When Siberia tried to become free for the last time
Author: Andrey Filimonov
"They were shooting from Samarovskaya Mountain. We all hid in the cellar. When the shooting died down, we crawled out of the cellar and went outside. In the alley that led to the river lay a dead officer and his dead horse. A neighbor came out, removed the richly decorated saddle from the horse, and bridle. They entered the village red».
A resident of the village of Samarovo (now a district of Khanty-Mansiysk) left these memories of the first days of the winter uprising of 1921 in Western Siberia. The Soviet authorities, having just defeated Kolchak himself, had no intention of standing on ceremony with the Siberian peasants. They were convinced that, following the famous Lenin's orderHang a dozen, or better yet, a hundred kulaks who instigated the "riots," and everyone else will fall silent in fear and submission. But soon, not just individual villages, but almost the entire Western Siberia and the Steppe Region (now Northern Kazakhstan) rose up against the Bolsheviks and their food tax system. The cause was the brutal actions of the food detachments, who literally took the last grain at machine gun point (there would be nothing to sow in the spring), sheared sheep in the middle of winter (causing the animals to freeze), and generally behaved like invaders. However, they themselves were enslaved—driven by Moscow. Lenin personally sent telegrams: "More grain from Siberia!"
The result of this policy was the Red Army's war with the Siberian peasantry, in which the death toll reached thousands.
It is interesting that the idea of the food requisition as a planned distribution of grain for the needs of the state did not belong to the Bolsheviks at all, but to officials of the tsarist government, who in 1916 adopted the law “On the requisition of grain and fodder purchased for defense-related needs.”
Surplus appropriation in the Tsarist, Kerensky and Soviet style
As is well known, the Russian monarchy was destroyed by "bread shortages." The February Revolution began in Petrograd's bread lines, which were catastrophically short in the final months of the empire's existence. Moreover, the shortage was not limited to the civilian population, but also to the active army.
It was precisely in order to feed soldiers, officers, and horses that the law on grain appropriation was passed, which included measures of administrative influence on those who refused to hand over grain at prices set by the state.
In practice, however, no violence was used against the peasants. Free farmers, at their village forums, would send the tsar's food detachments packing, and they would leave, helplessly throwing up their hands.
Speaking to the State Duma in February 1917, Minister of Agriculture Alexander Rittikh explained to the deputies that he considered the requisition of surplus grain to be a premature measure (this was three days before the overthrow of the monarchy): "We must wait, we must wait: perhaps the mood of the assembly will change; we must gather it again, point out to it the purpose for which this tax appropriation is intended, that this is precisely what the country and the homeland need for defense..." Rittikh said.
He believed in the collective wisdom of the peasants and wrote about it book “The Dependence of Peasants on the Community and the World,” in which he asserted that “in Russia, a socialist revolution is impossible, since these dreams of European revolutionaries have already been realized in the life of the Russian people.”
Perhaps this was once the case, but by 1917 the mood of popular life had changed dramatically and was no longer expressed in images of Slavophile fantasies about the “Russian world,” but in a rollicking song accompanied by an accordion: “I don’t care, I don’t care, I’m tired of fighting.”
In an atmosphere of extreme war weariness, the abdication of Nicholas II sparked national rejoicing. The winds of change swept the double-headed eagles from the streets in a matter of days. Many people, including officers, wore red ribbons on their chests. As Osip Mandelstam put it, "for a time it seemed that citizens would remain forever, like cats, with ribbons."
This flamboyant political carnival had only a relative bearing on reality. Bread was still in short supply for the army and the population, but the Provisional Government nevertheless intended to continue the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary "to the bitter end." In the spring of 1917, a "grain monopoly" was introduced: the government demanded that the peasants give up all the grain they produced, except for what they needed for food and sowing. A Ministry of Food was established, headed by journalist Alexei Poshekhontsev. A Socialist Revolutionary by political conviction, he advocated the thesis "the land for the peasants" in his books on the agrarian question.
"State lands must be given a very specific purpose: the workers must have the right to them. Management of these lands must be transferred to the people..." wrote Poshekhontsev.
