Peasant uprising led by Antonov. Antonovsky uprising. Events leading up to the uprising

). The first case in history of the use of chemical weapons against an insurgent population.

ORDER of the Commander of the Tambov Province troops No. 0116/operational-secret Tambov June 12, 1921

The remnants of broken gangs and individual bandits who fled from villages where Soviet power was restored gather in the forests and from there carry out raids on civilians. For immediate clearing of forests I ORDER:

1. Clear the forests where the bandits are hiding with poisonous gases, accurately calculating so that the cloud of suffocating gases spreads completely throughout the entire forest, destroying everything that was hidden in it.

2. The artillery inspector should immediately provide the required number of cylinders with poisonous gases and the necessary specialists to the field.

3. The commanders of combat areas must persistently and energetically carry out this order.

4. Report the measures taken.

Tukhachevsky based his operations on the creation of a strict occupation regime in the Tambov region and terror against the population of the province, with the taking of hostages, the destruction of villages and hamlets, the creation of concentration camps and mass executions. The villages of Koptevo, Khitrovo, and Verkhnespasskoye in the Tambov district were completely destroyed by artillery fire. The hostage system especially embittered the rebels; in response to it, they themselves took hostages and shot Red Army soldiers, communists, Soviet employees and members of their families. In the concentration camps for hostages, hastily equipped by the provincial department of forced labor, children, along with adults, were also kept in large numbers. On June 27, 1921, at a meeting of the plenipotentiary commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, “a large influx of minors, starting from infants, into concentration field camps” was noted; it was proposed that hostage children under 15 years of age be kept separately from adults, and that their mothers have the right to be with three-year-old children. Even after the campaign to unload the concentration camps in July 1921 (the uprising had been practically crushed by that time, and the hostages with their small children had been sent home), there were still over 450 child hostages aged from 1 to 10 years old. Yulia Kantor estimates the total number of peasants in the Tambov province who were subjected to repression at 30-50 thousand people.
Tukhachevsky noted: Without executions nothing happens. Executions in one village do not affect another until the same measure is carried out in them. When the threat of executions did not work, as in the village of 2nd Kareevka, which consisted of 65-70 households, the village residents were evicted, their property was confiscated, and the village itself was burned.

In addition to brutal repression, the rebels were attacked with the full might of the regular Red Army: artillery, aviation, armored vehicles and even chemical weapons (E56 chlorine). Documentary evidence has been preserved regarding the use of chemical weapons. In particular, the combat diary of the artillery division of the Zavolzhsky Military District brigade records that on July 13, 1921, the following were used up in battle: three-inch grenades - 160, shrapnel - 69, chemical grenades - 47. On August 3, the battery commander of the Belgorod artillery courses reported to the chief of artillery 6- th combat area, that during the shelling of the island on Lake Kipets, 65 shrapnel, 49 grenades and 59 chemical shells were fired. The chemical shells used by the Bolsheviks in May - June 1921 led to the death of not only the rebels, but also the civilian population.
In the summer of 1921, the main forces of the rebels were defeated. At the beginning of July, the leadership of the uprising issued an order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to divide into groups, hide in the forests and switch to partisan actions or go home. The uprising broke up into a number of small, isolated pockets, and the rebels reverted to the guerrilla tactics they had used before August 1920. The fighting in the Tambov region continued until the summer of 1922 and gradually faded away. On July 16, 1922, M. N. Tukhachevsky reported to the Central Committee of the RCP (b): “the rebellion has been eliminated, Soviet power has been restored everywhere.”

Connections of the rebels with the Armed Forces in the South of Russia
White governments and organizations paid insufficient attention to organizing the insurgent movement in the rear of the Red Army. All the more noteworthy is the attempt of the command of the All-Soviet Union of Socialist Republics to get into contact with the “green” rebels of the Tambov region in the summer of 1919 in order to attract them to their side. In August 1919, an employee of the special part of the Propaganda Department of the Yesaul A.P. Padalkin received an assignment from the headquarters of the 4th Don Corps K.K. Mamantov and Colonel K.V. their transfer to the ranks of the White Army. Particularly important was considered that part of the task where the esaul was ordered to establish contact with the former chief of police of the Kirsanovsky district A.S. Antonov: “Establish information about the whereabouts of the greens in general and, in particular, Antonov... Having contacted him, agree on their possible joining to Mamantov’s corps ..." Padalkin managed to successfully cross the front line using forged documents of a police officer. Soon, however, he was arrested as a “defector” and sent to the Red Army - to the Penza reserve regiment. Padalkin tried to escape from the regiment, was caught, arrested and sent to Butyrka prison in Moscow, from which, however, he was soon re-enlisted in the Red Army. Padalkin, having killed the political instructor, again fled along with the Red Army soldiers of the regiment who had joined him. After spending about 4 months in the Soviet rear, in late autumn he again crossed the front and returned to Rostov. He failed to establish contact with the rebels. But, having this archival information about such an attempt by the white command, the modern historian V. Zh. Tsvetkov concludes that it can be argued that the white command was complicit in organizing the Tambov uprising. Mamantov himself, returning from his raid, noted the good prospects for the rebel forces joining the white forces in his speech at the Don Circle in September 1919. And although Mamantov failed to create separate rebel units within his corps, they distributed a huge amount of weapons to the rebels with captured warehouses of the Southern Front.

Key participants in the uprising Antonov A.S. - Chief of Staff of the 2nd Insurgent Army. Antonov D.S. is the brother and closest associate of A.S. Antonov. Boguslavsky A.V. - commander of the 1st rebel army. Gerasimov N. Ya. (“Donskoy”) - head of counterintelligence of the Antonovites. Ishin I.E. - head of the “political department”. Kolesnikov I.S. - commander of the 3rd rebel army. Mamontov K.K. - commander of the 4th Don Cossack Corps. Mitrofanovich - commander of the 2nd rebel army. Tokmakov P. M. - leader of the uprising. Fedorov (“Gorsky”) is a lawyer, a member of the cadet party, a resident of the Antonov underground in Tambov, and also responsible for external relations.

Peasant uprising in the Tambov region

Tambov uprising (Antonovshchina) August 19, 1920 - June 1921 - a peasant uprising in the Tambov province against Soviet power, which was named after the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary A. S. Antonov. The main slogan is “Down with food appropriation!”

Peasant unrest directed against surplus appropriation and for free trade began in August 1920. By the beginning of 1921, about 50 thousand people had joined Antonov, who led the movement. The uprising was liquidated by the Red Army, sometimes even gas attacks were used. 1922, June - Antonov was killed. The abolition of food appropriation in 1921 significantly reduced the number of dissatisfied peasants.

Background

The year 1920 arrived. The front moved away from the borders of the province, the fight with the “whites” was approaching a victorious end. However, the internal policy of the Bolsheviks - “war communism” - remained unchanged. The Bolsheviks organized more and more new campaigns for plowing and harvesting, collecting firewood, delivering food, and helping the soldiers of the Red Army.

1920 - peasant farms were in complete decline. The village lacked men and horses, and the tools were worn out. There was not enough peasant strength, however, there was no need for the peasant to try - the authorities took away not only the surplus, but also what was necessary. The area under crops has decreased four times compared to 1917, and yields have decreased significantly. In addition, the Tambov region was struck by drought, and the grain collected from each sown tithe was four times less than usual.

