The Makhnovist movement of the Ukraine is the best known of the revolutionary oppositions to the Bolshevik regime. But it was not the only radical challenge the Bolsheviks faced from below. Numerous peasants revolts occurred in the years 1920-22, aiming not to restore the old regime but to defend themselves from the new one. Nick Heath here examines their extent, causes and limitations.

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Introduction : The Third Revolution? Peasant and worker resistance to the Bolshevik government

You fell as sacrifices to the great struggle. Your unforgettable names shall not die in the noble memory of the labouring people, for whose fortune you laid down your wild heads. In the battle’s roar you did not think of yourselves. Warriors for an idea, you did not tremble before the pack of tyrants. You, the first sacrifices of the Third Revolution, of the Revolution of Labour, gave an example of steadfast firmness in battle for your rights. You went forward under the slogan Victory or Death. You died. We who are alive shall carry the battle to its end. We vow on your fresh graves to be victorious or to lie next to you. Already, the light of the Great Liberation of Labourers has begun to shine.
Kronstadt Izvestia No. 10 March 12th 1921

The first Russian Revolution came about in February 1917 with the overthrow of the Tsar and the establishment of a coalition government of right wing Socialists led by Kerensky. The second came in October of the same year. Here the Bolsheviks overthrew the Kerensky regime, with the help of Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists and Maximalists. The defeat of the Kerensky regime celebrated on the streets was immediately followed by the monopoly of power by the Bolsheviks, the radical faction of the Social Democrats. The situation that followed led to the beginnings of what has been described as a Third Revolution.

By spring and summer 1918 the Bolsheviks were ready to take action against their opponents to the left. The Anarchist movement and its armed groups, the Black Guard, were attacked in Moscow and other centres in June 1918. The huge system of cooperatives that had emerged and which organised exchange between country and town was dispersed and replaced by tight government control. The bureaucratic system that then developed was incapable of organising supply and plunged the whole country into crisis whilst at the same time fostering speculation and corruption.

The peasantry was plundered to obtain the so-called “surplus”. Food and other materials gathered in this way were stored in warehouses and immediately fostered speculation. The political police of the Bolshevik regime, the Cheka, protected speculators whilst both the peasantry and the working class were plunged into poverty. Maizel, the auditor of the People’s Commissariat of State Control, warned Lenin in a 1920 report that the Cheka everywhere had entered into an agreement with speculators and that many raids, searches and requisitions were made by them purely for profit. In addition some state-owned industrial enterprises in rural areas and on large farms were run by former landowners and capitalists, in conjunction with commissars. Here workers and peasants had to work from dawn to dusk under armed guard.

During the Civil War in Russia, Lenin’s government was faced with a number of predominantly peasant uprisings which threatened to topple the regime. Can the accusation be justified that these were led by kulaks (rich peasants), backed by White reaction, with the support of the poorer peasants, unconscious of their real class interests? Or was it, as some opponents of Bolshevism to its left claimed, the start of the Third Revolution?

“All those who really take the social revolution to heart must deplore that fatal separation that exists between the proletariat of the towns and the countryside. All their efforts must be directed to destroying it, because we must all be conscious of this – that as much as the workers of the land, the peasants, have not given a hand to the workers of the town, for a common revolutionary action, all the revolutionary efforts of the towns will be condemned to inevitable fiascos. The whole revolutionary question is there; it must be resolved, or else perish”Bakunin, from The Complete Works “On German Pan-Germanism”.

Orthodox Marxism discounted the revolutionary role of the peasantry. According to the German Marxist Karl Kautsky, the small peasant was doomed. It was tactically useful to mobilise the peasant masses. In his the Agrarian Question, he stated that the short-term objectives of the peasants and the lower middle class, not to mention the bourgeoisie, were in opposition to the interest of all humanity as embodied in the idea of socialist society. “When the proletariat [meaning the industrial working class] comes to try and exploit the achievements of the revolution, its allies – the peasantry – will certainly turn against it…the political make-up of the peasantry disbars it from any active or independent role and prevents it from achieving its own class representation…By nature it is bourgeois and shows its reactionary essence clearly in certain fields… That is why the proposition before the congress speaks of the dictatorship of the proletariat alone supported by the peasantry… Peasantry must assist proletariat, not the proletariat the peasantry in the achievement of the latter’s wishes.” Leo Jogiches, “The dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasantry” at the Sixth Party Congress of the Polish Social Democrats 1908. (See also the following discussion at the Congress where it was stated that the “peasantry cannot play the autonomous role alongside the proletariat which the Bolsheviks have ascribed to it.”) Rosa Luxemburg shared Jogiches’ mistrust of the peasantry, and could see them only as a reactionary force.

Lenin himself, extremely flexible on a tactical level, and extremely rigid on an ideological one, was conscious of what he was doing when his Party advanced the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. After Bolshevik triumph “then it would be ridiculous to speak of the unity of will of the proletariat and of the peasantry, of democratic rule…Then we shall have to think of the socialist, of the proletarian dictatorship” (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, 1905).

For his part Trotsky had a harsher attitude to the peasantry, and was unconvinced of even a temporary alliance with them: “The proletariat will come into conflict not only with the bourgeois groups which supported the proletariat during the first stage of the revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasants (1905, written in 1922).

The Bolsheviks defined ‘kulaks’ as rich peasants, able to sell produce on the market as well as produce for their own use, able to employ hired labour and to sell their surplus products. They were seen as representing the real petit bourgeois elements in the countryside, ready to develop agriculture through capitalist advances. In the second stage of the revolution, after the initial bourgeois stage, the kulaks (and a ‘substantial part of the middle peasantry’ – Lenin) would go over to the bourgeoisie, whilst the proletariat would rally the poor peasantry to it. But as Ferro points out: “The search for the kulak was partly false, a matter of chasing shadows, for the kulaks had often disappeared, or sunk to muzhik level, since the Revolution of October.”[1] What is certain is that on a practical level the Bolsheviks alienated vast masses of the peasantry in the ‘War Communism’ years from 1918 to 1921, in particular with grain requisitioning and the Chekist repression. The Bolsheviks sought to bring class war to the peasantry. In doing so they exaggerated the importance and wealth of the kulaks. Selunskaia reports that in fact only 2 per cent could be classified as ‘clearly kulaks.’[2] One official statistic gives the following figures: in 1917, 71% of the peasants cultivated less than 4 hectares, 25% had between 4 and 10 hectares, only 3.7% had more than 10 hectares, these categories changing respectively in 1920 to 85, 15, and 0.5%. Another criterion, the possession of a horse, according to the same statistics, can be used to show relative wealth.29% had none, 49% had one, 17% had two, and 4.8% had more than 3 (in 1917). By 1920, the figures had changed respectively to 27.6, 63.6, 7.9, and 0.9%.[3] In fact, the number of kulaks – and here we are referring to Bolshevik norms as to what constituted ‘wealthy’ – was diminishing, and the equalisation process was continuing. As for the requisitioning, the leading Bolshevik Kubanin admitted that half the food collected rotted, and many cattle died on railway carriages en route, due to lack of water and food.[4]

War communism

In reaction to war communism, a number of insurrections broke out. This system was far from being one of social equality as it has been touted by its defenders. Within it there were 27 wage categories with privileges for food distribution and other basic materials. Widespread resentment against these privileges began to grow.

The first uprisings broke out in Kursk, Ryazan and other provinces in 1918. In March 1919 there was a peasant uprising in the Volga region. This became known as the Chapan war after the long peasant coat. The uprising began on 2-3rd March throughout the Middle Volga, Samara and Simbirsk provinces. It involved 150,000 combatants (according to the Bolshevik PG Smidovich) and a territory with a population of over a million people was seized. It was one of the largest peasant uprisings in history. However, and this was to be a constantly recurring problem with subsequent uprisings, there was a distinct lack of arms. The insurgents possessed only a few hundred rifles and a few machine guns, most of them being armed only with axes and home made spears. The driving force behind the uprising, the Union of Working Peasants, had emerged during the revolutionary period of 1905-07. This was never controlled by any party, either of left or right, although they attempted to exert influence within it. In addition Samara Province was a stronghold of the Maximalists who agitated in the villages. Their influence on the uprising however requires further research.

