The first Russian revolution 1905 1907 in Donbass. Donbass during the years of the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution and the First World War. Residents of the region during the Civil War

The December armed uprising and the first offensive of the workers of Donbass against the tsarist troops were preceded by enormous revolutionary educational work done by the Bolshevik organizations of Donbass. Even before the first revolution, the Social Democratic Union of Mining Workers arose here, in which the leading role in 1902 - 1903. played by Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky.

“The Union represents a vast organization, which includes almost all factories and mines of the Slavic-Serbian, Bakhmut and Mariupol districts, Ekaterinoslav province and adjacent territories of the Don Army Region, and has at its disposal two well-equipped printing houses that work alternately. Persons, members of the Central Group of this Union, apparently live in factories and mines near the village of Yuzovka, and among them is a peasant from the Kharkov province, Ivan Grigorievich Petrovsky 1, who was involved in the movement in Yekaterinoslav in 1900 as a member of the “Committee” of social -democratic organization and subject, according to the highest order, to imprisonment for a period of 6 months, but hid in a mine near the village of Yuzovo" 2.

The revolutionary word of the Social Democratic Union of Mining Workers fell on fertile ground: the economic and legal situation of the Donetsk workers was striking in its exceptional tragedy, even against the gloomy background of the life of the entire working class of Russia. Hard labor underground in conditions of low technology, full of dangers and torment, required exceptional physical overexertion. A twelve-hour day of such work was paid from 40 kopecks. up to 1 rub. 20 kopecks, and the lion's share of this money was pocketed by contractors. The average salary of a miner was 18 - 20 rubles per month. The owners of the mines - foreign concessionaires, while earning monstrous dividends (profits), at the same time saved on the safety of workers, and disasters occurred in the mines every now and then, claiming hundreds and thousands of workers' lives every year. For example, on July 4, 1905, an explosion of detonating gas at the Ivan mine buried 300 workers underground.

The famous “dwelling” of the Donetsk miner - “Shanghai”, “Sobacheevka” with their creepy dugouts, “booths” and stables, very colorfully described in Avdeenko’s novel “I love you” - were destroyed only under Soviet rule. Doctors wrote that “such premises reduce the human personality to a bestial existence” 3 . The workers themselves put it more simply: “We live worse than dogs.”

Peasants from Russian hungry villages in the northern and central zone could go into this “voluntary” hard labor only out of hungry despair. "Local residents work in the mines,

1 In the gendarmerie document, the name and patronymic of comrade. Petrovsky are indicated incorrectly. That's right Grigory Ivanovich.

2 Quoted from Kirzner’s book “Donbass” Krivoy Rog in the Bitchy Revolution”, p. 20. Kharkov, 1926.

3 A. S. Kirzner “Miners of Donbass and Krivoy Rog in the first revolution”, p. 11. All-Ukrainian Committee of the Union of Miners of the USSR.

with rare exceptions, they do not go, having the opportunity to use their labor profitably in the mines and mines as a carrier, - wrote the Ekaterinoslav governor in his “Note on the labor issue in the Ekaterinoslav province, - the composition of the workers is almost entirely from outsiders, especially in the coal mines... The main contingent of workers comes from the provinces: Oryol, Kursk, Chernigov, Ryazan, Kostroma, partly Voronezh, as well as the Belarusian ones - Minsk and Mogilev, 1 that is, precisely the most miserable, hungriest villages of tsarist Russia.

Such a composition of the “underground” working class, understandably, presented enormous difficulties for revolutionary propaganda work. In Lenin's Iskra, in the correspondence of the Conscious Miner, it was said that in the Donbass, in particular in the Golubovsky coal mines, “the initiators of socialist propaganda were the unemployed, newcomers from Yuzov, Bakhmut, Lugansk. Our people are all motionless, dark, the majority Oryol, or Kursk. Local residents do not go to this hard labor" 2.

The enormous difficulties for social-democratic work among the miners of Donbass were aggravated by the fact that any attempts on the part of the workers to protest or achieve even the slightest improvement in their situation were suppressed by tsarism with particular ferocity and inhumanity.

Donbass was actually at the mercy of foreign capitalist concessionaires. Their mines and mines, which yielded fabulous profits, were guarded by special gendarmerie and military detachments. Conflicts between owners and workers were almost always resolved with a bayonet and a whip. At the slightest sign of dissatisfaction, foreign mine owners called for help from the obedient tsarist troops, and a bloody reprisal began against the unarmed workers. Pacifying raids by punitive detachments against miners were often commanded by the governor himself.

In many villages, mines and stations of Donbass, as if under enemy occupation, there were military units - dragoons, Cossacks and gendarmerie - detachments, ready at any moment, at the first call of their owners, to oppose the workers of Donbass.

This explained the unanimity, the general anger and rage with which the Donetsk “Red Guards” - vigilantes of the first revolution - fought in December 1905 with the tsarist troops - dragoons and Cossacks. That is why Lenin’s idea of an armed uprising and the transition from defense to offensive was so vividly embodied in the unfolding struggle of the workers of Donbass against tsarism.

Donbass has long been shaken by revolutionary and social explosions. One of the first such explosions was a major uprising of Donetsk workers in 1887 in the very heart of the basin - in the mines of the Yuzovsky region. It began with a strike of 400 workers from the 19th mine; the strike was caused by new bullying and persecution of entrepreneurs. The angry workers went to the neighboring mines, No. 11 and 13, and forced them to stop working and join them. A crowd of one and a half thousand workers smashed everything that they hated, that poisoned their lives. They destroyed and burned the taverns that took away their last pennies from their meager earnings.

They destroyed the stores of coal miners, in which the owners forced workers to buy essential products at increased prices.

Then the foreign capitalist and owner of Yuzovka, Arthur Yuz, became the head of an armed detachment that opposed the miners. The helpful Ekaterinoslav governor sent troops to pacify the miners. The uprising was suppressed with the savagery characteristic of the authorities, and the miners were driven to work under the escort of military teams.

1 "Chronicle of the Revolution" No. 3 for 1925, p. 13.

2 "Iskra" No. 26 for 1902.

Uprisings followed one after another. At the very end of the last century there was a “revolt” at the Golubov mines.

From the destruction of taverns and shops, the workers are moving to more organized methods of struggle.

In the mines of Donbass, back in 1898, the first Social Democratic leaflet “Letter to the Miners” appeared. In the Shcherbinovsky and Nelepovsky mines, the first revolutionary circles appeared in 1901, in which G.I. Petrovsky worked. Two years later comrade. Artem organizes social democratic cells in the Berestovsky and Bogodukhovsky mines, in Yuzovka.

Small groups of Social Democratic workers, 5 to 10 people each, are being organized in other mines.

It was during these years that the emergence and rapid growth of the Social Democratic Union of Mining Workers began, which in 1903 alone managed to distribute tens of thousands of revolutionary leaflets among miners and metalworkers. The leaders of the movement are the most advanced layers of Donetsk workers: metal workers, workers of metallurgical and engineering factories in Donbass, and workers of the railway workshops of the Catherine Railway.

The proletarian Yekaterinoslav had a huge influence on the character and scope of the movement in Donbass. (now Dnepropetrovsk) with its huge metallurgical plants and the oldest and largest Bolshevik organization.

Even before 1905, it organized a number of revolutionary mass protests by workers, strikes, demonstrations, and rallies, sometimes accompanied by real battles with detachments of gendarmes and regular troops.

In response to “Bloody Sunday,” a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and rallies swept across Donbass, attracting even the most backward layers of miners.

The workers of Donbass responded unanimously to the call for the first general political strike in October 1905.

Already on October 7, as soon as the telegram from the Yekaterinoslav strike committee, sent throughout the line, was received, a railway strike began in Donbass. On the same day, the Yasinovataya, Grishino, Yuzovo and other stations went on strike. Traffic along the Ekaterininskaya Road froze.

The first general political railway strike in Donbass lasted two weeks; here she was even more stubborn than in the center. The mass movement swept over the heads of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik leaders from the All-Russian Railway Bureau. Despite

Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky, member of the combat strike committee in 1905.

The order they gave - to stop the strike on October 18 - on the Catherine Road, this main highway of Donbass, the strike continued until October 20, and partially until October 23-24, until the administration satisfied the workers’ demands.

Although this first all-Russian railway strike was formally led by the semi-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik All-Russian Railway Bureau, on the ground, in Yekaterinoslav and Donbass, the leadership of the strike was carried out by Bolshevik committees, which during the strike were able to implement such revolutionary measures as the introduction of an 8-hour working day in many railway workshops, depots and other enterprises.

The workers of Donbass are increasingly taking the path of the most intense political struggle, preparing for an armed uprising as the only way that can radically change their situation.

As a counterbalance to the Mensheviks, who consider a political strike mainly as a means of putting pressure on the existing authorities and their bodies, the Bolshevik organizations of Donbass were able to lead the workers along the path of immediate preparation for an armed uprising.

News coming from the south - from revolutionary Sevastopol - about a new uprising of revolutionary Black Sea sailors further accelerated the process of preparation for an armed uprising.