The Tambov peasantry, after two and a half years of Bolshevik rule, found itself on the verge of starvation. If in 1913 they only consumed 33 million poods of rye, then in 1921 the total harvest of all grains amounted to 11 million poods. However, the Soviet government did not even think of reducing the mortally unsustainable surplus appropriation; the next “pumping out” of grain began with increased energy and accumulated experience.

Beginning and progress of the uprising

The Tambov uprising broke out spontaneously in August 1920 in the villages of Khitrovo and Kamenka, Tambov district, in which the peasants did not want to hand over grain and disarmed the food detachment. Within a month, popular unrest engulfed several districts of the province, the number of rebels reached 4,000 armed rebels and approximately 10,000 people with pitchforks and scythes. On the territory of Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky and Tambov districts, a kind of “peasant republic” was formed with its center in the village of Kamenka.

The uprising was led by a tradesman from the city of Kirsanov, a former volost clerk and people's teacher, left Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Stepanovich Antonov (1889–1922). He had a military Socialist Revolutionary past, a prison under tsarism, and command of the police of the Kirsanovsky district after the February events. He left the post of chief of the district police voluntarily due to his rejection of the communist dictatorship and the policy pursued by the authorities towards the peasants. In the autumn of 1918, Antonov formed a “fighting squad”, which began an armed struggle against the power of the Bolsheviks. His detachment became the organizational core of the partisan army.

Under the leadership of Antonov, the strength of the rebels grew rapidly. This was facilitated by the clarity of the goals of the rebels (slogans of death to communists and a free peasant republic), successfully carried out military operations in favorable geographical conditions (many forests and other natural shelters), flexible guerrilla tactics of unexpected attacks and rapid withdrawals. 1921, February - when the peasant movement acquired its greatest scope, the number of fighters reached 40,000 people, the army was divided into 21 regiments and a separate brigade. The rebels destroyed state farms and communes, damaged railroad tracks, and killed communists and Soviet employees. The Tambov uprising began to go beyond local boundaries, finding a response in the border counties of the neighboring Voronezh and Saratov provinces.

Fracture

Everything began to change dramatically with the end of the Soviet-Polish war and the defeat in Crimea. This made it possible for the Bolsheviks to release the main forces of the regular Red Army against the “Antonovism.” 1921, February - the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, under the command of V.A., became the highest body in the fight against insurgents. Antonova-Ovseenko.

1921, April 27 - The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) sent to suppress the rebellion, N. E. Kakurin, I. P. Uborevich, G. I. Kotovsky were also sent to the Tambov region, V. V. Ulrikh was also sent from the punitive authorities . Tukhachevsky received a directive to liquidate the insurgent movement no later than one month.

The size of the Bolshevik army in the Tambov province was rapidly increasing, and by the end of May 1921 it amounted to 35,000 bayonets and 8,000 sabers with 463 machine guns and 63 artillery pieces. Together with the regular units of the Red Army, the troops of the Cheka, VOKhR and ChON took part in the liquidation of the Antnovshchina.

Suppression of the uprising

Tukhachevsky introduced a harsh occupation regime in the Tambov region, terror against the population of the province, with the taking of hostages, the destruction of villages and villages, concentration camps were created and mass executions were carried out. With the help of artillery, the villages of Koptevo, Khitrovo, Verkhnespasskoye of the Tambov district were completely destroyed. The hostage system especially hardened the rebels; in response to it, they themselves took hostages and shot Red Army soldiers, communists, Soviet employees and members of their families.

Upon arrival at the site, military units intended for cleansing cordon off the volost and take hostages 60-100 of the most prominent people (priests, teachers, paramedics, etc.). Leaving and entering the volost for the duration of the operation is prohibited. After which a full volost gathering is assembled, at which the orders of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee No. 130 and 171 and the written verdict for this volost are read out. All its residents are given two hours to hand over weapons and hiding bandits and their families, and the population is informed that if the handover is refused, all hostages will be shot in 2 hours. If the population has not surrendered the bandits and weapons after 2 hours, the gathering is reassembled and the hostages are shot in front of the population, after which new hostages are taken and those gathered at the gathering are again asked to hand over the bandits and weapons. And everything starts again and so on until everyone in question has been handed over. All those remaining are sent through survey commissions, and for refusal to provide information - execution on the spot.

In addition to brutal repression, the rebels were subjected to the full might of the regular Red Army: artillery, aviation, armored vehicles and even chemical weapons, which began to be used against peasants after Tukhachevsky’s order No. 0016 of June 12, 1921.

1921, summer - after bloody battles, the main forces of the Antonovites were defeated. At the beginning of July, the leaders of the uprising issued an order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to split into groups, hide in the forests and switch to partisan actions or go home. The Tambov uprising broke up into a number of small isolated pockets, and the rebels returned to the guerrilla tactics they had used before August 1920. The fighting in the Tambov region continued until the summer of 1922 and gradually faded away.

In addition to punitive measures, the concession made to the peasants by Lenin in the form of the abolition of the food dictatorship had an impact on ending the peasant armed movement (Antonovism).

ed. shtprm777.ru

G. I. Kotovsky
Pyotr Tokmakov †
Antonov A. S.
Antonov D. S. Strengths of the parties OK. 55 thousand OK. 50 thousand Military losses more than 11 thousand

Southern Front of the Russian Civil War
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Tambov uprising 1920-1921- one of the largest popular uprisings against the power of the Soviets during the Civil War in Russia, which occurred in the Tambov province. Sometimes called " Antonovism"after the name of one of the leaders of the uprising, chief of staff of the 2nd rebel army, member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party Alexander Antonov, who is often credited with a leading role in the uprising. The head of the uprising was Pyotr Tokmakov, who was the commander of the United Partisan Army and chairman of the Union of Labor Peasants (STK). The first case in history of the use of chemical weapons against an insurgent population.

Background

As of 1920, the population of the province was 3,650 thousand people (in total there were 268 thousand urban and 3,382 thousand rural residents); in terms of population density (62 people per square verst), it ranked 12th in the USSR and was one of the most populous in the RSFSR. At the same time, the number of communists was quite small: in August 1920, in 685 local party organizations there were 13,490 communists and candidates for party membership (of which only 4,492 were in rural areas)

In October 1920, Lenin instructed F.E. Dzerzhinsky, E.M. Sklyansky and V.S. Kornev “to speed up the defeat of Antonovism.”

By October 15, 1920, due to the mobilization of local reserves attached to the VOKhR and ChON units, the number of troops was increased to 4,447 people. with 22 machine guns and 5 guns.

At the same time, on February 6, 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, was sent to the province, which became the highest body in the fight against the uprising.

On February 12, 1921, based on the decision of the People's Commissariat of Food, food allocation was stopped in the Tambov province, and in March 1921, the X Congress of the RCP (b) decided to abolish food allocation, instead of which a fixed food tax was introduced. An amnesty was declared for ordinary rebels (subject to the surrender of weapons and information about the whereabouts of commanders). The measures taken were widely covered in the press and propaganda materials (a total of 77 names of appeals, leaflets, posters and brochures were issued), and they played a certain role in the revision of part of the peasantry their position regarding the Soviet regime.

On February 21, 1921, in order No. 21 of the 1st Rebel Army A.S. Antonov notes: “among the partisan detachments the fighting spirit begins to weaken, and shameful cowardice is observed”.

Nevertheless, the battles continued with varying success: on April 11, 1921, a 5,000-strong detachment of “Antonovites” defeated the garrison in Rasskazovo, and an entire battalion of Red Army soldiers was captured.