The main reasons for the uprising were hatred of the food requisitioning squads and suppression of free speech and assembly. In addition the Volga region was the front line of the struggle between the Reds and Whites and there was fierce opposition to forced conscription by either Reds or Whites. A People’s Peasant Army was formed and officers were elected by the insurgents from among those who had experience in the First World War. New Soviets were created through free elections. A statement was produced saying that the restoration of the pre-revolutionary capitalist order was not desired, but neither was the Bolshevik dictatorship. The main objective of the uprising, it was stated, was the cessation of the requisitioning and the protection of the Soviet regime which had been taken over by “parasites, under the guise of communism”. Interestingly enough Anarchists were included alongside Bolsheviks as “tyrants, murderers and robbers”. This was because of collaboration of some local anarchists with the Bolshevik regime.

The poorly armed uprising was savagely repressed by the Red Army and the Cheka in the following weeks of March. Thousands of peasants were killed. However revolt continued to smoulder and in spring 1920 peasants rose in Ufa province in the Pitchfork Revolt. This united Russians, Tatars, Bashkirs, and German and Latvian settlers. Forty thousand people were involved in this. Once again, it was brutally repressed. This was followed in the years 1921-1923 by a famine brought on by the requisitioning. Over two million people died in the region.

In the West Ukraine, the Makhnovist movement, inspired and militarily led by the anarchist peasant Nestor Makhno, was one of the more ideologically developed movements. It must be remembered that the Makhnovists had controlled this part of the Ukraine before the arrival of the Red Army and had successively defeated Austro-German and White troops. The Makhnovists invited a number of anarchists fleeing from the North and Bolshevik persecution or returning from foreign exile, to work through the Nabat (Alarm) Confederation of Anarchists in propaganda, cultural and educational work among the peasantry. The Makhnovists saw the White threat as a greater danger than the Bolsheviks, and concluded a series of alliances with the latter in a united front against the White leaders, Denikin and Wrangel. In fact, there seems to be much evidence that Wrangel would have smashed through the Ukraine and taken Moscow and destroyed the Bolshevik government, if not for the efforts of the Makhnovists. At the end of a joint campaign against the Whites in the Crimea, Makhnovist commanders were invited to Red Army headquarters and summarily shot. Makhno himself fought on for almost a year, before being forced to retire over the border.[5]

The Cheka and the prodrazverstksa (food requisition squads) never showed themselves in the Makhnovist centre of Hulyai-Polye before 1919, but peasants living in the Ekaterinoslav and Alexandrovsk areas had plenty of experience of them. In other areas of insurrection the initial opposition was more directly a result of the ‘War Communism’ policies of Bolshevism.

Throughout Siberia the regime was faced with probably their worst threat, and it is possible that it was this, more than the Kronstadt insurrection of the same year, that forced it to change course. Krasnaya Armiya (Red Army, published by the Military Academy, and aimed at a small circle of Communist readers) had to admit in its edition of December 1921 that the carrying out of the grain collections in spring 1920 roused the Siberian peasantry against the Communists and that “the movement in the Ishimsk region was proceeding under the same slogans which at one time were put forth by the Kronstadt sailors.” Red Army had to admit that ineptitude, economic mismanagement and ‘criminal’ seizure of property had been amongst the causes of peasant dissatisfaction. The journal recognised the effect on the morale when they saw at first hand the food requisitioned from them rotting in carloads. ‘Provocatory acts’ by government representatives in the tax-gathering agencies had frequently brought about risings of entire villages. The journal also reported on ‘a very unique’ movement in the Don and Kuban regions, headed by Maslakov, an ex-Commander of the Red Army, with the aim of declaring war on “the saboteurs of the Soviet power, on the ‘commissar-minded’ Communists.”[6] In fact, this was a whole brigade of the Red Army.

Links

Indeed Maslakov’s uprising in February 1921 in eastern Ukraine quickly linked with the Makhnovists through the detachment of the Makhnovist commander Brova. Red Army Commanders revolted, as with the battalion at Mikhailovka led by Vakulin, and then Popov, in the Northern Don Cossack territory (from December 1920). Vakulin appears to have had a force of 3,200 – six times the amount he had started out with – when he moved east into the Ural region. He succeeded in taking prisoner a Red Army force of 800. But on 17th February 1921 he lost a battle in which he died, and the Don Cossack F.Popov, a Socialist Revolutionary, took over. The Popov group moved back into Samara and then Saratov provinces, picking up strength as it went along. It was estimated by the Red Army that it numbered 6,000 by now. It managed to capture an entire Red Army battalion. It appears to have been eventually crushed, if we believe Bolshevik sources.

In Samara a Left-Social Revolutionary officer, Sapozhkov, in the Red Army revolted at the head of ‘anarchistic and SR elements’ (according to the Soviet historian Trifonov in Classes and Class Struggle in the USSR at the Beginning of the NEP 1921-1923). He was himself the son of a peasant in this province. This uprising began on 14th or 15th July 1920 with a force of 2,700. Sapozhkov fell in battle on 6th September after 2 months of fighting. His place was taken by Serov, who was still able to gather 3,000 combatants and who fought on until summer of 1923, the longest time than any rebel band had done so, apart from Makhno.

In the Tambov region another serious insurrection began in August 1920 under the guidance of Alexander Stepanovitch Antonov. Here again the revolt was sparked off by grain requisition. Antonov himself was an ex-Social Revolutionary, and then Left SR, who spoke of defending both workers and peasants against Bolsheviks. Other leading lights in this movement included Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. The Antonovists were able to assemble 21,000 combatants at one time. The anarchist Yaryzhka commanded a detachment of the Antonovist movement under the black flag of anarchism. Whilst serving in the Army during World War I he had struck an officer in 1916, been imprisoned and had converted to anarchism as a result of his experiences. He began operations in autumn 1918, fighting on till he was killed in action by the Bolsheviks in autumn 1920.

However of all the movements the Antonovschina was perhaps the most questionable. Antonov himself was extremely authoritarian and his movement was the only major one to advance the slogan of the reconstitution of the Constituent Assembly (probably one of the reasons that Kolesnikov was reluctant to go into close alliance with it).

It can be seen that all these risings or oppositional movements to Leninism amongst the peasantry occurred around about the same time, over the period 1920-1921. Indeed, taken with the rising of the sailors at Kronstadt in 1921, they formed a grave threat to Bolshevik rule. The aims of the Kronstadt insurgents seem to have had an echo in the peasant movements. This is hardly surprising considering many Kronstadt sailors had peasant origins. The west Siberia uprising adopted the Kronstadt demands[6], as noted by Krasnaya Armiya. After the Tambov insurrection, the Soviet authorities found the Kronstadt resolutions at an important Antonovist hiding place. Antonov himself was so saddened by the news of the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising that he went on a vodka binge, so it is alleged. It appears that some Kronstadt sailors escaped the crushing of the insurrection and linking up with the Antonovschina. On 11th July Bolshevik cavalry fought an engagement with a small but elite band of Antonovists, Socialist-Revolutionary political workers and sailors. They fought with “striking steadfastness” until the end according to the Chekist Smirnov, when the few survivors shot first their horses and then themselves. One Bolshevik noted in 1921 that “the anarchist-Makhnovists in the Ukraine reprinted the appeal of the Kronstadters, and in general did not hide their sympathy for them.”[7]

Accusations

It is clear that the Kronstadters were opposed to Tsarist restoration, and had been instrumental in bringing down the Kerensky regime. The Makhnovists were equally implacable towards the Whites. No alliance was even considered with them against the Bolsheviks, and indeed the Makhnovists formed anti-White alliances with the Bolsheviks, the last of which was to prove their downfall, as seen above. The movement was deeply influenced by anarchism, and hardly likely to countenance collaboration with one of its mortal foes. As for Maslakov, he had been a trusted Red Commander, and made proclamations that he was fighting for a communism without commissars. Krasnaya Armiya admitted that the insurgents in the Don and Kuban regions ‘disapprove of and fight against White Guardist agitation.’ As for Antonov, he “undertook no embarrassing action against the Bolsheviks such as cutting communications behind the front lines, but contented himself with combating punitive detachments sent out against the peasants.”[8] Antonov had been imprisoned under Tsarism for his activities as a Socialist Revolutionary during and after the 1905 Revolution with a 12 year sentence in Siberia, and his peasant movement was unlikely to have favoured a return to the old days.

