of peoples and regions.

The Declaration recognizes the need to eliminate the political isolation of Russia. The rebels recognized free trade, thereby departing from the Socialist-Revolutionary program here

The Declaration of the rebel groups "Will of the People" proposed to elect local authorities, and the Declaration of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Five-Council of Five in settlements with a population of more than 2 thousand people, and the Council of Three is elected in villages where there is no such number. However, this attempt to create a political organization is not crowned with success.

So, from the above it follows: in the political programs of the rebels there is a noticeable influence of the Socialist-Revolutionary ideology, but in the program of the STK, the Socialist-Revolutionary influence is stronger.

2. 2. Peasant leaders.

The leaders of the peasant movement can be divided into several groups.

The first group includes insurgents experienced in politics and who were members of any party. This group includes: A.S. Antonov, A.B. Semenov, R.N. Pluzhnikov, I.E. Ishin, P. Davydov, S.V. Odintsov, F.S. Picked up.

A.S. Antonov is one of the brightest leaders of the peasant movement of 1920-1921. in Russia. A.S. Antonov was born on June 26 / July 8, 1889 in Moscow, in the family of retired sergeant-major Stepan Gavrilovich and dressmaker Natalia Ivanovna Antonovs. In 1890 the family moved to Kirsanov. Here Antonov A.S. enrolled in a three-year school.

In the summer of 1906 in Tambov, the Tambov group of independent social revolutionaries arose. One of its two founders was precisely Antonov (party nickname - "Shurka"). This group was a subdivision of the Socialist-Revolutionary Gubernia Committee and was engaged in obtaining money and documents for party needs. In September 1907, the group was transformed into the Tambov Union of Independent Socialist Revolutionaries, which is no longer limited to "exes" in the Tambov region and increasingly transfers them to the Saratov and Penza provinces, after which it begins to call itself the Volga Union of Independent Socialist Revolutionaries.

A group of "independents" of Kirsanovsky district is developing a special activity. Antonov was also a part of it. He carried out his operations without shedding blood and did not leave any evidence against himself at all. However, in April 1908 he was forced to flee to Tambov, where he came under the supervision of the gendarmerie "outdoor".

In February 1918 the majority in the local council passed from the Left SRs to the Bolsheviks, and in April a county Cheka was created. The Chekists, all communists, immediately began to look askance at the policemen, who were almost entirely Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Antonov began defiantly to move away from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary organization and took several overactive communists to leadership positions in the police. Later it became clear who they actually worked for. More often than usual, Antonov began to disappear on trips around the southern part of the county.

I.S. Zuev and V.K. Loshchilin helped him hide weapons taken from the Czechs, as well as former front-line soldiers and criminals.

At the same time, the paths of Antonov and the head of the cavalry detachment of the 3rd regional police department P.M. crossed. Tokmakov - the future Antonov commander. When the Left SR rebellion broke out in Moscow in July, its echoes quickly reached Kirsanov. The Communists began to actively push the Socialist-Revolutionaries out of power. A.S. Antonov disappeared in mid-July, warned of the danger. At the end of August, the Kirsanov Commissar of Internal Affairs issued an order to dismiss Antonov, the head of the district police, from his post.

At the end of autumn 1918. he was accused of leading the Rudov rebellion. After the Bolsheviks sentenced him to death, the ambitious and energetic A.S. Antonov begins an open struggle against them.

Later, the secretary of the Tambov Guiding Committee of the RCP (b) B.A. Vasiliev wrote that the gubchek immediately faced the fact that it was devilishly difficult to catch Antonov, since he had his people everywhere - right down to party committees and Cheka bodies.

A.S. Antonov had certain principles - he did not tolerate when he was compared with the criminal Berbeshkin. As a result, he, like an ambitious revolutionary, destroyed the Berbeshin gang and poisoned a letter to the head of the district police. A.S. Antonov was power-hungry and did not tolerate rivals. So, F.S. Podkhvatilin in his testimony mentions a secret meeting at which, on the initiative of R.N. Pluzhnikov, the issue of subordinating the Main Headquarters to the provincial committee of STK was discussed. A.S. Antonov defended the independence of the headquarters, and then "drawn out a Mauser and dispersed everyone."

M.N. Tukhachevsky highly noted the military organizational talent of Antonov A.S. Another distinguishing feature is the fight to the end, even when he was ambushed and the insurgency collapsed.

A.B. Semyonov has been a member of the AKP since 1905. Due to political convictions, he was exiled to Siberia in 1905, where in 1917. joined the RSDLP (b). He held the position of secretary and member of the collegium of the Novouzensk Cheka. In October 1921, in the village of Solomikhino, he went over to the side of the rebels. In Serov's detachment, he served as chief of staff.

G.N. Pluzhnikov ("Batko") - an active participant in the peasant movement in the Tambov province, since the time of the first Russian revolution, one of the main leaders of the peasant uprising of 1920-1921. Born in the Tambov district in a peasant family.

Before 1909 lived in the village of Kamenka, engaged in agriculture. In 1909 arrested with a group of fellow villagers for participating in agrarian terror.

He served his sentence in the Tambov prison (simultaneously with A.S. Antonov) and in the Olonets province. One of the organizers of the uprising of the peasants of the villages of Kamenka and Khitrovo of the Tambov district in August 1920. In the autumn of 1920 - in the summer of 1921. - Head of the Provincial Committee of the STK.

