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The Tambov Revolt (1920-1921)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Seth Singleton
Seth Singleton*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Peasant life is known—it is to eat in order to work, to work in order to eat, and, beside that, to be born, to bear, and to die. Our revolution is a rebellion in the name of the conscious, rational, purposeful, and dynamic principle of life, against the elemental, senseless, biological automatism of life; that is, against the peasant roots of our old Russian history.

Boris Pilnyak, The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea

We cannot ignore the decision of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it. In the fire of experience, applying the decree in practice, and carrying it out locally, the peasants will themselves realize where the truth lies.

Lenin, introduction to the Land Decree, November 8, 1917

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1966 , pp. 497 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 Three unpublished documents provide the source material for this article: (a) V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, “O banditskom dvizhenii v tambovskoi gubernii,” Trotsky Archives, Harvard University, doc. # T686. This is the report of Antonov-Ovseenko, Soviet military commander and chairman of the plenipotentiary Commission for the Liquidation of Banditry in Tambov Province (guberniia) from February to July 1921, to Lenin and the Central Committee. The report is dated July 20, 1921. To judge from the comments written on it, the report passed through Lenin's hands to Trotsky. Written with the characteristic bluntness and clarity of a military order, the report examines the causes of the Tambov revolt, its organization, the measures taken to suppress it, and their effects. Antonov- Ovseenko's analysis seems truthful, perceptive, and intelligent, and in fact it substantiates the judgments of the other two, anti-Bolshevik, commentators. (b) M. Fomichev (Mikhail Lidin), “Antonovshchina, iz vospominanii Antonovtsa,” Russian Archive, Columbia University. Fomichev was a partisan leader in the Tambov revolt, a former officer disillusioned with the Whites. He offers an analysis of the revolt and its causes and provides vital information about the nature and extent of peasant participation in the revolt. Fomichev's anecdotes and descriptions vividly convey the desperate atmosphere of the revolt and the merciless nature of the fighting. Although the date that appears on the document is 1951, Fomichev must have written it shortly after the revolt or compiled it from a diary. (c) “Kak tambovskie krest'iane boriatsia za svobodu,” Russian Archive, Hoover Library, Stanford University, doc.# 208 (hereafter cited as “Tambovskie krest'iane“). The anonymous author of this document, dated 1921, was almost certainly a Socialist Revolutionary writing during the course of the revolt, for he sympathizes with the peasant cause while criticizing partisan leaders for not following the instructions of the SRs. The document is valuable for its information on the peasant revolutionary organization, the outbreak of armed revolt, and the role of the SRs.

2 A Soviet economist reported that grain sent to the cities declined from 212.5 million poods in 1917 to 180.5 million in 1920 and that by 1920 all grain sent from the villages was collected by forced requisition (Leonid Kritsman, Geroicheskii period velikoi russkoi revoliutsii [Moscow, 1926], p. 181).

3 According to the League of Nations Report on Economic Conditions in Russia (C.705 M.451, 1922), the harvests of 1920 and 1921 were less than half that of 1916: Year Poods of grain 1916 3,955,000 1920 1,738,000 1921 1,602,000 From 1915 to 1921 the area sown to crops declined by 37 percent, from 85.0 to 53.2 million dessiatines (Michael S. Farbman, Bolshevism in Retreat [London, 1930], p. 230).

4 This information of the Cheka is reported both by the Socialist Revolutionary press ( Shilkov, A, “Krest'ianstvo i Sovetskaia vlast',” in Krest'ianskaia Rossiia, Vol. I [Prague, 1922]Google Scholar) and by a contemporary official Soviet source (Itogi bor'by s golodom, with an introduction by Kalinin, M. I. [Moscow, 1922])Google Scholar. While both the SRs and the Soviet government wanted to pin responsibility for the movement on the SRs, the Soviet government seems to have had no reason for exaggerating the extent of peasant discontent.

5 The journalistic accounts of Soviet sources are substantiated by the scholarship of Geroid T. Robinson: “In the black-soil region, say in the guberniia of Tambov, an American traveler who rode through the grainfields in 1913 might have expected to find a scattering of farmhouses supported by this casual culture; but instead he would have found, perhaps, a village of a hundred households, then, a few miles further on, a village of a few hundred more. A constricted acreage, a nonintensive agriculture, a comparatively dense population—the landscape told no lies; there was really a malignant discord here“ (Rural Russia Under the Old Regime [New York, 1932], p. 245).