Fracture

The situation changed dramatically with the end of the Soviet-Polish War and the defeat of Wrangel's Russian Army in Crimea. This allowed the Bolsheviks to release additional Red Army forces against the rebels.

In the period from March 21 to April 5, 1921, a “two-week period” of voluntary surrender was announced for ordinary participants in the uprising.

In the battles that lasted from May 28 to June 7, 1921, in the area of the Inzhavino station, Soviet troops (cavalry brigade of G.I. Kotovsky, 14th separate cavalry brigade, 15th Siberian cavalry division, 7th Borisoglebsky cavalry courses) were under The general command of Uborevich defeated the 2nd rebel army (under the command of A.S. Antonov). After this, the 1st Insurgent Army (under the command of A. Boguslavsky) avoided the “general battle”. The initiative passed to the Soviet troops.

The defeat of the uprising

Order of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the beginning of repressive measures against individual bandits and the families sheltering them N 171, Tambov June 11, 1921. Political commissions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Starting from June 1, a decisive fight against banditry quickly calms the region. Soviet power is being consistently restored, and the working peasantry is moving on to peaceful and quiet work. Thanks to the decisive actions of our troops, Antonov’s gang was defeated, scattered and caught one by one. In order to completely eradicate the Socialist-Revolutionary-Gangster roots and in addition to 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. For villages in which weapons are hidden, the authority of the political commission or regional political commission shall announce a verdict on the seizure of hostages and shoot them if they do not surrender their weapons. 3. If a hidden weapon is found, shoot on the spot without trial the 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, the senior worker in this family is shot without trial. 5. Families harboring family members or property of bandits will be treated as bandits, and the senior employee of this family will be shot on the spot without trial. 6. In the event of the escape of the bandit’s family, its property should be distributed among peasants loyal to Soviet power, and the houses left behind should be burned or dismantled. 7. This order must be implemented severely and mercilessly. Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Antonov-Ovseenko Troop Commander Tukhachevsky Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee Lavrov Secretary Vasiliev Read at village gatherings. GATO. F.R.-4049. Op.1. D.5. L.45. Typographic copy.

ORDER of the Commander of the Tambov Province Troops No. 0116/operational-secret Tambov June 12, 1921 The remnants of broken gangs and individual bandits who fled from villages where Soviet power was restored gather in the forests and from there carry out raids on civilians. To immediately clear the forests, I ORDER: 1. Clean the forests where the bandits are hiding with poisonous gases, precisely calculate so that the cloud of suffocating gases spreads completely throughout the forest, destroying everything that was hidden in it. 2. The artillery inspector should immediately provide the required number of cylinders with poisonous gases and the necessary specialists to the field. 3. The commanders of combat areas must persistently and energetically carry out this order. 4. Report the measures taken. Troop Commander Tukhachevsky Chief of Staff of the General Staff Kakurin Russian State Military Archive F.34228. Op.1. D.292. L.5

The Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee recommended the following method of clearing out populated areas affected by the uprising, issuing order No. 116 on June 23, 1921, signed by its chairman Antonov-Ovseenko and the commander of the troops Tukhachevsky:

ORDER of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee No. 116 Tambov June 23, 1921 The experience of the first combat site shows great suitability for quickly clearing known areas of banditry using the following method of cleaning. Particularly gangster-minded volosts are identified and representatives of the county political commission, special department, military tribunal department and command go there, along with units intended to carry out the purge. Upon arrival at the place, the volost is cordoned off, 60-100 of the most prominent people are taken as hostages and a state of siege is introduced. Leaving and entering the volost must be prohibited during the operation. After this, a full volost gathering gathers, at which the orders of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee No. 130 and 171 and the written verdict for this volost are read. Residents are given 2 hours to hand over bandits and weapons, as well as bandit families, and the population is informed that if they refuse to give the information mentioned, the hostages will be shot in two hours. If the population has not indicated the bandits and weapons after a two-hour period, the gathering gathers a second time and the taken hostages are shot in front of the population, after which new hostages are taken and those gathered at the gathering are again asked to hand over the bandits and weapons. Those wishing to do this stand separately, are divided into hundreds, and each hundred is passed through for questioning through a polling commission (representatives of the Special Department and the Military Tribunal). Everyone must testify without making excuses of ignorance. In case of persistence, new executions are carried out, etc. Based on the development of the material obtained from the surveys, expeditionary detachments are created with the obligatory participation of the persons who provided the information and other local residents and are sent to catch the bandits. At the end of the purge, the state of siege is lifted, the Revolution is established, and the militia is installed. The Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee orders this to be strictly implemented. Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Commission Antonov-Ovseenko Commander of the troops Tukhachevsky Russian State Military Archive F.235. Op.2. D.16. L.25

Repression

In concentration camps for hostages, hastily equipped by the provincial department of forced labor, children were kept in large numbers along with adults. On June 27, 1921, at a meeting of the plenipotentiary commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, “a large influx of minors, starting from infants, into concentration field camps” was noted; it was proposed that hostage children under 15 years of age be kept separately from adults, and that their mothers have the right to be with three-year-old children. Even after the campaign to unload the concentration camps in July 1921 (the uprising had been practically crushed by that time, and the hostages with their small children had been sent home), there were still over 450 child hostages aged from 1 to 10 years old. Yulia Kantor estimates the total number of peasants in the Tambov province who were subjected to repression at 30-50 thousand people.

Nothing happens without executions. Executions in one village do not affect another until the same measure is carried out in them.

When the threat of executions did not work, as in the village of 2nd Kareevka, which consisted of 65-70 households, the village residents were evicted, their property was confiscated, and the village itself was burned.

In the summer of 1921, the main forces of the rebels were defeated. At the beginning of July, the leadership of the uprising issued an order, according to which the combat detachments were asked to divide into groups, hide in the forests and switch to partisan actions or go home. The uprising broke up into a number of small, isolated pockets, and the rebels reverted to the guerrilla tactics they had used before August 1920. The fighting in the Tambov region continued until the summer of 1922 and gradually faded away. On July 16, 1922, M. N. Tukhachevsky reported to the Central Committee of the RCP (b): “the rebellion has been eliminated, Soviet power has been restored everywhere.”

Connections of the rebels with the Armed Forces in the South of Russia

White governments and organizations paid insufficient attention to organizing the insurgent movement in the rear of the Red Army. All the more noteworthy is the attempt of the command of the All-Soviet Union of Socialist Republics to get into contact with the “green” rebels of the Tambov region in the summer of 1919 in order to attract them to their side:535.

In August 1919, an employee of the special part of the Propaganda Department of the Yesaul A.P. Padalkin received an assignment from the headquarters of the 4th Don Corps K.K. Mamantov and Colonel K.V. their transfer to the ranks of the White Army. Particularly important was considered that part of the task where the esaul was ordered to establish contact with the former chief of police of the Kirsanovsky district A.S. Antonov: “Establish information about the whereabouts of the greens in general and, in particular, Antonov... Having contacted him, agree on their possible joining to Mamantov’s corps ..." Padalkin managed to successfully cross the front line using forged documents of a police officer. Soon, however, he was arrested as a “defector” and sent to the Red Army - to the Penza reserve regiment. Padalkin tried to escape from the regiment, was caught, arrested and sent to Butyrka prison in Moscow, from which, however, he was soon re-enlisted in the Red Army. Padalkin, having killed the political instructor, again fled along with the Red Army soldiers of the regiment who had joined him. After spending about 4 months in the Soviet rear, in late autumn he again crossed the front and returned to Rostov. He failed to establish contact with the rebels. But, having this archival information about such an attempt by the white command, the modern historian V. Zh. Tsvetkov concludes that it can be argued that the white command was complicit in organizing the Tambov uprising. Mamantov himself, returning from his raid, noted the good prospects for the rebel forces joining the white forces in his speech at the Don Circle in September 1919. And although Mamantov failed to create separate rebel units within his corps, they distributed a huge amount of weapons to the rebels with captured warehouses of the Southern Front: 537.