In November, at the congress of workers of the Catherine Railway (about 700 people were present), convened to hear the report of delegates from the congress of the All-Russian Railway Union, representatives of the Bolsheviks made a special report - on the revolutionary events in Sevastopol, on the heroic battles of sailors with the autocracy. This message had a revolutionary effect on those gathered. As a result, the decision was made:

"Recognize the participation of railway workers in transporting troops for the stated purpose (i.e., suppressing the uprising. - M.K.) tantamount to participation in murder, and railway employees, in one way or another, participated

Bryansk plant in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) in 1905.

those living in it, accomplices in these crimes, deserving the strictest public condemnation" 1.

The delegates of this “congress” traveled to the stations of Donbass with instructions to local organizations to take all measures to prevent the transportation of troops to suppress the revolutionary movement. Delegates from the congress carried Bolshevik slogans and Bolshevik exercises to their seats, and this circumstance further accelerated the course of events brewing in the Donbass.

Workers stopped passing military trains and demanded that the soldiers surrender their weapons. The soldiers, most of whom were returning from the Manchurian front, having taken from there a deep hatred of the tsarist system, unquestioningly handed over their weapons to the workers. In this way, workers acquired the first rifles.

Back in November, under the influence of alarming rumors about a pogrom being prepared by the Black Hundreds, the first workers' self-defense detachment was created in Grishin, where the strongest Bolshevik organization in the Donbass was located. Grishino becomes the de facto center for the preparation of an armed uprising throughout the Donbass.

Leaders of Bolshevik committees very often, at the request of workers of various villages and stations, go to speak at rallies and to lead the revolutionary movement of workers.

In December 1905, the miners of Gorlovka, Sofievsky and Verovsky mines, which were then the most active and advanced in the Donbass, marched in step with the metalworkers and railway workers in December 1905. Here they openly prepare for an armed uprising, collect weapons, and at the Verovsky mines workers seize 150 pounds of steel from the owners to make pikes, which arm the workers' squads.

“At the Petrovsky mines (Yenakievo station) and its surroundings, at the Verovsky and Sofievsky mines, the order is exemplary and is maintained by the workers themselves. Workers come to their elected deputies not only for advice on purely work-related issues, but even resort to court in family troubles. More Not so long ago, the name "Social Democrat" frightened the workers, but now every worker also wants to call himself by this honorable name. Recently the district council of the local Social Democratic organization was supposed to meet, the workers came in droves...

All the mines and factories in this area elected their deputies, and now

Comrade Artem.

1 "The case of the uprising on the Ekaterininskaya railway." Istproftran, p. 24. Ed. Central Committee -d. 1926.

The arming of workers occurs openly, in front of the authorities. Powerless to prevent and prevent this, the authorities decide to use the weapons of the workers in the service of the counter-revolution and the Black Hundreds. A proven provocative technique is used: black agitators travel through the mines hundreds of times, urging them to “beat the Jews,” revolutionaries, etc. In some places, this agitation was successful among declassed elements and tramps. However, pogroms are quickly prevented by organized workers’ self-defense units. The workers now know “who to beat”: the Bolshevik organizations managed to open their eyes to reality.

A new, even more powerful impetus to the militant movement of Donetsk workers was given by the appearance of the December general political strike. On December 7, in Yekaterinoslav, a telegram was received from the center announcing a general political strike. And immediately a telegram with the following content was sent by telegraph to all stations and villages of Donbass, along the Catherine Road:

“Today from 10 o’clock in the morning a general strike of all roads and workers has been announced. Comrades" 3.

To lead the general strike in Ekaterinoslav on December 8, a combat strike committee was created, in which the Ekaterinoslav Bolsheviks played a decisive role.

The Combat Strike Committee played a huge role in preparing the armed uprising not only in Yekaterinoslav itself, but throughout the Donetsk basin: it issued daily bulletins and orders, which were carried out by all organizations. The Combat Strike Committee instructed representatives of the grassroots workers' organizations of Donbass, sent a huge amount of literature to the localities, and led the largest demonstrations of workers. In order to prevent the transportation of troops to suppress the revolution, the combat strike committee on December 8 issued an order to stop movement along the Catherine Railway. The order was firmly implemented by all local committees in Donbass. An exception was made only for delegate trains and those military trains in which demobilized soldiers were returning from the Manchurian front. Representatives of the committee met the soldiers and set the condition for their further advancement along the railway that they must surrender their weapons. The soldiers responded to these ultimatum demands of workers' power with unquestioning submission. In this way the workers received weapons at their disposal. At the stations, working detachments are organized, initially bearing the name “self-defense detachments”, initially pursuing the goal of preventing Black Hundred pogroms, but in the coming days they become fighting proletarian squads.

At all stations the power of the old railway administration was eliminated; its orders were not carried out by anyone. The Catherine Road thus passed into the hands of the workers. By resolutions of the combat strike committee, the head of the road and the heads of individual services were removed from their positions. Elected workers were nominated in their places.

How broad and friendly the militant revolutionary activity of the rebel Donetsk workers took on is shown by the following telegram from police officer Mashevsky to the Yekaterinoslav governor:

"I inform Your Excellency

1 "Bulletin of the South" N 103 for 1905.

2 Lenin. T. VII, p. 365.

3 "The case of the uprising on the Ekaterininskaya railway." Istproftran, p. 26. Ed. Central Committee -d. 1926.

At the same time, the workers of the Yuryevsky plant, employees of the Alchevsk Debaltseve station formed an armed militia and a strike committee chaired by engineer Kharchenko, supporting the anti-government strike, disarming all those traveling by cheap trains, individual soldiers, and police officials" 1 .

Then, on December 14, the Bakhmut police officer telegraphed that “all junction stations, ticket offices, and traffic have been seized by the committee and attempts are being made to take money from post offices and state-owned wine shops. Rifles have been taken away from the reserve soldiers traveling on the trains Avdeevka, Grishino, Chaplino, and a demand has been made to Debaltsevo.” disarmament of the police, release of confiscated weapons, telephone in Grishino in the hands of the committee. Almost all factories cease operations, workers everywhere arm themselves. Nikitovka and Gorlovka stations are guarded by companies, the Avdeevka bailiff is expected to be defeated, and agrarian unrest has begun in the Bantysh economy..." 2.

The armed uprising grew by leaps and bounds. Already on December 8, workers in Grishin, Avdeevka, Yasinovataya, Debaltsev, Gorlovka and other villages and stations went on strike. On the same day, workers' fighting squads are organized, attacks on the police and troops begin, and their weapons are taken away. “The Debaltsev police are disarmed and scattered” - such telegrams came not only from Debaltsev, but also from dozens of other points. All power is seized by the workers. Where the Bolshevik organizations were still weak, comrades from the stronger party committees of Grishin and Enakiev were called to help, from where the fiery and courageous Bolshevik worker Comrade often came. Tkachenko-Petrenko, hanged in 1908 for participation in the uprising. This was the case, for example, in Nikitovka, where the workers, having decided to go on strike, first contacted the Gorlovka Bolshevik Committee, and on December 13, the Gorlovka Bolsheviks arrived in Nikitovka to help. The Gorlovka Bolsheviks provided the same assistance to the workers in Debaltsevo. There was also a strong connection between Nikitov workers and peasants. Peasants from the surrounding villages were invited and present at the rallies on December 9 and 10 dedicated to the general strike.

View of Gorlovka in 1905.

1 Istpart Artemovsky district. "Materials on the history of the revolutionary events of 1905." Telegram No. 207. Artemovsk. 1925.

2 Ibid. Telegram N 420/193.

into fighting workers' squads, intensively stocking up on weapons. The squads grew every day: they arose in Grishin, Avdeevka, Enakievo, Yuzovka, Debaltsevo, Yasinovataya, Druzhkovka, Verovka, etc., hundreds of workers joined them. Due to the growth of the detachments, despite the fact that the weapons needed for the detachments were taken away by the workers from the soldiers and police, there was still a shortage of them. The Grishinites sent a representative of the workers to Rostov to buy weapons, who brought a box of revolvers for the first time. More than once Donetsk vigilantes sent their comrades to other cities for weapons.

The workers of Debaltsev also captured a lot of explosives for the upcoming battles. “At the Debaltsevo station, during the uprising, 146 pounds of dynamite and 8 pounds of gunpowder were looted. Checkers and revolvers were taken from all Debaltsevo gendarmes. They tried to arrest and disarm me,” 1 reported Lieutenant Colonel Pakhalovich.

To provide themselves with funds for the uprising, the workers seized the station ticket office. As the police officer Fedorenko telegraphed, “Debaltsevo station employees detained the artel worker with 20,000 rubles, forced the money to be returned to the station cash register in order to spend their needs during a further strike. Security was assigned to the cash register” (from the workers. - M.K.) 2 .

This is how the Donetsk workers were preparing for an armed uprising and for a grandiose offensive against the tsarist troops, which broke out in mid-December 1905.

“Debaltseve, Yasinovataya, Avdeevka, Grishina were settled by fighting squads, which were joined by peasants from neighboring villages. The troops cannot unite in any way to take the squads. The telephone has been cut off. Many police officers have been disarmed” 3 .