It was under his rule that the first timid attempts were made to force rural capitalists to hand over their grain surpluses. To count these surpluses, it was necessary to gain access to the peasants' granaries. But the villages distrusted the emissaries of a democratic government just as they distrusted the representatives of an autocratic government. The peasants weren't particularly alarmed by the decree on the "armed confiscation of grain from large owners," issued by the government in August 1917. Veterans and deserters from World War I brought back enough weapons from the front to the countryside to last for another five years of guerrilla warfare against anyone who wanted to profit from the "surplus" grain.
The Ministry of Food was the only Provisional Government institution to survive the October Revolution and continue to operate under the Bolsheviks. They simply changed the sign—it now read "People's Commissariat" instead of "Ministry." But the staff remained the same.
In early 1918, the People's Commissariat of Food was headed by the veteran Bolshevik Tsyurupa, who invented the Kombeds—village committees of the poor—which provided invaluable assistance to the Soviet government in finding grain reserves hidden by the kulaks. The members of the Kombeds were mostly peasants themselves and knew well where to look for grain when food detachments arrived. They also had a material interest—they were entitled to a share of the "surplus" found.
Using these methods, the Bolsheviks managed to extort approximately 2 million poods of grain from villages under the rule of the "workers' and peasants' government" in 1918. At that time, the territory of the RSFSR comprised no more than one-quarter of the collapsed Russian Empire. Ukraine, the Caucasus, southern Russia, Siberia, and the Far East were lost to the Bolsheviks, but they did everything possible to reclaim the territories.
The military fire is burning over a huge area
Siberian peasants had never experienced the joys of proletarian dictatorship until Soviet power arrived in 1920 as a victor, having extensive experience with forced food tax collection. In the very first year of the new socialist era, Siberian provinces were subjected to a tax of 110 million poods of grain, 6 million poods of meat, plus labor duties, as well as the requisition of hides, wool, horns, and hooves.
By the end of 1920, the Bolsheviks had managed to export one and a half million poods of grain from Siberia, with another million poods lost due to poor storage conditions at so-called "bulk points." Later, Soviet people would become accustomed to such "economic activity" and would humorously refer to vegetable storage facilities as "vegetable stash houses." But a hundred years ago, Siberian peasants found all this completely foreign—a savagery, to say the least—and were far from amused. Especially when the decree "On the Requisition of Seed Grain" was issued in December 1920.
“The Soviet provincial government orders,” wrote the Tyumen Izvestia in January 1921, “that all seed material located on individual farms is subject to confiscation, dumping and storing in public barns and storage facilities, for which purpose a distribution is being made among districts, villages and individual farms.”
It would have been hard to imagine a more reliable way to rouse the peasants to revolt. And they did.
On January 31, 1921, 50 carts arrived in the village of Chelnokovskoye to transport grain. A crowd of local residents (approximately 500 people) blocked the caravan's path and demanded an explanation for why the authorities wanted to confiscate the seed grain. The commander of the food detachment ordered his Red Army soldiers to disperse the crowd. In response, the peasants pulled the commander from his horse and began beating him. The soldiers opened fire, killing two people. The crowd scattered. The food detachment left the village without any loot. But on February 4, the Red Army soldiers returned and, after a two-hour battle, occupied Chelnokovskoye, capturing about two hundred rebels armed with "hunting rifles, scythes, and pikes."
Meanwhile, reports began arriving in Tyumen that neighboring volosts were "arming themselves and preparing to revolt," and that "communist workers at the local level were arrested." On February 7, the authorities began acting "according to martial law": an armored train carrying 180 Red Army soldiers was urgently dispatched from Omsk to Ishim with orders to "clear out" the stations occupied by the rebels, restore train service, and restore control of the telegraph. A combat summary for February 9 reported:
"Communication has been interrupted... the wire has been cut by bandits... A half-company has been sent to restore the line, followed by the main forces... an order has been given to advance to the area of the village of Petukhovo to mercilessly suppress the rebellion."