Key participants in the uprising

Tambov uprising in cinema

Illustrations

Notes

Lecture by K. M. Alexandrov (Ph.D., Associate Professor at St. Petersburg State University) on the history of the Civil War, delivered on January 5, 2010.
Sennikov, B.V. Tambov uprising 1918-1921 and the de-peasantization of Russia 1929-1933. / Edited by R. G. Gagkuev and B. S. Pushkarev. - 1st. - M.: Posev, 2004. - 176 p. - (Library of Russian Studies. Issue 9.). - ISBN 5-85824-152-2
"Collection of essays on economics and statistics of the Tambov province." Tambov, 1922, part 1. p.6
ON THE. Okatov. Tambov party organization during the period of restoration of the national economy (1921-1925). Tambov, 1961. p.9
Peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1919-1921. "Antonovschina": Documents and materials. Tambov, 1994. Complaint by I. F. Belov from the village. Merdushi of Temnikovsky district to V.I. Lenin on the use of violence by local authorities against his family. May 3, 1919:

...Addressing you, Comrade Lenin, as a defender of the highest justice, I, on myself and on behalf of my brothers, ask you to protect your father and brother from attacks and insults that they do not deserve, and to pay attention to the fact that in the cell of communists there are also the working peasants are commanded by people with a dark present and past, former murderers, hooligans, drunkards, gamblers and quitters, who do not know what honest work is, as in the form of Alexei Barsov, who even under Nicholas II served a prison sentence - 3 years for murder in Orekhovo-Zuevo, where he committed the murder. And these individuals, hiding behind the great name of the commune, keep the entire working peasantry in fear. About what will be done next, I earnestly ask you to let me, your younger brother, know at the above address, who asks you with full confidence that you will not refuse to extend your strong helping hand in the name of that justice, which becomes like air needed more than ever, in the current era, to the exhausted Russian people, expecting happiness and freedom as a reward for centuries of suffering. At the same time, I am enclosing a list of peasants who signed . I. F. Belov
Civil war in the USSR (in 2 vols.) / coll. authors, editors N.N. Azovtsev. Volume 2. M., Military Publishing House, 1986. p.323
"Military Historical Journal", No. 9, 1968. p.31
G.K. Zhukov. Memories and reflections (in 3 vols.). 7th edition. T.1. M., publishing house APN, 1986. p.91
D. L. Golinkov. The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground in the USSR: In 2 volumes - M., Politizdat, 1980. - Ed. 3rd, add. - Book II. - P. 73-82.
Soviet military encyclopedia. - T. 1. - P. 214.
Civil war and military intervention in the USSR. Encyclopedia / Editorial coll., ch. ed. S. S. Khromov. - 2nd ed. - M., Sov. encyclopedia, 1987. - pp. 39-40.
The password is courage. Essays about Tambov security officers. / Comp. G. D. Remizov. - Voronezh. Central Black Earth book publishing house, 1986. - P. 119.
Bobkov A. S. Tambov uprising: fiction and facts about the use of asphyxiating gases // Military history magazine. - 2011. - № 1.
I. P. Dontsov. Antonovschina: plans and reality. - M., 1977. - P. 91.
Order of the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the beginning of repressive measures against individual bandits and the families sheltering them
"Dry cleaning" in Tambov style.
A. Bobkov. On the issue of the use of asphyxiating gases in the suppression of the Tambov uprising // Skepticism].
Tukhachevsky wrote: “In areas of firmly rooted uprising, it is necessary to wage not battles and operations, but, perhaps, an entire war, which should end with the firm occupation of the insurgent area, install the destroyed organs of Soviet power in it and eliminate the very possibility of the population forming bandit detachments. In short, the fight has to be waged mainly not against gangs, but against the entire local population.<…>Soviet power did not exist in the countryside, and the minds of the peasantry were dominated by the old idea of the need to fight Soviet power.”
Richard Pipes. Russia under the Bolshevik regime. New York. A.A. Knopf. 1993. p. 378-387. (English)

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 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, collided 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 fray”, not to blame either side, to show that in a civil war there are no winners, that bitterness at the time of the Tambov peasant uprising reached an extreme degree, and blood flowed like a river. The exhibition features about two hundred exhibits. These are unique documents, photographs, personal belongings of event participants from the funds of the Tambov Regional Museum of Local Lore, the FSB archive for the Tambov Region, and the State Archive of the Tambov Region. Most of the materials are being exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition was met with caution. After all, for decades our compatriots were captive of a great historical untruth. Official Soviet historical science viewed the “Antonovism” as a kulak-SR bandit rebellion that “took the form of political banditry with a semi-criminal overtone.” The organizers of the exhibition were asked to rearrange the emphasis and “show more atrocities of the bandits.” Based on the concept of the exhibition, the authors sought to present a significant array of documents of two opposing sides, diverse in type and thematic composition: orders, reports, leaflets, appeals. The principle of objectivity required evidence of the cruelty of the hostile parties. However, in complete contradiction with the still prevailing unambiguous opinion 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 for Punishments Judgable by Army Courts,” according to which even “rough treatment of prisoners” was severely punished. The partisans were ruthless and merciless towards the “stony” communists - they executed captured commissars, red commanders, and 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 “leave” - a document with which they freely returned to their unit or home.

However, so far in Russia, including in the Tambov region, where the most powerful anti-communist uprising of 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 the movement that he led.

Here is just one eloquent example. In the ancient wealthy village of Parevka, Kirsanovsky district, in June 1921, in execution 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 famous 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 exhibition: “Where is the memory of those fellow villagers of yours who were shot in 1921?” In response I heard: “Well, we were taught that these were 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 knowledge they have was obtained at a time when the peasant uprising was considered banditry. This is very sad, because the leaders of the uprising, the ordinary soldiers of the rebel army, and the entire unconquered Tambov peasantry deserve special memory.

“This was the last peasant war in Russia,” Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote about them, “but the Tambov persistent uprising showed that the Russian peasantry did not give up without a fight.” Through the efforts of the great writer, “Antonovism” 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 French and Tambov peasants who opposed the sharp invasion of the revolutionary regimes into the interests of the rural population. This is where the expression “Tambov Vendee” came from.

The command staff of the Tambov Gubchek. 1921

The roots of the Tambov uprising go back to the beginning of the 20th century. Then the Tambov province became one of the main areas of the powerful peasant movement against the landowners; the protests were especially strong in the Tambov, Borisoglebsk, and Kirsanov districts. Tambov Governor V.F. von der Launitz and his closest subordinates acted as decisive pacifiers of the peasant uprisings in 1905. It is no coincidence that the local organization of 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 expression 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 “exes” for the needs of his party. Let’s make a reservation that the “ex” of “Rumyanoy” or “Osinovy” (as Antonov was referred to in the police orientation) were bloodless. Yet in 1910 he was accused of “injuring” a gendarmerie officer and sentenced to death by hanging. His case was put on the table of the Minister of Internal Affairs P.A. Stolypin, who revised the sentence and replaced capital punishment with “hard labor without term.” Antonov served hard labor in the Vladimir Central Prison.