The first battle between the workers' squads and the tsarist troops took place in Yasinovataya. It was provoked by the military authorities themselves, who decided to begin the defeat of the fighting squads from this station, as the weakest and least prepared.

1 Istpart Artemovsky district. "Materials on the history of the revolutionary events of 1905." Telegram N 648. Artemovsk. 1925.

2 Istpart Artemovsky district. "Materials on the history of the revolutionary events of 1905." Telegram dated 10/XII 1905.

3 Ibid., telegram dated 19/12 1905.

he informed them that the station and the entire area were now under enhanced security and that they were prohibited from gatherings of any kind. A huge crowd of excited workers gathered around him. Staff Captain Karamyshev rushed at the crowd with a saber and ordered the soldiers to disperse it with their rifle butts.

An hour later, the strike committee and Yasinovataya’s fighting squad sent a telegram to the nearest squads calling for help. (The armed workers' squads of the neighboring stations responded with lightning speed. And on the same day, fighting squads from Grishin and Avdeevka, led by Comrade Deinega, arrived in Yasinovataya on special trains. The combined forces of the three workers' squads went on an attack on the barracks, surrounded them and took them prisoner commander Karamyshev. The officer brazenly ordered the soldiers to open fire on the workers, for which he was immediately shot by the vigilantes. The majority of the soldiers went over to the side of the workers, giving them their 54 rifles.

This was the first and, moreover, truly major military victory of the workers' squads. It unusually raised the morale of the workers, strengthened the organization and influx of workers into the fighting squads. The warriors returned to Grishino in triumph and were solemnly greeted by all workers as heroes.

The first military victory of the workers' squads inspired them to further attack the tsarist troops. In Avdeevka on December 14, the squad carried out an armed attack on a detachment of dragoons that had arrived here, and, fearing persecution, selected units of the tsarist army galloped away from Avdeevka in disgrace.

“I ask you to recall 5 companies of the Don region, the situation in the district is the most critical” 1.

And reinforced Cossack and dragoon units were moved to Yasinovataya and Grishino. In response, the Grishinites began to erect barricades. In the shortest possible time, literally in a few hours, wire fences and embankments appeared. They were made not only by workers, but also by all residents of the village of Grishina. The strike committee developed a plan for fighting the Cossacks in order to prevent them from occupying the station with armed force.

Meanwhile, the authorities were preparing a strike on another revolutionary point in Donbass - Gorlovka. A particularly dangerous situation for the government was growing here. A Bolshevik organization worked in Gorlovka, to which comrade was sent from Yenakiev by the local Bolshevik organization to help. Tkachenko-Petrenko. Thanks to the work of the Bolshevik organization in Gorlovka, to a greater extent than in other places, it was possible to unite the forces of workers - both metal workers and railway workers, and miners. There was a political strike, they declared it together, they also prepared for battles together.

At the same time as all the workers, the metal workers of the Gorlovka Machine-Building Plant also went on strike. And when, on their behalf, Kuznetsov went to present demands to the director-

1 Istpart Artemovsky district. "Materials on the history of revolutionary events in 1905." Artemovsk. 1925.

tor of the Loest plant, the police ambushed him. Kuznetsov and a group of workers are negotiating with. Loestom; the latter, despite the tactics of “concessions” of other owners, was adamant. Then the workers informed him that he was under arrest and formed a convoy at his door. But Loest had already managed to warn the police in advance. The building was immediately cordoned off by the police, the yard was occupied by Cossacks and dragoons. In such a situation, Kuznetsov and the delegation went out to those gathered at the gates of the plant striking workers. The dragoons stop the workers trying to break into the factory yard, and the bailiff Nemirovsky offers them to hand over Kuznetsov, tries to break into the crowd in which Kuznetsov is surrounded and protected by a human wall. But the bailiff is immediately thrown back by the workers.

After the execution of the workers and the arrest of the leader, rage and anger gripped the working masses. It was unanimously decided to give battle to the troops, the police and expel the troops from the Donbass. But Gorlovka is still poorly armed. And that same evening, like the Yasinovatists, the workers of Gorlovka send a call from the Gorlovka strike committee by telegraph along the entire line.

Every village, every station received the following telegram:

"Combat squad. We are all without weapons, we demand immediate help from all sides. Committee" 1.

All workers' committees and fighting squads responded decisively to the call of the Gorlovtsy people. In Enakievo, Grishin, Yuzov, Avdeevka, Verovka, Druzhkovka, and in dozens of other places, combat squads hastily boarded specially formed trains. Where there was no fighting squad yet, the workers hastily armed themselves with whatever they could find: iron rods, sticks, axes, knives, daggers - and also boarded the trains. Echelons of vigilantes passed station after station, and at each one more and more detachments and groups of armed workers landed.

A total of three trains were sent to Gorlovka, crowded with variously armed workers. Two trains arrived, the third got stuck on the way. It was a train with armed workers from the same Verovskoto mine, the military work of which we spoke about above. As soon as they received the telegram, they went to Yenakievo, and from there by train to Gorlovka, but the route was already dismantled by the Cossacks. But the Druzhkovka miners managed to slip through and bring with them a whole carload of various weapons, which were immediately distributed to the workers.

This was the first All-Donetsk “gathering” of fighting squads, but the “gathering” was not for meetings, but for a battle with the hated autocracy. Many arrived unarmed, but they were rescued by the druzhkovtsy, and in addition, on the same night, the commissioners sent a second time for weapons returned from Taganrog, also bringing rifles and revolvers. All these weapons were immediately distributed to the traveling vigilantes.

In one of the station rooms, an operational meeting of the commanders of the traveling squads was held. The plan for an attack on the barracks of the troops located in Gorlovka was discussed. The squads were divided into separate detachments, detachment commanders, general command, communications, etc. were allocated. They tried to provide for every detail .

By 8 o'clock in the morning on December 17, the squads had completed the grouping and deployment of their forces. It is difficult to establish exactly how many vigilantes arrived in Gorlovka and took part

1 “The case of the uprising on the Ekaterininskaya railway. Istproftran, p. 63. Published by the Central Committee. Railways, 1926.

A group of arrested participants in the uprising in Aleksandrovsk (now Zaporozhye) in 1905.

in the famous offensive against the tsarist troops. According to official police reports, up to 4,000 worker vigilantes attacked the troops - it was a whole army, the first revolutionary workers' army. But of these, only about 300 people were armed with rifles and hunting rifles and a small part of the vigilantes had revolvers, while the rest had so-called “edged weapons,” which meant not so much checkers and daggers, but homemade pikes, iron rods, axes, knives etc.

The commander of the Gorlovka garrison, Captain Ugrinovich, had already been warned by someone. The troops also met the combatants in full combat readiness. They occupied all the windows and exits.

It was a frosty December morning. The weather was clearly unfavorable to the workers: there was frequent light snow, which soon turned into a blizzard. It was still dark when the vigilantes opened fire on the windows of the barracks. From three sides they persistently fired at the troops who had taken refuge there, who fired back through the windows and fences of the barracks.

A new victory, and a huge one at that, incomparably larger than it was in Yasinovataya and Avdeevka, was won by the workers-combatants. True, this victory was very short-lived: the forces of the workers, even with such a huge number of vigilantes, were still too insufficient and poorly armed.

The retreating troops united with hundreds of Cossacks coming from Yenakiev, who had been called earlier to help the military.

Heroes of Gorlovka: A.F. Shcherbakov, G.F. Tkachenko - executed; G. Lebedinchenko, G. Lebedinchenko and D. Geiko were sentenced to hard labor for participating in the fighting squad of the village of New Kaidany.

government authorities. Having dismounted, the Cossacks went around through the Ksenyevka farm to the Gorlovka station, in the building of which, under the command of Deinega, there were about 300 - 400 warriors from among the most weakly armed at that time (the most armed detachments went on the offensive on the barracks). Some of the detachments still continued shelling the barracks, in which a group of soldiers with the bailiff Nemirovsky at their head remained who did not have time to retreat; others advanced far into the steppe, pursuing the retreating troops. Due to the snowstorm and the large scattering of the workers' squads, they could no longer unite again. The most armed detachments could not unite with those remaining at the station to jointly repel the Cossacks, and could not even provide assistance to their comrades who were in the station building.

Meanwhile, the Cossacks and returning dragoons and soldiers, having surrounded the station, opened fierce fire on the warriors who had settled there.

Now the vigilantes were locked in, and they were besieged by Cossacks and soldiers. But while the soldiers besieged in the barracks were perfectly armed, the vigilantes locked by them did not even have this. The vigilantes fearlessly defended themselves, but soon the detachment commander Deinega was seriously wounded and died of hemorrhage. The Cossacks came close to the walls of the station.

Workers from the detachments besieging the barracks, hearing the shots, rushed to the station to help their besieged comrades, but were unable to provide assistance, since due to the snowstorm they mostly shot at random. Because of the snowstorm, the warriors of another detachment who were in the field could not approach the station. Thus the workers became isolated from each other. The lack of military experience and knowledge destroyed them. Noticing confusion among the vigilantes holed up at the station, Captain Ugrinovich invited them to surrender on “special conditions”: lay down their arms and go through the ranks of soldiers. The vigilantes refused. They also rejected the “softer” conditions of surrender. Then Captain Ugrinovich began to threaten the wholesale execution of all vigilantes. In response to the threats, the vigilantes decided, with weapons in their hands, to fight their way to a train standing not far from the mines, which was completely ready to depart.