But this was easier said than done. Scouts, posing as negotiators, infiltrated the rebels' positions, gathering information that was unfavorable for the Soviet authorities. Rebel villages had been transformed into fortified areas with multiple lines of defense and an extensive warning system. The Siberians' response to the Red Army's punitive detachments is described in a report by N. Rakhmanov, commander of the 85th Rifle Brigade:
"The villages are surrounded by trenches, prepared in advance using snow doused with water and camouflaged. Communication trenches lead to the trenches. As our units advance, the outposts and guard posts engage in combat, attempting to delay our lines' approach to the village. Cavalry communications assigned to the outposts and guard posts quickly notify their main forces, which immediately disperse to their positions. Our lines are deceived by the complete silence that reigns on the village streets, and they march through the streets toward the center of the village. Then, at a signal, a fierce barrage begins from behind cover, with the accurate, cold-blooded fire of our lines. Our units usually lie down under the bandits' fire, increasing losses from enemy fire, and then our units quickly retreat. At this point, the bandits begin firing at our units from the trenches surrounding the village. The fire is always intersecting. As a result, our losses are very high, while the bandits' losses are negligible."
On February 10, the Siberian Revolutionary Committee issued a threatening decree demanding the entire population surrender their weapons within 24 hours, or face execution on the spot. But the Siberians refuse to disarm. The uprising creeps north and south, and the rebels, armed with rifles and machine guns, unite into the "South Ishim Division," led by officers ranging from ensign to colonel. The "Division" blocks the Trans-Siberian Railway and begins advancing toward Petropavlovsk. Mobilization is declared in the city: a communist detachment is formed to guard the station, a city communist battalion, and a cavalry detachment. But this is to no avail. On February 14, the rebels enter Petropavlovsk.
REPORT OF THE DUBROVNO REBELLION HEADQUARTERS OF THE ISHIM DISTRICT
February 15 1921
"We report that Petropavlovsk has been captured by our troops. Three batteries, fully operational, have been captured... 1,100 prisoners, a large quantity of weapons and ammunition. A full agreement has been reached with the Cossacks. Kurgan and all the stations leading to Petropavlovsk are working with us. The Communists have lost all contact and are rushing about in panic. The fires of war are burning across a vast area on both sides of the city."
The war was technologically advanced. The rebels used radio stations, issued news reports, and published newspapers. Thanks to this, we know about the progress of the fighting from sources other than Soviet ones. The rebel newspaper "Voice of the People's Army" reported on Bolshevik atrocities in its March 20, 1921, issue:
"On the night of February 22, searches were conducted in Samarovo, and 12 local residents and some employees were arrested. Five of them were shot the following night—not shot, but literally hacked to pieces. In the morning, a large pool of blood was discovered near the ice hole, and not far from the hole, boys found a piece of someone's head with hair."
A week after Petropavlovsk, Tobolsk surrendered. It seemed like 1918 had returned, when the Czechoslovak legionnaires had dispersed Soviet power from the Urals to Lake Baikal in a matter of weeks. Three years later, military reports from Siberia once again recall the events of the Civil War: Surgut had fallen, Berezov had fallen, and Obdorsk was being evacuated.
Appeal of the command of the Northern Detachment of the People's Insurgent Army to the citizens of Tobolsk and its district
Tobolsk, February 22, 1921
"We, peasant plowmen, are marching for the rights of man and citizen of a free Siberia, marching for the liberation of our brothers in the village and city enslaved by the yoke of communism. Our task is to destroy communism, which has drenched our Motherland in the blood of its sons, seized our labor-earned national wealth for ruin and plunder, and turned free citizens into slaves. The fight against oppressors is difficult, but we are marching for the right cause. We are the people, and we will win."