The events of 1917 and the February Revolution took place in the Tambov region under the sign of Socialist Revolutionary agitation. Elections to the Constituent Assembly showed that 76% of voters in the Tambov province voted for representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Social Revolutionaries led a new rise of the peasant revolution in the Tambov region. They were the first in Russia to direct the struggle of peasants for landowners' lands into a peaceful direction. The famous “Order No. 3” of the Tambov Socialist Revolutionary Provincial Land Committee transferred noble estates to the control of peasant land committees and saved their economic and cultural values from pogroms. This document was issued a month earlier than 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 pounds of agricultural products. She fed herself, fed Russia, and supplied another 26 million poods to the European market.

The main reason for the clash between the Tambov peasants and the new “worker-peasant” government 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 immediately boiled down to the confiscation from the peasants of food necessary to provide for the army and the urban population. Mobilizations for military service and various types of duties (labor, horse-drawn, etc.) further intensified the confrontation between the peasantry and the authorities. In 1918, about 40 thousand peasants took part in the uprisings against violence by the emergency authorities of the Soviet government. The suppression of uprisings was carried out using military force and executions. It was during this period that Marina Tsvetaeva went on a “difficult, humiliating, risky” trip to the Usman district of the Tambov province to buy food for her daughters Ali and Irina, who were dying of hunger in Moscow. What she saw and experienced shocked the poetess and spilled out into tragic lines:

“Harness the blood horses to the logs!
Drink the count's wines from puddles!
Monarchs of bayonets and souls!
Sell - by weight - chapels,
Monasteries are auctioned and scrapped.
Ride your horse to God's house!
Drink up the bloody drink!
Stables - to cathedrals! Cathedrals - in the stalls!
In the devil's dozen - calendar!
We are under the rug for saying: Tsar!”

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 - no other province knew such a scale of confiscations. The peasants were outraged by the arbitrariness in determining the volume of supplies, the abuse of brute force, and the neglect of the storage and use of products confiscated from them: the bread taken from the allotment 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 drought. By the end of the year, the peasants of the three most grain-producing districts - Kirsanovsky, Tambov and Borisoglebsky - were starving, “they ate not only chaff and quinoa, but also bark and nettles,” and there was no grain left for spring sowing. The incredible volume of surplus appropriation of 11.5 million poods meant death from starvation for the peasantry.

Confiscation act: “Property was confiscated from the families of bandits... a worn corset - 1, a child’s dress - 1, a children’s sweatshirt - 1...”

How did the surplus appropriation go? The methods of the soldiers were inhuman and reminiscent of the Middle Ages - floggings, beatings, violence, executions. The commander of the food detachment, citizen Margolin, upon arrival in the village or volost, assembled a gathering, herded the peasants to the central square and solemnly declared: “I brought death to you, scoundrels. Look, each of my soldiers has a hundred and twenty lead deaths for you scoundrels.” This was followed by “foraging”, when, as documents show, “neither sheep nor chicken” were left behind. The men were flogged, put in a cold barn, lowered into a well in the cold, their beards were set on fire, etc. The settlement was burned. The commander of the 1st Cavalry Regiment N. Perevedentsev received the nickname “Burnt” from the local population, because “to consolidate the victory and punish the rebels for their tenacity in battle,” he burned them to the ground. Tambov villages. People had only one thing to do: proactively 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 tsarist penal servitude, he first worked in the Tambov police, then headed the Kirsanov district police, where he enjoyed great authority. But the violence that was happening towards the peasantry forced Antonov to break up with the new government. He left the post of chief of the Kirsanov police, with a small detachment of 150 people went into the Kirsanov forests and acted exclusively against food detachments.

Local authorities, first Kirsanov's, then provincial, tried to discredit Antonov. Publications appeared, even proclamations and leaflets, where he was compared with the famous local criminal Kolka Berbeshkin. Antonov tracked down Berbeshkin's gang and destroyed it. He informed the Kirsanov and provincial authorities that the gang had been destroyed, and indicated the place where the killed bandits were buried. “In terms of the fight against the criminal element, I am ready to provide assistance to the new Soviet government, but for ideological reasons I completely disagree with you, because you, the Bolsheviks, brought the country to death, poverty and shame.”

The Peasants' War of 1920-1921 grew out of an insurgency that began in the fall of 1918. In the following months, there were outbreaks of revolts in individual villages, and combat groups and partisan detachments appeared in forest areas. “Fighting 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, Tambov district, where peasants refused to hand over grain and disarmed the food detachment, under the organizing influence of the Antonov squad, quickly spread throughout the central and southeastern part of the province. However, the Tambov authorities continued to receive orders from the Center 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 to conduct successful military operations of the partisan type with the skillful use of natural shelters, close communication with the population and its full support, and the absence of the need for deep rear areas, convoys, 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. On the battle banners of the rebels was inscribed the famous Socialist Revolutionary slogan: “In the fight you will find your right!” The influence of the Social Revolutionaries on the ideology and organization of the insurgent movement is undeniable. It was especially noticeable in the activities of the Union of Working Peasants, whose main task was the overthrow of the “commissar state”. The STC committees, there were about 300 of them, performed the functions of local civil authorities in the territory covered by the uprising.

By the beginning of 1920, Antonov became the head of the General Staff 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 insurgent movement, special people were required, capable of leading a spontaneous, organizationally loose mass movement without much chance of success, psychologically ready for self-sacrifice in the revolution, close to the peasant environment, and with experience in revolutionary activity. The main leaders of the Tambov uprising of 1920-1921 were endowed with these features: 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 abilities, an energetic, experienced partisan,” “Antonov is not a criminal bandit, as he was portrayed in our press, but an old Social Revolutionary underground member, an active participant agrarian movement in the Tambov province during the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, former political prisoner.”

Initially, the Tambov leadership allocated no more than three to four weeks to liquidate the peasant uprising. But the guerrilla method of warfare 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 forces available, although over 10 thousand bayonets and sabers acted against the rebels.

Soviet historiography was silent about the question of A.S.’s attitude. Antonov and the entire rebel movement towards Orthodoxy. It was no coincidence that Solzhenitsyn called the Antonov movement the Tambov Vendée. After all, the uprising of French peasants had a religious overtones. “May Almighty God help us defeat the enemy and establish a government that would rule us for the benefit of the now weeping and oppressed people...” - these words from the leaflet of the Main 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 them to march on Moscow, ends with the words: “God is with us!” In poems attributed to A.S. Antonov, the word Vera is written 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. The highest body in the fight against “Antonovism” at the end of February - beginning of March 1921 became the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko. She concentrated all power in the Tambov province in her hands. In February, a change in the general policy of the state towards the peasantry was announced - the surplus appropriation system 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, men, you won, although this victory is temporary. And we, gentlemen commanders, are finished.”