The foray of the vigilantes was so unexpected that the troops could not prevent them from boarding the train. Under the bullets of the Cossacks, jumping into the carriages as they went, the warriors left Gorlovka.

At five o'clock in the evening Gorlovka surrendered. About 300 workers-combatants were killed in these heroic battles, and about the same number were taken prisoner. The remaining vigilantes managed to leave Gorlovka and go home.

Despite the “victory,” the troops hurried to quickly leave Gorlovka, where, as they put it, “every stone is shooting”: they feared a new attack.

The defeat of the workers in the Gorlovka battle decided the fate of the entire uprising in Donbass. The vigilantes returned home, partly on trains, partly on foot, and most of them

was already without weapons. The Grishinites and Avdeevites, who returned home in an organized manner, with weapons in their hands, hid them in safe places until the “next battle” with the tsarist-capitalist system.

Until December 21, the Gorlovka station was still in the hands of the workers. The troops did not want to return to Gorlovka. And only after making sure that the uprising was over, that Gorlovka was empty, an influx of troops and punitive detachments began in it and in other areas of Donbass, committing bloody trials and reprisals against the temporarily defeated workers.

Unforgettable are the high examples of proletarian heroism shown by the advanced workers, participants in the Gorlovka battle. Eight of the Donbass proletarian revolutionaries sentenced to hanging, led by the Bolshevik Tkachenko-Petrenko, refused to sign a request to the Tsar for pardon. For more than a month, the authorities delayed the execution of the sentence, seeking “repentance” from the convicts.

“There are 28 of us (including 8 suicide bombers. - M.K.) did not join the idea (to sign a request to the king. - M.K.) and remained unconvinced... We prefer to be tortured or shot rather than become traitors and traitors to our workers' cause. Oh no! Our enemies will not wait for this,” Tkachenko wrote in his suicide letter.

Thus ended the uprising of Donetsk workers. Although it took place more organized and united than the uprisings in other parts of Russia, it nevertheless suffered the same fate. Isolated from other centers of uprising, weakly connected with the peasant movement, poorly armed, the workers' army could not win the battles. But from the lessons of the uprising in Donbass, as well as other uprisings of 1905 - 1907, the revolution learned to win. And 13-14 years later, the Donetsk workers, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party in the civil war, showed that they had learned not only to fight and attack, but also to win.

Very interesting material from 1936 about the uprising of workers in the Donbass in 1905, with battles for Gorlovka, Debaltsevo, Yasinovataya, Avdeevka and other places well known from recent events.

Insurgent Donbass 1905

From the destruction of taverns and shops, the workers are moving to more organized methods of struggle. In the mines of Donbass, back in 1898, the first Social Democratic leaflet “Letter to the Miners” appeared. In the Shcherbinovsky and Nelepovsky mines, the first revolutionary circles appeared in 1901, in which G.I. Petrovsky worked. Two years later comrade. Artem organizes social democratic cells at the Berestovsky and Bogodukhovsky mines, in Yuzovka. Small groups of Social Democratic workers, 5 to 10 people each, are being organized in other mines. It was during these years that the emergence and rapid growth of the Social Democratic Union of Mining Workers began, which in 1903 alone managed to distribute tens of thousands of revolutionary leaflets among miners and metalworkers. The leaders of the movement are the most advanced layers of Donetsk workers: metal workers, workers of metallurgical and engineering factories in Donbass, and workers of the railway workshops of the Catherine Railway.
It was here that the first Bolshevik party organizations of Donbass emerged. There were Bolshevik groups in Lugansk, Grishin, Enakievo, Popasna. During mainly 1904, they launched extensive agitation and organizational work.
The proletarian Yekaterinoslav had a huge influence on the character and scope of the movement in Donbass. (now Dnepropetrovsk) with its huge metallurgical plants and the oldest and largest Bolshevik organization.
Even before 1905, it organized a number of revolutionary mass protests by workers, strikes, demonstrations, and rallies, sometimes accompanied by real battles with detachments of gendarmes and regular troops.

In response to “Bloody Sunday,” a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and rallies swept across Donbass, attracting even the most backward layers of miners.
The workers of Donbass responded unanimously to the call for the first general political strike in October 1905.
Already on October 7, as soon as the telegram from the Yekaterinoslav strike committee, sent throughout the line, was received, a railway strike began in Donbass. On the same day, the Yasinovataya, Grishino, Yuzovo stations went on strike and traffic along the Ekaterininskaya Road froze.
The first general political railway strike in Donbass lasted two weeks; here she was even more stubborn than in the center. The mass movement swept over the heads of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik leaders from the All-Russian Railway Bureau. Despite the order they gave - to end the strike on October 18 - on the Catherine Road, this main highway of Donbass, the strike continued until October 20, and partially until October 23-24, until the administration satisfied the workers’ demands.
Although this first all-Russian railway strike was formally led by the semi-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik All-Russian Railway Bureau, on the ground, in Yekaterinoslav and Donbass, the leadership of the strike was carried out by Bolshevik committees, which during the strike were able to implement such revolutionary measures as the introduction of an 8-hour working day in many railway workshops, depots and other enterprises.

The workers of Donbass are increasingly taking the path of the most intense political struggle, preparing for an armed uprising as the only way that can radically change their situation.
In contrast to the Mensheviks, who consider a political strike mainly as a means of putting pressure on the existing authorities and their bodies, the Bolshevik organizations of Donbass were able to lead the workers along the path of immediate preparation for an armed uprising.
News coming from the south - from revolutionary Sevastopol - about a new uprising of revolutionary Black Sea sailors further accelerated the process of preparation for an armed uprising.
In November, at the congress of workers of the Catherine Railway (about 700 people were present), convened to hear the report of delegates to the congress of the All-Russian Railway Union, representatives of the Bolsheviks made a special report - on the revolutionary events in Sevastopol, on the heroic battles of sailors with the autocracy. This message had a revolutionary effect on those gathered. As a result, a decision was made: “Recognize the participation of railway workers in the transportation of troops for the stated purpose (i.e., the suppression of an uprising - M.K.) as tantamount to participation in murder, and the railway employees participating in it in one way or another as accomplices in these crimes deserving the strictest public condemnation."

The delegates of this congress went to stations in Donbass with instructions to local organizations to take all measures to prevent the transport of troops to suppress the revolutionary movement. The congress delegates carried Bolshevik slogans and Bolshevik exercises to their seats, and this circumstance further accelerated the course of events brewing in the Donbass.
Workers stopped passing military trains and demanded that the soldiers surrender their weapons. The soldiers, most of whom were returning from the Manchurian front, having taken from there a deep hatred of the tsarist system, unquestioningly handed over their weapons to the workers. In this way, workers acquired the first rifles.
Back in November, under the influence of alarming rumors about a pogrom being prepared by the Black Hundreds, the first workers' self-defense detachment was created in Grishin, where the strongest Bolshevik organization in the Donbass was located. Grishino becomes the de facto center for the preparation of an armed uprising throughout the Donbass.
Leaders of Bolshevik committees very often, at the request of workers of various villages and stations, go to speak at rallies and to lead the revolutionary movement of workers.
In December 1905, the miners of Gorlovka, Sofievsky and Verovsky mines, which were then the most active and advanced in the Donbass, marched in step with the metalworkers and railway workers in December 1905. Here they openly prepare for an armed uprising, collect weapons, and at the Verovsky mines workers seize 150 pounds of steel from the owners to make pikes, which arm the workers' squads.

During the general strike in Donbass, the first councils of workers' deputies are organized. They are created in Lugansk, Yuzovka, Enakievo, at the Voznesensky mines, etc. The influence and power of these first mine councils of workers' deputies in the Donbass were so great that even before the armed uprising and the military seizure of power by workers in individual mines, tsarist power actually ceased to exist. Here, for example, is what the semi-liberal newspaper Vestnik Yuga wrote in November 1905:
“At the Petrovsky mines (Yenakievo station) and its surroundings, at the Verovsky and Sofievsky mines, the order is exemplary and is maintained by the workers themselves. Workers come to their elected deputies not only for advice on purely work-related issues, but even resort to court in family troubles. More Not so long ago, the name "Social Democrat" frightened the workers, but now every worker also wants to call himself by this honorable name. The other day the district council of the local Social Democratic organization was supposed to meet, the workers came in droves...
The solidarity here is complete. When 6 deputies were fired at the Sofievsky mine, all the workers went on strike and the delegates were accepted again...
All the mines and factories in this area elected their deputies, and now there is a council of workers’ deputies.”

