Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
In the minds of outsiders, Russia is often seen as a confusing place of extremes,
and its military history seems equally murky.
In this video, we clear things up a bit, cutting to the heart of the conflict that
spawned the Soviet Union and bringing its forgotten factions into the limelight.
In February 1917, the Tsar, whose ancestors had ruled Russia for over a thousand years,
was overthrown. Political chaos ensued as diverse factions challenged each other for control
of one of the world’s wealthiest countries. In November, Lenin’s Bolsheviks launched
the October Revolution and overthrew the Russian Republic’s Provisional Government.
Their rule was not universally accepted, and a bloody civil war engulfed the Russian state.
In the major cities, such as Moscow and Petrograd, communist red forces battled an
array of monarchists, capitalists, and democrats in the streets. These disparate groups coalesced
into the so-called “White” faction and began receiving military support from the Entente Powers
so that they might soon open up a second front against the German Empire. At this time,
Europe was still fighting the First World War, and an Entente victory was by no means assured.
Outside the major cities, something else was happening. Peasant farmers throughout Russia
and its occupied territories saw little difference between the Reds and the Whites. Both ruled from
afar and demanded crops, livestock, and men whenever they pleased. These men who called
themselves government officers seemed little better than bandits or burglars,
taking and taking until the villagers had nothing left.
In the face of such repression, many peasant communities rose up. They weren’t generally
associated with far-left or right-wing politics, but instead were fighting against requisitions,
reprisals, and starvation. They became known as Russia’s “green armies.”
By the end of 1918, the Red Army comprised one million soldiers. One year later, it numbered
three million. A year after that, five. But despite what the Bolshevik propagandists told
the world, the majority of these new soldiers weren’t diehard communists.
Most were forcibly conscripted from villages in rural Russia and didn’t want to be there at all.
When harvest season came, peasants deserted the Red Army en masse. Three million deserted between
1919 and 1920 alone, far more than were lost in combat. They often took their rifles with them
and joined informal militias upon returning home. These were some of the first soldiers of
the Green Armies, and they remained a thorn in the side of the Bolsheviks for years.
The Green Armies operated from the forests, sometimes fighting as platoon-sized guerrilla
units and sometimes numbering as many as several thousand. They lacked heavy weaponry but made up
for this with their expert knowledge of the terrain. In some cases, the Green soldiers
had centralised command and control nodes and auxiliary support staff. Others were little more
than terrorists. But they all had one thing in common: a deep desire to remain free from
oppression at the hands of the Reds and Whites. This they were willing to fight and die for.
On 3 March 1919, Red Army officials came to the village of Novodevichy,
near Samara, to requisition supplies. Due to unrest in the region, they first corralled
the locals in a small area at the centre of the village. Word quickly spread amongst the tightly
packed villagers that the officials were taking more of their grain harvest than usual, so they
made a plan. While the Reds were distracted, some villagers snuck away and secured hidden weapons.
Then the whole village attacked the requisition squad, killing or tying up all of the men.
Bolshevik soldiers from the local area were sent to make an example of Novodevichy,
but when they arrived, the conscripts shot their own officers
and joined the villagers. Armed and organized, the peasants formed a council and began booting
Bolshevik officials out of neighbouring villages and the surrounding area. They were greeted as
liberators in the city of Stavropol, and captured it without firing a shot.
Their war cry was “All power to the workers! Down with the rule of the Bolsheviks!”
The revolt, now known as the Chapan Rebellion, grew. A green army of at least 30,000 guerrillas
and deserters formed and fell under the command of Lieutenant Aleksey Dolinin.
They printed their own newspaper and destroyed all Soviet iconography in the territory they occupied.
This was an affront to Valerian Kuybyshev, head of the Soviet 4th Army and top party official.
He marched on Stavropol with the 1st Samara Workers' Regiment
and the 2nd International Company, which comprised mostly Hungarians. He had several machine guns
and a cavalry unit, with which he aimed to crush the rebels.
By March 10th, the Soviet reserve regiment in Samara turned traitor and joined the Greens too.
The same day, peasants rose up around Syzran and executed the city’s Bolshevik officials.
