White Movement
218-584: Green armies The Tambov Rebellion of 1920–1922 was one of the largest and best-organized peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik government during the Russian Civil War . The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and part of the Voronezh Oblast , less than 500 kilometres (300 mi) southeast of Moscow. In Soviet historiography , the rebellion
436-484: A "nation in arms" and failed. There were just over a million red soldiers at the end of 1918, 3 million in 1919, 5 million at the end of 1920, and 6 million in 1921. They were mainly forcibly recruited peasants. There was resistance among the Communists to the massive recruitment of peasants. For many, their army of loyal workers would become a force largely made up of an element that was alien and hostile to them,
654-551: A collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Krylenko . At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin
872-758: A combination of mass terror, propaganda and flooding rebel areas with troops. Some scholars credit the Green movement with indirectly forcing the Communist Party to change its economic strategy in 1921 (see New Economic Policy ), and yet, while the Greens certainly contributed to changes in Bolshevik policy, the extent of their influence is open to debate. It is far less contestable that the New Economic Policy – along with increased rainfall – quelled
1090-575: A commander in the Red Army. This is regarded as a precondition of the Soviet partisans ' strategy in their World War II campaign against the Nazi invasion. The Union of Working Peasants (Russian: Союз трудового крестьянства ) was a local political organization that emerged from the rebellion in 1920. The organization was led by the former Social-Revolutionary politician Aleksandr Antonov . The goal of
1308-565: A common border between Japanese controlled areas and the Soviet Far East and Mongolia . The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of the Mongolian People's Republic and Manchukuo , disputed the boundaries and accused the other side of border violations. This resulted in a series of escalating border skirmishes and punitive expeditions , including the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan , and culminated in
1526-523: A defensive stance: incapable and unwilling to march on Moscow, they hoped to remove the Bolshevik state's central influence. The greens were always hostile to the Whites, which is why their uprisings against the reds only became massive after ensuring the defeat of the Whites. Many White officers were members of the former Tsarist Nobility, and had lost the land they had or could inherit in the peasant revolution of 1917. With deeply entrenched classism against
1744-640: A few hundred to 50,000 fighters. Apart from the weapons that Red deserters brought with them, the Greens stole war material from defeated Bolshevik soldiers, from Bolshevik supply buildings, and from abandoned garrisons of the former Imperial Russian Army . They incited armed resistance to Bolshevik institutions in nearby villages and towns, bragging of peasant victories and recruiting new soldiers, sometimes by force. They formed guerrilla bands, which conducted highly mobile guerrilla warfare , attacking Bolshevik communication systems, mills , railways and factories. They also organized detachments numerically comparable to
1962-405: A few rifles were available, this was partly done with pitchforks and clubs. Other villages soon joined in the uprising against the Soviet authorities, and succeeded in repelling the Red Army. The peasants rebels, after their first success, attempted to capture Tambov , the capital of the governorate. There, however, they were scattered by Red machine guns barely ten kilometers from their target. It
2180-418: A further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million prisoners of war (POW) dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Officials at
2398-418: A group of soldiers through the countryside, enlisting village inhabitants and deserters from the Red Army along the way. The leaders would enter a village and make an announcement, employing simple messages and vague, reactionary goals in their rhetoric to rouse enthusiasm. They often exaggerated Bolshevik weakness and opposition victories as a means to convince listeners to join. By keeping the objectives simple,
SECTION 10
#17327653743992616-549: A higher level of organization than most peasant uprisings. For instance, Aleksandr Antonov 's Green army in Tambov had a medical staff, reinforcement brigades, and a complex system of communication and intelligence that employed women, children, and the elderly. Notable Green movements also developed in the regions of Novgorod , Tula , Ryazan , Tver , Voronezh , Kostroma , Syzran , Gomel , Kursk , Bryansk and Oryol , among many others. Estimations of Green forces ranged from
2834-447: A hundred times as many tanks . The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in
3052-454: A major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918, the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918, Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918, Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918,
3270-517: A more strategic than ideological effort against the Reds. White deserters joined their cause and came to lead bands of peasants, which served as a pretext for the Bolsheviks to exaggerate the relations between the two elements. More likely to follow aggressive rhetoric and promises of violent revenge, peasants tended to reject leaders with purely political or more moderate goals, that is, any close to
3488-526: A plane, armored trains and chemical weapons left over from World War I stockpiles. On 31 May, seven armored vehicles commanded by General Ivan Fedko surprised 3,000 rebels in the village of Dve Sestritsy and dispersed them with heavy casualties. Two infantry brigades and one veteran cavalry brigade under General Grigori Kotovski were assigned to the Tambov sector. During the first two weeks of May, 15,000 Red Army officers concentrated in Tambov to prepare for
3706-659: A popular uprising against the Bolsheviks to obtain victory, but usually most of the population was hostile to both sides and indifferent to who won the war. Wrangel was the only White general to realize the mistake. He knew that the war would not be won without successfully winning over the peasants, workers and national minorities to their side. Despite this, his subordinates in Crimea behaved like an occupying army, perpetrating all manner of arbitrariness and institutionalizing corruption. The Greens collaborated several times with other opposition groups, such as anarchists and SRs, in
3924-607: A possible enemy. According to the British historian Orlando Figes , at the climax of the civil war Lenin played pragmatically into the Red Army's advantages, in the form of a better organized but smaller army. Optimally disciplined, equipped and supplied, the force exerted less pressure on Rural areas by demanding less requisitions or levies and causing fewer peasant rebellions. They would also put less pressure on factory workers. Furthermore, it would not be made up mainly of peasants but rather workers, more loyal and motivated to fight for
4142-545: A stable nucleus. By 1925, this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Even in American terms
4360-521: A surrender the following day although some Japanese units continued to fight for several more days. A proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido , the second largest Japanese island, was originally planned to be part of the territory to be taken but it was cancelled. Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by
4578-545: A unit of Bolshevik militants, a machine gun platoon, the Volga Infantry Brigade (which had arrived in January from Saratov ), and the 2nd Cheka regiment, and it quickly collapsed. The rebels' goal was achieved: an artillery cannon with two or three hundred rounds, eleven machine guns, four hundred rifles, one hundred thousand ammunition, eighty telephones and 50 versts of cable. On 24 April, they gathered in
SECTION 20
#17327653743994796-409: Is estimated to be around 15–20% per month for the fall of 1921. Relatively few were released or executed, "barely" 15,000 were shot. However, mass executions of suspected villagers and prisoners were frequent in the villages. Some villages were burned to the ground. The properties confiscated from the arrested and exiled families were given to supporters or collaborators of the regime. The activities of
5014-552: The Battle of Warsaw , where Lenin's project to expand the revolution to Berlin or Budapest and then further west by military invasion was ultimately fruitless. Westerners wanted to surround Russia with a belt that prevented the further spread of Marxist and Leftist fervor, with a strong independent Poland being key in that plan and acting as one of the causes of the Polish-Soviet war : first encouraging Polish expansionism to
5232-625: The Don and Kuban Cossacks , who were initially more interested in obtaining their own independence. For their part, Ukraine and Finland were in the process of becoming independent, but the Whites refused to recognize their secession. Only the violent Bolshevik repression of the Cossacks in early 1918 made it possible to win them over to the White cause. After the October Revolution ,
5450-485: The German capital, Berlin . Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities. Officially, the Red Army lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) ( mostly captured ). The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). Of
5668-543: The Gulag . During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and
5886-906: The Imperial Japanese Army ), the doctrine was not used. Only in the Second World War did deep operations come into play. The Red Army was involved in armed conflicts in the Republic of China during the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) , the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang (1934), when it was assisted by White Russian forces, and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937) in Northwestern China . The Red Army achieved its objectives; it maintained effective control over