Ishin Ivan Yegorovich - Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalist, one of the leaders of the peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1920-1921. Born in the village of Kalugino, Kirsanovsky district, in a peasant family. He graduated from the local elementary school. Eser since 1905. In 1907-1909, he was an activist of the Kirsanov Social Revolutionary organization, maintained contact with the Volga Union of Independent Socialist Revolutionaries, took part in military actions, was repeatedly arrested for revolutionary activities. In 1917 chairman of the Kurdyukovsky volost zemstvo of the Kirsanov district. In 1918 - Chairman and Treasurer of the Kaluga Consumer Society, was persecuted by the Soviet authorities. In 1919-1920. a member of the "combat squad" A.S. Antonov. Autumn 1920 - summer 1921 - Member of the Provincial Committee of the STK, the main "ideologist" of the peasant uprising. In the summer of 1921 arrested in Moscow during a trip for weapons. Shot.

Davydov Peter - a peasant from Chernavka, Kirsanov district, Socialist-Revolutionary, was active in party activities in 1917. Since December 1918 - a member of the "combat squad" of A.S. Antonov. In 1920-1921 he was one of the leaders of the uprising of the Tambov peasants. Information about Soviet documents about him as a deputy of the Constituent Assembly is erroneous

F.S. Podkhvatilin - had a prestigious profession of a shoemaker in the countryside, in the Red Army he reached the position of head of a shoemaker's workshop of an army technical squadron. He has been a Socialist-Revolutionary since 1905. At the beginning of 1920. Podkhvatilin headed the local cultural enlightenment and, ex officio, campaigned for Soviet power.

The organizer of the Tokarevsky volost committee was a foundry worker S.V. Odintsov, who for participation in the revolutionary events of 1905. was exiled to Siberia and "reappeared under Kerensky".

The second group includes rebels who went through the First World War or served in the tsarist army. Basically, all of them occupied low command positions and, with the exception of A. Boguslavsky, did not have a military education.

These are, first of all, the leaders of the peasant movement in the Tambov region: D.S. Antonov, A. Boguslavsky, I.A. Gubarev, P.I. Popov, P.I. Storozhev, M. Yurin, P.N. Tokmakov. Rebels operated in the Saratov province: E.I. Gorin, I.V. Eliseev, G.R. Kireev.

A. Boguslavsky came from a landowner's family, a Socialist-Revolutionary by party affiliation. Member of the First World War, in the tsarist army had the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Antonov Dmitry Stepanovich - brother of A.S. Antonov, one of the main leaders of the peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1920-1921. Born in Kirsanov. He graduated from the Kirsanov 4-class city school. In 1908-1916 he lived with his father in the village of Inzhavino, worked in a pharmacy. In 1916 drafted into the army, graduated from a military paramedic school. May 1917 - June 1918 in senior positions in the Tambov city police. Member of the anti-Soviet uprising in Tambov in June 1918. After its suppression, he hid from the persecution of the Soviet authorities. December 1918 - August 1920 member of the "combat squad" A.S. Antonov, from the autumn of 1920. one of the leaders of the uprising of the Tambov peasants, commander of the 4th Nizovsky partisan regiment. Then he went into hiding and died with his brother.

Popov Maxim Dmitrievich - officer of the Russian army, in 1921 - adjutant of the Main Operational Headquarters of the partisan armies of the Tambov Territory.

Yurin Maxim is a peasant from the village of Ramza, Kirsanovsky district. Member of the First World War. In 1919-1920. a member of the "combat squad" A.S. Antonova. In 1920-1921. one of the leaders of the uprising of the Tambov peasants, head of the partisan counterintelligence.

I.A. Gubarev was a member of the Main Operational Headquarters of the partisan armies of the Tambov Territory, the head of the first partisan army, a Social Revolutionary, served as an officer in the tsarist army.

P.I. Storozhev was the leader of a detachment of several villages in the Tokarevsky and Sampursky districts. Since 1914 before the February Revolution of 1917. was at the front, had the rank of non-commissioned officer.

The third group includes red commanders who opposed Soviet power. This is I.P. Kolesov, A.V. Sapozhkov, K.T. Vakulin, V.A. Serov, R.I. Dolmatov.

P.M. Tokmakov - a front-line soldier, rose to the rank of second lieutenant. In 1917 in the Tambov province, he served as head of the cavalry detachment of the 3rd regional police department. He commanded a partisan army in the Tambov region.

F.I. Dolmatov is a native of the village. Orlov Gai, Novouzensky district, Saratov province. Member of the First World War, private, was a lecturer in the company, Member of the RCP (b) since 1918. In 1920 - military commissar of the 7th cavalry regiment of the 2nd Turkestan division (chief division Sapozhkov). During the suppression of the uprising, he disappeared in the division. An active participant in the insurrectionary movement in Serov's detachments, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and head of the political department of Serov's associations.

I.P. Kolesov was a native of the village of Ilovlinskaya, from peasants, a participant in the First World War, a sergeant major, a holder of 4 St. George's crosses. In the spring of 1917 was elected commander of the regiment. After demobilization, he arrived in the Don, where he was elected chairman of the council of the villages of Sirotinskaya, Kachalinskaya, Ilovlinskaya. During the offensive, Kaledin announced the mobilization of the Cossacks of 8 years of service, of which he formed 2 regiments, for which he was declared by Kaledin "a traitor to the Quiet Don." Kaledin promised a reward of up to 200,000 rubles for his head. In 1919 fought in the Red Army, as part of the 4th division.