Another accusation against the peasant movements was that they were kulak-led, dragging the rest of the peasantry in their wake. An analysis of leading lights within the Makhnovist movement at least disproves it in their case. Trotsky implied that the “liquidation of Makhno does not mean the end of the Makhnovschina, which has its roots in the ignorant peasant masses.” But all the leading Makhnovists that we have biographical information on came from the poor peasantry, including Makhno himself, and in a few cases the middle peasantry. As Malet says: “the Bolsheviks have totally misconstrued the nature of the Makhno movement. It was not a movement of kulaks, but of a broad mass of the peasants, especially the poor and middle peasants.”[9] We have little empirical evidence for the composition of the peasant uprisings in the Don and Kuban areas. Radkey has provided some information on the Tambov insurrection through research under difficult conditions, and has found that Antonov was the son of a small-town artisan – hardly a kulak! There is evidence that some leading Antonovists were of kulak origin, (based on Bolshevik archives) yet one Cheka historian had to admit that a “considerable part of the middle peasantry” supported the insurrection.[10] There is evidence that Antonov had the support of the poor peasantry and some workers in the province.[11]

Reservations

One must have reservations over the allegations of the ‘kulak character’ of these uprisings. Even if it is admitted that some kulaks took parting the risings, it must be granted, from the little evidence available, that other sections of the peasantry took an active part. What can be made of the allegations that far from being counter-revolutionary, the peasant uprisings were the start of a ‘Third Revolution’ (leading on from the February and October Revolutions)? This term appears to have been developed by anarchists within the Makhnovist movement, appearing in a declaration of a Makhnovist organ, the Revolutionary Military Soviet, in October 1919. It reappeared during the Kronstadt insurrection. Anatoli Lamanov developed it in the pages of the Kronstadt Izvestia, the journal of the insurgents, of which he was an editor. Lamanov was a leader of the Union of Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists in Kronstadt, and saw Kronstadt as the beginning of a ‘Third Revolution’ which would overthrow the “dictatorship of the Communist Party with its Cheka and state capitalism” and transfer all power “to freely elected Soviets” and transform the unions into “free associations of workers, peasants and labouring intelligentsia.”[12] The Maximalists, a split from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, demanded immediate agrarian and urban social revolution, a Toilers Republic of federated soviets, anti-parliamentarism and distrust of parties. There is little evidence on the links between them and the Makhnovists, though it would be unlikely that this slogan emerged in two places totally independently. “Here in Kronstadt, has been laid the first stone of the Third Revolution, striking the last fetters from the labouring masses and opening a broad new road for socialist creativity”, proclaimed the Kronstadters.[13]

The term ‘Third Revolution’ however, seems vague, with no clear idea of how to bring this Revolution about. It had its adherents in Makhnovist circles, and possibly in West Siberia and with Maslakov, but never operated in a unified approach to a development of its implementation. What distinguished the Makhnovist movement from Tambov was the former’s specific ideology. The Antonov movement had no ideology, “knew what they were against… but only the haziest of notions as to how to order Russia in the hour of victory.”[14] The Antonovists were a local movement with local perspectives. The Makhnovists were wide-ranging, and links were formed with Maslakov. Makhno himself campaigned as far as the Volga, going around the Don area linking up similar bands. A Makhnovist detachment under Parkhomenko was sent off to the Voronezh area in early March 1921 and it appears to have linked up with insurgent detachments under Kolesnikov.

But the vast expanse of the Soviet Union curtailed link-ups between the movements. There seems to have been widespread mutual ignorance of either the existence or the aims of the differing peasant movements. In addition, as has already been noted, there was always a problem of sufficient supplies of weapons.

Where there was an awareness, there seems to have been little effort to combine the movements for a unified onslaught against the Bolshevik government. The Kronstadt insurrection was later deemed as several months premature by some of its leading lights.[15] Localism and lack of a more global strategy similarly hamstrung Antonov and the movements in the Don, Kuban and west Siberian regions, as did the very spontaneity of the risings. The Makhnovists may have had a better grasp of the situation, but they failed to unite the opposition, going into alliance once more with the Bolsheviks, despite previous unhappy experiences. Nevertheless, the sum of these risings presented a very grave threat to the regime, forcing it to at least move from War Communism to the New Economic Policy.

A Note on Free Trade

One of the problematic questions for anti-capitalist and ant-Leninist revolutionaries as regards this incipient Third Revolution was the demand of free trade that was raised by some of the peasant revolts and by the Kronstadters. This has often been used as an argument that these revolts were basically an attempt to return to a capitalist order and that this demand was bourgeois. This is used by both Leninist apologists for the Bolshevik regime and by right wing historians and advocates of the market. However it should be remembered that the Bolsheviks had imposed a state capitalist regime and that the demand for free trade under War Communism by the peasants was similar to the demands of workers for better pay and conditions. Such demands by workers did not go beyond the capitalist system but in struggle they had created factory committees and other forms of self-organisation. Similarly, the peasants had created unions of working peasants and free soviets.

These two forms of organisation could have together become the foundation of a new kind of society. Even the most suspect of the movements, the Antonov movement had advanced the slogan “Freedom of trade through cooperation”. The peasant unions set up by the peasants sought a fair exchange of goods between town and country. They were not in favour of a free market but of a more equitable and harmonious system of distribution and exchange. There is of course an ambiguity here that cannot fully be resolved. It should be remembered that when the masses go into struggle a fully revolutionary programme rarely emerges at once. All revolutions contain contradictions within them. The Kronstadt revolt itself was not without illusions among some of its participants that, for example, Lenin himself was ill and not aware of current Bolshevik policy. Authoritarian and nationalist ideas could be discerned in many of these movements.

However these ideas were not in general dominant. It is important to remember that the peasants were not opposed to the towns and cities in general and that the connections between town and countryside were many, with the supply of farm machinery, tools, and textiles in return for food. In addition as can be seen industry itself was developing in the countryside and that many centres of the revolts were large villages or small towns where industry was developing. As Ida Mett noted in The Kronstadt Commune: “In the Kronstadt Isvestia of March 14th we find a characteristic passage on this subject. The rebels proclaimed that ‘Kronstadt is not asking for freedom of trade but for genuine power to the Soviets.’ The Petrograd strikers were also demanding the reopening of the markets and the abolition of the road blocks set up by the militia. But they too were stating that freedom of trade by itself would not solve their problems.”

Ante Ciliga was to further emphasise this when he wrote in The Kronstadt Revolt: “People often believe that Kronstadt forced the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) – a profound error. The Kronstadt resolution pronounced in favour of the defence of the workers, not only against the bureaucratic capitalism of the State, but also against the restoration of private capitalism. This restoration was demanded – in opposition to Kronstadt – by the social democrats, who combined it with a regime of political democracy. And it was Lenin and Trotsky who to a great extent realised it (but without political democracy) in the form of the NEP. The Kronstadt resolution declared for the opposite since it declared itself against the employment of wage labour in agriculture and small industry. This resolution, and the movement underlying, sought for a revolutionary alliance of the proletarian and peasant workers with the poorest sections of the country labourers, in order that the revolution might develop towards socialism.

The NEP, on the other hand, was a union of bureaucrats with the upper layers of the village against the proletariat; it was the alliance of State capitalism and private capitalism against socialism. The NEP is as much opposed to the Kronstadt demands as, for example, the revolutionary socialist programme of the vanguard of the European workers for the abolition of the Versailles system, is opposed to the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles achieved by Hitler.”

