Greens vs. Reds & Whites Candidate of Historical Sciences Ruslan Gagkuev described the events of those years as follows: “In Russia, the cruelty of the civil war was due to the destruction of traditional Russian statehood and the destruction of centuries-old foundations of life.” According to him, in those battles there were no losers, but only destroyed ones. That is why rural people with entire villages, and even volosts, sought to protect the islands of their little world from an external deadly threat at any cost, especially since they had experience of peasant wars. This was the main reason for the emergence of a third force in 1917-1923 - the "green rebels".

In the encyclopedia edited by S.S. Khromov “Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR” defines this movement as illegal armed formations whose members hid from mobilization in the forests. However, there is another version. So General A.I. Denikin believed that these formations and detachments got their name after a certain Ataman Zeleny, who fought against both the Whites and the Reds in the western part of the Poltava province. Denikin wrote about this in the fifth volume of Essays on Russian Troubles. “Fight among yourselves” The book of the Englishman H. Williamson “Farewell to the Don” contains the memoirs of a British officer who during the years of the Civil War was in the Don Army of General V.I. Sidorina. “At the station, we were met by a convoy of Don Cossacks ... and units under the command of a man named Voronovich, who lined up next to the Cossacks. The “greens” had practically no uniforms, they wore mostly peasant clothes with checkered woolen caps or shabby mutton hats, on which a green cross was sewn. They had a simple green flag and looked like a tough and powerful group of soldiers." The "soldiers of Voronovich" refused Sidorin's call to join his army, preferring to remain neutral. In general, at the beginning of the Civil War, the peasantry adhered to the principle: "Fight among yourselves." However, the "whites" and "reds" every day stamped out decrees and orders on "requisitions, duties and mobilization", thereby involving the villagers in the war. Village fighters Meanwhile, even before the revolution, the villagers were experienced fighters, ready to grab pitchforks and axes at any moment. The poet Sergei Yesenin in the poem "Anna Snegina" cited the conflict between the two villages of Radovo and Kriushi. Once we caught them ... They are in axes, we are the same. From the ringing and gnashing of steel, a shiver rolled through the body. There were many such skirmishes. Pre-revolutionary newspapers were full of articles about mass fights and stabbings between residents of various villages, auls, kishlaks, Cossack villages, Jewish shtetls and German colonies. That is why every village had its cunning diplomats and desperate commanders who stood up to protect local sovereignty. After the First World War, when many peasants, returning from the front, took with them three-line rifles, and even machine guns, it was dangerous to enter such villages just like that. Boris Kolonitsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, noted in this regard that regular troops often asked permission from the elders to pass through such villages and often received refusals. But after the forces became unequal due to the sharp strengthening of the Red Army in 1919, many villagers were forced to go into the forests so as not to fall under mobilization. Nester Makhno and Old Man Angel A typical commander of the "greens" was Nestor Makhno. He went through a difficult path from a political prisoner due to participation in the anarchist group "Union of Poor Grain Growers" to the commander of the "Green Army", numbering 55 thousand people in 1919. He and his soldiers were allies of the Red Army, and Nester Ivanovich himself was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the capture of Mariupol.

At the same time, being a typical "green", he did not see himself outside his native places, preferring to live by robberies of landowners and wealthy people. The book "The Most Terrible Russian Tragedy" by Andrey Burovsky cites the memoirs of S.G. Pushkarev about those days: “The war was cruel, inhuman, with complete oblivion of all legal and moral principles. Both sides sinned with a mortal sin - the murder of prisoners. The Makhnovists regularly killed all captured officers and volunteers, and we let the captured Makhnovists go to waste. If at the beginning and in the middle of the Civil War the "greens" either adhered to neutrality, or most often sympathized with the Soviet government, then in 1920-1923 they fought "against everyone." For example, on the carts of one commander "Batko Angel" it was written: "Beat the reds until they turn white, beat the whites until they turn red." It got to the point that the red commanders themselves did not know where - the truth, and where - a lie. Once, at a peasant gathering, the legendary Chapaev was asked: “Vasily Ivanovich, are you for the Bolsheviks or for the Communists”? He replied: - "I am for the International." Under the same slogan, that is, “For the International,” St. George Knight A. V. Sapozhkov fought, who fought simultaneously “against the gold-chasers and against the false communists who settled in the Soviets.” His unit was destroyed, and he himself was shot dead. The most prominent representative of the "greens" is considered to be a member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party A. S. Antonov, better known as the leader of the Tambov Uprising of 1921-1922. In his army, the word "comrade" was in use, and the struggle was fought under the banner "For Justice". However, most of the "Green Army" did not believe in their victory. For example, in the song of the Tambov rebels "Something the sun does not shine ..." there are such lines: They will lead us all indiscriminately, They will give the command "Pli!" Chur, do not whimper at the barrel, Do not lick the ground at the feet! ..

Anton Posadsky.