Now, much of the Volga Basin was in the hands of the Greens, and the Bolsheviks were terrified of
the rebellion spreading further. They had one last card to play: the Cheka.
The predecessor to the NKVD, the Cheka were the communist party’s secret police and political
enforcers. Nominally, their role was to prevent counter-revolutionary activity, but in reality,
they prosecuted state-sanctioned terror. They infiltrated Syzran and caused chaos behind Green
lines, while Kuybyshev launched a frontal assault with his cavalry. The rebels were forced back and
broken. Within days, the Reds had crushed the Chapan Rebellion, but their work wasn’t done.
In the proceeding months, the Bolsheviks burned the villages that had initially risen up,
and arrested the peasants en masse. Anyone who had supported the greens
was sent to a concentration camp, which quickly became overcrowded. When the camp
couldn’t hold any more prisoners, the Cheka shot anyone else they captured.
It’s unclear just how many were killed, but it was, at the very least, in the tens of thousands.
Not eighteen months later, to the west of Samara, another green rebellion took place. The peasants
of the Tambov region had been very productive before the Civil War, producing at least 33%
more grain than they needed. The Bolsheviks in Moscow noted this and consequently increased the
requisitions year on year, until, by 1920, 50% of the once-rich region was starving.
In August 1920, the Reds came once again to take food from the starving peasants. Reportedly,
“they plundered everything, even pillows and kitchen utensils. They shared the spoils and
beat old men of 70 years old in front of everyone. The confiscated grain
[was] carted to the nearest train station and left to spoil there in the open air.”
The villagers had had enough.
Wielding pitchforks, wooden clubs, and a few rifles, the peasants of Chitrovo village killed
as many of the requisition officers as they could, and chased the rest away. Their spontaneous revolt
quickly turned into a movement, and other villages joined them. Alexander Antonov, a popular hero in
the region who had previously fought against the Bolsheviks, was chosen as the movement’s leader.
As usual, the Reds tried to put the rebellion down with local troops,
but the troops defected and shot their officers.
Antonov then organised these men and several thousand peasant volunteers into a new green
army. It boasted 18 regiments, each with its own political officers, communications departments,
and support staff. Their first operation was an attack on the trains transporting requisitioned
grain to Soviet-controlled cities. This was successful, and Antonov redistributed the grain
to Tambov’s peasant farmers. This action won him their loyalty, and the ranks of his army swelled.
Revolts broke out in the cities of Voronezh, Saratov, and Pensa while Antonov persecuted
anyone with ties to the Bolshevik party. He had 1,000 party members executed
and all Soviet institutions abolished. By October 1920, the Reds had lost control of
all territory in the region and more and more of their men were deserting to the Greens.
Even the feared Tambov Cheka was infiltrated, and its operations curtailed.
By early 1921, Antonov’s army numbered 70,000 regular soldiers and militiamen.
Revolts inspired by his had spread as far as Tsaritsyn,
Astrakhan, and into Siberia. The Bolsheviks had counterattacked, but Antonov’s green army had,
on several occasions, defeated them in pitched battles. But it was not to last.
The White Russian General Wrangel had been soundly defeated and his troops scattered
or killed. This freed up a large portion of the Red Army to take the fight to Tambov.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky was placed in charge, and every weapon,
from armoured trains and tanks to poison gas, was put at his disposal.
While they fought bitterly, the Tambov Green Army had no heavy weapons of their own. They suffered
horrendous casualties from Soviet artillery and machine guns. But worst of all was the gas.
Soviet newspapers rejoiced over the devastation wrought by poison gas. It carpeted the forests
and seeped into the villages, killing everything. The Bolsheviks ended the Tambov rebellion,
but only by liquidating the peasants and depopulating the countryside.
Antonov and his guard tried to escape but were surrounded. He later died during a
shootout with Soviet troops and was buried alongside his green soldiers.
This was the way all green rebellions were put down by the Soviets: with brutality. Many isolated
deserters and renegades continued the fight, sometimes for years, but as the USSR consolidated,
they were eventually stamped out. But what do you think? Do YOU know of any other green rebellions
against Soviet rule? Was it inevitable that people fought back when their food was taken away? How
different do YOU think things might’ve been if the rebellions succeeded? Let us know in the comments.