Footnotes

1. p.138 Ferro
2. Izmeniia 1917-20, in Atkinson.
3. L Kritsman, The Heroic Period of the Great Russian Revolution, 1926 in Skirda.
4. Kubanin ‘The anti-Soviet peasant movement during the years of civil war (war communism) 1926’, in Skirda.
5.Palij, Malet, Skirda all cite evidence of Makhnovist achievement in saving the Bolshevik capital
6. p.148, Maximoff
7. Lebeds, quoted by Malet.
8. p.82 Radkey
9. p122 Malet
10. Sofinov, in Radkey. p106.
11. p107-110 Radkey
12. See Getzler
13. p243 Avrich
14. p.69 Radkey
15. see Avrich

Bibliography

Avrich, P. Princeton (1970) Kronstadt 1921.
Atkinson,D. Stanford (1983) The end of the Russian Land Commune 1905-1930.
Lewin, M. Allen & Unwin (1968) Russian Peasants and Soviet power.
Mitrany, D. Weidenfeld & Nicholson (1951) Marx and the Peasant.
Malet, M. MacMillan (1982). Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War.
Palij, M. Washington (1976) The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno.
Radkey, O. Hoover (1976) The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia.
Maximoff, G. P. Cienfuegos (1976) The Guillotine at Work.
Skirda, A. Paris (1982) Nestor Makhno, Le Cosaque de l’Anarchie.Ferro, M. RKP (1985) The Bolshevik Revolution, A Social History of the Russian Revolution.
Getzler, I. Cambridge University Press (1983) Kronstadt 1917-1921, the Fate of a Soviet Democracy.

1920: The Sapozhkov Uprising and the Army of Truth

Alexander Sapozhkov came from a peasant family in Novouzensk county of Samara province. During the First World War, he graduated from the school of ensigns, rose from private to lieutenant and was awarded the medal of Knight of St. George. In 1917 he became a Left Socialist-Revolutionary and took an active part in the revolution in Saratov province. In 1918 he joined the Bolshevik Party and became chairman of the county soviet. Sapozhkov set up a Red partisan group, and enjoyed great popularity among the men of this detachment. He actively defended Bolshevism and participated in the suppression of several peasant uprisings. In February 1919 Sapozhkov became Commander of the 22nd Division of the Red Army and from then on was fighting in the Urals and on the southern fronts against the Whites. He headed up the defense of Uralsk from the White Cossacks led by Ataman Tolstov.

In spring 1920 he commanded the Turkestan Division of the Red Army in Saratov and Samara provinces. Most of the commanders of divisions – Zubarev, Serov, Usov – were Left SRs from the local peasantry. These were wary of commanders imposed by the Communists and sympathized with the plight of the peasants. In June 1920 the first part of the Turkestan division consisting of two regiments of cavalry and artillery had to merge into the newly formed 9th Cavalry Division of the Red Army. The military commander of the Zavolzhsky district decided to suspend Sapozhkov from his command under the pretext of sending him to study in Moscow. The order to replace Sapozhkov, Zubarev and others with “military experts” from the officer class of the Tsarist army was met with dissatisfaction in the ranks.

On July 1st Sapozhkov disobeyed his dismissal and announced that he remained divisional commander. He wanted his division to be sent to the Turkestan front rather than going to the western front to fight the Poles. On July 13, 1920 Sapozhkov secretly left Buzuluk village, the division headquarters, and convinced the regimental commanders that “unreliable, governmental” commanders and political commissars should be arrested. At first the mutiny was to express dissatisfaction with the choosing of appointed “experts” and no blood was planned on being shed. In parts of the division the slogan “Down with the specialists!” was raised. On the morning of July 14th the division raised the banner of revolt and proclaimed the formation of the First Red Army of Truth under the leadership of Sapozhkov. In this army there were up to 4,000 fighters, among which the Red Army divisions made up two-thirds. The Army of Truth has 4 field guns and 45 machine guns.

2,000 Red Army soldiers were disarmed at a first engagement. Half of these joined the Army of Truth. In Buzuluk the rebels released inmates from prison, seized 310 million rubles, and dissolved the local soviet. Communists and Soviet officials prudently fled the city so there were no killings. Soon, the Army of Truth was marching towards the cities of Uralsk and Pugachev.

The Army of Truth was well armed, supported by the local population and constantly replenished by new volunteers, including deserters from the Red Army. Deserters and soldiers from the Red Army were organised into the Chapayev Division. After the capture of Buzuluk, Sapozhkov even thought to talk with the commander of the Trans-Volga district for armistice terms and the demands of the insurgents but the District Commander did not answer the telephone. Shortly after Sapozhkov decided that the time for talk had passed. Sapozhkov addressed a rally of local insurgents in Buzuluk with the slogan “Down with the dictatorship of the Communist Party!” He called “for the revolution and the Red Army, but without the tyranny of the Communists” for “Truth” with a capital letter against the injustice of the leaders Lenin and Trotsky. He advocated a “true Soviet power and the Third International”. He appealed “to all workers and the Red Army” and against the “bourgeoisie entrenched in Soviet institutions” and the “pseudo-Communists”.

Sapozhkov said that in Soviet institutions there were “entrenched enemies of the revolution – the officers and bourgeois,” that senior officials of the Communist Party had been “bourgeoisified”, that there should be a purge and no further agreements with the bourgeoisie. This was met with consternation in the Bolshevik leadership, which feared that the revolt could spread to other parts of the Red Army. Lenin, in a telegram to the Zavolzhsky district commander, demanded the speedy elimination of the insurgency. Trotsky threatened: ” Those guilty from top to bottom should be ruthlessly punished” and ordered the shooting of all rebels taken with arms in their hands. Then members of local organizations of the anarchists, Social Revolutionaries, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were rounded up and imprisoned.

Communist Party members were mobilized in the Volga region. An armoured train and large infantry and cavalry detachments were sent against the Army of Truth. Sapozhkov for his part formed the 1st Cavalry Division under Zubarev and the 1st Infantry Division in the Army of Truth. The chief of staff of the Army of Truth was the former Communist commissar Fedor Dolmatov.

To spread the revolt to other territories, Sapozhkov ordered the formation of the Pugachev 2nd Infantry Division under the command of a former brigade commander in the 25th Chapayev Division, Plyasunkov, and sent it to the area of the city of Pugachev. But by July 17, 1920 up to 5 thousand Red Army fighters had come from Orenburg and Samara and the Army of Truth split into two rebel brigades. The 1st Brigade led by Serov advanced on Orenburg, the 2nd brigade under Sapozhkov advanced on Novouzensk. However near this town the Sapozhkov units were defeated and one of its commanders, Dimitri Zubarev, was captured. Zubarev had taken part in the 1905 Revolution, for which he received 3 years in prison and a year in a disciplinary battalion. In 1917 he was a member of a Soldiers’ Committee and had opposed the Kornilov putsch. He took part in the October Revolution and the establishment of soviets in Samara province, and fought against the White Cossacks. In 1921 he was shot for participation in the uprising.

On August 3rd the Army of Truth suffered a defeat and lost 400 men killed and taken prisoner. Three days later Sapozhkov again attempted to storm Novouzensk and was again defeated, and then went to the Ural steppes. On August 12 the Army of Truth was defeated once more and its forces seriously depleted with only 150 combatants remaining in the 2nd Brigade. On Sept. 6th at Lake Bak-Baul in Astrakhan Province it was overtaken by a Red Army detachment. During the ensuing battle Sapozhkov was killed. His body was beheaded and his head was taken to the division headquarters.

Sources: http://old.samara.ru/paper/41/6771/119544/ article from paper Volga Commune, 130, 2007.

http://revolution.allbest.ru/history/00033452_1.html Comparative analysis of the peasant movement in 1920-1921 on the basis of the Saratov and Tambov provinces.

1921: The Maslakov mutiny and the Makhnovists on the Don

“Beside me on the big bay horse raced Brigade Commander Grigori Maslakov. This was a man of great physical strength and desperate courage. There were in his behaviour major shortcomings, but courage in battle, the ability to win over the soldiers by personal example to achieve victory atoned for them.” Budyenny’s Memoirs

Grigori Savelievich Maslakov was born in 1877 in the Stavropol province into a poor peasant family. He worked in the Sal district in the Don region as a breaker-in of horses on a stud farm. He is described as having a cheerful personality and being fond of a drink. During World War One he served in the artillery in the Russian Army. At the end of 1917, he organized a Red partisan group that fought against the counterrevolutionary Whites led by Krasnov and Denikin in the river Manich area near Rostov. In 1918, his unit was integrated with a division led by Dumenko and he became a cavalry commander. In 1919 he operated under the command of the Red general Budyenny. He was promoted to commander of the First Brigade of the Fourth Division of the First Cavalry. It was his unit that participated in suppressing the mutiny by the Red Cossack leader Fyodor Kuzmich Mironov on September 13, 1919, capturing him without a fight. However because of expressions of discontent and insubordination he was demoted from Divisional Commander to Brigade Commander.