Green Movement in the Civil War in Russia. Peasants' Front between Reds and Whites. 1918-1922

The latest research on the history of Russia

The Latest Studies in the History of Russia series was founded in 2016.

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This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project No. 16-41-93579)

Introduction 1
The monograph was prepared with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation, project No. 16–41 -93579. The author is grateful to F.A. Gushchin (Moscow) for the opportunity to get acquainted with a number of memoirs.

Revolution and internecine strife are always very flowery, in every sense of the word. Vivid vocabulary, aggressive jargon, expressive names and self-names, a real feast of slogans, banners, speeches and banners. Suffice it to recall the names of the parts, for example, in the American Civil War. The southerners had "Lincoln assassins", all kinds of "bulldogs", "threshers", "yellow jackets", etc., the northerners had a grandiose sinister anaconda plan. The civil war in Russia could not be an exception, especially since in a country just approaching universal schooling, visual perception and marking meant a lot. No wonder the romantics of the world revolution expected so much from the cinema. An incredibly expressive and understandable language has been found! The sound once again killed the aggressively revolutionary dream: the films began to speak in different languages, the dialogue replaced the irresistible power of the living poster.

Already in the revolutionary months of 1917, the banners of shock units and death units provided such expressive material that an interesting candidate's dissertation was successfully defended on them. It happened that a unit with the most modest real combat strength had a bright banner.

The autumn of 1917 finally determined the names of the main characters - the Reds and the Whites. The Red Guard, and soon the army was opposed by the Whites - the White Guards. The name "White Guard" itself is believed to have been adopted by one of the detachments in the Moscow battles in late October - early November. Although the logic of the development of the revolution suggested an answer even without this initiative. Red has long been the color of rebellion, revolution, barricades. White is the color of order, law, purity. Although the history of revolutions knows other combinations. In France, white and blue fought, under this name one of the novels by A. Dumas from his revolutionary series came out. The blue semi-brigades became the symbol of the victorious young revolutionary French army.

In the picture of the unfolding Civil War in Russia, along with the "basic" colors, others were woven. Anarchist detachments called themselves the Black Guard. Thousands of Black Guards fought in the southern direction in 1918, being very wary of their red comrades.

Until the fights of the early 1930s, the self-name of the rebels "black partisans" appeared. In the Orenburg region, even the Blue Army is known among many insurgent anti-Bolshevik formations. "Colored", almost officially, will be called the most cohesive and combat-ready white units in the South - the famous Kornilovites, Alekseyevites, Markovites and Drozdovites. They got their name from the color of their shoulder straps.

Color markings were also actively used in propaganda. In the leaflet of the headquarters of the recreated North Caucasian Military District in the spring of 1920, “yellow bandits” stood out - these are the sons of offended kulaks, socialist-revolutionaries and Mensheviks, fathers, Makhnovists, Maslaks, Antonovites and other comrades-in-arms and hangers-on of the bourgeois counter-revolution, bandits “black”, "white", "brown" 2 .

However, the most famous third color in the Civil War remained green. The Greens became a significant force at some stages of the Civil War. Depending on the inclination of specific green formations to support one or another "official" side, white-green or red-green appeared. Although these designations could only fix a temporary, momentary tactical line or behavior dictated by circumstances, and not a clear political position.

A civil war in a large country invariably creates some main subjects of confrontation and a significant number of intermediate or peripheral forces. For example, the American Civil War drew the Indian population into its orbit, Indian formations appeared both on the side of the northerners and on the side of the southerners; there were states that were neutral. Many colors were also indicated in civil wars, for example, in multinational Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Civil War in Russia, the main subjects of confrontation crystallized rather quickly. However, within the white and red camps, there were often very serious contradictions, not even so much of a political nature as at the level of political emotions. The Red partisans did not tolerate commissars, the White Cossacks did not trust the officers, etc. In addition, new state formations were structured with more or less success on the national outskirts, striving primarily to acquire their own armed forces. All this made the overall picture of the struggle extremely variegated and dynamically changing. Finally, always active minorities fight, they rouse broader masses of fellow citizens. In peasant (and landslide re-peasant in 1917-1920 due to land redistribution and rapid deindustrialization) Russia, the main character in any lengthy struggle was the peasant. Therefore, the peasant in the armies of the opposing sides, in the rebels, in the deserters - in any state created by a large-scale internal war - already by his mass character alone showed a very significant value. The Greens became one of the forms of peasant participation in the events of the Civil War.

The Greens had obvious predecessors. The peasant always suffers from war, often drawn into it out of necessity, either incurring a duty in favor of the state, or in defending his home. If we dare to make analogies that are not close, we can recall how the military successes of the French during the Hundred Years War in the 1360s and 1370s grew out of the need for self-defense and the emerging national feeling. and in the era of Joan of Arc, successes and innovations in the military art of the Dutch gezes at the end of the 16th century with their “transfer” through the Swedes to the Russian militias of the Time of Troubles, led by M. Skopin-Shuisky. However, the era of modern times has already separated the combat capabilities of the regular army and any improvised rebel formations too far. Probably, this situation was most clearly demonstrated by the epic of clobmen - "clubmen" - during the years of civil wars in England in the 17th century.