In just a few months of the revolution, the class consciousness of Donetsk workers stepped forward as far as a decade of ordinary life could not have done: “... look,” Ilyich wrote in 1905, “how quickly yesterday’s slave straightens up, how the flame of freedom sparkles even in half-extinguished eyes."
The arming of workers occurs openly, in front of the authorities. Powerless to prevent and prevent this, the authorities decide to use the weapons of the workers in the service of the counter-revolution and the Black Hundreds. A tried and tested provocative technique is used: Black Hundred agitators travel around the mines, urging them to “beat the Jews,” revolutionaries, etc. In some places, this agitation was a success among declassed elements and tramps. However, pogroms are quickly prevented by organized workers' self-defense units. The workers now know “who to beat”: the Bolshevik organizations managed to open their eyes to reality.

A new, even more powerful impetus to the militant movement of Donetsk workers was given by the announcement of the December general political strike. On December 7, in Ekaterinoslav, a telegram was received from the center announcing a general political strike. And immediately a telegram with the following content was sent by telegraph to all stations and villages of Donbass, along the Catherine Road: “Today, from 10 o’clock in the morning, a general strike has been declared on all roads and workers. Comrades.”
To lead the general strike in Ekaterinoslav on December 8, a combat strike committee was created, in which the Ekaterinoslav Bolsheviks played a decisive role.

How broad and friendly the militant revolutionary activity of the rebel Donetsk workers took on is shown by the following telegram from police officer Mashevsky to the Yekaterinoslav governor:
“I inform Your Excellency that the workers of the Yuryevsky plant, the employees of the Alchevsk Debaltsevo station formed an armed police and a strike committee chaired by engineer Kharchenko, supporting the anti-government strike, they are disarming everyone traveling on cheap trains, individual soldiers, and police officials.”
Then, on December 14, the Bakhmut police officer telegraphed that “all junction stations, ticket offices, and traffic have been seized by the committee and attempts are being made to take money from post offices and state-owned wine shops. Rifles were taken away from the reserve soldiers traveling on the trains Avdeevka, Grishino, Chaplino, and a demand was made for the disarmament of the police in Debaltsevo.” , the issuance of confiscated weapons, the telephone in Grishin is in the hands of the committee. Almost all the factories cease their activities, workers are arming themselves everywhere. The Nikitovka and Gorlovka stations are guarded by companies, the defeat of the bailiff of Avdeevka is expected, agrarian unrest has begun in the Bantysh economy...".

During the days of December 8-14, workers actively create militant workers' squads. Organized in October and November, as we wrote above, to combat pogroms, workers’ self-defense units in December turned into militant workers’ squads, intensively stocking up on weapons. The squads grew every day: they arose in Grishin, Avdeevka, Enakievo, Yuzovka, Debaltsevo, Yasinovataya, Druzhkovka, Verovka, etc., hundreds of workers joined them. Due to the growth of the detachments, despite the fact that the weapons needed for the detachments were taken away by the workers from the soldiers and police, there was still a shortage of them. The Grishinites sent a representative of the workers to Rostov to buy weapons, who brought a box of revolvers for the first time. More than once Donetsk vigilantes sent their comrades to other cities for weapons.

Weapons were obtained by any means. For example, the Debaltsevo squad was entirely armed with weapons that it had taken from the gendarmes and police.
From the very beginning, a close connection was established between the working combat squads of various villages: they actively helped each other and shared captured weapons. The seizure of weapons belonging to the authorities became more and more widespread. Thus, the workers of Avdeevka managed to seize an entire carriage with cartridges and dynamite, and the Avdeevka workers shared it in a comradely manner with the vigilantes of other stations.
The workers of Debaltsev also captured a lot of explosives for the upcoming battles. “At the Debaltsevo station, during the uprising, 146 pounds of dynamite and 8 pounds of gunpowder were looted. Checkers and revolvers were taken from all Debaltsevo gendarmes. They tried to arrest and disarm me,” reported Lieutenant Colonel Pakhalovich.

Finally, the workers even had... artillery. Back in 1896, for firing on ceremonial days, by order of the authorities, a homemade cannon was made from carriage axles in the railway workshops in Grishin. In the December days, the workers' squad in Grishin adapted this cannon for battles with troops. Due to the lack of shells, the workers fired lead from this cannon. In addition, the workers captured dozens of bombs, gunpowder, dynamite, etc.
To provide themselves with funds for the uprising, the workers seized the station ticket office. As the police officer Fedorenko telegraphed, “Debaltsevo station employees detained the artel worker with 20,000 rubles, forced the money to be returned to the station cash register in order to spend their needs during a further strike. Security was assigned to the cash register” (from the workers. - M.K.).
This is how the Donetsk workers were preparing for an armed uprising and for a grandiose offensive against the tsarist troops, which broke out in mid-December 1905.

By the beginning of the uprising, the workers' fighting squads had completely supplanted and expelled the police, gendarmerie and authorities not only along the Catherine Road, which had been captured even earlier, but also in many villages and stations, becoming the undivided masters of the situation in them. A short telegram from police chief Fedorenko quite clearly depicts the situation in a number of areas by mid-December:
“Debaltseve, Yasinovataya, Avdeevka, Grishina were settled by military squads, joined by peasants from neighboring villages. The troops cannot unite in any way to take the squads. The telephone is cut off. Many police officers are disarmed.”
The first battle between the workers' squads and the tsarist troops took place in Yasinovataya. It was provoked by the military authorities themselves, who decided to begin the defeat of the fighting squads from this station, as the weakest and least prepared.

The Yasinovat workers were indeed armed and organized worse than others. The local workers had almost no weapons, and the commander of the 12th company of the Balaklava Regiment located here, Staff Captain Karamyshev, decided to take advantage of this. On the morning of December 13, having gathered the workers, he announced to them that the station and the entire area were now under heightened security and that they were “prohibited from all gatherings.” A huge crowd of excited workers gathered around him. Staff Captain Karamyshev rushed at the crowd with a saber and ordered the soldiers to disperse it with rifle butts.

The first military victory of the workers' squads inspired them to further attack the tsarist troops. In Avdeevka on December 14, friendship, selected units of the tsarist army galloped out of Avdeevka in disgrace.

The fighting of the squads began violently from the very first day. After the battle in Yasinovataya, the Bakhmut police officer in a panicked telegram to the governor demanded the sending of troops from the Don region: “I ask you to recall 5 companies of the Don region, the situation in the district is most critical.”

Meanwhile, the authorities were preparing a strike on another revolutionary point in Donbass - Gorlovka. A particularly dangerous situation for the government was growing here. A Bolshevik organization worked in Gorlovka, to which comrade was sent from Yenakiev by the local Bolshevik organization to help. Tkachenko-Petrenko. Thanks to the work of the Bolshevik organization in Gorlovka, more than in other places, it was possible to unite the forces of workers - both metalworkers and railway workers, and miners. There was a political strike, they announced it jointly, and they also prepared for battles together.

The authorities knew this very well and sent the largest number of troops here.

But despite the strong workers' organization in Gorlovka, a large working-class region, power continued to remain almost entirely in the hands of the old administration. For the same reason, there were not enough armed workers' squads here. Even before the strike began, a team of 100 dragoons was stationed in Gorlovka, and with the start of the strike another infantry company was sent here. The police are looking for an opportunity to decapitate the workers' movement by arresting their leaders. A real police hunt is being organized for one of them, Kuznetsov. Workers constantly protect him from police raids with a specially designated squad, and wherever Kuznetsov goes, he is constantly accompanied by a worker guard of 15 to 20 armed vigilantes.
At the same time as all the workers, the metal workers of the Gorlovka Machine-Building Plant also went on strike. And when Kuznetsov went on their behalf to present demands to the plant director Loest, the police set up an ambush. Kuznetsov and a group of workers are negotiating with. Loestom; the latter, despite the tactics of “concessions” of other owners, was adamant. Then the workers announced to him that he was under arrest and formed a guard at his door. But Loest had already warned the police in advance. The building is immediately cordoned off by police, the courtyard is occupied by Cossacks and dragoons. In such a situation, Kuznetsov, together with the delegation, went out to the striking workers gathered at the gates of the plant. The dragoons stop the workers trying to break into the factory yard, and the bailiff Nemirovsky invites them to hand over Kuznetsov, tries to break into the crowd in which Kuznetsov is surrounded and protected by a human wall. But the bailiff is immediately thrown back by the workers.

Then the execution of the workers by dragoons begins. Kuznetsov is wounded in the arm and, under the cover of loyal worker guards, manages to leave the factory. The police nevertheless found Kuznetsov bleeding in the hospital where his comrades had brought him. Almost in front of the police, Kuznetsov’s hand was taken away, after which he was immediately arrested and taken to prison.
After the execution of the workers and the arrest of the leader, rage and anger gripped the working masses. It was unanimously decided to give battle to the troops, the police and expel the troops from the Donbass. But Gorlovka is still poorly armed. And that same evening, like the Yasinovatists, the workers of Gorlovka send a call from the Gorlovka strike committee by telegraph along the entire line.
Every village, every station received the following telegram: “Combat squad. We are all without weapons, we demand immediate help from all sides. Committee.”
All workers' committees and fighting squads responded decisively to the call of the Gorlovtsy people. In Enakievo, Grishin, Yuzov, Avdeevka, Verovka, Druzhkovka, and in dozens of other places, combat squads hastily boarded specially formed trains. Where there was no fighting squad yet, the workers hastily armed themselves with whatever they could find: iron rods, sticks, axes, knives, daggers - and also boarded the trains. Echelons of vigilantes passed station after station, and at each one more and more detachments and groups of armed workers landed.