6 S. Prokopovich, Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR, Vol. I (New York, 1952), p. 132. Even if the Tambov poor peasant doubled his holding of perhaps half a dessiatine, he would have been left with at most a bare margin of subsistence.

7 Fomichev, p. 16.

8 Ibid., p. 8.

9 “Tambovskie krest'iane,” p. 2.

10 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 5. Antonov-Ovseenko gained prominence as the captain of the cruiser Aurora during the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. During the civil war he was given important military-administrative assignments by the Central Committee of the Party. The last of these was the suppression of the Tambov revolt. Antonov-Ovseenko served on the Central Committee in the 1920s but, with most of his old Bolshevik comrades, perished in the great purge.

11 Fomichev, p. 1.

12 Ibid., pp. 14-15.

13 Ibid., p. 2.

14 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 5.

15 Fomichev, p. 20.

16 “Tambovskie krest'iane,” p. 3

17 Fomichev, p. 9.

18 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 7.

19 In Bolshevik terminology a “kulak” meant, of course, any peasant who happened to be opposing the Bolsheviks, regardless of his economic status.

20 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 6.

21 “Tambovskie krest'iane,” p. 6.

22 This was, of course, what led the Bolsheviks to overestimate partisan strength so drastically. Everyone in southeast Tambov seems to have fought the Bolsheviks on occasion, but only a few lived apart from their villages. Thus estimates of partisan strength could vary from a few hundred to almost the total male population of the area.

23 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 9.

24 The Red Army was, of course, occupied elsewhere in the fall of 1920. War with Poland did not end until the preliminary peace of October 12, and Baron Wrangel's White army was defeated in the Crimea only in mid-November. Red Army veterans began to arrive in Tambov in January and February 1921 for a spring campaign against the partisans.

25 The story of the brigade is taken from Fomichev, whose narrative contains many bloody military anecdotes.

26 The author of “Tambovskie krest'iane” (p. 16) believed that lack of a clear political program was from the beginning the revolt's fatal flaw. “The tragedy of the Tambov peasantry is that it is without ideological leadership; a powerful peasant revolt without ideological leadership may degenerate into partisan warfare.*’ “Ideological leadership“ —from the viewpoint of this writer—meant SR control, which in Tambov might have meant no armed revolt at all.

27 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 10.

28 Ibid. Both other sources were vague in their chronology, and neither identified events described as occurring in the spring of 1921. Hence we must rely mainly on Antonov- Ovseenko for the account of later developments in Tambov.

29 Ibid., p. 12.

30 Ibid., p. 11.

31 Ibid., p. 15.

32 Ibid., p. 13.

33 Ibid., p. 16. The Tambov peasants, of course, knew the difference between the partisans and the Whites. Since war had ended in late 1920 in Poland and the Crimea, the only “Whites” left were peasant partisans in Tambov and elsewhere. The phrase was probably forced down the throat of the peasant congress for the sake of its effect in other parts of the country or abroad.

34 Ibid., p. 15.

35 Ibid. Fomichev described in detail the defeat and extermination of some of the partisan bands who were cut off from their supplies and cornered by Red Army troops.

36 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 20.

37 Probably very few peasants participated in the operations against the partisans. Many had been part-time guerrillas themselves, and none were eager to hunt their relatives and fellow villagers. To the end the campaign remained in the eyes of peasants an invasion of the countryside by the city. Of course, most Red Army soldiers sent against the partisans were themselves of peasant origin. Because of earlier failures of Red Army units to attack peasant partisans, coupled with a high rate of desertion and occasional defection of whole units to the partisans, the troops sent to Tambov in the spring of 1921 were those most disciplined and hardened by campaigns against the Whites.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., p. 25.

40 Ibid., p. 9. Again Fomichev corroborated Antonov-Ovseenko's generalization with the unpleasant details.

41 Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 20.

42 Ibid., p. 24.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., p. 32.

45 Ibid.,p. 30.

46 Ibid., p. 32.