6104-821: The Livny rebellion , easily put down during August 1918 . Also included is the Izhevsk–Votkinsk Uprising of that year and what is considered the first true vostante , the Chapan rebellion , which broke out on the banks of the Volga, in the districts of Karsun , Syzran , Sengilei and Stavropol in 1919. It should be mentioned that the Kuban and Don Cossacks and the tribes of Caucasus rose up in 1920, forming their own peasant guerrillas. The latter reached more than 30,000 rebels in arms. They remained very active until
6322-703: The New Economic Policy . The Russian sociologist and contemporary witness Pitirim Sorokin even concluded that the insurgents had forced the NEP by their actions. The new policy relied more on a natural tax on actual production instead of on compulsory collection of agricultural products. In the military field it is mentioned that the Soviet Army Commander Mikhail Frunze was impressed by the guerillas' resistance to regular forces. He therefore began studying guerrilla tactics as
6540-589: The October Revolution , since Vladimir Lenin 's Decree on Land legalized the expropriation of property. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks had problems in maintaining control of the governorate. Unlike in the cities, the Bolsheviks had hardly any supporters in the rural regions, where in the elections of 1917 the Socialist Revolutionary Party had won large majorities. In March 1918, the Bolshevik delegates in Tambov were even thrown out of
6758-656: The Reds ( Bolsheviks ) and the Whites ( Royalists ). In reality, beyond the military confrontations between the Red Army and the various units that made up a fairly heteroclite white army , the most important thing was what happened in the rear of the most important front lines. The Bolsheviks initially believed that they could easily defeat the Greens, treating them as a hopeless cause both in their propaganda and in their military strategies. Instead of focusing armed attention on
Tambov Rebellion - Misplaced Pages Continue
6976-583: The Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922. The Green armies were semi-organized local militias that opposed the Bolsheviks , Whites , and foreign interventionists , and fought to protect their communities from requisitions or reprisals carried out by third parties. The Green armies were politically and ideologically neutral, but at times associated with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party . The Green armies had at least tacit support throughout much of Russia. However, their primary base,
7194-732: The Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), removing Russia from the First World War. Freed from international obligations, the Red Army confronted an internecine war against a variety of opposing anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies , efforts to restore
7412-621: The Russian Provisional Government of 1917. "They prefer to fight a desperate and lonely war on their own, rather than to help the oppressors of the past [the Whites] defeat the oppressors of the present [the reds].” A union network emerged in the villages, replacing the Soviets and helping provide supplies to the rebels. Each village was responsible for mobilizing, feeding and equipping their own units. The Church and
7630-610: The Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 (three days after the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the same day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki , while also being exact three months after the surrender of Germany). It was the largest campaign of the Soviet–Japanese War , which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace following
7848-964: The United States . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials ($ 180 billion in the 2020 money value): over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 14,015 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 2,908 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,400 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that
8066-575: The Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov ) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow , at Stalingrad , Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing
8284-502: The Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive , Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps ". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions . In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by
8502-587: The brigade and regimental levels. The commissars also had the task of spying on commanders for political incorrectness . In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically unreliable Red Army units, to shoot anyone who retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Joseph Stalin reintroduced the blocking policy and penal battalions with Order 227 . The Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919 occurred at
8720-532: The death penalty . Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old Imperial Russian Army , who were employed as military advisors ( voenspetsy ). The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages. As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were former tsarists . By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 non-commissioned officers . When
8938-632: The left SRs , although only at the beginning because later they were also repressed following the Left SR Uprising . According to the anarchists, both sought to subjugate the people through the state. Lenin also ordered the Bolshevik Party itself to be purged to get rid of potentially unfair or useless elements. In parallel there was an exorbitant growth of the Party, distancing the bases from its leaders. The first purge took place in
Tambov Rebellion - Misplaced Pages Continue
9156-400: The summary execution of "civilians". The rebels responded with assassination attempts on Tukhachevsky and Ovseyenko, and the kidnapping and shooting of family members of members of the Party and Red Army. On 6 May, Tukhachevsky announced his pacification campaign. That month a large army of between 50,000 and 100,000 Red soldiers reached the southern part of the oblast. The plan was to "flood
9374-407: The triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction." The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) can be divided into three periods: At the start of the civil war, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments . The civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved
9592-744: The "Second Soviet-Finnish War") which was a conflict fought by Finland and Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with
9810-499: The "home front". Among the new measures was the dispatch of officials to the farms of central Russia to collect supplies for the Red Army and start the construction of the socialist economy, by any means necessary. The aim was to requisition grain , cattle and horses , recruit young people to the army, and punish villages suspected of harboring deserters. The farmers' first reaction was to bury their grain, feed it to cattle, or clandestinely distill it into alcohol . In response,
10028-524: The "local peasant revolution". Thus, what in most cases began as small revolts against the requisitions, the incompetent and brutal response of the local communists turned into large rebellions. The first collectivizations also generated great resistance due to forced transfers and the new ways of life that were imposed. Many units and inspectors exceeded their powers, looting houses and murdering villagers. They harshly repressed any sign of resistance. All of this contributed to widespread resentment against
10246-539: The "populicide" of Vendée , which found its climax in the " infernal columns ". The Red Terror was much more systematic, widespread and effective than the White Terror . Any opposition, real or potential, was mercilessly repressed, setting the tone for future civil wars of the 20th century. The prison population of the Chekas were "a reduced version of society itself", they included all kinds of people and there
10464-466: The 1929 Field Regulations and became codified in the 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The Great Purge of 1937–1939 and the 1941 Red Army Purge removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky himself and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned. Thus, at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 ( major border conflicts with
10682-542: The 1932–1939 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts . The Red Army, with support from Mongolian forces, overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army and local Chinese forces supporting them. The Soviets advanced on the continent into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , Mengjiang (the northeast section of present-day Inner Mongolia which was part of another puppet state) and via an amphibious operation
10900-515: The 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. The official grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists
11118-646: The All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin . On 2 September 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters, the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel . On
SECTION 50
#173276537439911336-623: The Army. The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating command and administration of the army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko , commissar for
11554-636: The Bolshevik Revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labour until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make
11772-445: The Bolshevik detachments in charge of requisitioning grain or repressing the villagers. This lack of coordination was, in addition to their poor weapons and training, ultimately decisive in their defeat. They were organized in two armies divided into a total of 21 regiments. Their use of guerrilla warfare was based on the old tactic of launching surprise attacks and fleeing immediately afterwards, thanks to their superior knowledge of
11990-428: The Bolsheviks (consequently, Bolsheviks who fell into their hands were assassinated and government or Party buildings razed). Only as some successful movements became more complex and territorially broad did the Greens present a political program, an adaptation of SR ideas. Russia rapidly polarized during 1917. Very soon, large masses of the population were in favor of smaller and less organized revolutionary groups than