With revolutionary songs and red flags, vigilantes rushed on trains to Gorlovka to help their comrades. Two trains, crowded with vigilante workers from all over the Donbass, arrived on the night of December 17 in Gorlovka.
This was the first All-Donetsk “gathering” of fighting squads, but the “gathering” was not for meetings, but for a battle with the hated autocracy. Many arrived unarmed, but they were rescued by the druzhkovtsy, and in addition, on the same night, the commissioners sent a second time for weapons returned from Taganrog, also bringing rifles and revolvers. All these weapons were immediately distributed to the gathered vigilantes. An operational meeting of the commanders of the assembled squads took place in one of the station rooms. A plan for an attack on the barracks of troops located in Gorlovka was discussed. The squads were divided into separate detachments, detachment commanders, general command, communications, etc. were allocated. They tried to provide for every little detail.
By 8 o'clock in the morning on December 17, the squads had completed the grouping and deployment of their forces. It is difficult to establish exactly how many vigilantes arrived in Gorlovka and whether the Group of arrested participants took part in the uprising in Aleksandrovsk (now Zaporozhye) in 1905, in the famous offensive against the tsarist troops. According to official police reports, up to 4,000 worker vigilantes attacked the troops - it was a whole army, the first revolutionary workers' army. But of these, only about 300 people were armed with rifles and hunting rifles and a small part of the vigilantes had revolvers, while the rest had so-called “edged weapons,” which meant not so much checkers and daggers, but homemade pikes, iron rods, axes, knives etc.

Immediately after the end of the operational meeting of the commanders of the combat squads, at 8 o’clock in the morning, three detachments launched an attack on the barracks. One of them, the most equipped with rifles, shotguns and revolvers, occupied the mine structures, overpasses and rock dumps. The other two detachments were placed in the courtyards, opposite the barracks, behind the fences, and were the first to open fire, concentrating the enemy’s attention and fire on themselves, in order to enable the first, most heavily armed detachment to attack the troops.
The commander of the Gorlovka garrison, Captain Ugrinovich, had already been warned by someone. The troops also met the combatants in full combat readiness. They occupied all the windows and exits.
It was a frosty December morning. The weather was clearly unfavorable to the workers: there was frequent light snow, which soon turned into a blizzard. It was still dark when the vigilantes opened fire on the windows of the barracks. From three sides they persistently fired at the troops who had taken refuge there, who fired back through the windows and fences of the barracks.

The battle lasted about two hours, after which the troops retreated, unable to withstand the fire of the combat squads. Their unnoticed departure from the barracks was facilitated by a snowstorm. The troops hastily left Gorlovka and fled to Yenakievo. When the workers noticed the flight of the dragoons and soldiers, it was already too late; they rushed to pursue the retreating ones, but because of the snowstorm they could not see anything.
A new victory, and a huge one at that, incomparably larger than it was in Yasinovataya and Avdeevka, was won by the workers-combatants. True, this victory was very short-lived: the forces of the workers, even with such a huge number of vigilantes, were still too insufficient and poorly armed.
The retreating troops joined forces with hundreds of Cossacks coming from Yenakiev, who had been called earlier to help the military authorities. Having dismounted, the Cossacks went around through the Ksenyevka farm to the Gorlovka station, in the building of which, under the command of Deinega, there were about 300 - 400 warriors from among the most weakly armed at that time (the most armed detachments went on the offensive on the barracks). Some of the detachments still continued shelling the barracks, in which a group of soldiers with the bailiff Nemirovsky at their head remained who did not have time to retreat; others advanced far into the steppe, pursuing the retreating troops. Due to the snowstorm and the large scattering of the workers' squads, they could no longer unite again. The most armed detachments could not unite with those remaining at the station to jointly repel the Cossacks, and could not even provide assistance to their comrades who were in the station building.

Meanwhile, the Cossacks and returning dragoons and soldiers, having surrounded the station, opened fierce fire on the warriors who had settled there.
Now the vigilantes were locked in, and they were besieged by Cossacks and soldiers. But while the soldiers besieged in the barracks were perfectly armed, the vigilantes locked by them did not even have this. The vigilantes fearlessly defended themselves, but soon the detachment commander Deinega was seriously wounded and died of hemorrhage. The Cossacks came close to the walls of the station.
Workers from the detachments besieging the barracks, hearing the shots, rushed to the station to help their besieged comrades, but were unable to provide assistance, since due to the snowstorm they mostly shot at random. Because of the snowstorm, the warriors of another detachment who were in the field could not approach the station. Thus the workers became isolated from each other. The lack of military experience and knowledge destroyed them. Noticing confusion among the vigilantes holed up at the station, Captain Ugrinovich invited them to surrender on “special conditions”: lay down their arms and go through the ranks of soldiers. The vigilantes refused. They also rejected the “softer” conditions of surrender. Then Captain Ugrinovich began to threaten the wholesale execution of all vigilantes. In response to the threats, the vigilantes decided, with weapons in their hands, to fight their way to a train standing not far from the mines, which was completely ready to depart.
The foray of the vigilantes was so unexpected that the troops could not prevent them from boarding the train. Under the bullets of the Cossacks, jumping into the carriages as they went, the warriors left Gorlovka.
At five o'clock in the evening Gorlovka surrendered. About 300 workers-combatants were killed in these heroic battles, and about the same number were taken prisoner. The remaining vigilantes managed to leave Gorlovka and go home.
Despite the “victory,” the troops hurried to quickly leave Gorlovka, where, as they put it, “every stone is shooting”: they feared a new attack.
The defeat of the workers in the Gorlovka battle decided the fate of the entire uprising in Donbass. The vigilantes returned home, partly on trains, partly on foot, and most of them were already without weapons. The Grishinites and Avdeevites, who returned home in an organized manner, with weapons in their hands, hid them in safe places until the “next battle” with the tsarist-capitalist system.
Until December 21, the Gorlovka station was still in the hands of the workers. The troops did not want to return to Gorlovka. And only after making sure that the uprising was over, that Gorlovka was empty, an influx of troops and punitive detachments began in it and in other areas of Donbass, committing bloody trials and reprisals against the temporarily defeated workers.

Three years later, in December 1908, the participants in the uprising and the seizure of the Catherine Railway were tried. A grandiose trial took place, the peculiarity of which was that almost all the participants in the uprising who were free during these years were, at the insistence of Stolypin, arrested and put on trial. People began to be arrested wherever they were, and they were taken straight from work to prison. 179 people were tried at once. The verdict shocked all of Russia at that time: 32 people were sentenced to death, 12 to indefinite, lifelong hard labor, about 50 people were also sentenced to hard labor for various terms.
Unforgettable are the high examples of proletarian heroism shown by the advanced workers, participants in the Gorlovka battle. Eight of the Donbass proletarian revolutionaries sentenced to hanging, led by the Bolshevik Tkachenko-Petrenko, refused to sign a request to the Tsar for pardon. For more than a month, the authorities delayed the execution of the sentence, seeking “repentance” from the convicts. “28 of us (including 8 suicide bombers. - M.K.) did not join the idea (to sign a request to the Tsar. - M.K.) and remained with our opinion... We prefer it better to be tortured or to be shot, than to become traitors and traitors to our workers' cause. Oh, no! Our enemies will not wait for this," Tkachenko wrote in his suicide letter.
Thus ended the uprising of Donetsk workers. Although it took place more organized and united than the uprisings in other parts of Russia, it nevertheless suffered the same fate. Isolated from other centers of uprising, weakly connected with the peasant movement, poorly armed, the workers' army could not win the battles. But from the lessons of the uprising in Donbass, as well as other uprisings of 1905 - 1907, the revolution learned to win. And 13-14 years later, the Donetsk workers, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party in the civil war, showed that they had learned not only to fight and attack, but also to win.

https://prometej.info/blog/istoriya/vosstavshij-donbass/ - full link

PS. It is quite natural that such a background led to the fact that after the October Revolution, the workers’ Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic arose in the Donbass, led by Stalin’s friend, Comrade Artem. The DKR played a big role in the defeat of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism in Ukraine and the preservation of Ukraine as part of Soviet Russia.
Therefore, the hatred of Ukrainian nationalists for Donbass is historically due not only to their recent defeats, but to the events of a century ago, when workers and miners, who started with local uprisings, created their own republic, which torpedoed the attempts of Ukrainian nationalists to create a full-fledged “Anti-Russia” on the territory of the former territories of the Russian Empire.

In January 1905, a bourgeois-democratic revolution began in Russia, caused by contradictions in political and economic development. Its main tasks were the elimination of the remnants of serfdom - landownership, monarchy, and the unresolved national question. One of the most important issues was limiting the power of tsarism, adopting a Constitution, and forming legislative and executive powers independent of the royal family. The powerful workers', peasants' and national movements, the emergence of Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, the opposition activities of the liberal bourgeoisie and the democratic intelligentsia forced the authorities to make concessions. In October 1905, Russian Tsar Nicholas II proclaimed a Manifesto, in which the people of Russia were granted certain political and democratic freedoms - citizens receiving voting rights and participation in elections to the State Duma, the activities of political parties, freedom of speech and assembly. However, tsarism retained control over the Duma and the government.