The First Cavalry Army was stationed in Ekaterinoslav province. At that time there was famine in the Ukraine. According to Budyenny the situation was catastrophic: people and livestock were dying from malnutrition. He reported that in winter 1921 several thousand horses died; although he fails to go on to say how many soldiers might have died too. Budyenny implored the Bolshevik leadership to relocate the Red Cavalry to the grain areas of the Northern Caucasus and the Kuban, but Trotsky was adamant that they should not move. As a result it became more and more difficult to maintain discipline in the Red Army. One of the first to break with Red Army discipline was Maslakov. In December 1920 the 4th Division was deployed against anarchist leader Nestor Makhno. But in January 1921 Maslakov and his detachment refused to attack the Makhnovists who they saw as fellow revolutionaries.

On February 8th 1921, he unexpectedly called upon the people to revolt against Soviet rule and declared himself a partisan and a supporter of Makhno. In the same area, near Pavlograd, he merged with the Makhnovist detachment of Batko Brova who later became an ideologist of the Maslakov rebel detachment. In leaflets distributed among the population, Maslakov wrote: “Comrades!… We do not go against the Soviet regime, but fight for it.… We do not go against the Communist comrades who are on the right path and are workers … but against the Communist commissars. We gave a word of honour and vow not to abandon our weapons, but will destroy these vermin … Long live the free soviets, but such soviets to be properly chosen by the people rather than appointed from above. Down with all dictators, no matter who they were! “To this was appended the slogan “true Soviet power without the Communists.”

In February 11th the Revolutionary Military Council of the First Cavalry outlawed Maslakov as “a traitor to the republic” who “on the grounds of drunkenness and demagoguery” had ensnared a large number of combatants and had “betrayed the revolution”.

At the end of February 1921 the 15,000 strong Makhnovist Insurgent Army left the Donbas region and tried to break into Gulyai Polye, but was encircled by the Red Army and returned to the Donbass area of Mariupol. The Makhnovists decided to change tactics. At a meeting of the various units it was proposed to divide the insurgents into a few large units and attempt to spread an uprising among the masses throughout Southern Russia and the Ukraine. Large columns were sent to Tambov, Kharkov, Saratov, and Voronezh. A special unit led by Maslakov and Brova was sent to the Don on March 10th. It was given the grand name of the Caucasian Makhnovist Insurgent Army. Apparently, the Maslakov group also included former soldiers of the Second Cavalry of Mironov, who had defected to Makhno in December 1920.

In the second half of March, the Red Army conducted a series of successful operations against insurgent groups in southern Russia and Ukraine; in the Tambov forests they routed a large force led by Antonov who then, with a hundred horsemen, went into hiding; the Makhnovists suffered a serious defeat in the Ukraine. After unsuccessful confrontations with government troops in the Stavropol region Maslakov headed north-east beyond the Don region. On March 12th the rebels attempted to break through the Red lines and suffered heavy casualties in a battle on March 16th. They retreated, divided in three directions. The Maslakov detachment then streamed into the Kalmyk steppe. Here the Maslakov detachment was enthusiastically joined by locals so that its forces increased from 1,000 to 4,000 in a short space of time.

The Bolsheviks saw this as a threat to their supply lines. In a telegram of March 19, Lenin commanded Trotsky: “We must push hard and break Maslakov”. On March 23rd near the village of Roguli, on the border of Kalmykia, the guerrillas were encircled and completely routed. Remains of the Maslakov detachment in “disarray fled to the east in the direction of the Kalmyk villages…” 200 guerrillas were taken prisoner. In early April, the remnants of the Maslakov unit operated in the Ikitsokhurovsky steppes (50-60 miles east of Elista), and in Tsaritsyn province. Here the unit was joined by Kalmyk rebels under the command of Goryvanya, bringing the numbers up to 200. The combined rebel detachment captured Elista, where they shot 100 Bolshevik officials and commissars.

According to the Astrakhan Cheka, Maslakov trying to gain a foothold in the area and liaise with Antonov, head of the Tambov rebellion and with the detachment of the anarchist Marousia (this Marousia is not the fierce anarchist Marousia Nikiforova, but one Marousia Kosova, who led a large Antonovist detachment. In January 1921 her group and a Makhnovist unit operated together in the Donbass steppes. On July 14-15, she was separated from Makhno and went to Taganrog county. On July 22nd the Bolshevik leader Eideman insisted on her execution).

Maslakov appears to have attempted to rejoin the main Makhnovist body but was repulsed three times. In mid-May Trotsky finally heeded the pleas of the Red Army leaders Budyenny and Frunze and sent the army to the Kuban and Northern Caucasus, but with the condition that it destroys the Maslakov-Brova detachment. On their way through the Don region, Budyenny suffered an ignominious defeat by the Makhnovists.

In early July 1921 Maslakov moved to the Don to join up with a large detachment led by Makhno. On the night of 26th to 27th July in the vicinity of the village of Kazan the two groups met up after a five-month separation, finally merging into one unit of 450 cavalry, and together moved in a northwesterly direction. But on August 2nd the detachment was attacked by the Red Army and again Maslakov and Brova separated from Makhno. Makhno moved off northwest to eventually be forced to cross into Romania. The Bolsheviks had concentrated huge forces and carried out mass shootings against the insurgents to defeat the Maslakov uprising.

The end of Maslakov is contradictory. According to the first version, detachments of the Cheka put them in the foothills of the North Caucasus. Here in the mountains of Chechnya and Ossetia in late September 1921 amnestied rebels treacherously killed their commanders Maslakov and Brova (although it is also asserted that these were Chekists infiltrated into the detachment). Documents from the State Archives of the Volgograd region tell a different story. In late August 1921 Maslakov with a detachment of 150 cavalry, with a wagon train of 30 wagons, appeared in the Ust-Medveditsk District and was still operating there in late September.

Isaac Babel gives him much attention in his collection of short stories Red Cavalry. In the story Afonkina Bida the writer describes this “incorrigible partisan”, but paints a picture of a bloodthirsty adventurer, in line with the Soviet regime’s view of him as a traitor to the Revolution. Babel served in the First Cavalry and would have known Maslakov (incidentally in two other tales in the collection Makhno is the unsympathetically described subject). Readers can decide for themselves whether Maslakov was a traitor or whether in fact he was a defender of the real revolution of the masses.

Sources: On the Maslakov uprising www.nestormakhno.info/russian/maslakov.htm And: voenforum.ru/index.php?showtopic=961

Budyenny’s memoirs The Road Travelled (published 1965-1973) at: http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/budenny_sm/1_06.html

Brova, Mikhail or Brava aka Batko Brova, ?-1921

Mikhail Brova was born into a peasant family in the village of Novogrigorevka, in the Ekaterinoslav province of the Ukraine. He started work at an early age, gaining skill as a mechanic-locksmith at the station at Avdeevka Yuzovsky.

He became an anarchist-communist in 1904, and took part in the Revolution of 1905-07. By 1917-18 he served as a sailor in the Russian fleet. In June 1918, he organised with other anarchists in Aleksandrovsk. He set up one of the first anarchist guerilla detachments in the Dibrivsky forest and fought against the Austrian-German invaders and the puppet Hetman Skoropadsky.

In August 1918 he was seriously wounded in combat, commanding a detachment sent to join the noted Makhnovist Fedor Shchus. From autumn 1918 he participated in the Makhnovist movement, and was one of its commanders in the autumn-winter campaign of 1919 against the White forces of Denikin. In early January 1920, he headed a group of anarchists numbering 300-400 people which began a guerrilla struggle against the Reds in Novomoskovsk in Ekaterinoslav province.

In mid-February he was arrested by the Cheka during clandestine meetings of Makhnovist commanders operating in the county. He was imprisoned at Ekaterinoslav from where in April 1920 he escaped and resumed guerrilla warfare. By the summer of 1920 he had re-established links with the Makhnovist staff and was appointed representative of the revolutionary insurgents in Novomoskovsk, where he led a guerrilla movement in the summer and autumn of 1920.

