Tambov Rebellion

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 southeast of Moscow. In Soviet historiography, the rebellion 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 the peasant army was destroyed by large Red Army reinforcements using chemical weapons in the summer of 1921, smaller groups continued 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 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 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 the local soviets, following the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.