The working class of Donbass took an active part in the revolutionary struggle. Workers of the region took part in the General Political Revolution; armed protests took place in the cities of Avdeevka, Yasinovataya, Gorlovka, and Bakhmut.

Just like in other large cities of Russia, new bodies of revolutionary power were created in Donbass. In October - December 1905, Soviets of Workers' Deputies arose in Enakievo, Mariupol, and Yuzovka. They operated at railway stations, at a number of factories and mines. The Soviets became a new form of organization of the working population of Donbass, a new democratic government. These were administrative and strike committees. They spontaneously introduced an 8-hour working day, set prices for food in mine and factory shops, and organized the protection of the population from pogromists and hooligans. Elections were carried out on the basis of direct open voting of all participants, and all political revolutionary parties were represented.

The centers of armed struggle in December 1905 were railway stations and workers' settlements with metallurgical and machine-building factories. To lead the uprising, fighting squads were created that opposed the tsarist troops.

The center of events was Gorlovka, where on December 16, 1905, police and troops opened fire on striking workers at a machine-building plant. 18 people were killed and 50 wounded. Workers from the cities of Donbass, mainly railway workers, arrived to help Gorlovka. On December 17, the vigilantes managed to repel the troops, but the forces were unequal and on December 24

Government troops occupied all junction stations in the Donbass, declared a state of emergency and banned any strikes. The participants in the uprising were tried, 8 out of 131 participants were hanged, the rest received various punishments.

The revolution was suppressed, but its legacy was, albeit limited, the power of the State Duma, as a legislative body, and a system of political organizations - parties. Political bourgeois organizations, common intelligentsia, and the working class were formed.

The party of the big bourgeoisie and landowners was pleased with the Manifesto of October 17 and, as a sign of this, took the name “Union of October 17.” The Octobrists did not want the revolution to continue and stood on the fact that in the peasant question landownership should be preserved. The liberal bourgeoisie and intelligentsia formed into the “Constitutional Democratic Party”. The Cadets, as they were called, saw the ideal in the English monarchy, where royal power was combined with constitutional democracy.

The Union of the Russian People party represented landowners who did not want change and demanded the protection of autocracy, Orthodoxy, and (Russian) nationality in Russia. Despite the reactionary views, the party enjoyed great support from citizens. In Donbass, its branch was the largest. Thus, in large cities of the region its number reached from 900 to 1200 people. While the Octobrists in Mariupol numbered only 152 people.

The Raznochinsky intelligentsia supported the Social Revolutionaries party (SRs), who used radical terrorist methods in the struggle. After the revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries advocated solving the agrarian question through “socialization,” according to which land was transferred to the peasants by special committees. The workers were led by the RSDLP, or Social Democrats (Social Democrats), and in the Donbass there were up to 3 thousand of them.

Jewish parties - the Bund and the Zionist Socialists - also operated in Donbass.

Deputies from Donbass were also delegated to the First and Second State Dumas from political parties. In addition to representatives of the landowners and bourgeoisie, peasants and middle circles of the population were represented, who very actively participated in the work of the Duma. In the IV State Duma, G. Petrovsky, elected from the Mariupol Social Democrats, decisively defended the interests of the workers. Donbass, along with the largest industrial centers of Russia, became the most active political region. Strikes and strikes attracted almost 40 thousand people.

The peasant movement also intensified. It was a consequence of the Stolypin agrarian reform in 1906-1907. The main content of the reform was the exit of peasants from the community, the consolidation of their plots into private ownership and the formation of plot farms (farms and cuts).

Allotment farms were a counterbalance to the mass of interstitial communal lands, the number of which in the Ekaterinoslav province reached 97%. After the publication of the Decree of November 9, 1906. the pace of formation of parcel land ownership accelerated. Since the more prosperous peasants, when leaving the community, demanded better land for themselves, the exit of the rest was carried out by force. The poor peasantry in the community saw the preservation of the community as protection and collective help. Communal farming was preserved, and peasants had the right to redistribute their plots according to their souls, as well as to use their striped plots. Bran and farm farming developed. The bran farm was one in which one plot was allocated at a greater or lesser distance from the village, and the peasant owner lived in the village. When creating a farmstead, the peasant allocated his plot in a certain place and settled in it as a farmstead, running his farm as a small private owner. The reform strengthened the differentiation of the peasant class and led to the growth of wealthy and middle peasants in the countryside.

A significant part of the peasantry could not withstand the reform, lost their lands, landless and land-poor peasants abandoned the village and went to the city.

Bourgeois transformations in the countryside led to a significant increase in the number of private farm owners, which contributed to an increase in the level of agricultural production. Already in 1908, the average spring grain harvest was 113.6% compared to the average harvest for 1903-1907. The increase in winter grain yield in 1915 reached 201.8% compared to the average harvest for 1910-1914. An important result of the reform was the expansion of the sown area of the province, and from 1908 to 1915 it exceeded 218%.

By 1915, the territorial and administrative division of Donbass was finally formed. Bakhmut district had 22 volosts, 281 rural communities, 1 city (Bakhmut) and 930 settlements. Mariupol district was divided into 30 volosts, 164 rural communities, 1 city (Mariupol) and 562 settlements. More than a quarter of the population of the Ekaterinoslav province lived in Bakhmut and Mariupol districts, which, according to the 1897 census, had over 3.5 million people.

The new revolutionary upsurge in Russia, which began in 1912, was interrupted by the First Imperialist War.

38 countries with a population of over 1.5 billion people took part in World War I. Main opponents: England, France, Russia, Serbia, Japan, later Italy, Romania and the USA. They were opposed by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Türkiye and Bulgaria.

The causes of the war were the contradictions between the countries of Europe, the countries that carried out the initial division of the world and missed this process. The German Empire, created in 1871, sought to make up for lost time and take away colonies from England and France. In this regard, Germany's contradictions with Great Britain and France intensified. The United States and Japan have become increasingly active on the world stage, wanting to expand the spheres of their political and economic influence.

The main one was the Anglo-German contradiction, in which Germany wanted to take away her colonies from England, as well as the Franco-German antagonism over Alsace and Lorraine, disputed territories on the border of the two countries. The contradictions between the European powers in the Balkans and the Middle East were strong. Germany tried to expand its influence in the region, Austria-Hungary laid claim to Serbia, and Russia sought to maintain its position in the Balkans. All countries were concerned about the issue of control over the straits.

The reason for the war was the murder of the heir to the Austrian throne by a Serbian nationalist. Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to Serbia, and on July 15, 1914 declared war on it, despite Serbia's compliance. Russia, as the guarantor of Serbian independence, began a general mobilization. Germany demanded to stop it and, in response to Russia’s negative response, declared war on it. France and England, allies of Russia, also entered the war.

The war was fought on two fronts - Western (in France and Belgium) and Eastern (against Russia). Germany planned to defeat France with a lightning strike and then transfer troops to the Eastern Front. But the Russian offensive thwarted this plan.

Mobilization began in Russia, enterprises switched to military orders. The war became a difficult test for the residents of Donbass. The situation in Donbass during the First World War deteriorated sharply.

During the war, prices for consumer goods began to rise rapidly. The centralized supply of cities began to be disrupted, prices for goods in the markets increased 3-6 times compared to pre-war.

From the second half of 1915, the labor movement intensified in the region, and strikes of Donetsk workers became widespread. In 1915-1917, the number of strikes in the Donbass and the number of participants in them increased. Thus, 40 thousand people took part in the strike of workers in the Gorlovsko-Shcherbinovsky district. The workers demanded a 50% increase in wages, the abolition of overtime work, and improved living conditions. The administration of factories and mines rejected these demands.

Enterprises worked for the war, and interruptions in work were considered by the authorities as undermining the country's defense. The strikes of the war years were particularly persistent. The activities of legal organizations, trade unions, and cooperatives did not stop.

During World War I, the activities of zemstvo and city unions intensified. Local branches organized industrial enterprises working for the war, and Red Cross committees. Various public organizations operated: the Russian Technological Society, the Russian Medical Society. Jewish organizations created societies to help the Jewish poor and Jewish refugees.

Since 1915, opposition sentiments intensified among liberal organizations, local cadet and Octobrist committees, and fear of revolution grew. In this regard, there was growing criticism of the local administration, which was unable to lead the country out of the crisis. On the contrary, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin in 1916. 1917 set a course for the collapse of the front, convincing soldiers and former peasants not to fight for capitalists and landowners, transforming the world imperialist war into a civil war based on “fraternization” with the Germans, the same peasants. These actions, coupled with the anti-war sentiments of the population, defeats at the fronts, active criticism of the tsarist government and Nicholas I himself, led to the destruction of state power and increased the revolutionary intensity.