12208-413: The Bolsheviks for their forced requisitions, which had put them at the limit of survival, and for the forced levies that had created numerous fugitives. In the summer of 1919, Antonov fled to the forest and formed a gang that murdered several Bolshevik activists. This is how the first anti-Bolshevik guerrilla movements arose, made up of Red Army deserters, Socialist-Revolutionaries and peasants who resisted
12426-443: The Bolsheviks organized a 'supply army' of 80,000 men tasked with forcibly requisitioning grain surpluses. Half were unemployed workers from Petrograd who were looking for a fixed salary and to keep some of the loot. The rest were criminals, other unemployed and ex-soldiers. They formed undisciplined troops, known as prodotriady ( Russian : продотряды ), who did not hesitate to steal vital reserves, seed and other possessions from
12644-410: The Bolsheviks were forced to withdraw from a region by guerrilla harassment they tended to take hostages in towns and cities and execute them once they were safe in territory under their rule. On the other hand, the Reds did not hesitate to suppress them with machine guns , tanks , armored cars , armored trains , heavy cannons , observation airplanes and poison gases leftovers from the arsenals of
12862-747: The Bolsheviks were holding out with 120,000 soldiers in the Urals (eastern front), 180,000 in the Chernozem region (southern front), 35,000 in Pskov (northern front) and 130,000 in Belarus (western front). In July 1918, there were 40 to 50 thousand "international combatants", made up of Chinese , Romanian , Polish , Czech and Austro - Hungarian leftists, not including the Latvian Rifles . The Bolshevik forces were militarily fragile, as proven after
13080-420: The Bolsheviks, the anarchists and Left SRs . The Great War had encouraged the peasants and workers to follow a revolutionary path, so Lenin proposed to turn the "imperialist war" into a "civil war." The greens were driven by the ideal of the SR "black division", "a division of all lands according to the number of mouths to be fed in each family", not for the broader nationalization and collectivization of
13298-441: The Cheka, the incorporation of thousands of locals into the Communist Party (with the benefits that it implied) and the concessions of the New Economic Policy helped the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1921 to defuse the situation, especially the end of grain requisitions. The uprising made the Soviet leadership aware of its failure to manage relations with the peasants and is seen as one of the factors that prompted Lenin to initiate
SECTION 60
#173276537439913516-543: The Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi . It also co-operated with armed Bolshevik Party-oriented volunteer units, the Forces of Special Purpose from 1919 to 1925. The slogan "exhortation, organization, and reprisals" expressed the discipline and motivation which helped ensure the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka special punitive brigades conducted summary field court-martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin ,
13734-451: The Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245,
13952-408: The Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty . Finland ceded 9% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to
14170-456: The Great War . In addition to flooding rebel areas with troops and propaganda. Quickly, the communists learned that: "Conventional armies, however well armed, are ill equipped to fight against a well supported peasant army." A lesson they would learn again much later in Afghanistan . The Bolshevik government tried to build an anti-revolutionary , anti-communist image for the Green armies. Provincial Communist officials announced to locals that
14388-522: The Green armies were a subsection of the villainous White movement, despite the fact that Green armies were generally just as hostile to the Whites as they were to the Reds. The Bolsheviks also exaggerated the influence of the kulaks in Green armies, who were undoubtedly involved, but hardly the driving force of the movement. These massive uprisings, which shook Soviet power in Eastern Ukraine , Tambov , and Siberia in 1919-1921, involved more than 100,000 guerrillas and millions of peasant supporters. In
14606-419: The Green armies with White leadership, such a designation overemphasizes the political aspects of the movement. In a broad sense, the Green armies were spontaneous manifestations of peasant discontent rather than of any specific ideology. By 1920, the Bolsheviks had secured victory over the Whites. The peasant soldiers of the Red Army, outraged at the prospect of continuing to violently oppress their own class in
14824-438: The Green movement by improving rural conditions and thus damaged the Green armies’ foundation for successful recruitment – peasant discontent. By the summer of 1922, as the Bolsheviks were securing their victory in the civil war, the Green troops had all but disappeared. The demise of these movements was in large part caused by the famine of 1921-1922 , which affected 29 million people in total and killed about five million, being
15042-424: The Greens as a whole, the Reds treated each peasant army as a specific instance of unrest, suppressing harshly and further angering the peasant population. By the time that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks realized the strength of the Green movement, it had grown into a serious social and military threat to Bolshevik power. The small units sent to subdue them many times defected demoralized, so they were replaced by
15260-417: The Greens to gain the support of the population. If the peasants successfully overwhelmed Bolsheviks, they cruelly punished soldiers and officials, often mutilating bodies, torturing families or burying victims alive . No more than 6,000 men, evenly distributed, fought in the first battles between the Whites of Lavr Kornilov and the Reds of Rudolf Sivers . Because of the small number of men involved and
15478-405: The Imperial Russian Army was being taken apart, "it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes." Therefore, the Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918. They envisioned a body "formed from
15696-481: The Lenin and Stalin governments, to economically develop territories and punish potentially separatist peoples, numerous communities were starved, deported and replaced by Russian settlers. Hence, the resistance and genocide of the Cossacks were called by the Bolshevik leaders themselves as the "Soviet Vendée." Lenin admitted to imitating the tactics devised by François Babeuf , inventor of modern communism , who planned
15914-545: The Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway , and successfully installed a pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang . The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts , also known as the "Soviet–Japanese Border War" or the first "Soviet–Japanese War", was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan from 1932 to 1939. Japan's expansion into Northeast China created
16132-520: The NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons , which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to
16350-644: The Red Army finally achieving a Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan and Manchukuo at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a ceasefire. Later the two sides signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum . The Winter War ( Finnish : talvisota , Swedish : finska vinterkriget , Russian: Зи́мняя война́ )
16568-556: The Red Army numbered some 6.5 million men, many of whom the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, western and southwestern. Around 2.5 million men and women were mobilized in the interior as part of reserve armies. The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army. It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in
16786-404: The Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations and assistance with farm work. Some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army; men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away, they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages. In some cases, the money they earned would go towards tanks for
17004-628: The Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and the Cheka secret police. Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists , deserters , and " enemies of the state ". The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, such as
17222-590: The Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Wrangel in the south in 1920 allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Historian John Erickson sees 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as marking the ascent of the general staff , which came to dominate Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength had diminished to 530,000. The list of Soviet divisions 1917–1945 details
17440-411: The Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored
17658-487: The Reds had no more than 700,000 combatants, less than 500,000 active, with 2,250,000 as reservists in training, 391,000 in reserve units and 159,000 in labor units, wounded, sick or deserters. The greens were always more numerous than the Whites. In concrete figures, Yudenich commanded 30,000 Whites, Kolchak 120,000 and Denikin around 150,000; by comparison, the Greens numbered over half a million during 1919. According to Western intelligence services, in September of that year
17876-584: The Reds, in West Siberia they were even capable of facing them in the open field. The peasants were permanently in need of modern rifles and machine guns, decisive for the war, being forced to obtain them anyway. Crowds stormed the cities, looting and burning the Party offices, the local Soviet, police posts, courts, and propaganda centers. The collective farms were destroyed. Tools, livestock, requisitioned grain, mills, factories, breweries, and bakeries were redistributed. This claim of popular property served
18094-435: The Reds. They preferred to prowl during the day, keeping watch over their enemies and attacking at night. They permanently refused to fight in the open, hiding in hills and forests to ambush and retreat quickly. Their greater mobility made up for their total absence of artillery. In Western Siberia and Central Russia, their guerilla tactics were aided by the wooded terrain of the taiga . When they were defeated they mixed with