After the conclusion of the last political-military agreement with the Communists (October 1920) the Brova detachment fought on the front against the White general Wrangel but on 16th November 1920 he returned to the Novomoskovsk area to form new Makhnovist units. By December, he had organized a detachment of 400 cavalry and 300 infantry, and conducted a guerilla war against the Reds in Krivoy Rog, Pavlogradski and Novomoskovsk counties after the treacherous breaking of the treaty by the Bolsheviks. On several occasions he managed to escape from encirclement by Red forces although suffering heavy casualties.

At the end of January 1921 the group joined up with Maslakov who took command of the combined units, Brova becoming chief of staff. They proceeded to the Kuban region and Northern Caucasus. There they enjoyed the support of the population and their fighting force grew rapidly; according to Belash in February 1921 it had around 1000 people but by summer this had increased to up to 10 thousand people. In August 1921 the Reds, concentrating considerable forces, and making extensive use of hostage taking and mass shootings, had inflicted a series of heavy defeats. The Maslakov-Brova detachment broke up into several small isolated units, one of them led by Brova. In September 1921 he was probably killed by Cheka agents infiltrated into his unit in Chechnya (but see above for entry on Maslakov).

Sources: http://www.makhno.ru/ http://ruthenos.org.ua/HTML/Lozova/harkivschyna.html

The Fomin Mutiny on the Don, 1920-1922

Iakov Efimovich Fomin was born in 1885 in the Cossack hamlet of Rubezhnoe in Elenskaia stanitsa in the Upper Don district (stanitsas were the village units of the Cossacks, primary units in political and economic administration). He served in an elite Don Cossack unit from 1906. He is described as being six feet tall with a red beard. After the revolution he returned to the Don region but was drafted into the Don Army of Ataman Krasnov, which was opposed to the new Bolshevik government. He led defecting units from the Don Army over to the Red forces in December 1918-January 1919 (Krasnov in his memoirs tells how he got on the phone to Fomin who answered him with “vulgar abuse”). This resulted in the defeat of Krasnov and the consolidation of Red Cossack units.

As a unit commander in the Don Corps led by Filipp Mironov, he participated in the August 1919 mutiny at Saransk which ended with his and Mironov’s arrest by Maslakov. Mironov had been moved there far from the Don and even further from the front against the White general Denikin. In response to the victories of the Denikinists the forces of Mironov, disobeying the orders of Trotsky and Budyenny, started to march to engage them in combat. For this Trotsky falsely and slanderously accused Mironov of seeking not to fight Denikin but to join him.

Both Fomin and Mironov were sentenced to death, with Trotsky particularly keen on calling for their execution. However the Bolshevik government amnestied them both, supposedly for their past services to the revolution, but really for the need to win the support of the Cossacks. Fomin then returned to service in the Red Army.

It was as a commander of a cavalry squadron in the stanitsa of Veshenskaia in late 1920 that Fomin launched his mutiny, with the support of his captain Kapurin. Increasingly dissatisfied with the Bolshevik food requisitioning which directly affected the Cossack garrison and encouraged by the fighting among Upper Don district officials as to whether or not they should move grain to other districts, the squadron mutinied on March 13th, two weeks after a Bolshevik high-up ordered the moving of grain seed from the county, raising the slogan of Down with the requisitioning! Down with non-local Communists! There was almost complete support of the population of Veshenskaia for the mutiny. It appears that Fomin was also inspired by news of the Kronstadt mutiny that had just broken out. The Communist Party cell of the garrison joined the mutiny as did one third of the Veshenskaia stanitsa Party cell.

The Fomin unit was forced out of Veshenskaia and began a guerrilla struggle against the Bolshevik regime. They moved location every day, and held assemblies in every village they went through where Fomin and Kapurin said that the unit was fighting against the Communists but for Soviet power.

Under increasing attacks from Red Army forces the Fomin unit was driven into Voronezh province. However it returned to Veshenskaia in autumn 1921, winning much support among the local population and increasing its strength through new recruits. On April 18th Fomin’s forces were surrounded by Red forces led by Yegor Zhuravlov and almost completely destroyed. Fomin managed to escape and started building up his units again. Bands of anarchist sailors joined the grouping, as did combatants from dispersed units of the previous Maslakov mutiny and the guerrilla unit of Korchukin, who had been involved in the previous mutiny against the Bolsheviks led by Vakulin and Popov. It defeated several Red Army detachments. It appealed to “citizen Cossacks and peasants, Red Army men in the front-line units of our glorious Red Army!”, and it condemned the mass terror tactics of the Bolsheviks calling on “citizens” to rise against them and establish “the true power of the whole labouring people”.

Worried by the increasing support for the Fomin detachment, in November-December 1921 the Bolshevik leadership sent a special unit of the Don Cheka, a whole Red Army regiment and additional special detachments to the area. On the night of 13th to 14th June 1921 Korchukin was killed and his unit cut to shreds.

The Red detachment led by Frolov finally caught up with Fomin and his combatants on the 18th March 1922. Two days of fighting ensued. Fomin and his fighters were wiped out by the 20th. Fomin killed himself rather than be captured, or so the Bolsheviks claimed.

Fomin features in Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel of the civil war The Don Flows Home to the Sea. Sholokhov, who knew Fomin personally, describes him as “an incorrigible woman chaser, a merry and sociable Cossack”. It should be borne in mind that the novel was written under the Stalin regime and so Sholokhov’s unfavourable descriptions of Fomin and Mironov should be considered in this light.

Sources:Holquist, P. (2002) Making war, forging revolution: Russia’s continuum of crisis, 1914-1921.

http://old.samara.ru/paper/41/6771/119 (article from Russian paper The Volga Commune).

The Kolesnikov Uprising

Ivan Sergeevich Kolesnikov was born in 1894 in the settlement of Stara Kalitva in Ostrogozh county of Voronezh province in a large but prosperous farming family of four sons and four daughters. He is described as having blond hair, and as being of medium height with a stocky build. During the First World War he went from private to junior non-commissioned officer and platoon commander, fighting in the Caucasus on the Turkish front. From May 1919 he served in the 107th Red Army cavalry reconnaissance detachment and from August 1919 in the 357th Infantry Regiment, 40th Infantry Division.

At the end of May 1919 he was appointed platoon commander and then commandant of the regiment headquarters and in early January 1920 temporarily filled the post of commander of the 3rd Battalion, 357th Infantry Regiment. His career in the Red Army was characterised by an exemplary combat record. In the second half of 1919 he received gunshot wounds in combat at least twice. Apparently after being wounded once more he was made regimental treasurer on June 18, 1920. While in this position he was involved in a great waste of money (embezzlement?) and then deserted and returned to Stara Kalitva.

In early November 1920 a mass uprising against Bolshevik grain requisition broke out in Ostrogozh county. A famine and a poor harvest in the summer of that year were not taken into account in the autumn grain requisitioning. Many grain stores of local peasants were completely expropriated with the requisition squads acting as a law unto themselves and in a high handed way. As a result, in the southern districts of Voronezh province deserters from the Red Army set up armed detachments. One of these groups was led by a cousin of Ivan, Grigori Kolesnikov, and was raised widely supported by the local peasantry. In the first days of the rebellion the major challenge for the rebels was to organise an effective armed struggle against the Soviet authorities. In this regard, it was necessary that the revolt was headed by a man who had a rich military experience and leadership qualities. Kolesnikov fitted the bill. On November 7th 1920 at a mass meeting in Stara Kalitva he was elected as the military leader of the uprising.

Immediately after taking command of all rebel forces Kolesnikov announced the mobilisation of the male population aged 17 to 50 years. In a short time he managed to equip a detachment of a thousand people. It furnished itself with large number of weapons left behind by the Red and White armies during the Civil War and hidden by the peasantry.

Kolesnikov began to operate successfully in mid-November, with the broad support of the local population, destroying two large punitive detachments. The head of the Voronezh Cheka with other top-ranking Bolshevik officials and a death squad came to Stara Kalitva to impose order, believing the uprising was small and marginalised. They took up residence in a house on the outskirts of the settlement. During the night the house was surrounded by insurgents and shooting broke out. By the morning all the Bolsheviks had been shot dead (a monument was later raised in their memory by the Soviet authorities). The first success not only raised the morale of the insurgent peasantry, but also allowed Kolesnikov to broaden the area of the uprising. Insurgency spread to the villages and settlements of Bogucharsky and Pavlovsky counties. Under the motto “against hunger and looting”, the Kolesnikovists wherever they appeared, dispersed the requisition squads and gave the grain back to the peasants. It should be noted that local soviets were not destroyed, but taken over by the insurgents.