Cavalier royalists fought the parliamentary armies. The fight was fought with varying success. However, any internal war primarily hits the non-belligerents. The intemperate armies of both sides laid a heavy burden on the peasant population. In response, the cudgels rose. The movement was not widespread. It was located in several counties. In the domestic literature, the most detailed presentation of this epic remains the long-standing work of Professor S.I. Arkhangelsk.

The activity of klobmen is one of the stages in the development of the peasant movement in England during the civil wars of the 17th century. The peak of development of this self-defense movement came in the spring - autumn of 1645, although evidence of local armed formations is known almost from the beginning of hostilities, as well as later, outside of 1645.

The relationship between the armed peasants and the main active forces of civil strife - gentlemen and supporters of parliament is indicative. Let's highlight some plots that are interesting for our topic.

Clobmen are mostly villagers who have organized to resist looting and enforce peace on opposing sides.

Klobmeny had their own territory - this is primarily the counties of South-West England and Wales. These territories mostly stood for the king. At the same time, the movement also spread beyond the base territory, covering, at its peak, more than a quarter of the territory of England. The klobmen seemed to "not notice" the Civil War, expressing their readiness to feed any garrisons so that they would not act outrageously, expressing in petitions reverence for the royal power and respect for parliament. At the same time, the excesses of the troops caused a rebuff, and sometimes quite effective. Ordinary klobmen were mostly rural residents, although nobles, priests, and a significant number of townspeople are found in their leadership. In different counties there were different moods and motivations to participate in the Clobmen movement. This is due to the difference in socio-economic status. Everyone suffered from the war, but patriarchal Wales and the economically developed, woolen counties of England paint a different picture.

In 1645 there were about 50,000 clobmen. This number exceeded the royal armed forces - about 40 thousand, and slightly inferior to the parliamentary (60-70 thousand).

It is interesting that both the king and parliament tried to win the clubmen over to their side. First of all, there were promises to curb the predatory inclinations of the troops. At the same time, both sides sought to destroy the klobman organization. Both the Chevalier Lord Goring and the Parliamentary general Fairfax alike forbade Clobmen meetings. Apparently, the understanding that klobmen, in their further development, are capable of growing into some kind of third force, existed both on the side of the king and on the side of parliament, and caused opposition. Both needed a resource, not an ally with their own interests.

It is believed that by the end of 1645 the movement of klobmen was largely eliminated by the efforts of parliamentary troops under the command of Fairfax. At the same time, organizations of many thousands, even relatively weakly structured ones, could not disappear overnight. Indeed, already in the spring of 1649, at a new stage in the mass movement, a case was recorded of the arrival of an impressive detachment of clobmen from the county of Somerset to help the Levellers 3 .

For all the riskiness of analogies in three centuries, we note the plots themselves, which are similar in the civil wars in England and Russia. First, the grassroots mass movement is inclined towards a certain independence, although it is quite ready to listen to both "main" sides of the struggle. Secondly, it is territorially localized, although it tends to expand into neighboring territories. Thirdly, local interests prevail in motives, primarily the tasks of self-defense from ruin and excesses. Fourthly, it is the real or potential independence of the insurgent movement that causes concern of the main active forces of the civil war and the desire to liquidate it or integrate it into their armed structures.

Finally, the Russian Civil War unfolded when a great civil strife with active peasant participation was burning out on another continent - in Mexico. A comparative study of the civil war in an American country and in Russia has obvious scientific prospects. In fact, the activities of the peasant armies of Zapata and Villa provide rich and picturesque material for the study of the insurgent peasantry. However, it is more important for us that this analogy was already visible to contemporaries. In 1919, the well-known publicist V. Vetlugin wrote about “Mexican Ukraine” in the white press, the image of Mexico also appears in his book of essays “Adventurers of the Civil War”, published in 1921. evoked such associations. True, in the "green" areas of "Mexico" there were relatively few, this is more an affiliation of the steppe chieftain.

As early as 1919, the term "political banditry" appeared in the RSFSR to designate insurrection and anti-Bolshevik insurrectionary struggle, which became firmly and permanently included in historiography. At the same time, the main subject of this banditry was the kulaks. This evaluation standard was extended to situations of other civil wars, as a result of which the communists came to power. Thus, a book on the history of China published in the USSR in 1951 reported that in 1949 there were still a million "Kuomintang bandits" in the PRC. But by the first anniversary of the republic, the number of "bandits" had dropped to 200,000 4 . In the years of perestroika, this story caused controversy: “rebels” or “bandits”? The propensity for one or another designation determined the research and civic position of the writer.