18312-546: The Revolution across Europe would spurn on internal debate within the Bolsheviks, with Bukharin and Stalin later formulating the dominant theory of socialism in one country . Within this Red Army, the special units of the Cheka and the "internal defense troops of the Republic" stood out, with 200,000 members in 1921. In the wake of the Revolution, they were the main repressive organs of the fledgling Soviet State. Due to
18530-473: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). As many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on
18748-488: The SR Peter Tokmakov [ ru ] . On 19 August 1920, a revolt broke out in the small town of Khitrovo, where a military requisitioning detachment of the Red Army had appropriated everything they could and "beat up elderly men of seventy in full view of the public". In anticipation of an attack by the Red Army to enforce the procurement of grain, the farmers of the village armed themselves. Since only
18966-645: The Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps from the United States began appearing in large numbers in 1942. Until then, the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of
19184-535: The Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia , Petsamo , and Salla . The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War (also known as
19402-436: The Soviet defence budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $ 11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of its greatest defence effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when
19620-543: The Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding POWs, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. In 1941, the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into
19838-401: The Soviets tended to classify them into two main categories: bunt , a specific, brief revolt with few participants; and vostante , an insurrection of thousands of peasants, capable of conquering cities and giving themselves a coherent political program, usually of a social-revolutionary type, as in Tambov, or anarchist, like the peasant armies of Makhno. Among the initial movements would be
20056-661: The Tambov Cheka . Towards the end of October, the head of the Internal Guard [ ru ] in the Tambov Governorate , Vasili Kornev [ ru ] , engaged in a series of battles with the rebels. According to his letters, he killed 3,000, wounded 300, and captured 1,000 along with copious amounts of weapons, ammunition, and supplies (such as a telephone and a field kitchen). His casualties were 90 dead and less than 200 wounded. However, he
20274-675: The USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements . Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler ,
20492-400: The Union of Working Peasants ( Russian : Союз Трудовых Крестьян , STK), which functioned as the political organization of the insurgents and with which Antonov worked. Having their own political program gave them a strength and coherence that other peasant uprisings lacked. However, this movement was still based on the weariness of the population but without having a clear idea of how to replace
20710-422: The Ural Mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. The Red Army was financially and materially assisted in its wartime effort by
20928-462: The Whites, the peasants had a duty to serve in their armies, based primarily on the old structure of the Tsarist regime. Due to this, they saw no reason in convincing or aligning those they conscripted. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks knew how to use the symbolism of the revolution, proclaiming themselves the defenders of peasantry and smaller farmers. Paradoxically, many White commanders waited for
21146-480: The armies of Anton Denikin , Nikolai Yudenich and Aleksandr Kolchak , continued requisitioning came to be viewed as more and more unjustifiable. Numerous contingents of peasant soldiers, usually having connections and sympathy with the Peasantry, refused to repress the green uprisings and defected, forming their own "green" guerrillas in the forests. In 1919-1921 most of the guerrillas were deserters, including
21364-424: The armored vehicles commanded by Fedko achieved another victory near Chernyshovo. Between 1 and 9 June, three Bolshevik forces led by Uborevich launched a coordinated attack with seven armored vehicles against the rebel stronghold, near the town of Kamenka [ ru ] , and faced 2,000 rebels led by Antonov and Boguslavski in six battles, during which 800 partisans died. The region between Tambov and Kirsanov
21582-636: The army. However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome. By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000. This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure. The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions. Divisions consisted of three regiments. Brigades as independent units were abolished. The formation of departments' rifle corps began. After four years of warfare,
21800-517: The beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree on 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats ( voyennyy komissariat , abbr. voyenkomat ), which as of 2023 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with
22018-594: The best known green movement is the rebellion that broke out on August 19 , 1920 in the small town of Khitrovo, as a rejection of food requisitions in the Tambov Oblast and quickly spread to Penza , Saratov and Voronezh . This was defeated in June 1922 with the death of its leader, Aleksandr Antonov . While it can be difficult to distinguish Green armies from other forms of peasant unrest, they were marked by concentrated leadership and distinct units, displaying
22236-480: The brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed. The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion . The Soviets enforced the loyalty of the various political, ethnic, and national groups in the Red Army through political commissars attached at
22454-406: The campaign. On the dawn of 1 June, Fedko with three vehicles armed with machine guns, Kotovski's horsemen and the brigade of Siberian cavalry of M. D. Kovalev launched a surprise attack against Antonov and the 3,000 partisans with whom he occupied Elan [ ru ] . Although the rebels managed to repulse the armored vehicles with their rifles, they fled before Kovalyov's cavalry. On 6 June,
22672-682: The circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa , approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in
22890-513: The cities it captured (the guerrillas of Tambov were unable to seize cities but also created a complex administrative network in the countryside); on the contrary, the Makhnovists were present in both countryside and cities, maintaining a loose and autonomous administration in line with Anarchist ideology. At the beginning of 1920, when the Red victory was practically assured after the defeat of
23108-421: The civil population or fled on horses provided by the locals. The Greens formed multitudes of peasants with clogs made of linden bark, they armed themselves with what they found: sticks , pitchforks , tridents , pikes , hoes , axes and clubs . To a lesser extent, also firearms such as shotguns , carbines , hunting rifles , pistols and rifles . Also many greens fought under red flags, symbols of
23326-420: The civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of
23544-534: The class-conscious and best elements of the working classes." All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible. Its role being the defense "of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe." Enlistment
23762-559: The combatants of all the countries involved for three years in the most deadly and total wars.” More than 2 million of their comrades had perished fighting the Central Powers . Many supported the Bolsheviks in 1917 because they promised an assured peace, but due to the outbreak of the civil war, the peasants were very reluctant to be recruited. During the civil war, the desire for peace in the face of devastation led many communities to declare themselves "neutral republics" to prevent
23980-473: The countryside of the Kiev province, but not the big cities, and had 20,000 armed followers. Another green movement was the brief rebellion of Nykyfor Hryhoriv , ataman of Kherson , and Yuriy Tyutyunnyk . Hryhoriv was an opportunistic leader who knew how to switch sides when it suited him. Admiral Kolchak made the fatal mistake of winning the animosity of peasants eager for agricultural reform by restoring
24198-750: The defeated Provisional Government, monarchists, but mainly the White Movement of several different anti-socialist military confederations. "Red Army Day", 23 February 1918, has a two-fold historical significance: it was the first day of conscription (in Petrograd and Moscow), and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army . The Red Army controlled by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic also against independence movements, invading and annexing newly independent states of
24416-549: The defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon , and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov , appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived
24634-499: The depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep-battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances with the expectation that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry , artillery , and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse , concentrated in time and space, against targets of
24852-481: The desperate peasantry of rural Russia. Another source of opposition from the population towards the Bolsheviks was the "way of life Communist leaders' feudal system,” with the excesses of Bolshevik leaders in contrast to the horrors of the civil war producing resentment from the impoverished and war-torn peasantry. The ideology of the Greens was very uniform, representing the common aspirations and goals of peasant revolutions in Russia and Ukraine. They wanted to regain
25070-643: The dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II , and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan . During its operations on the Eastern Front , it accounted for 75–80% of the casualties that the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during the war, and ultimately captured