In the second half of November an insurgent detachment led by Emelyan Barabbas, hitherto operating in the area to the south, joined the Kolesnikov forces. A cavalry unit was formed under the command of Ivan Pozdnyakov. At first it had only 35 horses, but grew from day to day as many peasants flocked to the insurgents with their own horses. There was a special regiment under the leadership of Alexander Konotoptsev, a former Chekist who had sided with the insurgents. He directed their counter-intelligence unit, which reported on the movements of the Soviet authorities and Red Army, with great effectiveness. A headquarters was set up at Stara Kalitva with several observation posts to protect it.

By the end of November 1920 the Kolesnikov forces had already covered a large part of Voronezh province in the south. There were up to 10 thousand armed insurgents, according to Bolshevik military intelligence. By 25th November, the peak of the movement, the Kolesnikov detachments had become a full division with 5,500 infantry and 1,250 cavalry, with 6 artillery pieces and 7 machine guns.

The rapid spread of the insurrection compelled the local authorities to seek help from the centre. Large Red Army forces soon began arriving in the Voronezh area. In early December 1920 in Bogucharsky county Red cavalry utterly routed the combined forces of Kolesnikov. However the following day Kolesnikov’s forces together with a detachment led by Kamenev (Kamenyuk) an anarchist-Makhnovist flying a black banner, captured Starobelsk in Kharkov province in the neighbouring Ukraine. Kolesnikov wintered in this area alongside the detachments of Kamenyuk and Marousia (not the redoubtable anarchist Marousia Nikiforova but another female Makhnovist commander).

This caused great concern to the Bolshevik commander in the Ukraine and Crimea, Mikhail Frunze. Repeated attempts to smash the Kolesnikov unit failed as it avoided direct confrontation, moving over the border into the neighbouring Don region when necessary.

On January 29th 1921, the Kolesnikov detachment appeared in Bogucharsky county. At this time the military leadership of the province were concentrating all their efforts to fight the Antonov uprising in the northern counties and units led by Makhno which had suddenly appeared in the south-western counties. Consequently the forces of the Reds in the southern district were small and scattered. Also worthy of special attention is the fact that the local population there were still very dissatisfied with Bolshevik food policies. As a result the slogans of the Kolesnikov forces of “Against Hunger, Against Robbery” had a great resonance among it.

Returning to his native land Kolesnikov consolidated himself again, operating with three other insurgent units, those of Demian Strezhnev, Emelyan Barabbas, and the anarchist-Makhnovist Parkhomenko. The rebels were well armed with artillery pieces, although suffering from shortages of ammunition. From 29th January to 3rd February the Kolesnikov forces easily took control of the entire southern Bogucharsky county. The ranks of the rebel units were rapidly reinforced by former combatants and Red Army deserters. On February 4th after an unsuccessful attack on Boguchar, the insurgent detachments started moving to Stara Kalitva.

Encountering no resistance, as a result of a mass evacuation by the Bolsheviks, the insurgents reached the area of Novy Kalitva and Stara Kalitva on the following day. Here they were reinforced by many volunteers; in Stara Kalitva alone two hundred local peasants joined them. The Kolesnikovists now had 500 cavalry and 700 infantry. Divided into several units, the Kolesnikovists occupied all the surrounding villages and settlements during the day. There they seized government warehouses and granaries and a large part of their contents were immediately distributed under the direction of Kolesnikov to the local peasantry.

On 6th February, Kolesnikov led a 500 strong detachment to the village of Evstratovka, located a few miles from the station of the same name. It was obvious that the Soviet authorities would not give up such an important railway junction without a fight. To support the garrison at the railway junction an infantry battalion was dispatched from Pavlovsk, and two armoured trains from the stations of Millerovo and Mitrofanovka. Despite the fact that the Reds did not arrive until the 8th Kolesnikov made no attempt to take the station. The purpose of a strange manoeuvre can be understood if we take into account the fact that just a week before him near the same station Makhno turned up with his forces. The Reds foiled his breakthrough to Voronezh province. Borisov advances the hypothesis that it is likely that Kolesnikov intended to meet the advance Makhnovist detachments not suspecting that they were already defeated and pushed back into central Ukraine. He assumes that this was part of an overall plan of the two insurgent commanders to unite their forces, hatched during Kolesnikov’s stay in the Kharkov region. If this is true it means that the Makhnovists intended to break out of the Ukraine into the Central Chernozem region.

With the failure of the link-up with Makhno, Kolesnikov turned to the mass insurrection in the Tambov region and the northern counties of Voronezh region led by Antonov. Up until now Kolesnikov seems to have avoided a direct alliance with the Antonov movement, preferring to build links with the Makhnovists. Was this because Kolesnikov was suspicious of the politics of the Antonovists with their call for the re-establishment of a constituent assembly? Was it necessity that now forced him into an alliance? He rapidly advanced to the north east of Voronezh province, with Red Army squadrons in hot pursuit. By now the Kolesnikovists had run out of ammunition and often had to engage in costly hand-to-hand fighting. They invaded the town of Novohopersk to get supplies. This resulted in fierce resistance from the Bolshevik garrison. Kolesnikov, realizing that his cavalry was not able to fight in the narrow streets of Novohopersk, gave his men the order to dismount. But two commanders refused to obey orders of their leader. Infuriated by this, Kolesnikov personally shot them down. After sustaining heavy losses, the insurgents left the town.

Eventually after much harassment from their pursuers there was a meeting of the Kolesnikovists with an Antonovist regiment. As a result of this Kolesnikov was elected leader of the 1st Antonov Army, which now escalated its actions. It defeated the 14th Red Cavalry Brigade, followed shortly after by the capture of 2 Red units, followed by another major defeat of Red Cavalry units. As a result of this the insurgents were able to replenish their arms supplies. But as it turned out, it was the last success of Kolesnikov. On March 22nd Milonov’s Red Cavalry inflicted a serious defeat on the 1st Antonov Army, with about three hundred men killed and wounded. A twenty year old Chekist called Katarina Verenikina had infiltrated the Kolesnikov headquarters and was able to pass information back to the Soviet authorities. Among those killed was Grigori Kolesnikov, the cousin of Ivan and a regimental commander.

At the end of March the insurgents heard of the decision by the Bolshevik Plenipotentiary Commission of Tambov region, headed up by Antonov-Ovseenko, to end food requisitioning in the region. Antonovists began to desert so Kolesnikov decided to leave the area. On April 6th in Voronezh province a spontaneous meeting of the insurgents was held, where there was a split between the majority of the Antonovists and the Kolesnikovists. Most Antonovists (1400 insurgents) decided to return to Tambov.

Kolesnikov with about 500 insurgents moved on to Stara Kalitva by mid-April. The appearance of Kolesnikov in his native place once again stepped up the insurgency in the south of Voronezh province. On April 21st the insurgents were attacked by a Red Cavalry division. The insurgents gathered all their forces in one detachment and the Red Cavalry were driven back. On April 24th the insurgents completely destroyed a Bolshevik special unit. But the days of Kolesnikov were numbered. According to one account, on the of evening of April 28th at the end of a fierce five-hour battle with the Reds he was shot in the back by one of his own men. According to another version Kolesnikov died two weeks later on May 12, 1921, when his group fought a battle against Red mobile groups which vastly outnumbered them.

No one with the military skills of Kolesnikov could be found to replace him. As a result, by May 1921 the scattered Kolesnikov detachments moved from an open confrontation of Soviet power to local guerrilla struggle. After the death of Kolesnikov the Soviet government declared an amnesty and thousands of insurgents surrendered, although many fought on with up to 2,000 insurgents dispersed in Ostrogozhsk and Bogucharsky counties in small mobile detachments. Many of the insurgents linked up with the forces of Makhno or Antonov. In June the Cheka reported a Kolesnikov band with 1000 cavalry and 13 machine guns, which operated in the Lugansk region. Perhaps the commander of this detachment was our old friend Kamenyuk. In July, the remnants of a Kolesnikov unit under Lukhachev returned from Ukraine to Voronezh province, where fighting continued until October 1921, until they disappear from records.