The "big" civil war did not arouse as much attention among analysts of the Russian diaspora as the initial volunteer period. This is clearly seen in the well-known works of N.N. Golovin and A.A. Zaitsov. Accordingly, the green movement was not in the focus of attention. It is significant that the late Soviet book about the red partisans has nothing to do with the green movement, even the red-green one. At the same time, for example, in the Belarusian provinces, the maximum number, which hardly corresponds to reality, of partisans of a communist orientation is shown 5 . In a recent fundamental attempt to present a non-communist view of Russian history 6, the green movement is also not specifically singled out.

The green movement is sometimes interpreted as broadly as possible, as any armed struggle within the framework of the Civil War outside the white, red and national formations. So, A.A. Shtyrbul writes about "a broad and numerous, albeit scattered, all-Russian partisan-insurgent movement of the greens." He draws attention to the fact that anarchists played a significant role in this movement, and also to the fact that for the majority of representatives of this environment, whites were “more unacceptable” than reds. N. Makhno 7 is cited as an example. R.V. Daniele made an attempt to give a comparative analysis of civil wars and their dynamics. In his opinion, the Russian revolutionary peasantry, alienated by the policy of requisitioning, "became a free political force in many parts of the country", opposing the Whites and the Reds, and this situation was most dramatically manifested in Nestor Makhno's "Green" movement in Ukraine. M.A. Drobov considers the military aspects of partisanship and small war. He analyzes in detail the red insurrection of the Civil War. The Greens for him are primarily an anti-White Guard force. “Among the “greens” it is necessary to distinguish between bandit gangs, self-seekers, various types of criminal punks who had nothing to do with the insurrection, and groups of poor peasants and workers scattered by whites and interventionists. It was these last elements ... having no connection either with the Red Army or with the party organization, independently organized detachments with the aim of harming the whites at every opportunity. M. Frenkin writes about the operations of the Greens in Syzran and other counties of the Simbirsk province, in a number of counties of Nizhny Novgorod and Smolensk, in the Kazan and Ryazan provinces, and clusters of the Greens in Belarus with its vast forest and swampy areas 10 . At the same time, the name "green" for, for example, the Kazan or Simbirsk regions is uncharacteristic. An expanded understanding of the green movement is also inherent in historical journalism 11 .

T.V. played an important role in the study of peasant participation in the Civil War. Osipov. She was one of the first to raise the subject of the subjectivity of the peasantry in the internecine war 12 . In subsequent works by this author 13 a picture of peasant participation in the revolutionary and military events of 1917–1920 is developed. T.V. Osipova focused on the fact that the protest movement of the Great Russian peasantry was not noticed in Western literature, but it was, and was massive.

The well-known essay on peasant uprisings by M. Frenkin, of course, also concerns the theme of the Greens. He quite correctly assesses the green movement as a specific form of peasant struggle that appeared in 1919, that is, as a kind of innovation in the peasant struggle with power. With this movement, he connects the active work of the peasants in the destruction of Soviet farms during the Mamontov raid 14 . M. Frenkin is right from the point of view of the general logic of the peasant struggle. At the same time, one should carefully accept his value judgments about the unchanged multi-thousand greens. At times, conscious distortions in this matter have given rise to a whole tradition of incorrect perception. So, E.G. Renev showed that the memoirs of Colonel Fedichkin about the Izhevsk-Botkin uprising, published in Abroad, were subjected to serious editing by the editors of the publication with a deliberate distortion of the content. As a result, instead of peasant detachments of one hundred people who supported the workers' uprising in the Vyatka province, ten thousand detachments appeared in the publication 15 . M. Bernshtam, in his work, proceeded from the published version and counted active fighters on the side of the rebels, reaching up to a quarter of a million people 16 . On the other hand, a small active detachment could operate successfully with the total support and solidarity of the local population, sometimes quite an impressive neighborhood. Therefore, when counting insurgent, lightly armed and poorly organized (in the military sense of the word) forces, it may be appropriate to estimate not only the number of combatants, but also the total population involved in an uprising or other protest movement.

In 2002, two dissertations were defended on the military-political activity of the peasantry in the Civil War, specifically addressing the issues of the green movement. These are the works of V.L. Telitsyn and P.A. Pharmacist 17 . Each of them contains a separate plot dedicated to the "Zelenovshchina" of 1919. 18 The authors of these plots published 19 . P. Aptekar gives a general outline of the green uprisings, V. Telitsyn actively used Tver material.