25288-487: The east, after stoking the Russian nationalism that the Bolsheviks knew how to take advantage of, and finally motivating Lenin to try to break this belt and overwhelm the new order founded in Versailles . The red soldiers were unable to defeat the newborn Polish army, ensuring that they would be unable to compete with the established and powerful industrial countries of central and western Europe. The failure to spread
25506-400: The edge of the rebel zone and whose communist garrison saw most of its inhabitants leave or turn to the black market to survive. On 23 January 1921, 250 mounted cadets of the 6th Volche-Karachan regiment managed to defend the town of Borisoglebsk from a large rebel contingent. For the Bolsheviks, it was key to keep Borisoglebsk and Kirsanov in their hands, since these were their bastions in
25724-483: The factories to their former owners, sparking the hatred and resistance of the workers. The Whites, unable to effectively contain the unrest, resorted to greater repression and terror. Like Kolchak, Denikin failed to create his own local government structure, resorting to repression to try to mobilize the population and its resources under his control. With these being something decisive in any modern civil or total war, he attempted to tap into these possible resources but
25942-461: The fields of Kazan , Simbirsk and Ufa . However, the rapid Bolshevik reaction brought their annihilation the following month. Between the beginning of 1921 and the end of 1922, the West Siberian rebellion took place, the largest green uprising, and perhaps the least studied, both in number of rebels and in size geographic. One of the best known and most organized of these movements
26160-516: The fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as people's commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars. At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are fleeing, panic-stricken, as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to
26378-406: The formation of new peasant guerrillas. Besides Soviet records of their oppositional activity, there is very little personal information about the Green leaders, described as "men who acted and wrote not" due to the widespread illiteracy and spontaneous nature of their movement (85% of the population was illiterate in 1917). In order to build substantial forces, a motivated individual would lead
26596-569: The formations of the Red Army in that time. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians – led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky – developed the deep operation doctrine, a direct consequence of their experiences in the Polish–Soviet War and in the Russian Civil War. To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout
26814-574: The former Russian Empire. This included three military campaigns against the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic , in January–February 1918, January–February 1919, and May–October 1920. Conquered nations were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky abolished workers' control over the Red Army, replacing the election of officers with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with
27032-656: The government. Instead, Antonov dreamed of marching on Moscow and ending Bolshevik rule. In May 1921, the Union proclaimed the Provisional Democratic Republic of the Tambov Partisan Region [ ru ] which would rule until the holding of a democratically elected constituent assembly. The Republic used the pre-revolutionary flag of Russia , and the slogan "Long live the Great United and Indivisible Russia", one of
27250-464: The grain requisitions should be ended and the Soviet administration and the Cheka dissolved. His troops carried out surprise raids on railway junctions, kolkhoz and the Soviet authorities. They were supported by the population and used the villages for cover and rest. Likewise, they often disguised themselves as Red Army soldiers to move about the countryside or to exaggerate the element of surprise. The insurgent peasants organized themselves through
27468-500: The ground. The special commissions ordered by the Cheka with pursuing them captured 500,000 deserters in 1919 and 600,000 to 800,000 in 1920. Thousands were shot and their families deported, but 1.5 to 2 million avoided capture. The mass desertions started much earlier. From the Kerensky Offensive to the October Revolution two million soldiers abandoned their positions and returned to their homes. The Tsarist army that
27686-407: The highest tactical importance." "To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique." Trotsky on the Red Army purges of 1937. Red Army deep operations found their first formal expression in
27904-612: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. While the Soviets considered the surrender of Germany to be the end of the "Great Patriotic War", at the earlier Yalta Conference the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theater portion of World War II within three months of the end of the war in Europe . This promise was reaffirmed at the Potsdam Conference held in July 1945. The Red Army began
28122-426: The institution of military political commissars . In the mid-1920s, the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region, able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided
28340-423: The interest of the new government, deserted and consolidated in groups in the forests , eventually leading to their "Green" designation. While these groups primarily opposed the Bolsheviks, they often did so without a plan or alternative form of government in mind; rather, they simply wanted to rid the countryside of Bolshevik influence by any means necessary. The revolts varied greatly from one another, however,
28558-493: The lands as presented by the Bolsheviks. In Lenin's eyes there was nothing socialist about this measure, believing the plan of the SRs would be to establish capitalism in the countryside. This was seen as avoiding concrete Socialist policy, instituting basic programs such as improvements to peasant quality of life and an end to slavery. According to him, it was no more than a bourgeois slogan, just like " land and liberty ", to appeal to
28776-419: The leaders, with many in positions of leadership being veterans of the fight against the Whites. Alongside this, White Holdouts described as "little White dabbling" continued to fight until 1922, however were described to be "more like a permanent hindrance than a real threat.” Officially two and a half million soldiers were demobilized in 1921, with many returning to their homes and joining the Greens, worsening
28994-417: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in
29212-423: The life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by
29430-414: The local soviets , following the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . Following the outbreak of the Russian Civil War , the newly established Russian Soviet Republic adopted the policy of war communism , in which food for the cities was obtained by compulsory requisition from the villages, without financial compensation. This was met with the resistance of the peasant population, especially as
29648-673: The local SRs, mainly from the left, were key in the organization of the movements. For example, in West Siberia the SRs led the revolts and although there was a central authority in Tobolsk , it had little to no control of the Bolshevik-free territory. Because of this, essentially every volost was self-governed. In contrast, the Siberian movement demonstrated a high level of organization and even installed an administration in
29866-430: The local villages and often had little motivation to fight members of their own class. The rebels were able to control large parts of the region and managed to capture railway trains transporting requisitioned grain. The grain intended to supply Red Army units was instead re-distributed by Antonov's men to local farmers. The rebellion also spread to parts of other provinces: Voronezh , Saratov and Penza . This territory
30084-470: The main weapon of the regime to regain control over many provinces. Ruthless terror played its part in suppressing the revolts, but the main weapon was hunger. In the opinion of the anarchists: "The basic psychological trait of Bolshevism is the realization of its will by means of the violent elimination of all other wills, the absolute destruction of all individuality, to the point where it becomes an inanimate object." Many local communist officials saw that
30302-540: The majority of the population, who opposed them in a passive and disorganized way. Between late 1917 and early 1918 there was no serious opposition to the Bolsheviks, who controlled central Russia , Baku and Tashkent . The only opposition force was the Volunteer Army (Russian: Добровольческая армия ), barely 3,000 men, still organized in southern Russia . All the White movement 's hopes were on winning over
30520-514: The male population of the Russian Empire were mobilized; however, most of them were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles such as maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. While
30738-473: The mentality of their parents and grandparents and did not hesitate to repress their own people. The resistance of the Cossacks led to a fierce campaign of decossackization , from 1919 to 1920, in which they were repressed with the clear intention of eliminating them "as a social group" -the first of many repressions in Soviet history. Men were shot, women and children deported, their homes burned and their lands repopulated with non-Cossack settlers. During
30956-472: The middle of a peasant ocean" unwilling to hand over the fruits of their labor and submit to any external authority. The conflict between the cities and a countryside was one of the main edges of the civil war. This resistance was interpreted by many as a mere expression of the "social anarchy" that existed in the country. The communist influence on the peasants and workers was negligible. The Bolsheviks controlled some soviets , but without coercive power over
31174-407: The middle of the fields controlled by the rebels. During that month, the Bolshevik authorities demobilized 4,000 locals who served in their garrisons because they were not trusted. They immediately joined the partisans. By this time, only half of the desired grain had been collected by the Bolshevik requisition squads. Antonov-Ovseyenko noticed from his own experience that every other farmer in Tambov