A.V. Sapozhkov - from the peasants of the Samara province, a participant in the First World War, second lieutenant. In 1917 joined the Left Social Revolutionaries, took an active part in the Bolshevik revolution, in the Saratov province, tried to join the Bolshevik party. From February 1919 commanded the 22nd division and participated in hostilities, did not obey the order of the commander of the Zavolzhsky military district K.A. Avksentievskiy to remove him from his post and announced the creation of the so-called "First Army of Truth" on the basis of the emerging units of the division.

V.A. Serov is a native of the village of Kurilovka, Novouzensky district, Saratov province. He studied at the parochial school. Since 1913 served in the Russian army as a senior non-commissioned officer. Member of the RCP (b) since 1919. In 1920 served in the 2nd Turkestan division, during the uprising in the division, after the capture of the city of Buzuluk, he was appointed head of the local garrison. In June 1920 declared himself an enemy of the Soviet government and set about forming his own insurgent detachment.

All 4 leaders were participants in the First World War, and then, having fallen into a revolutionary whirlpool, they found their place in the new Russia and made a good career. Ural historian I.V. Narsky argues that the First World War gave a new archetype of the Russian soldier. Historian P.V. Volobuev and V.P. Buldakov believe that they played a significant role in turning their country into a "military camp". I.V. Narsky writes "These were cold-blooded and ambitious young people who had lost their social roots, for the most part - literate, peasant sons, who then made a career in the Red Army and the Cheka."

K.T. Vakulin - former commander of the 23rd regiment of the Mironov division, awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1920 - commander of the guard battalion at the Ust-Medveditsky district military registration and enlistment office. December 17, 1920 led a rebellion in the village of Mikhailovskoye against the Soviet regime. Suspected of a joint conspiracy with F.K.Mironov.

The fourth group is made up of deserters. This is F. Agutin, I.S. Kolesnikov, S.N. Sarafankin. Deserter F. Agutin was the instigator of unrest in the village of Ataevka, Atkarsky district. I.S. Kolesnikov was a peasant in the Voronezh province. In the Russian army he served in the rank of non-commissioned officer. Served and deserted from the Red Army. In 1920-1921. was a rebel leader. January to June 1921 acted in the ranks of the Tambov rebels. S.N. Sarafankin was a native of the peasants of the Saratov province. He had the rank of non-commissioned officer in the Russian army, then served in the 25th division of the Red Army. In 1920 deserted and joined the insurgent detachments of Aistov.

The fifth group of leaders of the peasant movement includes the rebels, about whom there is practically no information. These are Ivanov, Popov, Aistov, Pyatakov and others.

Thus, many leaders of the peasant movement occupied important military or administrative posts and were well aware of the information about the ongoing processes at the grassroots level. Many of the peasant leaders were either in the RCP (b) or joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Many leaders were distinguished by such character traits as quarrelsomeness, ambition, lust for power, adventurism. Sapozhkov A.V. went against the Soviet government, because he did not want to move to a lower position of S.N. Sarafankin created his own cavalry squadron and separated from the groups of V.A. Serova, Popova. Thanks to the civil and First World Wars, they could appreciate the advantages of discipline and military structure, so the rebels often had relative discipline, and military formations, and military ranks, as well as elements of intelligence and counterintelligence. They received skills in handling weapons, the ability to manage people, to obey. In the Tambov province, the Social Revolutionaries and front-line soldiers of the First World War, who did not participate in the battles of the civil war, dominated, and in the Saratov province, the rebel leaders mainly consisted of deserters and red commanders who broke and spoke out against Soviet power. However, all of them were united, with the exception of A. Antonov and A. Boguslavsky, one thing - they all came from peasants and advocated for their interests.

2.3 Political organization.

The activity of the party of social revolutionaries in the Tambov province has a long tradition. Such prominent representatives of the right SRs as V.M. Chernov and S.N. Sletov, it was in the Tambov province that the political career of M.A. Spiridonova. Elections to the Constituent Assembly gave the Socialist-Revolutionaries 71% of the vote. Moreover, such counties as Spassky, Borisoglebsky, Morshansky gave 89.9%, 86.2%, 85.9% of the vote, respectively. In the provinces of the Middle and Lower Volga regions, the Social Revolutionaries received 39 mandates out of 65.

However, having been defeated in the civil war, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party emerged from it significantly weakened. Its membership has drastically decreased, most of the organization has disintegrated or were on the verge of it. As in tsarist times, the party was in an illegal position, intra-party ties barely functioned. A number of prominent figures ended up either in exile or in Soviet prisons. Summer in 1920 the top leadership of the party was reorganized: an organizational bureau of the Central Committee was created, consisting of members of the Central Committee who had survived the arrests and a number of influential party leaders. In September of the same year, the leader of the party, V.M. Chernov, went abroad with the powers of a representative of the Central Committee and publisher of the central printed party organ. Back in 1919 The Tambov Social Revolutionaries maintained illusions about the possibility of legal work among the masses, in particular, through cooperation and trade unions. However, their hopes were not justified. “Social revolutionaries,” noted in the report of the provincial committee of the party of socialist revolutionaries, “are strictly persecuted.”