The green movement in the last two and a half decades has been actively studied in the regions. Some plots are well developed with the use of local funds of Soviet institutions, archival and investigative files. S. Khlamov explores the history of the most organized Vladimir greens operating in the Yuryevsky (Yuryev-Polsky) district. S.V. Zavyalova studies the Kostroma Zelenovshchina in the Varnavinsky and Vetluzhsky districts, including the Urensky region, as an integral part of the insurrection in these regions, which began in the summer of 1918. 20 A.Yu. Danilov offers a detailed picture of the performances of the Yaroslavl Greens, primarily in Danilovsky and Lyubimsky, as well as Poshekhonsky districts 21 . In the Yaroslavl region, the activities of the law enforcement and punitive system are being actively and successfully studied, including in the early Soviet period 22 . Departmental historiography raises important questions, such as the motives for brutality in the suppression of the green movement. M. Lapshina clarified in detail a number of plots of the Kostroma Zelenovshchina 23 . According to Tver speeches both in 1918 and 1919. K.I. has been working productively in recent years. Sokolov 24 . The largest green uprising in Spas-Yesenovichi caused a detailed reconstructive analysis of the Vyshnevolotsk local historian E.I. Stupkina 25 . Ryazan authors formed a fairly detailed picture of the so-called Ogoltsovshchina - the struggle of an active rebel group in the Riga district. It was headed by successively different people, the most famous figure of them is Ogoltsov, who actually raised a rather massive green movement in several volosts, and the most interesting one was S. Nikushin. G.K. is actively working on this topic. Goltseva 26 . S.V. Yarov proposed a typology of the uprisings of 1918–1919. on the materials of the North-West of Russia 27 . In 1919, a young researcher M.V. was actively working in the Pskov region. Vasiliev 28 . The Prikhoperskaya Zelenovshchina is studied by the Balashov researcher A.O. Bulgakov, who conducts, in particular, field exploratory research 29 , the author of the present book 30 published a voluminous study on this region. Northern material in a significant number of works was worked out by V.A. Sablin, T.I. Troshina, M.V. Taskaev and other researchers 31 . Kaluga local historian K.M. Afanasiev built a documentary chronicle of provincial life during the years of war communism, touching, of course, on the subject of desertion and its attendant 32 . A significant array of materials on the insurrectionary, including the green, movement during the years of the Civil War was published in a series of collections under our editorship 33 .

At the same time, some stories remain in the shadows due to the lack of professional research "hands".

Thus, the Zhigalovshchina, a major movement raised in 1918 in the Porechensky (Soviet Demidovsky) district of the Smolensk province, which had a long history, has been little studied. Three Zhigalov (Zhegalov) brothers stood at the origins of the insurrectionary movement. The active green movement in the Novgorod province remains in the shadow.

The green movement is best known as a more or less reflected position of the "third force" in the Black Sea province. There are Soviet memoirs on this plot, there are many references in the memoirs of the white side. The epic, which is rare for insurgent plots, was described by one of the initiators of the case, Guards officer Voronovich, who published a book of documents on the topic. In modern historiography, a comprehensive study conducted by the Sochi researcher A.A. Cherkasov 35, and the work of N.D. Karpova 36 .

Belarusian chieftains of national orientation have their share of attention in Belarusian historiography, first of all, the names of N. Stuzhinskaya and V. Lyakhovsky should be mentioned.

The study of the green movement cannot be named among the priority topics of Western historiography of the Russian Civil War. However, there is an interesting work directly devoted to this plot. This is an article by E. Landis 37 , the author of the English-language monograph "Bandits and Partisans", dedicated to the Tambov uprising of 1920-1921. Landis argues in terms of "collective identity" and rightly connects the green movement with mobilizations and desertions. He correctly points out that the green army is a collective name.

The civil war in Russia was a tragedy for the entire population of the country. The confrontation embraced all segments of the population, entered every home. The Kuban was no exception, where the confrontation involved the Cossack and nonresident population. The first battles took place in early January 1918 near the city of Ekaterinodar and ended in the defeat of the Bolsheviks. January 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of this tragedy.

I do not pretend to consider in detail all the aspects related to those distant events, but I will try to consider the readiness of the military units of the warring parties at the initial stage of the confrontation. It should be noted that in this period of time, the confrontation embraced the masses of soldiers, who stood mainly on the side of the Bolsheviks, and the Cossack formations, who tried to resist the aspirations of the Bolshevik leaders. The Kuban Cossacks did not yet understand the threats that arose before them as one of the classes to be eliminated, and tried to defend their traditional rights. Unfortunately, this came at a high cost.

The Black Sea region was the first to come under the rule of the Bolsheviks. In this regard, the Kuban Regional Food Committee refused to send trains with grain to Novorossiysk, which served to strengthen anti-Cossack sentiment, although the committee was not Cossack in composition.

The Bolsheviks, guided by the decisions worked out at the first conference of party organizations of the Kuban and the Black Sea, held on November 25-26, 1917 in Novorossiysk, focused on the formation of Red Guard detachments and intensification of work in military units returning from the front. Bolshevik leader A.A. Yakovlev offered to go to Trebizond for troops in order to immediately move to the Kuban. This decision was unanimously adopted.

At the end of December 1917, meetings of military workers were held in the villages of Krymskaya and Primorsko-Akhtarskaya. They make decisions on the transition to an active struggle against the regional government. By the end of 1917, the power of the Kuban government extended only to Yekaterinodar and the villages closest to it.