Large combat-ready, technically equipped military contingents numbering 110 thousand bayonets and sabers, 4 mobile cavalry brigades, 2 air detachments, an armored detachment, 6 armored battalions, 4 armored trains and an airborne detachment were sent to the Tambov region. A clear structure of military administration was created, the province was divided into 6 combat areas 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 “sole commander of the troops in the Tambov district.” The strategy consisted of a complete and brutal military occupation of rebel areas. The essence of this strategy is set out in the “Instructions for Combating Banditry”, order No. 130 of Tukhachevsky 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 “bandits” and “maliciously bandits”, an occupation regime was introduced. Troops entered the village. The population remaining in the village was herded to the central square, hostages were taken, and they were given two hours. If the men did not come out of the forest with weapons, the hostages were shot. Disobedience and concealment of “bandits” and weapons also resulted in execution. Then there was confiscation of property, destruction of houses and deportation of families of participants in the rebellion to remote provinces of Russia. The orders were carried out “severely and mercilessly.” On July 12, 1921, the commander of the provincial troops, M. Tukhachevsky, signed order No. 0116 on the use of chemical weapons against “bandits.” Concentration camps were established in the province. According to available data, there were 12 permanent concentration camps in the Tambov region. The largest - Tregulyaevsky - was located in the ancient, especially revered St. John the Baptist Monastery. There were also temporary detention camps: a square in a populated area (in Tambov it was Cathedral Square) was fenced off 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 Directorate of Forced Labor” we read: “A large number of children, including infants, are admitted to the camps.” There was starvation in the concentration camps, the incidence of illness was extremely high, and “child hostages” over three years old were kept separately from their mothers.

Terror, repression, the most severe measures of suppression, and the military superiority of the “Reds” predetermined the defeat of the uprising. In the summer of 1921, Antonov's main forces were defeated. At the end of June - beginning of 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 eliminated by the end of the year.

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

A. Antonov's common-law wife, Natalya Katasonova, became one of the first prisoners of the Solovetsky special purpose camp.

Death overtook the Antonov brothers not far from their homes. They took their last battle on June 24, 1922 in the village of Nizhny Shibray, 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 was 28 years old. Their bodies were brought to Tambov, to the former Kazan Mother of God Monastery, where the Tambov provincial “Cherekvychaika” was located, and put on display for three days in order to show that the Antonovs no longer existed, and the uprising was finally suppressed. They were buried somewhere on the banks of the Tsna River. There are different evidence about the burial place, but so far no one is studying 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. The Tambov province was liquidated as an administrative unit. The number of killed, shot, deported rebels and members of their families, ninety years later, has not been named. I think we are talking about several hundred thousand. Persecution for belonging to the Antonov movement continued for many years. They flared up with renewed vigor in the 1930s, when the tormented Tambov peasantry resisted collectivization. The salt of the Russian land, the guardians of Orthodox traditions and the national way of life, the great workers - the cultivators, the breadwinners of the country - were destroyed. This fact has not been recognized at the official state level. The archives are still not fully open. But the worst thing is oblivion and lies: the Tambov rebels on this long-suffering land are routinely called bandits.

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

G.A. Abramova, chief researcher of the Tambov Regional Museum of Local Lore

(photo materials courtesy of Galina Abramova)

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* The signature on the document was stained after Tukhachevsky himself was convicted as “the head of an extensive military-fascist conspiracy in the Red Army” and executed in 1937.

Traveling around the Tambov region and collecting materials for our research, we are amazed at how firmly the people preserve their historical memory. People, especially in the outback, remember everything. And this is despite all the futile attempts of the authorities to erase the unsightly milestones of Tambov history. We are talking about a peasant uprising at the beginning of the last century. Local authorities are even afraid to immortalize this tragedy of the Tambov peasantry in a normal monument.

With the help of Wikipedia, let us briefly recall our history. Under the Bolsheviks, peasants in the Tambov region, as well as throughout Russia, were deprived of all political and economic rights, they were forbidden to trade in grain and they began to take it by force. The relative proximity of the Tambov province to the center and its distance from the fronts predetermined the wide scope of the activities of the food detachments, which caused strong discontent among the local peasant population. The population of the Tambov region responded to the communists with active armed resistance. In 1918, up to 40 thousand people took part in the uprisings and partisan movement against the Bolsheviks, food detachments and poor commanders. The position of the authorities was complicated by the frequent defections of Red Army soldiers (often with weapons in their hands) to the side of the partisans. After the capture of Tambov on August 18, 1919, Lieutenant General Mamontov handed over a huge amount of weapons captured in the city to the Tambov partisans. This largely contributed to the duration and scope of the partisan and insurgent movement in the Tambov region. In June 1920, at a meeting of commanders of partisan groups and local self-defense units, it was decided to unite all forces into two armies (1st and 2nd rebel armies) for better coordination of actions.

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In 1920, the Tambov region was struck by drought, and only 12 million poods of grain were collected. Meanwhile, the surplus appropriation allocation was not reduced, amounting to 11.5 million poods. The uprising broke out on August 15, 1920 in the village of Khitrovo, Tambov district, where the local STK committee disarmed the food detachment. On August 19, 1920, in several villages at once (Kamenka, Tambov district, Tugolukovo, Borisoglebsk district), peasants refused to hand over grain and, with the support of partisans, destroyed food detachments, local communists and security officers. On the same day, in the village of Afanasyevka, Tambov district, several small rebel groups united, and the uprising began to quickly spread. Soon the uprising spread to the territories of the Tambov, Kirsanovsky, Borisoglebsky, Morshansky and Kozlovsky districts of the Tambov province, as well as the neighboring districts of the Saratov and Voronezh provinces. The rebels liquidated the organs of Soviet power, destroyed its representatives and military garrisons, and took power into their own hands.

Stills from the filming of the film “Once Upon a Time There Was a Woman”

On August 21, 1920, at a meeting of the Tambov Provincial Committee of the RCP (b), an emergency operational headquarters was created, a state of siege was introduced in the province, but control over the development of events was already lost. Although the troops of the Tambov province were able to inflict significant losses on the rebels, the uprising became widespread and protracted. On August 30, the provincial committee described the situation as “extremely serious,” and the communists were mobilized: 500 people were transferred to barracks. On August 31, the chairman of the Tambov provincial executive committee, A. G. Shlikhter, led a punitive detachment against the rebels, but was defeated and fled to Tambov. In October 1920, Lenin instructed F.E. Dzerzhinsky, E.M. Sklyansky and V.S. Kornev “to speed up the defeat of Antonovism.” By October 15, 1920, due to the mobilization of local reserves attached to the VOKhR and ChON units, the number of troops was increased to 4,447 people. with 22 machine guns and 5 guns.

On November 14, 1920, the rebels decided to unite all their forces under a single command. They created the United Partisan Army of the Tambov Territory (which was led by the St. George Knight, Lieutenant Pyotr Tokmakov, originally from the peasants of the village of Inokovka, Kirsanovsky district) consisting of three armies (1st, 2nd and 3rd rebel), formed their political organs based on the surviving Socialist Revolutionary organizations and their own political organization, the Union of Labor Peasants. The political program of the uprising was built on a democratic basis under the slogans of overthrowing the Bolshevik dictatorship, convening the Constituent Assembly, and restoring political and economic freedoms. In January 1921, at the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), with the participation of F.E. Dzerzhinsky, V.S. Korneva, S.S. Kamenev and the leadership of the Tambov province again discussed the progress of the fight against Antonovism.