February-March 1920 their illegal activities have somewhat intensified. The Socialist-Revolutionary peasant brotherhoods began to be restored, and by the end of the summer, there were about a dozen in three districts of the Tambov province. Then, in the spring of 1920. the Tambov district, and in the summer the provincial conference of the AKP was held, which brought together representatives of the Tambov city and district, Kozlov and Morshansk organizations.

At the same time, the Tambov Socialist-Revolutionaries, with the support of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, were working on the creation of the "Union of the Labor Peasantry", which set as its task the removal of the Communists from power and the formation of representatives of the peasantry, members of the "Union", workers' organizations and socialist parties of the Provisional Government, whose task was to convene the All-Russian workers' congresses. The latter were to decide the question of state power. The second main task of STK was seen in the implementation in full of the law on the socialization of land.

The "Union of the Working Peasantry" received the support of the villagers, and by the summer of 1920. its grassroots organizations arose in half of the volosts of the Tambov district. The Socialist-Revolutionaries managed to hold a district conference of the STK here. A regional peasant union was organized, headed by a district committee, consisting of three people. Branches of the "Union" were also created in Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky and Usmansky counties.

The central leadership of the AKP did not overestimate the significance of the growing peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks, believing that isolated actions would only lead to their bloody suppression.

The Central Committee of the AKP took a firm position on this issue: “But putting forward the slogan of resolutely overcoming the Bolshevik dictatorship, party organizations should by all means warn the peasantry against isolated spontaneous uprisings, explaining all their practical inexpediency, the longer the period of formation of the class self-consciousness of the peasantry, the greater the chances the party to take control of the movement and save it both from political degeneration and from a possible deviation to the right from the basic ideas of the February revolution. Central Committee of the AKP July 13, 1920 put forward a plan to organize a "sentence movement" in the countryside (the peasants in their "sentences" had to make demands to the authorities), it was also supposed to create the "Union of the working peasantry" as a non-party organization.

The Tambov STK was engaged in gathering peasant forces for further political campaigns against the Bolshevik regime. However, he opposed the armed struggle. It is characteristic that immediately after the start in the village of Kamenka on August 19, 1920. uprisings in the village of Khitrovo A.S. Antonov, a meeting of the district committee of the STK was held, at which a decision was made to refrain from joining the Kamensky peasants due to the hopelessness of an open armed struggle against the Bolsheviks in the absence of sufficient organization of the peasants. At the beginning of 1921 prominent Tambov Social Revolutionary Yu.N. Podbelsky described the uprising of the Tambov peasants as "bare partisanism" without slogans, without ideas, without programs. Elsewhere Yu.N. Podbelsky in a statement to the Chairman of the Moscow Council L.B. Kamenev is characterized by A.S. Antonov as "a typical expropriator of the era of 1905-1909", "a free shooter of partisans".

The Tambov Provincial Committee of the AKP presented A.S. Antonov, who in the documents of the Socialist-Revolutionary leaders was called nothing more than “calling himself a Socialist-Revolutionary”, or submit to the general party tactics, stop the unsystematic terrorist struggle, move to the north of the Tambov province (the uprising unfolded in the center and southeast of the Tambov region) for a peaceful organizational and cultural work. Antonov verbally agreed to these demands, but in reality he immediately resorted to "independent partisan tactics."

And the newspaper "Will of Russia" in the spring of 1921. in response to accusations against the Socialist-Revolutionary STK, she wrote that A.S. Antonov in the summer of 1919. was disavowed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries for killing communists.

At the All-Russian Conference of the AKP on September 8, 1920. both Tambov delegates insisted on the need to meet the spontaneous peasant protest and give it their slogans tested in the struggle, without hiding from the people the inevitability of the violent liquidation of the Bolshevik dictatorship. One of the Tambovites proposed to put forward "retaliatory terror as a means of combating the extremes of the Bolshevik dictatorship." The conference stated the presence of a widespread insurrectionary movement, the inevitability in the future of the resumption of the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks by the party, however, in view of the dispersion of the masses, the AKP put forward preliminary work on their organization as the next task, thereby not supporting the Tambov uprising that had begun.

In the Review of the special department of the gubchek for April 1921. states “In our opinion, Antonov is neither a right nor a left SR, but simply a SR who remembered the program of 1917. and stopped on it, cut off from the central bodies, having no connection with them without ideological leadership, he remained in the same position.

V.M. Chernov clearly counted on the fact that Kronstadt would become the instigator and stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik people's revolution, the political slogan that was to be the struggle for free soviets and Constituent Assemblies. In the early days of the uprising, Chernov saw in it "a new act of drama - the beginning of the end of the Bolshevik dictatorship."

According to the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper "Will of Russia", the uprising in Kronstadt and the popular anti-Bolshevik movement that unfolded in the country clearly proved the correctness of the Socialist-Revolutionary forecast: not the White Guards, not the reactionary generals, but only the workers and peasants themselves will launch a struggle that will inevitably lead to a people's revolution and the collapse of the Bolshevik regime. Many Socialist-Revolutionaries believed that the only way to put an end to the Bolshevik regime was with the help of a broad movement of organized masses consciously advocating the ideas of democratic socialism.