31392-527: The military circles of the Red command had decided to concentrate on a great campaign of pacification of Tambov: as soon as their troops flooded the province the movement would soon be finished. In addition, it was increasingly difficult to help them because their main communication links, the armored trains, were continuously attacked in the area. During the winter of 1920–1921, food reserves in many towns were exhausted, as in Kozlov and Morshank , towns located on
31610-509: The names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people)." At the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. Approximately 23% (about 19 million) of
31828-400: The new Bolshevik authorities enacted a policy of war communism . This system sought to abolish all private enterprise , maximize state control over distribution and the foreign market, nationalize all heavy industry, requisition agricultural surplus, and impose a universal rationing system to focus the entire economy on supporting the war effort. It was a way of fighting their opponents on
32046-518: The new regime. The Bolsheviks understood that they had to control the grain supply and, in order not to depend on the small farmers, they tried to found Kolkhoz (cooperatives) and Sovkhoz (state farms). Another source of the peasantry's rejection of the Bolsheviks was the abolition of the Committees of Poor Peasants or komitety bednoty ( Russian : Комитеты Бедноты ) in December 1918, but Lenin had foreseen fierce resistance and increased both
32264-678: The north was at peace, not being a large food-producing region, it never lived through the requisitions that had sparked the revolt. The lack of heavy weapons prevented the rebels from taking over the cities, which became havens for communists and government officials. During that December, reinforcements from the Cheka began to arrive, numbering 3,500 combatants in the area. Two months later its leader, Felix Dzerzhinski , would arrive to direct its operations. During this time garrison officers and local Bolshevik militants complained of their ever-increasing abandonment by Moscow, from where fewer and fewer supplies and reinforcements were sent to them. In fact
32482-654: The northern portion of Korea . Other Red Army operations included the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin , which was the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island (and Russia had lost to Japan in 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War ), and the invasion of the Kuril Islands . Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August. The commanding general of the Kwantung Army ordered
32700-468: The old Tsarist social and economic order aggressive repression and rejection of the Peasant base and refusal to carry out even basic reforms demanded by the circumstances The Whites could not take advantage of the countryside's hesitance towards the Reds and win it for their cause. They refused to reform land ownership, stoking the fears of the rural majority against the prior regime and failing to take
32918-569: The ones who had secured the most land from the nobility. According to SR politicians, if Alexander Kolchak had not restored the rights of landowners, he would have won greater support of farmers in the Urals and the Volga . The robberies and massacres at the hands of the Cossack cavalry also contributed to turning the countryside against the White advance in 1919. Denikin proved unable to contain
33136-511: The organization was the 'overthrow of the government of Communist-Bolsheviks'. In December 1920, the Union of Working Peasants released a manifesto, stating their intention to overthrow the Bolshevik government and their aims in doing so: Green armies The Green armies ( Russian : Зеленоармейцы ), also known as the Green Army (Зелёная Армия) or Greens (Зелёные), were armed peasant groups which fought against all governments in
33354-493: The peasant army was destroyed by large Red Army reinforcements using chemical weapons in the summer of 1921; smaller groups continued resistance until the following year. It is estimated that around 100,000 people were arrested and around 15,000 killed during the suppression of the uprising. The movement was later portrayed by the Soviets as anarchical banditry, similar to other left-wing anti-Bolshevik movements that opposed them during this period. In 1904, Alexander Antonov
33572-424: The peasantry, were largely reluctant to wage an active campaign during the Russian Civil War and, with an impending Bolshevik victory, dissolved in 1922. The Russian peasantry lived through two wars against the Russian state, the product of revolutions that ended with state victory: 1905-1907 and 1917-1922 . At the beginning of 1918 the Bolshevik Party only controlled a few cities, "unique Bolshevik islets in
33790-472: The peasants they once ruled over, the Whites sought to turn back time and take revenge against every symbol of change. They would never recognize new national realities or the attempts at agrarian revolution. One of the main causes of the White defeat was being identified by the people with the restoration of the old regime, signaled by the treatment that their officers and officials gave to the peasants. With their deeply reactionary positions desire to restore
34008-414: The peasants. The prodotriady were killed at an increasing rate: 2,000 in 1918, 5,000 in 1919, and 8,000 in 1920. The Bolsheviks retaliated by burning villages, confiscating livestock, and executing peasants by the hundreds. Many were accused of being kulaks but most were poor farmers, the most vulnerable to poor harvests. People fled to the forests with nothing to lose and joined the rebels to defend
34226-410: The possibly decisive advantage of rural support. That is why many peasants feared that the Whites would restore the rights of the rural nobility to the land, destroying the autonomy and local representation that they'd won in the Revolution of 1917. Faced with this fear, many peasants joined the reds when the Whites advanced on the districts of Orel and Moscow in 1919. They had through their efforts been
34444-597: The product produced on their farms requisitioned and the land promised to them in the Revolution occupied by the State. With these worries and concerns growing, they began to accept the SR proposals: the end of Bolshevik rule, land redistribution and an end to the civil war. Their opposition to the Bolsheviks was due to, rather than a political plan or national alternative, a desire to protect and preserve their communal land. Interested in defending local interests, these movements took
34662-417: The province to be pacified completely. The Antonov brothers and several of their last followers were killed in combat against a Red detachment on 24 June 1922 in the village of Nizhni Shibriai [ ru ] , where they hid their few personal possessions. The Cheka wanted to arrest them and set fire to the house where they took refuge. When they tried to flee, they were shot down. By then, their movement
34880-425: The rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters to the army. In September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under
35098-536: The rebellion area with troops". They included regular forces, Chinese and Hungarian internationalists and detachments of the Cheka , the Units for Special Purposes [ ru ] and the Militarised Guard [ ru ] , although the decisive contingents were the numerous cadets and horsemen who arrived. They were supported by 70 heavy artillery pieces, hundreds of machine guns, 3 armored units,
35316-402: The rebellion practically defeated by the end of June. By the month of September, the rebels had been reduced to a thousand due to the massive arrival of red troops. By the end of that year, there were no more than 4,000 rebels left on the warpath. With almost all their leaders dead, the last parties took refuge in swamps and forests under constant persecution. It took until the middle of 1922 for
35534-446: The rebels mobilized 50,000 partisans. By February 1921, they were between 20,000 and 40,000-strong, with half of them acting as full-time combatants and the other half part-time. Around 6,000 were mounted, hindering the government troops, whose lack of mobility undermined their effectiveness. But they never formed an "organized guerrilla army". Because of this, most of their actions were impulsive assaults orchestrated by each band against
35752-491: The rebels, all Soviet institutions were abolished. Around 1,000 members of the Russian Communist Party were killed by the insurgents. By October 1920, the Bolsheviks had completely lost control of the rural territory of the governorate, dominating only the city of Tambov itself and a number of smaller urban settlements. After numerous deserters from the Red Army joined it, the peasant army numbered over 50,000 fighters. The rebel militia proved highly effective and even infiltrated
35970-530: The recruitment indiscriminate, and the mood optimistic, Green leaders succeeded in provoking a sense among the peasants that they could make a significant dent in Bolshevik power. They also drew support from disillusioned urban and railroad workers, who had "fled back to the villages" and informed the peasants about the horrendous working conditions of developing industry. Among these atamans were Aleksandr Antonov , Nykyfor Hryhoriv , Danylo Terpylo and Nestor Makhno . Despite Soviet attempts to associate
36188-540: The red or White armies from entering their territories. It's possible that the Reds never gathered more than half a million "equipped soldiers" at any one time. After capturing Kazan in a five-day struggle, the Bolsheviks stopped retreating and began to reap successes thanks to the cemented centralization of command and a mass wave of recruits. It quickly had to face mass desertions between June 1919 and June 1920. About 2,700,000 men were recruited, with almost all of this figure deserting except 60,000 troops. In August 1920,
36406-571: The reds. The massive desertion as a phenomenon that affected the entire Red Army indicates that the peasantry were hesitant to serve in it. With many still having rural farms or villages to return to, many deserted during periods of Harvest, with spikes in desertion being indicated by season. During 1918 more than a million soldiers deserted, the following year the figure increased to 2 million, and in 1921 there were almost 4 million. Between 1919 and 1920 3 million men deserted. In 1919, these fugitive "green deserters" numbered more than one million in