The rebels had serious grounds for such a claim. Firstly, the People's Army truly lived up to its name—in terms of its numbers, weapons, and structure. The NA commander was Vasily Zheltovsky, a 26-year-old veteran of World War I, demobilized from the front with the rank of sergeant major and working as a clerk in the city military registration and enlistment office. In just a few months, he managed to carry out mobilization and elections to the peasant-town council of Tobolsk. Serving under Zheltovsky were "military specialists," former career officers of the tsarist army, including "a certain Kudryavtsev, a colonel of the General Staff, sent by the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic to be assigned to Shorin's headquarters, but who defected to the rebels along the way" (from a telegram from Smirnov, chairman of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee, to Lenin, dated March 12, 1921).
In March, Soviet power continues to crumble across Western Siberia. Provincial capitals, protected by well-armed garrisons, are impregnable to the People's Army. But around them, rebellion is raging. No one knows for sure what's happening in the districts and rural areas. There is only one certainty that worries the government most: grain from Siberia is no longer reaching the "motherland's granaries."
"In a month and a half, counterrevolutionaries have deprived the center of tens of thousands of train cars of Siberian grain, hundreds of trains of firewood and coal. Thanks to them, the workers of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the Donets Basin are once again receiving only one-third of a pound of bread a day. Thanks to them, millions of peasants in non-producing provinces are starving. Thanks to them, factory machines are running slower, and less of the goods needed by the villages are being produced…" This is the pathetic tone in which Lazarev, the military commissar of the 39th Division, complains about the rebels, ordering the bandits to be exterminated "root and branch." The military commissar blesses his subordinates for the massacre in the following manner: anyone who does not kill the "bandits" will be shot themselves. Terror has always been the last word of the revolution.
In April, reinforcements arrived in Siberia from European Russia. Regular units with artillery, armored trains, and armored steamships were deployed against the People's Army. On April 7, the Red Army launched an assault on Tobolsk and captured the city, following a flanking maneuver to the rear of the People's Army units that were preparing to repel an attack on the approaches to Siberia's ancient capital.
"The assault continued amid heavy resistance from the enemy, who had fortified themselves magnificently (several rows of trenches stretching over three miles). By 5 a.m., Tobolsk had been captured by our forces from the Abalaksky direction," Studitov, chairman of the Tyumen Provincial Cheka, reported to Moscow on April 9, 1921.
In the spring of 1921, having sailed up the Ob River, the punitive flotilla landed troops in Samarovo, Berezovo, Tobolsk, and Surgut—the main centers of the West Siberian Uprising. In a fierce battle on May 16, Vasily Zheltovsky, commander of the People's Army, was killed. With his death, organized resistance on the banks of the Ob River effectively ceased. Isolated partisan detachments, driven from the cities into forests and remote villages, continued fighting until the end of 1922. But already in May, the Siberian Revolutionary Committee reported to Moscow that the uprising had been successfully suppressed.
A debriefing immediately begins, with the authorities appointing those responsible for the uprising. This isn't Lenin with his "hanging" telegrams, but rather unknown fighters on the food front who committed local excesses. Identifying "individual shortcomings" was a regular practice of Soviet power throughout its history.
EXTRACT FROM MINUTES No. 24 OF THE MEETING OF THE TYUMEN PROVINCIAL COMMITTEE OF THE RCP(b)
Tyumen, May 3, 1921
"The impression I got from Ishim District, as the speaker put it, was this. He says that, in effect, Soviet power didn't exist there for eight months. There was some kind of brutal reprisal by the food workers, who often didn't recognize any governing bodies."
As for V. I. Lenin, he made a powerful political move in March of that year, deciding to abolish the food tax. The corresponding decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was published in Izvestia on March 23, a few days after the suppression of the sailors' revolt in Kronstadt. Lenin understood that Soviet power, in the form of "War Communism," had created too many internal enemies. It was time to dilute the commissars in dusty helmets with decently dressed people. Thus began the New Economic Policy (NEP). News of the abolition of the food tax did not immediately reach Siberia, and the peasants did not immediately believe it, knowing that the Bolsheviks were capable of any lie to gain power. But after the information spread widely, the number of Siberians supporting the People's Army began to decline. Ultimately, they rebelled against the food tax, which has now been abolished, and thus the goal has been achieved. The peasants only learned how badly the Soviet government had cheated them at the end of the twenties.