However, even the events in Kronstadt caused an ambiguous reaction in the Socialist-Revolutionary émigré environment. If the left wing reacted with revolutionary enthusiasm, then the right SRs and some centrists were rather reserved.

The Socialist-Revolutionary emigration was unable to provide real assistance to the rebels and was, in fact, powerless. The position of the party in Russia was simply desperate.

However, the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionary ideology in the creation of the program of the Antonov STK is great, among the leaders and organizers of the Antonov rebellion there were many Socialist-Revolutionaries who had no connection with the Central Committee of the AKP.

In the Saratov province, the influence of the Social Revolutionaries was lower than in the Tambov province. The influence of anarchists is noticeable. In 1919 On November 22, the II Congress of Soviets took place in Volsk. At the factional meeting of the revolutionary communists, orators spoke and definitely spoke out against the Bolsheviks, calling them robbers and rapists. They called on the faction to allocate to the executive committee such people who would step on the Bolsheviks' throats and crush them so that they could not stand on their feet.

All the speakers spoke in favor of creating cells of revolutionary communists and peasant unions.

In a message from the Novouzensky district for April 2, 1920. there is evidence that a detachment of greens and anarchists consisting of 400 people is operating near the village of Piterka.

In July 1920 in Perekopnoye, Novouzensky district, there was an uprising on food grounds. One socialist-revolutionary was declared the instigators. However, the reliability of this message is low. In the information bulletin of the secret - operational department of the Saratov subject for January 5, 1920. it is reported that among the Socialist-Revolutionaries of the province, there was an unspoken split. Many Social Revolutionaries stop party work and join Soviet politics.

The influence of the Social Revolutionary ideology is in the programs of the partisan detachments of F. Popov and V. Serov. There is such a requirement in the Declaration of the Revolutionary Military Council. “The new revolutionary government sets the immediate task of establishing the closest relations with the democracy of Europe through its representatives of the socialists, whom the communist government, on the principle of Nicholas the Bloody, expelled from their homeland, whose participation in the construction of Russia the new revolutionary government considers necessary.” The same requirement is in the Declaration of the Revolutionary Military Council.

Most likely, there were Social Revolutionaries in the detachments of the rebels, or people who knew the AKP program well. The Central Committee of the AKP was simply powerless in those circumstances and therefore did not take part in organizing the uprisings in the Saratov and Tambov provinces. If in the Tambov province the strong influence of local Socialist-Revolutionaries can be traced, then in the Saratov province, anarchists and revolutionary communists were also active.

In the Tambov province, the rebels created a coherent STK management structure with headquarters in the village of Kamenka, thanks to which the three counties became a real peasant republic.

In direct subordination to the provincial committee of the "Union of the working peasantry" were the county: Tambov, Kirsanovsky and Borisoglebsky. Their work was led by elected chairman, deputy chairman, members. Ukoms were divided into departments: food (accounting for products, processed raw materials of industrial establishments, mills), military, which controlled similar volost and district departments, led the formation of detachments and the replenishment of partisan units, mobilization, and organizational work.

Under the ukomas, there was a county militia, operationally subordinate to the head of the provincial one. Her duties included conducting searches, confiscations, arrests, as well as organizing espionage against the Red Army. The court, which consisted of members of the ukom, investigated cases of accusing only civilians of criminal offenses, as well as those suspected of "communism." Directly subordinate to the chairman of the ukom was a team that provided communication between them, partisan units and nearby STK committees.

For the purpose of more flexible management, in addition to the county committees, there were district committees of the STK. They obeyed the provincial committee and their own committee, had in their composition the general, political, food and military departments, the court, the police and the communications team with functions similar to the corresponding departments of the committee.

According to P. Zalutsky, stated in his report to the Central Committee: "With a strike on the STK, the fight against banditry is facilitated by more than ¾."

It follows that the political organization in the Tambov province was created by the Social Revolutionaries from the peasants, and the Central Committee of the AKP was not the organizer of the uprising. The rebels created an extensive network of the STK, thanks to which they controlled the southeastern part of the Tambov province.

2.4. Tactics of eliminating the peasant movement in the Tambov and Saratov provinces.

The liquidation of the peasant uprising in the Tambov region took place in several stages. Initially, the military leaders S.N. Shikunov, Yu.Yu. Aplock and K.V. Redzko primarily through military and repressive measures. A.V. Pavlov tried to liquidate both military and peaceful means. M.N. Tukhachevsky, appointed after A.V. Pavlov, tried to eliminate the uprising by a whole range of measures: military, repressive, peaceful.

Provincial Commissar S.N. It seemed to Shikunov that the uprising could be suppressed with small forces, using cruel measures against the "bandit" villages and villages. By the end of August, the Red Army units in the Sampur district numbered about 1,500 bayonets, 500 sabers, 10 machine guns and 2 guns.

Here are fragments of the order of the commander of the troops of the Tambov province S.N. Shikunov, given at the beginning of September 1920: “Our task is the final destruction of the enemy bands, the confiscation of all livestock and property from the peasants involved in complicity with the bands ... The detachment acting against Koptevo, with an energetic offensive through Kenzar, take possession of Koptevo, confiscate all livestock, take away inventory, grain supplies and food in general ..., set fire to Koptevo from four sides, retreat to Kenzar ourselves ... Destroy the gang in Novosilsk, confiscate livestock, bread and all food. Send bread and all food on carts to Tambov.