36624-410: The region despite having 32,500 foot soldiers and 8,000 cavalry plus machine guns and cannons in the area. By this time, the rebels were able to mobilize large field armies. On 11 April, Antonov gathered 5,000 partisans and launched a pincer attack on Rasskazovo (an hour prior he launched a diversionary attack on Nizhne-Spasskoe with a small force). The garrison consisted of a company of infantrymen,
36842-473: The requisition orders starved their own people to death, but "The good comrade did the what was said to him; he was pleased to leave all critical thinking to the Central Committee." That was the discipline the Party advocated. Ironically, many Bolshevik officers were the children of peasants educated in Tsarist military schools. With their minds open when leaving the narrow rural world, they rejected
37060-402: The requisitions were often violent in nature. Likewise, the amount of grain to be requisitioned were not measured according to production. Instead, commissions gave a rough estimate based on pre-war production, so that devastation, crop failures, and population decline were not included. Before the revolution, the peasants in Tambov produced around one million tonnes of grain. Of these, one-third
37278-497: The revolution later appropriated by the communists. The first small units sent by the Bolsheviks to subdue them were easily defeated and practically did nothing more than give them more weapons. Many Bolshevik units, especially in 1918, lacked training and discipline, dispersing after the first shots. For every Red soldier in combat, another eight were inactive due to illness or lack of training, clothing or ammunition. Whites were more disciplined and numerous and better trained. When
37496-566: The revolution. They had 14,000 or 18,000 men, mostly consisting of deserters from the Red Army. Of these, five to seven thousand had firearms. By the end of the month, the rebels numbered six groups, each totaling 4,000 men with a dozen machine guns and several artillery pieces. As the Bolshevik authorities were busy with the Polish-Soviet War and Pyotr Wrangel 's offensive in northern Tavria , they only had 3,000 unreliable troops in Tambov province. These soldiers had been drafted from
37714-439: The rights of landowners. The problem worsened in early 1919. Kolchak resorted to terror to appease them. With his rear weakened by the wear and tear of the guerrillas, the White regime could not stop the Bolshevik advance, which on the other hand, knew how to add local partisans to its forces wherever it advanced. At the beginning of 1920 the " Pitchfork uprising " broke out, led by the "Army of Black Eagles" and spread through
37932-696: The same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev ). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War . In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. At
38150-412: The same time as the general Soviet move into the areas abandoned by the Ober Ost garrisons that were being withdrawn to Germany in the aftermath of World War I . This merged into the 1919–1921 Polish–Soviet War , in which the Red Army invaded Poland, reaching the central part of the country in 1920, but then suffered a resounding defeat in Warsaw , which put an end to the war. During the Polish Campaign
38368-524: The searches in the forests. Their first acts were assassinating unpopular state officials and raiding state farms. They killed more than 200 government grain collectors and over the next year their forces grew steadily, growing from an initial 150 to 6,000 by early summer 1920, but that would have to wait until after the defeat of Anton Denikin 's White movement for there to be a real mass uprising. The other leaders of this force were Alexander Antonov's younger brother, Dmitri Antonov [ ru ] , and
38586-492: The self-government maintained until 1918, seize the nobility's lands, maintain rural market-economies and govern their communities with soviets chosen by them. The peasants rejected the growing authority that the new state was gaining. Four years after the Revolution they watched as the Soviet state centralized, with the autonomy of their Soviets integrated into the growing organs of the state. Their own small agricultural holdings were replaced by large state collectivizations, with
38804-411: The situation for the central government, as there were 250,000 in Tambov alone. However, by that time both Greens and Blacks could only dream of damaging the Red Army, with its experience and size making it a true "military giant", although their armed forces (undermined by desertions) never reached official figures. They claimed; the Bolsheviks had tried to realize the French revolutionary ideal of
39022-417: The size of the prodotriady and the tax requirement. The following season, some 242 million pud of grain was requisitioned. At the outbreak of the February Revolution , the most important political parties were the Social Revolutionary Party , Mensheviks , and Kadets . The first two controlled most of the country's soviets , except the ones in Petrograd and Moscow ; the third were liberals with
39240-406: The slogans of the White movement , became one of the mottos of the rebels and the Republic. Antonov organized the farmers on the model of the Red Army in 18–20 regiments with their own political commissars , reconnaissance departments and communication departments. Likewise, he introduced a strict discipline. The farmers used the Red flag as their standard and thus claimed the central symbol of
39458-472: The small number of regular soldiers at the disposal of all sides, the armies that were in the Russian battlefields were very small - tens of thousands in the largest battles - compared to those used in the World War I . Volunteers were scarce and undisciplined, forcing Soviet commanders to recruit peasants, a social group that Soviet military leadership considered unreliable. This was coupled with increased pressure towards requisitions, which only contributed to
39676-426: The summer of 1918, the second in the spring of 1919, and the third in the summer of 1920, focusing on comrades of peasant or non-Russian origin. The Party did not inspire loyalty and people voluntarily left it in waves. Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army , often shortened to the Red Army , was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union . The army
39894-404: The summer of the following year, when they will be definitively defeated, although small green parties in Kuban, Don and Western Siberia remained active until 1923 . Later, in 1924 , there would be a last revolt in Georgia . It was quickly and harshly repressed. Danylo Ilkovych Terpylo led a Ukrainian nationalist peasant uprising characterized by antisemitic pogroms . He came to control
40112-483: The support of moderate sectors who wanted to maintain the freedoms won with the revolution. The Mensheviks quickly lost the support of many soviets, except in the Caucasus , and especially in the Democratic Republic of Georgia , while Bolshevik influence rapidly grew. The peasants were overwhelmingly in favour of the SR. In some cases, as in Western Siberia in 1920–1921, the rebellious peasants began their revolts without any proposal or plan more complex than overthrowing
40330-516: The supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic ( Russian : Революционный Военный Совет , romanized : Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet (Revvoyensoviet) ). The first chairman was Trotsky, and the first commander-in-chief was Jukums Vācietis of the Latvian Riflemen ; in July 1919 he was replaced by Sergey Kamenev . Soon afterwards Trotsky established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded
40548-418: The terrain and the mobility of their cavalry. Each village was in charge of equipping and maintaining a group of these combatants, which was easy since many were locals defending their own communities. That localism also played into their hands. On the contrary, being too closed in on themselves prevented them from seeking allies in other peasant movements or marching against the big cities, the control of which
40766-452: The territory under Bolshevik control alone, and although trace amounts went on to serve with the Whites, most fought in heavily wooded areas near their own homes against authorities from both sides. Detachments were sent to villages near the battlefront and families suspected of harboring deserters were punished with fines, confiscation of livestock and land, the seizure of hostages, executing community leaders and even burning whole villages to
40984-411: The terror proved not to be enough to spurn the territories they held. Alongside this, it was unable to counteract the critical waste and bleed of already present supply. When the Military aid from their western allies was reduced, White soldiers had to loot for supplies, only further stoking the rage and fear of the local populace. Finally, they failed to properly capitalize on the propaganda front. To
41202-409: The time, Bolshevik reports said that two thousand partisans were still in the woods of Novokhopyorsk , near the station. The main source of information that the peasants had about what happened on other fronts were the red prisoners. In that month, there were barely 5,000 Bolsheviks in the region. At the height of his power, thanks to their strong popular support, between October 1920 and January 1921,
41420-704: The tiny territory affected, it is difficult to call this even a civil war. During the entire first year of the war there were only skirmishes and artillery duels with small armies or partisan forces, more concerned with obtaining supplies. Territory continually changed hands, there were no front lines or fixed positions. In the decisive battles of 1919, they mobilized the peasantry by force, to fight in large armies with hundreds of thousands of men facing each other on fronts of hundreds of kilometers and supported with heavy weapons. Their favored activities included blowing up bridges, cutting telegraph lines and raising railways in an attempt to paralyze communications and movements of
41638-475: The tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars , reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps , 6th Guards Tank Army ), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also