The uprising reached its maximum extent by February 1921, when the number of rebels reached 50 thousand people, united in two armies (consisting of 14 infantry, 5 cavalry regiments and 1 separate brigade with 25 machine guns and 5 guns). The rebels destroyed 60 state farms, took control of almost the entire Tambov province (only the cities remained in the hands of the Bolsheviks), paralyzed traffic along the Ryazan-Ural railway, and successfully repulsed attempts by Soviet troops to invade the territory of the uprising, inflicting heavy losses on them. By this time, under the command of A.V. Pavlov there were 11,602 people. with 136 machine guns and 18 guns. At the same time, on February 6, 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, was sent to the province, which became the highest body in the fight against the uprising. On February 12, 1921, based on the decision of the People's Commissariat of Food, food allocation was stopped in the Tambov province, and in March 1921, the X Congress of the RCP (b) decided to abolish food allocation, instead of which a fixed food tax was introduced. An amnesty was declared for ordinary rebels (subject to the surrender of weapons and information about the whereabouts of commanders). The measures taken were widely covered in the press and propaganda materials (a total of 77 names of appeals, leaflets, posters and brochures were issued), and they played a certain role in the revision of part of the peasantry their position regarding the Soviet regime.

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On February 21, 1921, in order No. 21 of the 1st Rebel Army A.S. Antonov notes: “among the partisan detachments, the fighting spirit begins to weaken, and shameful cowardice is observed.” Nevertheless, the battles continued with varying success: for example, on April 11, 1921, a 5,000-strong detachment of “Antonovites” defeated the garrison in Rasskazovo, and an entire battalion of Red Army soldiers was captured. The situation changed dramatically with the end of the Soviet-Polish war and the defeat of Wrangel's Russian army in Crimea. This allowed the Bolsheviks to release additional Red Army forces against the rebels. In the period from March 21 to April 5, 1921, a “two-week period” of voluntary participation was announced for ordinary participants in the uprising.guilty.province of M. N. Tukhachevsky, his deputy - I. P. Uborevich, chief of staff - N. E. Kakurin. G.I. Kotovsky was also sent to the Tambov region, G.G. Yagoda and V.V. Ulrikh were sent from the Cheka. Tukhachevsky received a directive to liquidate the Tambov uprising no later than within a month. The number of Soviet troops in the Tambov province quickly increased and by the end of May 1921 amounted to 43 thousand Red Army soldiers (35 thousand bayonets and 8 thousand sabers with 463 machine guns and 63 artillery pieces). The Central Committee of the RCP (b) additionally mobilized 300 communists from Moscow, Petrograd and Tula to help the Tambov provincial party organization. The workers of the carriage workshops built an “armored vehicle” consisting of an armored steam locomotive, three armored cars and two cargo platforms with installed weapons: one 76-mm gun and three machine guns. The “Armored Train” was at the disposal of the transport Cheka and was used to ensure security along the railway line.
On May 20, 1921, the main command of the partisans, the civil government and the population of the surrounding villages proclaimed the “Provisional Democratic Republic of the Tambov Partisan Region” with rights until the convening of the Constituent Assembly. The rebels nominated an active member of the STK and one of the leaders of the partisan movement, Shendyapin, as the head of the republic of the partisan region. On May 25, 1921, a separate cavalry brigade of G.I. Kotovsky defeated and scattered two rebel regiments under the command of Selyansky, who was mortally wounded.

In total, up to 55 thousand military personnel of the Red Army were involved in the suppression of the Tambov uprising: 37.5 thousand bayonets, 10 thousand sabers, as well as 7 thousand military personnel in nine artillery brigades; 5 armored squads, 4 armored trains, 6 armored battalions, 2 air squads, cadets of the Moscow and Oryol infantry and Borisoglebsk cavalry courses. Not the least role in the defeat of the peasant revolt in the Tambov region was played by the use of poisonous gases (instructions from Tukhachevsky) and brutal repressive measures against the rebels, their families and fellow villagers. On June 11, 1921, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued order No. 171 “On the beginning of repressive measures against individual bandits and the families sheltering them.”

It is clear that our local authorities are still afraid of this spontaneous outburst of indignation by citizens breaking out of obedience and spontaneously destroying the old order. Wherever history is made, no matter what social foundations are broken and replaced - feudal or bourgeois or pseudo-socialist - such changes are always based on the interests of citizens and their contradictions, which allow or do not allow reforming social orders without leading to an explosion. In the case when those in power, for one reason or another, do not take into account the interests of the population, do not reform outdated orders, dissatisfaction of citizens accumulates, a mass movement begins, from which either a consciously organized revolution or a protest, explosion, rebellion devoid of a “guiding idea” can arise. .

It would be absurd to think that, using the example of the Tambov region, when one or another social system or political structure has become obsolete or has reached a dead end, when the people and citizens are unbearable, when they find themselves driven to the extreme line of despair, a revolution is necessarily carried out, deliberately sweeping away the outdated orders and establishing new ones, acceptable to the people, for active citizens. No, the Tambov story does not have such a clear logic and the solutions are not so simple. It can be argued that there are two options, two fundamentally different lines of development, generated by the need and hopelessness of the situation, the despair of the masses. Each of them has logic in one case - spontaneous protest, irreconcilable nihilism and bloody rebellion; in the other - meaningful confrontation, liberation struggle and social revolution.

Tambov abandoned village

In our days, so that the extreme need and despair of the masses does not develop into the Antonov uprising, there must also be an understanding of what is happening, a “guiding idea”, there must be an organizing force capable of absorbing and accumulating the growing discontent of the people, ready to direct the spontaneous protest of the masses in the right direction and against the real enemies of progress, which is what the leading party is now trying to do. But it is not the crowd, but the Tambov people who are the creators of history; their interests, demands and actions determine social progress in our region. Moreover, if they say: “the people demand,” this does not mean at all that the whole people, all the people who make it up, demand. Often those in power hide behind the name of the Tambov people. The difference is in the nature of the demands, in their connection with the deep needs of social development, with the interests of the vast masses of the population. After all, the people are an objective community of people, a decisive part of the population, whose actions are determined by the long-term deep interests of the masses of the population.
It must be taken into account that the reasons that raise people to revolution and to revolt are not the same. The masses of the people come to the revolutionary movement under the influence of long-term factors - a decline in living standards, lack of political freedoms, and each participant has his own reasons that led him to the streets. And if the enemy is found, there is no doubt what the rebels will do.

Considering the Antonov uprising, we must immediately note that the economic development of the region is still more deformed than the overall Russian one. This gives rise to the feeling that any division of power from above will unleash Pugachevism, that is, disorder beyond control. Now the same fear of peasant revolt, destructive and nihilistic, has taken over the government. It is no coincidence that our society now finds itself in such a position that these bodies and the main one among them - state power - have begun to serve the special interests of civil servants. From servants of society, these bodies turned into its masters. Life developed in the Tambov region in such a way that, when performing general management functions necessary for the functioning of society, the people intended for this formed a special branch of the division of labor within society and, thus, acquired special interests, different from the interests of those who authorized them to manage, began independent in relation to them, and under certain conditions they rose above the entire society, pursuing their own selfish goals. This is the origin of Tambov bureaucracy and its fear of popular unrest.

Abandoned Tambov village

Each of us, faced with Tambov bureaucracy, noticed that this or that official did not show any personal interest in the essence of the matter (say, in the actual solution of the housing

problems of citizens, to the issues of privatization of housing by citizens), but, bureaucratically delaying the resolution of the issue, never takes the blame on himself: he always refers to this or that instruction, to certain real problems of the management process, to the letter and spirit of the laws, as a result why the bureaucrat’s own idleness and indifference looks like the soullessness of the state itself.

