An uprising broke out in the history of the Civil War that broke out in the Tambov province under the leadership of Antonov Alexander Stepanovich, a former second lieutenant of the tsarist army who showed heroism during the First World War, and on the eve of the February Revolution linked his fate with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The movement led by him became one of the most widespread manifestations of popular anger caused by the rules established after the Bolsheviks came to power. During its suppression by the Communists for the first time in world practice, poisonous gases were used against their own compatriots.
The blessed breadbasket of Russia
According to historians, the Tambov uprising led by Antonov was the result of a deep crisis caused by the policy of the new authorities carried out against the population of this once richest Russian province. To understand the severity of the situation that had developed in 1920 on its territory, it is necessary to turn to the statistical data of previous years and compare them with those realities that the Bolsheviks brought to the residents of Tambov. This will help to fully understand the reasons for the uprising of Antonov.
So, it is known that at the beginning of the 20th century, of the 4 million people living in the Tambov province, the vast majority (75%) lived in rural areas and were engaged in agriculture. There were all objective prerequisites for this. It is enough to say that fate granted them the most fertile soil in the world (!) - chernozem, sometimes reaching a depth of four meters. Using favorable natural conditions, as well as the rich experience of cultivation, inherited from many generations of ancestors, the inhabitants of the province received the highest grain harvests in Russia and, trading it both domestically and abroad, achieved an unusually high standard of living.
The production and marketing of grain by Tambov farmers did not decrease even with the outbreak of the First World War, as the loss of a number of foreign buyers was offset by supplies to the army. In this difficult period, as in the pre-war years, the province remained the main breadbasket of Russia, uninterruptedly supplying its multimillion-dollar population with bread and ensuring a decent life for its workers.
Procedures introduced by the new authorities
This picture radically changed with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks. As you know, the new “masters of life”, who declared the transfer of land to peasants as the main direction of their policy, actually deprived them of all economic and political rights, and also introduced a ban on the sale of bread, which they began to seize by force. Food detachments sent to the villages took the whole crop from the peasants, condemning them to starvation and mercilessly shooting those who resisted. Such "management methods" provoked widespread indignation and created the prerequisites for the start of a peasant uprising led by Antonov.
Forced Deserters
Against the background of the economic policy of the authorities, which was essentially a robbery of the broad masses of the people, the general mobilization introduced in 1918 into the Red Army, which fought for interests alien to the peasants, also provoked a protest. Really sensing what the words really mean about the struggle for the common good, and not wanting to participate in the fratricidal war, they deserted as soon as possible with weapons in their hands.
Thus, having turned out to be outside the law, and not having the opportunity to return home, where they were awaiting inevitable reprisals, they were forced to unite in armed groups and earn their own food by all available and in most cases illegal ways. By 1920, several dozen such detachments were operating in the Tambov region. Their members, called "green," because they had to hide in the forests, exacerbated the already difficult situation, but at the same time they became the nucleus of a peasant uprising led by Antonov.
It is worth noting that in 1919, these masses of armed people, who by fate turned out to be outcasts of society, tried to win over the command of the Volunteer White Guard Army, created in southern Russia. In August, a special emissary was sent to them - Yesaul F.P. Padalkin, whose duties included conducting among the "green" propaganda work. However, he did not fulfill the task assigned to him, and returned with nothing.
A drop that overflows the cup of patience
The impetus for one of the most massive anti-government protests that took place during the Civil War was the actions of the chairman of the Tambov provincial executive committee A.G. Schlichter, who, despite the drought that covered a significant territory of the region in 1920, demanded that the peasants, according to their own established volumes surplus appraisals, 11.5 million pounds of grain with a total yield not exceeding then 12 thousand pounds.
His order, condemning thousands of farmers to starvation, provoked massive discontent, crushed by the authorities with incredible cruelty. Hundreds of peasants became victims of arbitrariness, carried out by food detachments, in a short time, while the survivors were imbued with fierce hatred of the Bolsheviks and became their irreconcilable enemies. Soon they joined the number of participants in the Antonov uprising that broke out in the Tambov region.
