War communism at the beginning of the 20th century put pressure on the peasants and put them before the choice between starvation and resistance to power. At the same time, there was also a massive closure of the churches, which forced the peasants to defend the shrines. All this led to numerous peasant uprisings throughout the country.
The largest of them was the Tambov Uprising of 1920-21. The Tambov province was located not far from the capital of the Bolsheviks, so the whole burden of the Bolshevik outrages fell here. We can say that the uprising was begun 2 years before the date that historians consider the beginning of peasant indignation. In 1918, resistance to the Bolsheviks was already in this area, periodically flaring up small, poorly organized uprisings, which were quickly suppressed. In the summer of 1920, a meeting was held in the Blue Shrub village, where white officers and guerrilla leaders decided to join forces in the fight against communism. By August 20th, 2 partisan armies were organized, which began to inflict serious blows on the Soviet regime. From this moment, the Tambov uprising passed into an active stage.
On August 19, peasants refused to hand over bread in several villages. Food detachments were disarmed. In the village of Afanasyevka, small insurgent groups united into one detachment. Then the fire of rebellion began to spread throughout the country. Soviet institutions ceased their activity in the province, food detachments and punitive detachments disappeared. Internationalists, Chekists and Jews fled from the Tambov province. The rebel formations became the basis for the three armies, which were subsequently brought under general command. The Tambov uprising led to the creation of a democratic republic in the Tambov region, where the necessary organs were created: the police, the press, and the prosecutor's office. There was a demand to convene a Constituent Assembly.
The heroes of the civil war in Russia, including the Tambov uprising, are contradictory personalities, which are difficult to judge today. So, the leader of the Tambov uprising, Alexander Antonov, was a terrorist fighter, and after the February Revolution he took the post of police chief of the Tambov province.
During 1921, the Tambov uprising expanded, spreading to neighboring counties. But at the same time, the number of Bolshevik forces in this territory also grew. When the fronts in Poland were closed, the Bolshevik heroes of the civil war in Russia, N.E. Kakurin, G.I. Kotovsky, I.P. Uborevich.
Resistance to the Bolsheviks in the Tambov region unfolded in a large-scale war under the leadership of M.N. Tukhachevsky. Armored vehicles, poisonous substances, aircraft, artillery were put up against the peasants.
In the summer of 1921, the rebels could no longer resist the pressure of the Red Army. The population refused to support the uprising. At the end of June, a proposal was received for military units: to disband and hide in the forests or return to civilian life. But the revenge of the Bolsheviks was terrible. During this period, not a single village was wiped off the face of the earth. The leader of the uprising, Antonov, was killed in 22 when he was arrested.
The background of the civil war in Russia was not an empty phrase. They resulted in terrible acts of self-destruction of the people that flared up throughout the country for several years. But the people were so exhausted by the politics of war communism that they preferred blind and thoughtless resistance, which inevitably led to defeat and death. The result of these uprisings was a temporary retreat of the authorities from sub-deployment to the NEP. This marked a new stage in the history of the Soviet Union and its people.