41856-415: The use of chemical weapons against the remaining rebels. They ordered their troops to clear the forests with poison gas, stipulating that it "must be carefully calculated, so that the layer of gas penetrates the forests and kills everyone hiding there." Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with the poison gas. Antonov's army was encircled and destroyed, leaving
42074-428: The victors. Pursued by the enemy cavalry, the rebels had 2,000 dead in the following days according to estimates by the communist government. By January 1921, peasant revolts had spread to Samara , Saratov , Tsaritsyn , Astrakhan and Siberia . But with the end of the Polish–Soviet War and the defeat of General Wrangel , the Red Army could divert its regular troops into the area. In May 1921, Mikhail Tukhachevsky
42292-485: The village of Kobiaki [ ru ] five to ten thousand fighters under the command of "Vaska Karas" (identified as Vasili Nikitin-Koroliov [ ru ] ) and Vasili F. Selianski. Not everyone participated in the battle. They intended to take the town of Kirsanov, garrisoned by a Moscow infantry brigade led by cavalry commander V. I. Dmitrenko. A day later they launched two equally unsuccessful assaults, abandoning 22 machine guns, small arms and ammunition of
42510-414: The violence. The best White troops were from the Kuban, the Don and the Caucasus, as the Cossacks were the main a source of men and resources for the Whites. When they realized that Denikin was defeated, they wanted to return to their homes en masse, seeing greater benefit in negotiating their own autonomy with the communists. Despite everything, Denikin cracked down on the rights of the unions and returned
42728-568: The western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern , Western , and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War (as it is known in Russia), the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat,
42946-406: The words of Vladimir Lenin , it was a "great internal political crisis", the first in Soviet history . These rebellions were recognized by Lenin as "far more dangerous than all the forces of Denikin , Yudenich and Kolchak combined," as he proclaimed on March 8, 1921, in his opening speech at the 10th Party Congress . The civil war in Russia has generally been analyzed as a conflict between
43164-467: Was exported . On the basis of these figures, which did not include the dislocations of the civil war in the countryside, a high target for the procurement of grain was set. The peasants often responded by reducing their acreage, as they no longer had the economic incentive to produce surpluses, which made the confiscations ordered from above hit them even harder. For the most part, the peasants had been indifferent to Bolshevik ideology, but they came to hate
43382-470: Was 10,000,000 strong had been defeated by shattered morale in its ranks and the weakness of its institutions, with millions returned to their farms. That same year, 1917, a massive demobilization was decreed. Many of these deserters were peasants, "the Imperial Army was a peasant army", who called themselves Marxists, despite lacking knowledge or understanding of the ideology. Their " trenches Bolshevism reflected above all an aspiration for peace, shared by
43600-680: Was a particularly high mortality of prisoners compared to the rest of the camp system. The devastation of the fighting and punitive measures, together with the Bolshevik agricultural policy, led to a famine in the areas of the insurgents. In addition to Tambov, large parts of Russia were affected in the following two years. Family members of the rebels were usually used as hostages, others were held at random and in some cases entire villages were interned. Between 50,000 and 100,000 villagers including some 1,000 children, were interned in dedicated concentration camps in July 1921. There they suffered severely from cholera and typhus epidemics. The death rate
43818-434: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland . The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and
44036-423: Was blamed for the rebellion and removed. Some sources say the rebels numbered just 8,000 horsemen in November. On 5 November, two to six thousand rebels, mostly on horseback, attacked the railway station at Sampur in two coordinated groups, capturing an artillery cannon, some machine guns, and numerous revolvers and rifles. However, they failed in their attempt to sabotage the railway lines and quickly withdrew. At
44254-412: Was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power, or by party or trade union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary." Because
44472-488: Was essentially a tax on grain and other foodstuffs. This was done before the 10th Congress of the Bolsheviks, when the measure was officially adopted. The announcement began circulating in the Tambov area on 9 February 1921. On 20 March, a general amnesty was also announced for anyone who surrendered. During the two weeks that the amnesty was in place, about 3,000 rebels capitulated, but very few with weapons in hand. By then, Bolshevik power had disappeared almost entirely from
44690-438: Was established in January 1918 by Leon Trotsky to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War , especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army . In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy ) was renamed the " Soviet Army " – which in turn became the Russian Army on 7 May 1992, following
44908-459: Was here that Alexander Antonov , a radical Left Socialist-Revolutionary , led the movement into a guerilla war against the Reds. Before the uprising, Antonov and a few comrades had fought an underground insurrection against the Bolsheviks and had been sentenced to death. Since he was able to escape capture by the Soviet authorities, he was a kind of folk hero to the peasants. He demanded that the free trade and movement of goods should be allowed, that
45126-419: Was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army . After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918,
45344-399: Was no family that had not suffered the arrest or disappearance of a member. Terror against the workers had begun in 1918 and reached its climax in 1921, with the subjugation of Kronstadt . According to several of the Bolshevik leaders, the terror started by Lenin was the natural consequence of the violent seizure of power and his rejection of democracy. The only allies of the Bolsheviks were
45562-421: Was ordered by Lenin as military commander-in-chief to suppress the uprising in Tambov. Assigned to him were tanks , heavy artillery and 100,000 soldiers, mostly special units of the Cheka, with additional Red Army units. As many members as possible of the communist youth organization Komsomol were assigned to him because they were considered politically loyal. The Red Army used armoured trains and engaged in
45780-563: Was pacified. These three forces intended to converge on Rzhaksa : Dmitrenko's cavalry brigade (2,000 men from the Sampur in the Tambov uyezd), Kotovski's cavalry brigade (1,000 soldiers from the Lomovis station in the Kirsanov uyezd) and the 14th cavalry brigade (1,000 cavalry up the Vorona River from Karai-Pushkino in Kirsanov's uyezd). Two weeks later rebel commander Aleksandr Boguslavski was killed in combat. The same fate befell Tokmakov, Karas and Selianski. On 12 June 1921, Tukhachevsky received permission from Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko to begin
45998-409: Was populated by more than three million people, 90% farmers and artisans. The region was densely populated, with rich, forested land that offered many jobs, especially as the land had been appropriated in 1917 and the owners expelled. But the demands of the Bolshevik government and the Russian Civil War prevented them from profiting, which only encouraged the insurrection. In the areas controlled by
46216-449: Was reduced to only a few groups. As a result of the military operations against the rebels, around 6,000 of their fighters surrendered and were either shot or deported. The deportees were transferred from the local camps to special camps in the northern regions of Russia after the suppression of the uprising. These camps were otherwise reserved for officers of the White movement and captured insurgents from Kronstadt . In these camps there
46434-401: Was referred to as the Antonovschina ("Antonov's mutiny"), so named after Alexander Antonov , a former official of the Socialist Revolutionary Party , who opposed the government of the Bolsheviks . It began in August 1920 with resistance to the forced confiscation of grain and developed into a guerrilla war against the Red Army , Cheka units and the Soviet Russian authorities. The bulk of
46652-411: Was sentenced to twenty years in prison for blowing up a train, but received an amnesty from the Russian Provisional Government following the February Revolution and returned to his native Tambov , where he served in the local militia in Kirsanov . As the Provisional Government refused to discuss agrarian reform, he joined the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries . The peasants of Tambov largely supported
46870-402: Was starving. To win over the population, Nikolai Bukharin was commissioned to draw up "non-coercive measures", in which he recommended that the required grain quotas be lowered. In response, on 2 February 1921, the Soviet leadership announced the end of the " prodrazvyorstka ", and issued a special decree directed at peasants from the region implementing the " prodnalog " policy. The new policy
47088-431: Was the Makhnovist Revolution led by the Ukrainian anarchists Nestor Makhno , Fedir Shchus and Semen Karetnyk . Its movement was only comparable to that of Tambov due to its magnitude and organization. In a few years the Makhnovist partisans fought against Germans and Austro-Hungarians , Petliura nationalists , a French-led intervention in Berdyansk , and were targets of Denikin, Wrangel and Bolsheviks. Probably
47306-402: Was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare
47524-412: Was what the Bolsheviks worried about because their source of support was the industrial proletariat. By the end of the year the greens had achieved one of the main objectives, the reds had stopped sending units to their territories to requisition grain. The officials in the south of Tambov were incapable of such action, as their resources were destined only to garrison the villages under their control. But
#398601