An order signed by the chief of staff of the group of troops of the Tambov province K.V. Brimmer, also deserves attention: “... after the fact that the villages of Novosilskoye, Koptevo and Kenzar were burned and foraging was not fully done, but only captured what was possible to convey, I order: in the area of ​​​​the villages of Periksy and Kenzar, to carry out enhanced foraging in to the full extent for the fact that Kenzar and Perixes took part in the uprising without exception .... "

It is hardly possible to think of a better way to agitate against the Red Power than this. The robbed, homeless peasants had no choice but to fight those who deprived them of all the property acquired by hard work.

Moreover, as indicated in the report of the commission of the Commander-in-Chief S.S. Kamenev in October 1920, unjustified cruelty, repression, the destruction of villages, which became a system under the command of Yu.Yu. Aploka, more and more embittered the population.

In military terms, the uprising was tried to be liquidated by the forces of local garrisons. There was no clear plan of action to eliminate the peasant movement, the command did not take into account the causes of the uprising. The insurgent detachments were largely armed and supplied by local Red Army or Vokhrov detachments that had been defeated or taken prisoner. On the part of the railway parts of the VNUS, it came to the open betrayal of K.V. Redzko writes in a report to the Provincial Military Council dated December 14, 1920, that "Antonov can be defeated only by freely maneuvering units, and they are sorely lacking." K.V. Redzko led a company of voluntary appearance of partisans and promised mercy to everyone from the leaders to the rank and file, if they lay down their arms before December 5th. Such a step did not give the desired results. In December 1920, A.V. was appointed commander of the troops of the Tambov province. Pavlov. Formally, the Tambov command was subordinate to the Oryol military district, but in practice A.V. Pavlov had the right to report directly to the center, which significantly expanded his powers. The new commander immediately chooses new methods of fighting the insurgents. The first method of struggle, applied by A.V. Pavlov, failed, and he soon abandoned it. This method consisted in the fact that the units of the Red Army were to "go from edge to edge" in a continuous front of the rebel areas and thereby completely liquidate the Antonov detachments.

The failure was explained simply: the bandits were local peasants, and when the red units passed through this place, there were no bandits, but only civilians, as soon as the unit passed, the civilians became bandits and already found themselves in the rear of the red units. Refusing to fight on a solid front, A.V. Pavlov moves on to a different way of fighting. Having divided the region of the uprising into combat sectors, occupying certain points with garrisons, the commander, in fact, began to apply the system of occupation. The command decided to fight the main forces with the encirclement system, however, this method turned out to be untenable, since the Antonov regiments operated not only in the territory of Tambov, but also in the Voronezh, Penza, Saratov provinces. A.V. Pavlov decided to build up military forces in the Tambov region and apply the "flying detachments" method. In December 1920 at the disposal of the commander of the troops of the Tambov province A.V. Pavlov received a regiment of the Cheka from Moscow, an infantry regiment CHON from Kazan, a cavalry regiment, a separate squadron and an artillery platoon. All in January 1921. 9659 bayonets, 1943 sabers, 136 machine guns and 18 guns were brought to the Tambov province. Even then, the Soviet troops had a numerical superiority over the rebels. On March 1, 1921, the number of Soviet troops in the Tambov province was 32,500 bayonets, 7,948 sabers, 463 machine guns, 63 guns. Excellent results were obtained by the so-called flying or maneuvering detachments, organized from selected cavalry and riflemen mounted on carts, with artillery and machine guns. A flying detachment was assigned to each partisan detachment.

At the very end of February - beginning of March 1921, the rebels carried out a number of successful raids on individual garrisons. So, for example, on March 1, the Selyansky detachment captured the Otkhozhaya station and, having disarmed about two companies of Red Army soldiers, took away four guns. Then the united detachment of Tokmakov, Antonov and Selyansky numbering 5-5.5 thousand people with 15 machine guns and 5 guns crossed the borders of the province and headed for the area of ​​the city of Chembar. This campaign, made with the aim of expanding the scale of the uprising, was a mistake of the leaders. Lacking such support as in the Tambov region, acting in three directions (Serdobsky, Chembarsky and Nizhnelomovsky) against the superior forces of the Red Army, the partisans suffered heavy defeats from March 6 to 17, suffered significant losses in people (Tokmakov was also killed) and in weapons (3 guns and 8 machine guns). After that, they returned to the Morshansky district, where they took refuge in the area of ​​​​the Ramzen lakes, which were inaccessible during the flood. A.V. Pavlov planned to block the stage of work, and then liquidate the uprising, but the lack of leather shoes among the fighters forced him to suspend hostilities.

It was not calm in the rest of the province. Kolesnikov's detachment reappeared. His sudden raids on the stations of Uvarovo, Otkhozhaya and other important points again brought good luck to the rebels.

On April 11, they raided the Rasskazovo station (35 km east of Tambov) where the headquarters of the 2nd combat section, the headquarters of the 2nd regiment of the Cheka, two battalions of this regiment, a semi-battery (two 76-mm guns) and several more military teams and detachments were located .

The station garrison was taken by surprise. The partisans captured the station and captured one gun, 11 machine guns, 300 shells, 70 thousand rounds of ammunition, as well as 150 buckets of alcohol and 250 prisoners, most of whom they soon released.