The events of 1917-1918 showed the inability of the democratic forces of the region to resolve economic and political issues peacefully. Passions boiled around the issue of land, but it was resolved only in favor of the Cossack part of the population, which meant attempts to establish a dictatorship. Land lease speculation deepened the split in society. The intensity of political passions led to the fact that most political parties and movements saw the possibility of their existence only in support on an armed basis. The process of militarization of parties began. From local clashes, the parties moved on to a large-scale civil war.

On January 12, 1918, in the village of Krymskaya, the Bolsheviks made a decision to storm Yekaterinodar. Their forces, according to the ataman Vyacheslav Naumenko, amounted to 4,000 people. The regional government could oppose them with about 600 fighters with four guns.

The opposing side did not sit idly by. I will give an assessment of the historian D.E. Skobtseva: “N.M., a member of the government for military affairs, finally arrived from the Caucasian front. Uspensky and began to put together parts of the Kuban volunteers. In a hurry, he passed through the Government Council the regulation on service in the Kuban volunteer detachments. The volunteers were given a decent allowance, the military regulations were adjusted, the regulations on rank-keeping, discipline, revolutionary field courts, etc. were revised.

The phase of active formation of the first units began. The author mentioned above noted: “By the end of Christmas time, there were already several Kuban volunteer detachments that took the name of their chiefs: military foreman Golaev, Colonel Demenik and others. At the same time, the initiative and popularity of the bosses were of great importance.

At the end of January 1918, near Enem and Georgi-Afipskaya, the struggle took on a large-scale character. Skobtsev noted: “... three directions of the Bolshevik offensive on Yekaterinodar were determined: Caucasian, Tikhoretsk and Novorossiysk - along the main railway lines. At first, Novorossiysk turned out to be the most stormy - led by the "Minister of War of the Novorossiysk Republic", Ensign Seradze. The battle began at the very approach to Yekaterinodar, at the Enem junction. Seradze was opposed by Galaev and Pokrovsky.

In the very first battle near the Enem station, the Bolsheviks suffered a serious defeat. During the battle, the military foreman P.A. Galaev shot the commander of the Red Guard Junker Alexander Yakovlev and was immediately killed himself. An interesting fact is that during the First World War, Yakovlev served as a supplier of uniforms for the needs of the army and was not a professional commander. During one of the trips near the city of Molodechko, a grenade flew into the window of the car where he was, the cadet was wounded, after which he underwent treatment on the Black Sea coast. After the events of 1917, he was sent by the Bolsheviks to Novorossiysk.

The second fight was also not successful. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary ensign Seradze, appointed to replace Yakovlev, was captured and died from his wounds in a military hospital.

In Novorossiysk, several armored trains were prepared for an attack on the capital of the Kuban. The number of Red Army soldiers, according to Soviet and émigré specialists, was about 4,000 people. Supporters of the regional government threw no more than 600 Cossacks against this group. Cossack cavalry and several guns were thrown against the armored trains.

The result of this operation is impressive. The Red Guard on armored trains with artillery was defeated, and most of its members fled: “The Bolsheviks fled, leaving numerous trophies on the battlefield and their commander-in-chief Seridze, mortally wounded. Here, in a battle near the Enem junction, a girl, ensign Barkhash, died. Pokrovsky was given a triumph like the Caesars.

Thus, it turned out that the Cossacks were more prepared for the conduct of hostilities, and the motive for defending their land among the Cossacks was much higher. In addition, the level of command training among the leaders of the Bolsheviks was highly questionable.

The population of Kuban reacted negatively to the performance of the Bolsheviks. The gathering of the inhabitants of the village of Pashkovskaya condemned this action. The Cossacks of the villages of Voronezhskaya, Platnirovskaya, Novotitarovskaya and others spoke out in support of the regional government. The villagers of Kushchevskaya refused to submit to the authority of the Soviets.

The first attempt by Bolshevik supporters to seize power in the Kuban capital failed. A new stage in the escalation of the civil war began. To replenish supplies, the Novorossiysk executive committee continued to disarm parts of the Caucasian front that were moving through the city.

An attempt to agitate among seven thousand soldiers in the capital of the Black Sea province about a second speech led to a split in their ranks. The soldiers of the 22nd Varnavinsky Regiment and the 41st Artillery Battalion agreed to participate in the fight against the regional government. The sailors of the Black Sea Fleet played an active role. At the request of the Novorossiysk Bolshevik Committee, a detachment of F.M. Karnau-Grushevsky.

The Kuban-Black Sea Military Revolutionary Committee received weapons from the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Caucasian Army, the Central Executive Committee of the Navy from Kerch, Sevastopol, and Odessa. Contact was established with Armavir and Tikhoretskaya to form a new front against Yekaterinodar.

The base of armed resources for a new assault on the Kuban capital was created. Moreover, support was provided in all directions. Supporters of the Cossacks did not have such a broad base, the industrial regions of Russia were under the control of the Bolsheviks. There were no ammunition, small arms, cartridges, military equipment and ammunition.