Sources: http://bereg.sia.vrn.ru/article554.html ‘In the interests of the oppressed peasantry’ by Denis Borisov (In Russian) Photo of Kolesnikov from same source.

Newspaper article in Volga Commune, No.130 http://old.samara.ru/paper/41/6771/119544/ (in Russian)

Lamanov, Anatoli Nikolaevich 1889-1921

Anatoli Lamanov was born on July 3rd 1889. His father was Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai P. Lamanov, equipagemeister (crew chief) of the Russian fleet at the major naval base of Kronstadt in 1913. His mother had populist sympathies and his elder brother was Piotr Lamanov, a lieutenant in the fleet, who also took part in the early revolutionary stirrings at Kronstadt during 1917 and commanded its naval forces.

As a third year student at the National University of Chemistry, he had gained much sympathy among the Kronstadt workers, sailors and soldiers for his visiting lectures in natural history, geography and technology during the war years. Unlike his older brother, who had links with the Social Revolutionaries, Anatoli appears to have had no direct connections with any political grouping.

He is described by the Englishman Morgan Phillips Price, Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, as having “long hair, dreamy eyes and the far-off look of an idealist” and as “earnest, friendly, somewhat enigmatic”.

He became head of the vocational training of the municipal department of education at Kronstadt. At the same time, he was elected to the Committee of the Movement by the employees of the Kronstadt chemical laboratory. He was Chairman of the Kronstadt Workers Soviet in March and April and from May onwards of its Workers and Soldiers Soviet. He gave many addresses at sessions of the Soviet. He was a leading light in the Non-Party Faction, alongside Ippolitov, Rivkin and Zverin. In August the Non-Party group joined the radical left and antiparliamentarian split from the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Union of SR-Maximalists, changing their name in the process. As Getzler says of the group: “… it rejected party factionalism, stood for pure sovietism and thus fitted admirably into Kronstadt’s early revolutionary and markedly soviet landscape…” (p. 37).

Lamanov was also editor of the Kronstadt paper, Izvestia. He was described by the wily Bolshevik F. F. Raskolnikov in his memoirs as being a “hundred per cent philistine” (philistine was a word much used at the time by Bolsheviks, especially by Lenin and Trotsky, to describe their political opponents). On the contrary, far from being a philistine, Lamanov was an untiring advocate of the democratisation (for want of a better word) of the revolution and alongside this of a mass educational and cultural initiative, including the theatre: “…the theatre complements what we see and hear in life and read about in books; it injects new ideas into the minds of spectators, ideas that are new not because of their content, but because of their embodiment before us on the stage”.

The Soviet threw itself open to many speakers from all the revolutionary groups, Bolshevik, Socialist Revolutionary and anarchist alike.

The Bolsheviks were always a minority within the Kronstadt Soviet, although they made strenuous efforts to manipulate proceedings. Lamanov reminded the Bolsheviks that it was the people who had made the February Revolution, not the party.

The Maximalists maintained a large number of delegates to the Soviet throughout its history, although Lamanov resigned from the Maximalists at the end of 1919. This was because he wanted to distance himself from the bombing of the Moscow Communist Party headquarters which he believed Maximalists to be involved in and which he condemned.

He applied to be a candidate member of the Bolshevik party at some point in 1920. He took no part in the initial stirrings of revolt and did not serve on the Revolutionary Committee during the uprising. However he continued to edit the Kronstadt Izvestia and put forward the slogans of “Third Revolution” and Communism without the “commissarocracy” in its pages. He announced his resignation from the Communist Party there in March, saying that he had always really remained a Maximalist all along. Thus the Izvestia became the mouthpiece of the Kronstadt insurgents, filling its pages with letters and statements from many of the rebels.

He was arrested on March 18th 1921 by Soviet troops. The rigours of Cheka interrogation seem to have broken him, as he readily gave evidence against the other leaders of the revolt. He testified that “The Kronstadt mutiny came as a surprise to me. I viewed the mutiny as a spontaneous movement” but later in his testimony stated that the mutiny had been planned from the start by Left SRs!

Sentenced to death on April 20th by the Petrograd Cheka as a “counter-revolutionary” he was shot the following day and his body buried in Petrograd.

Sources: Getzler, I. Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracyhttp://lists.memo.ru/
The Truth about Kronstadt: www-personal.umich.edu/~mhuey/TOC/AUT.frame.html

Lamanov, Anatoli Nikolaevich 1889-1921

Anatoli Lamanov was born on July 3rd 1889. His father was Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai P. Lamanov, equipagemeister (crew chief) of the Russian fleet at the major naval base of Kronstadt in 1913. His mother had populist sympathies and his elder brother was Piotr Lamanov, a lieutenant in the fleet, who also took part in the early revolutionary stirrings at Kronstadt during 1917 and commanded its naval forces.

As a third year student at the National University of Chemistry, he had gained much sympathy among the Kronstadt workers, sailors and soldiers for his visiting lectures in natural history, geography and technology during the war years. Unlike his older brother, who had links with the Social Revolutionaries, Anatoli appears to have had no direct connections with any political grouping.

He is described by the Englishman Morgan Phillips Price, Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, as having “long hair, dreamy eyes and the far-off look of an idealist” and as “earnest, friendly, somewhat enigmatic”.

He became head of the vocational training of the municipal department of education at Kronstadt. At the same time, he was elected to the Committee of the Movement by the employees of the Kronstadt chemical laboratory. He was Chairman of the Kronstadt Workers Soviet in March and April and from May onwards of its Workers and Soldiers Soviet. He gave many addresses at sessions of the Soviet. He was a leading light in the Non-Party Faction, alongside Ippolitov, Rivkin and Zverin. In August the Non-Party group joined the radical left and antiparliamentarian split from the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Union of SR-Maximalists, changing their name in the process. As Getzler says of the group: “… it rejected party factionalism, stood for pure sovietism and thus fitted admirably into Kronstadt’s early revolutionary and markedly soviet landscape…” (p. 37).

Lamanov was also editor of the Kronstadt paper, Izvestia. He was described by the wily Bolshevik F. F. Raskolnikov in his memoirs as being a “hundred per cent philistine” (philistine was a word much used at the time by Bolsheviks, especially by Lenin and Trotsky, to describe their political opponents). On the contrary, far from being a philistine, Lamanov was an untiring advocate of the democratisation (for want of a better word) of the revolution and alongside this of a mass educational and cultural initiative, including the theatre: “…the theatre complements what we see and hear in life and read about in books; it injects new ideas into the minds of spectators, ideas that are new not because of their content, but because of their embodiment before us on the stage”.

The Soviet threw itself open to many speakers from all the revolutionary groups, Bolshevik, Socialist Revolutionary and anarchist alike.

The Bolsheviks were always a minority within the Kronstadt Soviet, although they made strenuous efforts to manipulate proceedings. Lamanov reminded the Bolsheviks that it was the people who had made the February Revolution, not the party.

The Maximalists maintained a large number of delegates to the Soviet throughout its history, although Lamanov resigned from the Maximalists at the end of 1919. This was because he wanted to distance himself from the bombing of the Moscow Communist Party headquarters which he believed Maximalists to be involved in and which he condemned.

He applied to be a candidate member of the Bolshevik party at some point in 1920. He took no part in the initial stirrings of revolt and did not serve on the Revolutionary Committee during the uprising. However he continued to edit the Kronstadt Izvestia and put forward the slogans of “Third Revolution” and Communism without the “commissarocracy” in its pages. He announced his resignation from the Communist Party there in March, saying that he had always really remained a Maximalist all along. Thus the Izvestia became the mouthpiece of the Kronstadt insurgents, filling its pages with letters and statements from many of the rebels.

He was arrested on March 18th 1921 by Soviet troops. The rigours of Cheka interrogation seem to have broken him, as he readily gave evidence against the other leaders of the revolt. He testified that “The Kronstadt mutiny came as a surprise to me. I viewed the mutiny as a spontaneous movement” but later in his testimony stated that the mutiny had been planned from the start by Left SRs!

Sentenced to death on April 20th by the Petrograd Cheka as a “counter-revolutionary” he was shot the following day and his body buried in Petrograd.

Sources: Getzler, I. Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracyhttp://lists.memo.ru/
The Truth about Kronstadt: www-personal.umich.edu/~mhuey/TOC/AUT.frame.html

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