Another characteristic feature of the Tambov bureaucracy and bureaucracy is a negative attitude towards publicity, towards openness, the desire to monopolize knowledge of the management process, and to do its business in secret. It is also very important that bureaucrats value not what is said, but by whom it is said, i.e. not the arguments justifying the decisions, but the ranks and positions of those who express these decisions and thoughts: authority is the principle of knowledge of the bureaucracy, and the deification of authority is its way of thinking. Neither Marx, nor Lenin, nor modern political scientists fully saw the danger of bureaucracy. Therefore, hopes that after the next social revolution the state will begin to wither away, and with it the social division of labor between managers and governed - the main source of bureaucracy - will begin to disappear, are not justified.

After the October Revolution, the cancer of bureaucracy spread wider and deeper first to the USSR, and later to the modern state, where the party-state bureaucracy represents a “new class” that usurped both political power and property. Life testified that the party-state bureaucracy, headed in the Soviet Union by I. Stalin, moved step by step to power and has successfully entrenched itself in it now. After the August 1991 coup, when the Soviet party-state bureaucracy tried to restore its omnipotence, but suffered a crushing defeat, democrats came to power, seeking to come to an agreement with the nomenklatura, creating their own bureaucratic structures and new problems in the fight against bureaucracy and bureaucracy.
It is the bureaucracy in Tambov that invariably represents the dominant force, regardless of the specific form of power. Those who used to be in the CPSU are now in “UNITED RUSSIA”. The form is changing, but the positions of the local bureaucracy remain unshakable, playing the role of a relatively autonomous filter and brake on political changes generated by representative democracy. Now, in a representative and parliamentary democracy, power is in the hands of the bureaucracy, which is called the administration.

When a single party controls simultaneously, as in the USSR the CPSU, and now “UNITED RUSSIA”, both the governing body of any organization and the organization itself, this only leads to uniformity of speech and stifles fruitful activity, since decisions are made elsewhere. As a result, people's energy is spent on competition within the party for advancement through the ranks, which is the only real incentive. Today it is funny to remember that back in 1920 Lenin and Trotsky denounced the Soviet bureaucracy, forgetting that they themselves contributed to strengthening its positions (by placing the activities of all Soviet institutions under party control, outlawing other parties, and then subordinating the parties and the state : their revolution gave birth to a new category of bureaucrats, the so-called apparatchiks. History teaches us nothing...

As we have already mentioned, the local authorities are afraid of any mention of the Antonov uprising. Thus, on the night of May 1, 2001, in Tambov, a monument to the fallen participants in the popular peasant uprising in the Tambov province was demolished and destroyed. Shortly before this, on Tambov radio, regional Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Chantsev said that he would make every effort to destroy it. Residents of Tambov filed an application to the Tambov prosecutor's office to initiate a criminal case, with little hope that appropriate measures would be taken and that the desecrators would be found and brought to justice. The history of the installation of this monument began with the opening of a memorial plaque at the same place in 1999, but it stood for less than a month and was taken away by unknown people, who were guarded by the police. Then residents of Tambov and the region literally raised funds for a national monument to freedom fighters, literally by pennies. The late famous ophthalmologist, academician Svyatoslav Fedorov, also provided great assistance. He also established the anniversary sign “Alexander Antonov. In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the start of the peasant uprising in the Tambov province." The monument was unveiled on June 24, 2000, the day of the death of A. Antonov. The monument was erected with the permission of local authorities and consecrated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Despite the rainy day, many people gathered for the opening. The pedestal of the monument was literally littered with wreaths and flowers. Ironically, on those same days, State Duma deputies demanded that the monument to Dzerzhinsky be restored in Moscow. Another coincidence was tragic: Svyatoslav Fedorov, flying by helicopter from Tambov, died in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances.

At the moment, there are no monuments to the victims of the Antonov uprising in the Tambov region. At the site of the supposed burial of Antonov himself, a monument to the composer Rachmaninov was erected. And in the Sochi park, they installed an incomprehensible popular popular man with the sugary face of the epic Sadko. Why shouldn’t Karev take the initiative to erect another monument in some area of our region, dedicated to the victims of the uprising? They are trying in every possible way to erase the genetic memory of our ancestors from us, since officials have something to lose.

A fatal and unexpected blow for Tambov officials was the filming of the film “Once Upon a Time There Was a Woman,” directed by the world-famous talented director and actor Andrei Smirnov, about the life of Russia from 1909 to 1921, about the events of the Civil War and the Antonov Uprising, shown through the eyes of a Tambov peasant woman. The director has been working on the film since 1987. The film was released widely in Russia in the fall of 2011. For obvious reasons, local officials were unable to prevent the filming of the film. And even if they could, they were afraid and had to make false curtsies to save face. According to A. Smirnov, in terms of plot and characters, “the film was ready 24 years ago.” Scenario

was completed in 2004 after several years of work in the archives, studying the dialect and ethnographic features of the Tambov peasantry. “In the Tambov province today there is not a single district that I have not visited: I lived in the village, talked with grandmothers, and worked with museum workers,” the director recalls. The fact that the filming of the film was successful in the Tambov region was facilitated to a large extent by the fact that financing for the filming was helped in 2007 by such famous politicians and businessmen as Vladislav Surkov, Viktor Vekselberg, Alfred Kokha, Roman Abramovich, Leonid Gozman, Anatoly Serdyukova and Vladimir Yakunina, also the son-in-law of the director Anatoly Chubais. It is noted that “the film was released just before the elections, and its main (albeit somewhat veiled) message was to expose all the sins of the Soviet regime and a warning to the regional elite. And it is no coincidence that the sponsors of the film were influential people from the ruling party in Russia.”

Andrey Smirnov and Yuri Shevchuk

Why is the local government conspicuous by its complete absence at the “funeral” of the Tambov peasantry? Why? It’s clear - some are busy, some are in business, others “have a more attractive magnet.” There is only one tendency among officials - “there is an instruction.” Whose? Oh, this painful unknown... It is clear that the late Antov and thousands of Tambov peasants don’t care. As for their descendants, we do not undertake to judge. But everything that concerns such a phenomenon as the Tambov peasant uprising, both during life and after it, still has a political background. And this underlying reason is clear - the fact of rebellion is objectionable, unreliable! However, this is not a matter of natural bureaucratic ingratitude. Antonov and the uprising - a symbol. A symbol of Freedom, the destruction of bureaucracy, a symbol of the fight against a corrupt state, a symbol of the real Russian revolution, a symbol of inspired crowds of people and intoxicated freedom of speech... And the attitude towards his memory on the part of the local authorities is quite symbolic!

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Antonov would not put up with the facts when a veteran lives in a collapsing house, a young

the mother is being driven out of work, forests are being cut down there, housing and communal services are being robbed here... Where can a Tambov resident go with all these problems? To the administration? Or maybe to the cozy office of the ruling party? Do not make me laugh! When it was the officials and the party serving them who cared about the people. They remember them in the run-up to the elections and forget them the morning after voting day. They have one goal - to stay in their chairs as long as possible and have time to make provisions for the rest of their lives. They need people to approve and not ask unnecessary questions. Is it any wonder that the Antonov uprising is like a thorn in their side?

A lie does not live long, says the proverb. No matter how you lie, people will still find out the truth. They will ask those who deceived them, who prevented them from changing their lives for the better. And the time is already close. Now official local historians say that many of the participants in the uprising were deceived by the organizers and rebelled over other issues.