On the one hand, we see excellent command cadres among the opponents of the Bolsheviks, and on the other, the lack of material support for hostilities.

The situation among the supporters of the Bolsheviks was absolutely opposite. And time was not long in coming, the next stage of the armed confrontation began, which ended in the spring of 1918 with the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik coalition in the Kuban. The process of accumulation of forces began again, which grew into a confrontation in the summer of 1918, when the Volunteer Army, together with parts of the Kuban Cossacks, took full control of the territory of the former Kuban region.

"White-green" 20s

Most of the Kuban, tired of the war, supported the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1920. The peasants and workers joyfully greeted the Red Army, and the Cossacks maintained a benevolent neutrality. Pilyuk and Savitsky, the leaders of the "Green Army" who rebelled against Denikin, hoped for the moderation of the Bolsheviks, the agreement of the socialist parties, the granting of autonomy to the Cossack regions. It seemed to them that the Bolsheviks would not introduce the system of war communism in the Kuban. A peculiar situation arose in the Sochi and Tuapse districts, where the Committee for the Liberation of the Black Sea, headed by the Social Revolutionary Voronovich, created the Black Sea Peasant Republic, fighting against both the Volunteer and the Red Army.

In the spring of 1920, only a few continued to fight against the Bolsheviks. But by May 1920, the introduction of labor duties and surplus appropriations, the redistribution of Cossack lands and lawless reprisals, the ban on the participation of kulaks in elections heated up the atmosphere. At the end of April, the 14th Cavalry Division of the 1st Cavalry Army, formed mainly from former whites, revolted. Knowing about the direction against Wrangel, the division raised a riot in the village of Umanskaya with the call "Down with the war, down with the commune!" Near the village of Kushchevskaya, the rebels, led by Colonel Sukhenko, were defeated and dispersed.

The anti-Bolshevik movement represented a wide range of forces. Agents of foreign states and criminals acted, a protracted war demoralized many and devalued life. But it is wrong to neglect the heterogeneity and complex alignment of the forces of the rebels. The reason for reflection gives the opinion of the political worker of the 1st Cavalry Army Stroilo: "Pure banditry is a property of very few small detachments that have nothing to do with large political organizations."

The social composition of the “white-greens” was complex. Usually, the detachments were led by officers or Cossacks, there were many former soldiers of the Volunteer Army, refugees from Central Russia. During the capture of the villages, all Cossacks of military age were subjected to mobilization. Relations between the White-Green groups are contradictory, they were united by hatred of the Soviet regime.

An accurate assessment of the number of insurgents, their deployment and equipment is difficult. A special department of the Caucasian Front believed that the number of large detachments of the "white-green" in June-July 6, 1920 increased in the south from 5,400 to 13,100 people in 36 detachments with 50 machine guns and 12 guns. The historian Stepanenko summarized the data, according to which in August 1920 the counter-revolutionary forces in the Don, Kuban and Terek reached 30,000 people. Military operations had a seasonal rhythm, fading during the sowing and harvest seasons, flaring up in autumn and early spring. The next peak of speeches falls on February-March 1921, a period of exacerbation of the food crisis and a turning point in the policy of the RCP (b).
The main centers of the insurgent movement were the Trans-Kuban region (deployment of the Russian Renaissance Army), the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov (Wrangel landings), and the Sochi District.

In mid-April 1920, General Fostikov began to create a plastun regiment and a cavalry brigade near Maikop. In July, a spontaneous revolt, caused by surplus appropriation and the seizure of ¾ of hay stocks, swept the villages of the Labinsk department. On July 18, Colonel Shevtsov, with a detachment of 600 sabers, captured the village of Prochnookopskaya and announced the mobilization of the Cossacks. The total forces of the "white-green" Labinsk, Batalpashinsky and Maikop departments reached 11,400 people in mid-July with 55 machine guns and 6 guns.

On July 23, the military foreman Aprons restored ataman rule in the mountainous strip of the Maikop department.

Growing rebellions forced to ask for military assistance. On August 1, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Cheka received a telegram from the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee: “The entire Kuban is engulfed in uprisings. Detachments are operating, led by a single hand - the Wrangel agents. Green squads grow and expand significantly with the end of the hot season of field work - around August 15th. If Wrangel is not liquidated within a short time, we risk temporarily losing the North Caucasus.”

The authorities have taken drastic measures. On July 29, 1920, Order No. 1247 was issued for the troops of the Caucasian Front, signed by Trifonov and Gittis. By August 15, residents were ordered to hand over their weapons under pain of confiscation of property and execution on the spot. The same punishment was set for joining gangs, assisting the "greens" or harboring them. The rebellious villages were subject to pacification "by the most decisive and merciless measures, up to their complete ruin and destruction."