V.A. Antonov-Ovsienko writes in his report: “The campaign of a two-week voluntary turnout, which took place in late March and early April, was unsuccessful. A total of only 6,000 insurgents showed up in five districts.”

In early May, A.V. Pavlov was replaced by M.N. Tukhachevsky. An occupation system was chosen. V.A. Antonov-Ovsienko writes in his report about the essence of this method: “The principle or the occupation by military garrisons, according to a predetermined plan, of a number of villages most infected with banditry and then the purge, the seizure of the SR bandit elements, the arrest and confiscation of the property of bandit families, as a means of influencing those who do not surrender, stubborn bandits, the destruction of the supply base and moral support and ties with the families of gang members, and, finally, the establishment of solid organs of Soviet power, such as the revolutionary committees, the police, which are, of course, the correct and only logically correct means and method of struggle for the final liquidation antonovshchina".

By the summer of 1921, the number of Soviet troops in the Tambov region exceeded 100,000 Red Army soldiers. Together with Tukhachevsky, military leaders who distinguished themselves during the Civil War arrived in the Tambov region: N. Kakurin, I. Uborevich, G. Kotovsky. Not only large and combat-ready units were concentrated against the Antonovites, but also a significant proportion of equipment. By May 15, the army of Tukhachevsky.M.N. there were 21 armored vehicles, 18 aircraft, 5 armored trains, 7 armored vehicles. Repressive orders No. 130 and No. 171 were adopted. Order No. 130 was ineffective - gangster families fled, took refuge with relatives, very few weapons were handed over, some partisans refused to identify themselves. The Provincial Committee of the STK issued its order to take hostages the families of Red Army soldiers and Soviet employees, confiscating their property, and this order was carried out in some areas with the greatest cruelty (the Red Army families were massacred in dozens, in many places the peasants asked not to touch partisan families).

Then, after a fierce battle with the rebels, order No. 171 of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 11, 1921 determined the start of repressive measures against the rebels and their families: citizens who refused to give their names were to be shot on the spot without trial, the villages in which weapons were hidden were announced a sentence on the seizure of hostages and their execution in case of non-surrender of weapons; when a hidden weapon was found, a senior worker in the family was subjected to execution on the spot without a loan. The family in whose house the insurgent took refuge was subject to arrest and deportation from the province, its property was subject to confiscation, the senior worker in this family - to be shot without trial, families sheltering family members or property of the rebels were considered as bandits - the senior worker was also subject to execution on the spot without trial, in the event of the flight of a rebel family, its property was distributed among “peasants loyal to the Soviet regime”, the abandoned houses were burned or dismantled. The specified order was to be executed "severely and mercilessly." The order, signed in addition to Tukhachevsky, by the chairman of the plenipotentiary commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Antonov-Ovseenko, was to be read at rural gatherings. At the end of June 1921, there were about 50,000 rebels and members of their families in concentration camps in the province alone.

About how orders No. 130 and No. 171 were applied in practice, the chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko reported to Lenin: “From June 1 to July 10, bandits with weapons voluntarily appeared in the Tambov district - 59, without weapons - 906, deserters - 1504. 549 families were taken hostage, 295 final confiscations of property were carried out, 80 houses were dismantled, 60 were burned houses, 591 bandits were shot, 70 hostages, 2 for harboring. The minutes of the meeting of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee dated June 22, 1921 contain interesting information about the implementation of order No. 130: “The sentence was very successfully applied in Parevka (as in the village of Kamenka). The first hostages in the amount of 80 people categorically refused to give any information whatsoever. They were all shot, and a second batch of hostages was taken. This party, without any coercion, gave all the information about the bandits, weapons, bandit families, some even volunteered to take a direct part in the operations on order No. 130. Order No. 189 provided for the taking and execution of hostages in the event of the destruction of bridges from nearby villages.

The main forces of the partisans were defeated on June 5-19 near the Vorona River, when the consolidated group of Uborevich overtook the detachments of Boguslavsky and Antonov. Detachments of Selyansky, Kuznetsov and other formations were also defeated.

However, even after defeating the main forces of the rebels in June, the peasant movement did not die out. In the forests and swamps of the Tambov province, small detachments operated, some of them 5-10 people each. Destroying them was quite difficult. June 12, 1921 Tukhachevsky. M.N. adopted Order No. 0016 on the use of asphyxiant gases against the rebels in order to "immediately clear the forests." In total, 2,000 shells and 250 cylinders of chlorine were sent to the Tambov province. By December 1921, several detachments with a total number of up to 150 people had survived, of which they were located in the wooded Borisoglebsk district. Antonov rebellion, in fact, ceased to exist.

At the second and third stages, not only military and repressive measures were used to eliminate the Antonovshchina, but peaceful ones. The Red Army units helped the Tambov peasants in the sowing campaign. On March 10-16, 1921, a provincial non-party conference was held, at which the peasants expressed their demands to the authorities. Many comments were taken into account and implemented. Campaigning was intensively carried out, brochures and a special peasant newspaper "Tambov plowman" were published.

The liquidation of the peasant movement in the Saratov province can be divided into 2 stages. From the autumn of 1920 to the spring of 1921, the local authorities tried to liquidate the peasant movement on their own, however, due to the low combat capability of the army units and the existence of the surplus appropriation, their actions were ineffective. In the summer - autumn of 1921, cavalry units and armored vehicles arrived in the Saratov province, from which "flying detachments" were organized. By the end of 1921, the peasant movement had faded away, and the bulk of the insurgent detachments had been defeated.