In the 19th century XX century Donbass from uninhabited, sparsely populated lands has turned into the largest industrial coal and metallurgical center in Russia, surpassing other regions of the country in terms of the pace of development and concentration of production and the working class. At the same time, the underdevelopment of the social sphere, democratic institutions, the predatory use of natural resources by foreigners, the brutal exploitation of the working class and its lack of rights created the ground for a revolution that was destructive for the state.

Donbass in a whirlwind of wars and revolutions

What consequences did the First World War have for the region?

Revolutionary Donbass.

Residents of the region during the Civil War

They walk into the distance with a mighty step...

- Who else is there? Come out!

This is the wind with a red flag

Played out ahead...

A.Blok “Twelve”

In this lesson you will learn:

1) talk about facts related to the development of our region;

2) name the names of prominent figures of the civil war in Donbass;

3) give a short description of the main events and formulate your own value judgments;

4) work with a variety of historical sources - documents, photographs.

Events of the first Russian revolution (1905-1907) in Donbass.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire was one of the largest states in the world. Most of the residents were employed in agriculture. The country developed rapidly. But the life of the common people remained too difficult at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was a crop failure, economic problems due to which factories stopped working, and unemployment grew.

But the government is not yet used to talking to the people. Thousands of people gathered together and walking towards the royal palace - this is for the king and ministers

meant one thing - rebellion. And there could be only one answer - to shoot, to suppress. And the workers, believing in the good king, went to him with their families, in festive clothes. During the shooting of a peaceful demonstration on January 9, 1905, many old people, women, and children died. This day went down in Russian history under the name “Bloody Sunday.”

Along with ordinary Russians, faith in the good Tsar perished on this day.

The news of the execution quickly spread throughout all regions of Russia. Angry workers armed themselves. In Russia by this time there were not only workers’ circles, but also parties. The parties (numerous associations of like-minded people) included professional revolutionaries, workers and all sympathizers. In 1889, the RSDLP party, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, appeared in Minsk; in 1903, in London, it split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

These parties were called workers for the reason that it was on the workers that the revolutionaries pinned their main hopes. The workers lived in poor conditions, they had nothing to lose except their chains, as they said at the time. Since the end of the 19th century, Russian workers have celebrated May 1 - International Workers' Day: they gathered outside the city, in nature, on the so-called. May days, talked, celebrated, sang songs, listened to party lecturers. The lecturers told them about socialism.

At the heart of all socialist ideas is the dream of a society of equal people - socialism.

Under socialism, everyone must work to the limit of their strength and capabilities. Having worked according to his ability, a person should receive wages according to his work. This way people will create a society of unlimited wealth. And the main thing is that in this society everyone will work honestly. You don't have to count who did how much. The money will disappear. You come to the store, take it as needed. Such a society is called communism. And the socialist party will later be called communist. And the goal is also communism.

Ordinary people reasoned: in order for it to be fair today, everything must be taken away from the rich and divided equally. Start with this. So that no one else would take away the results of a worker’s labor, and the wages would be fair.

The Bolsheviks were engaged in agitation, i.e. spreading their ideas in cities and villages. Many peasants lived very poorly, they did not have enough land to cultivate, but the noble landowners had a lot of it. Therefore, the peasants expressed their disagreement with the structure of the state by destroying the estates of the landowners and appropriating their land. The revolution of 1905 also affected the peasants: peasant uprisings swept across Russia.

Barricade battles began in cities - streets were blocked with large rubbish and turned into fortresses to fight government troops. There were serious battles in Moscow. But very often the army refused to shoot at the people. During 1905-1906 Entire regiments and even ships (the battleship Potemkin and the cruiser Ochakov) went over to the side of the rebels, because they served in the tsarist army

yesterday's peasants and workers. This behavior of the army - not only soldiers, but also officers - was the most alarming for the government.

The government and the entire royal court realized that it was time to move to fundamental changes in government - to attract more smart people to management. The country received its first Constitution - the basic law of the state. In 1906, the legislative body, the State Duma, met for its first meeting. True, not everyone received the right to vote - women and the very poor did not have it, but a start had been made.

The revolution reached its highest level during the December armed uprising, one of the main areas of which was the Donbass, where militant workers' squads disarmed police and soldiers. The workers elected their own authorities - the Soviets. On December 16, 1905, the tsarist authorities tried to arrest the Gorlovka Council of Workers' Deputies. A battle ensued. Working fighting squads from Enakievo, Alchevsk, Debaltsevo, Lugansk and other cities (about four thousand people) arrived in Gorlovka. A small detachment remained to defend the station where the rebel headquarters was located, the rest moved to the dragoon barracks and forced them to retreat into the field towards Yenakievo. New military units sent to help the Gorlovka garrison captured the station and defeated the workers who were on the waste heap of mine No. 1

Donbass in a whirlwind of wars and revolutions

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire was one of the largest states

peace. Most of the residents were employed in agriculture. The country developed rapidly. But the life of the common people remained too difficult at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was a crop failure, economic problems due to which factories stopped working, and unemployment grew.

The impetus for changes in the country was given by the revolution of 1905. It began on Sunday, January 9, 1905, with a peaceful march of thousands of St. Petersburg workers. They walked to the Winter Palace to present the Tsar with a letter telling them about their misfortunes. But the government is not yet used to talking to the people. Thousands of people gathered together and marching towards the royal palace - this meant one thing for the king and ministers - rebellion. And there could be only one answer - to shoot, to suppress. And the workers, believing in the good king, went to him with their families, in festive clothes. During the shooting of a peaceful demonstration on January 9, 1905, many old people, women, and children died. This day went down in the history of Russia under the name "Bloody Sunday." Along with ordinary Russians, faith in the good Tsar perished on this day.

These parties were called workers for the reason that it was the workers

the revolutionaries had their main hopes. The workers lived in poor conditions, they had nothing to lose except their chains, as they said at the time. Since the end of the 19th century, Russian workers have celebrated May 1 - International Workers' Day: they gathered outside the city, in nature, on the so-called. May days, talked, celebrated, sang songs, listened to party lecturers. The lecturers told them about socialism. At the heart of all socialist ideas is the dream of a society of equal people - socialism. Under socialism, everyone must work to the limit of their strength and capabilities. Having worked according to his ability, a person should receive wages according to his work. This way people will create a society of unlimited wealth. And the main thing is that in this society everyone will work honestly. You don't have to count who did how much. The money will disappear. You come to the store, take it as needed. Such a society is called communism. AND the socialist party would later be called the communist party.

And the goal is also communism. Ordinary people reasoned: what would be fair for

today, everything needs to be taken away from the rich and divided equally. Start with this. So that no one else would take away the results of a worker’s labor, and the wages would be fair.

There were serious battles in Moscow. But very often the army refused to shoot at the people. During 1905-1906 Entire regiments and even ships (the battleship Potemkin and the cruiser Ochakov) went over to the side of the rebels, because yesterday’s peasants and workers served in the tsarist army. This behavior of the army - not only soldiers, but also officers - was the most alarming for the government.

The government and the entire royal court realized that it was time to move to the indigenous

changes in government management - to attract more smart people to management . The country received its first Constitution - the basic law of the state. In 1906. The legislative body, the State Duma, gathered for its first meeting. True, not everyone received the right to vote - women and the very poor did not have it, but a start had been made.

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the workers of Donbass also prepared for armed struggle and created fighting squads. Councils of workers' deputies and fighting squads were created in cities: Yuzovka, Grishino, Gorlovka, Avdeevka, Enakievo, Mariupol, Debaltsevo. The revolution reached its highest level during the December armed uprising, one of the main areas of which was the Donbass, where militant workers' squads disarmed police and soldiers. The workers elected their own authorities - the Soviets. On December 16, 1905, the tsarist authorities tried to arrest the Gorlovka Council of Workers' Deputies.

A battle ensued. Working fighting squads from Enakievo, Alchevsk, Debaltsevo, Lugansk and other cities (about four thousand people) arrived in Gorlovka. A small detachment remained to defend the station where the rebel headquarters was located, the rest moved to the dragoon barracks and forced them to retreat into the field towards Yenakievo. New military units sent to help the Gorlovka garrison captured the station and defeated the workers who were on the waste heap of mine No. 1. The forces turned out to be unequal.

The rebels were forced to stop fighting. Despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the brutal persecution of participants in the revolution, the struggle of the masses did not stop. In 1906, strikes by Donbass workers continued, and clashes between strikers and police occurred. Kramatorsk became the center of revolutionary rallies. They were attended by

peasants of nearby villages, workers of many mines and factories.

In 1907, the revolution was suppressed by the tsarist government, its participants

Thanks to the flexible government policy and the efforts of Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, the vast region from the Seversky Donets to the Azov region has turned into the largest industrial center in Europe, sometimes called the “Russian Ruhr” (developed region of Germany). It was at this time that Donbass formed into a single interconnected economic region, covering Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and partly Kherson provinces and the Don Army Region. All this was part of the Russian Empire. These territories were then called Southern Russia or Novorossiya.

At the beginning of the last century, Alexander Blok, having visited Donbass, called it New America - for the unprecedented speed of development, the entrepreneurial spirit of managers and the mixing of nationalities in a single “melting pot”. However, the rapid development of our region was interrupted by wars and revolutions.