The beginning of bloodshed
In the historical literature devoted to the events of that period, the beginning of large-scale military operations is usually called the events of August 19, 1920. On that day, peasants from several villages of the Tambov province not only refused to hand over bread, but, with the support of armed groups composed of local deserters, defeated the food detachments heading for them. At the same time, all the local communists, who were ruthlessly destroyed as soon as possible, fell under the "distribution".
Further developments were like a snowball. Realizing that one did not have to wait for mercy from the Bolsheviks, the peasants everywhere created self-defense units, which, merging together and joining with previously operating armed groups, formed a powerful insurgent army.
Its head was the chairman of the underground anti-Bolshevik organization, called the “Union of the Labor Peasantry” - the lieutenant of the tsarist army Pyotr Mikhailovich Tokmakov, and the chief of staff and the actual leader was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party Alexander Stepanovich Antonov. Given the outstanding role of this man in subsequent events, the popular movement that swept the Tambov region in the period 1919-1920 was named after him.
The intensity of hostilities
Antonov’s Tambov uprising began to gain strength with extraordinary speed, he soon captured most of the counties, and a month later a wave of popular anger spilled out into neighboring provinces - Saratov and Voronezh. Peasants who took up arms everywhere eliminated the organs of Soviet power and mercilessly killed its representatives. Soon, a significant number of cities and villages of the region were under their control. The White Guard Lieutenant General Mamontov supplied the necessary amount of weapons to the rebels, who captured Tambov as a result of the horse raid and held it in his hands for some time.
In response to this, the local party bodies mobilized the Communists, and on August 31, the chairman of the Tambov Provincial Executive Committee A.G. Schlichter, leading the punitive detachment created from them, came out to suppress the uprising. Obviously, he was counting on an easy victory, but it was one thing to shoot unarmed peasants, and it was quite another to oppose the armed group created from among them. In the first open battle, his detachment was utterly defeated, and Schlichter himself barely escaped. This defeat then cost him his position, but soon he was again in demand by the party and made a career already in the diplomatic field.
The Antonov uprising in the Tambov region had such a wide resonance that in October of that year V. I. Lenin ordered F. E. Dzerzhinsky and his two assistants - V. S. Kornev and E. M. Sklyansky - to take urgent measures for his speedy suppression. According to their orders, the number of troops operating against the rebel army was increased due to the reserve from the VOKhR and CHON (special forces), and amounted to 4.5 thousand people. They were armed with 23 machine guns and 5 artillery pieces.
For comparison, it should be noted that in the ranks of the participants in the uprising led by Antonov, by that time there were already at least 20 thousand fighters, armed with 45 Maxim machine guns and 4 field guns with three hundred shells. In addition, the rebel army was constantly replenished at the expense of the local residents adjoining it, who had every reason to hate the Bolsheviks.
Fracture in the course of hostilities
However, the successes that accompanied the first stage of the Tambov uprising of Antonov in 1921 gave way to a strip of bitter failures. This is explained primarily by the fact that the Soviet-Polish war, which had ended by that time and the defeat of Wrangel in the Crimea, allowed the Red Army command to transfer a significant contingent of troops to Tambov and thereby strengthen the units there. The former lieutenant of the tsarist army M.N. Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the combined force group, and E.P. Uborevich became his deputy.
The brigade under the command of G.I. Kotovsky was sent to fight against "Antonovism" —that throughout the Soviet period it was customary to call the uprising, and representatives of the Cheka — G. G. Yagoda and V — arrived to control the actions of the command staff. V. Ulrich. All these people (except Kotovsky) during the Stalinist repressions were shot on charges of anti-Soviet activity, and later rehabilitated posthumously.
By April 1920, the preponderance of forces was already on the side of government troops, consisting of 55 thousand Red Army soldiers who had 63 artillery weapons, about 500 machine guns and 4 armored trains. In addition, 5 auto-armored squads and 2 squadrons fought on their side. A decisive turning point in the course of hostilities was marked on May 25, when the Kotovsky brigade utterly defeated two insurgent regiments led by Selyansky, and Uborevich’s division destroyed the unit commanded by Antonov personally. The uprising in the Tambov region from that time began to decline, but many of its participants still continued the struggle.