The most important and common reason for the victory over the rebels is the rejection of the policy of "war communism" and the introduction of a tax in kind. At first, the tax in kind was heavy, the Saratov and Tambov provinces were economically devastated, but the rebel groups did not offer anything, but only ruined the peasant economy, evolved into outright banditry and criminality.

Sociologist T. Shanin rightly noted: “The key to understanding a successful guerrilla war should be sought not in the miracles of the organization of the insurgents, but in their relationship with the peasantry, not in military methods that few people own, but in the sociology of the masses.” Historian-peasant V.P. Danilov argues that in the civil war, the success of the Red Army directly depended on the political mood of the peasants. A significant part of the collective farms and artels were destroyed in the southeastern part of the Tambov province, which also suited the Tambov peasants. As a result, the rebels lost their social base, and the peasants supported the Soviet government. The Tambov province has become a real school for army commanders. It was here that valuable experience in the fight against insurgents was accumulated. Military methods of struggle, which had proven themselves in the Tambov province, began to be used in the Saratov province. In one of the instructions there is such a curious message: “The so-called flying, or maneuverable, detachments, organized from selected cavalry and shooters, planted on carts with artillery and machine guns, gave excellent results. Detachments of this type are organized on the territory of Ukraine and the Tambov province and will undoubtedly find application in the Saratov province.

The Red Army soldiers, most of them yesterday's peasants, began to oppose the policy of "war communism". December 14, 1920 At the II non-party conference of the Kirsanov garrison, the Red Army wished to eliminate from the food work those who discredited the policy of the Soviet government. The conference ended with the slogans: "Long live the workers' and peasants' government!", "Long live the breadwinner of Russia - the farmer peasant!", "Long live the mutual trust of workers and peasants!". Red Army soldiers of the 15th Cavalry Division, located in Balashov in March 1921. demanded free trade. Separate groups of Red Army soldiers terrorized food workers and policemen.

V. I. Lenin personally received a delegation from the Tambov peasants at the beginning of 1921. and listened to their concerns. F.E. Dzerzhinsky asked the faction to withdraw his candidacy from the nomination to the Central Committee, arguing that he did not want, and most importantly, could not work in the Cheka. “Now our revolution,” he said, “has entered a tragic period, during which it is necessary to punish not only class enemies, but also working people - workers and peasants in Kronstadt, in the Tambov province and other places ...” . The authorities listened to the demands of the peasants and made the right decision. The crisis was successfully overcome.

Thus, to eliminate the uprising in the Tambov region, a whole range of measures was used: political, military, repressive. In the Saratov province, the uprising was liquidated mainly by military and political actions. The demands of the peasantry were met, thereby eliminating the causes of the peasant uprisings in 1920-1921.

Conclusion.

The presence of regional features was influenced by the following factors: natural conditions, the tradition of the struggle of peasants for their rights, the activities of the party at the beginning of the 20th century, the scale of the personality of the leaders, the level of mistakes of local authorities and the odiousness of some of its representatives, proximity to the front. The Tambov province showed an example of the development of the peasant movement in 1920-1921. with a center of resistance. Thanks to the epicenter of the struggle, the events in the Tambov province had an all-Russian resonance. Borisoglebsky, Tambov, Kirsanovsky districts forced the political elite of the country to pay attention to their problems. By the summer of 1921, the number of Red Army soldiers in the Tambov province had increased to 100 thousand people to eliminate the Antonovshchina. The uprising was suppressed by talented red commanders: M. Tukhachevsky, N. Kakurin, I. Uborevich, G. Kotovsky and others. In the Saratov province, the center of the struggle did not develop and, as a result, the resistance was fragmented.

There are several promising directions in the study of the peasant movement. With regard to the activities of A.S. Antonov, there are such points of view. In Soviet historiography, he appears as a bandit, historian M. Frenkin considers him a talented partisan, and V.V. Samoshkin puts Alexander Antonov on a par with Ivan Bolotnikov, Stepan Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, Emelyan Pugachev, “after all, the only thing that distinguishes Antonov from his predecessors, the leaders of peasant wars and uprisings in Russia, is that he was the leader of the last peasant war in our country" . In 1994 in the journal "Questions of History" an article by V.V. Samoshkin "Alexander Stepanovich Antonov", in which the author points out the paucity and fragmentation of the material. In 2005 his monograph “Antonov Rebellion” is published, consisting of 3 chapters, one of which is dedicated to A.S. Antonov.

Recently, works and a collection of documents on the leaders of the peasant movement N. Makhno, F. Mironov, A. Antonov have appeared. However, no less significant historical figures such as Boguslavsky, Ishin, Podkhvatilin, Sapozhkov also require the attention of researchers. Information about them is scarce, but the trends of recent years in the study of the peasant movement inspire optimism. Historians P.V. Volobuev and V.P. Buldakov in the article “The October Revolution: New Approaches to Study” write: “Until now, this “average” figure of the revolution (peasant leaders - M.M.) has been studied the least. Meanwhile, it is through it that one can understand how the bright faith in universal happiness turned out to be supplanted by the idea of ​​“rob the loot”.

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