Bloody apocalypse on Tambov land
Enormous forces were used by the Bolsheviks, but on the basis of the surviving documents, as well as the testimonies of contemporaries, the conclusion suggests that they achieved victories primarily through barbaric methods of warfare. Suffice it to say that while suppressing the Antonov uprising in the Tambov region, for the first time in world history, poisonous gases were used against their own compatriots, many of whom were civilians in the war zone. The order to use chemical weapons came from Moscow and was immediately executed by the commander in chief of government troops Tukhachevsky.
He was sent to all units of the directive that prescribed the widest possible repressive measures not only against the participants in the rebellion, but also members of their families. Since that time, such unprecedented cruelty actions as taking hostage and subsequent execution of hundreds of civilians, the destruction of entire cities and villages, as well as the widespread creation of concentration camps in which even mothers with babies and feeble old people have come into practice have come into practice.
The number of volunteers of the Antonov uprising in the Tambov province and their family members who voluntarily surrendered and nevertheless shot without trial was measured in hundreds of thousands. Recall that these bloody iniquities, as well as all subsequent ones, were created under the slogan of building a brighter future, and the name of the main executioner - Tukhachevsky - still bears one of the streets of St. Petersburg. It will be appropriate to recall the ancient wisdom that states that a people who have forgotten their past are doomed to repeat it.
The end of the peasant rebellion
By the summer of 1921, the main forces of the rebels were defeated, and the Tambov uprising of Antonov took on the character of a guerrilla war, the scope of which was limited only to individual regions. Many rebels laid down their arms and went home. In mid-July, Tukhachevsky was already reporting to Moscow about the elimination of the last hotbeds of resistance, but individual skirmishes between peasants and government troops continued for another year.
One of the important factors that contributed to the change of mood among the peasants participating in the Antonov uprising in the Tambov province and their refusal to continue military operations was the cancellation of the surplus appropriation announced by the government in February 1921, and its replacement with a fixed tax. This was a tricky step of the Moscow leadership, perceived by the peasants as their victory, but in fact turned into even more enslavement.
The same can be said about the decree, on the basis of which all participants in the peasant uprising of Antonov were promised an amnesty, subject to the voluntary surrender of weapons and assistance in the capture of its main leaders. In practice, all the rebels who confessed were arrested and sent to places of detention, where they basically ended their lives. The same bitter fate awaited their family members.
The death of the main mastermind and leader of the uprising
In one of the letters of that period, A. S. Antonov stated that the bulk of the people succumbed to deception, and their fighting spirit decreased markedly. Just as deserters had fled hundreds of units of the Red Army at one time, so now they began to leave the rebel army, taking with them weapons and food supplies. The previously strong and combat-ready army began to melt rapidly, which testified to the inevitable defeat of the Tambov uprising. Alexander Antonov, unable to influence the course of events, only bitterly added in the same letter that now all the participants in the rebellion, and especially its leaders, would face severe retaliation.
After the final defeat of the uprising in Tambov, Antonov was hiding for almost a year from the Chekists in nearby farms. It became harder and harder for him to evade the persecution every day, as the old rebellious spirit was scattered among the people, many were not averse to redeeming themselves at the cost of betraying their former commander. Finally, on June 22, 1922, a Chechens received a denunciation from a railwayman reporting that the wanted criminal, along with his brother Nikolai, was in the village of Nizhny Shibryai in the house of a local resident, Natalya Kosatonova. A capture group was immediately sent to the indicated address, the members of which, after an unsuccessful attempt to take the brothers alive, shot both from close range.
The bodies of the dead were transported to Tambov and placed in the basement of the previously abolished Kazan monastery, the premises of which were used for the needs of the provincial department of the GPU. Information about where the bodies of the main leader of the uprising, Alexander Antonov and his brother, were buried is not known. The events that covered the Tambov province and part of the territories adjacent to it during the period 1920-1921 resulted in the tightening of the repressive regime previously established by the Bolsheviks and the final deprivation of all economic and political rights of the peasants.