Category: Main
Text: Russian Seven

Against Reds and Whites

Candidate of Historical Sciences Ruslan Gagkuev described the events of those years as follows: “ In Russia, the cruelty of the Civil War was due to the destruction of the traditional Russian statehood and the destruction of the age-old foundations of life.". According to him, in those battles there were no losers, but only destroyed ones. That is why rural people with entire villages, and even volosts, sought to protect the islands of their little world from an external deadly threat at any cost, especially since they had experience of peasant wars. This was the main reason for the emergence of a third force in 1917-1923 - the green rebels.
In the encyclopedia edited by S.S. Khromov "Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR" defines this movement as illegal armed formations whose members hid from mobilization in the forests.
However, there is another version. So, General A.I. Denikin believed that these formations and detachments got their name from a certain ataman Zeleny, who fought against both the Whites and the Reds in the western part of the Poltava province. Denikin wrote about this in the fifth volume of Essays on Russian Troubles.

"Fight among yourselves"

The book by the Englishman H. Williamson “Farewell to the Don” contains the memoirs of a British officer who, during the Civil War, was in the Don Army of General V.I. Sidorina. " At the station we were met by a convoy of Don Cossacks ... and a unit under the command of a man named Voronovich, who formed up next to the Cossacks. The “greens” had practically no uniforms, they wore mostly peasant clothes with checkered woolen caps or worn mutton hats, on which a green cross was sewn. They had a simple green flag and looked like a tough and powerful group of soldiers.».
The "soldiers of Voronovich" refused Sidorin's call to join his army, preferring to remain neutral. In general, at the beginning of the Civil War, the peasantry adhered to the principle: "Fight among yourselves." However, the whites and reds every day stamped out decrees and orders on "requisitions, duties and mobilization", thereby involving the villagers in the war.

village brawlers

Meanwhile, even before the revolution, the villagers were experienced fighters, ready to grab pitchforks and axes at any moment. The poet Sergei Yesenin in the poem "Anna Snegina" brought the conflict between the two villages of Radovo and Kriushi.

Once we got them...
They are in axes, we are the same.
From the ringing and rattle of steel
A shiver ran through my body.

There were many such skirmishes. Pre-revolutionary newspapers were full of articles about mass fights and stabbings between residents of various villages, auls, kishlaks, Cossack villages, Jewish shtetls and German colonies. That is why every village had its cunning diplomats and desperate commanders who stood up to protect local sovereignty.
After the First World War, when many peasants, returning from the front, took three-line rifles and even machine guns with them, it was dangerous to enter such villages just like that.
Boris Kolonitsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, noted in this regard that regular troops often asked permission from the elders to pass through such villages and often received refusals. But after the forces became unequal - due to the sharp strengthening of the Red Army in 1919, many villagers were forced to go into the forests so as not to fall under mobilization.

Nestor Makhno and Old Man Angel

A typical commander of the "greens" was Nestor Makhno. He went through a difficult path from a political prisoner due to participation in the anarchist group "Union of Poor Grain Growers" to the commander of the "green" army of 55 thousand people in 1919. He and his soldiers were allies of the Red Army, and Nestor Ivanovich himself was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the capture of Mariupol.
At the same time, being a typical "green", he did not see himself outside his native places, preferring to live by robberies of landowners and wealthy people. The book "The Most Terrible Russian Tragedy" by Andrei Burovsky cites the memoirs of S.G. Pushkareva about those days: “The war was cruel, inhuman, with complete oblivion of all legal and moral principles. Both sides sinned with a mortal sin - the murder of prisoners. The Makhnovists regularly killed all captured officers and volunteers, and we let the captured Makhnovists go to waste.
If at the beginning and in the middle of the Civil War the “greens” either adhered to neutrality, or most often sympathized with the Soviet government, then in 1920-1923 they fought “against everyone”. For example, on the carts of Father Angel it was written: “ Hit the reds until they turn white, hit the whites until they turn red».

Heroes of the Greens

According to the apt expression of the peasants of that time, the Soviet government was both mother and stepmother for them. It got to the point that the red commanders themselves did not know where the truth was and where the lie was. Once, at a peasant gathering, the legendary Chapaev was asked: “Vasily Ivanovich, are you for the Bolsheviks or for the Communists”? He replied: "I am for the International."
Under the same slogan, that is, "for the International", the Knight of St. George A.V. fought. Sapozhkov: he fought at the same time "against the gold-chasers and against the false communists who settled in the Soviets." His unit was destroyed, and he himself was shot dead.
The most prominent representative of the "greens" is considered to be a member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party A.S. Antonov, better known as the leader of the Tambov uprising of 1921-1922. In his army, the word "comrade" was in use, and the struggle was fought under the banner "For Justice". However, many "Green Army" did not believe in their victory. For example, in the song of the Tambov rebels "Something the sun does not shine ..." there are such lines:

They will lead us all around,
They will give the command "Pli!".
Chur, do not whimper at the barrel,
Don't lick the ground at your feet!…

In Russia, the brutality of the civil war was due to the breakdown of the traditional
Russian statehood and the destruction of the age-old foundations of life. rural people
entire villages, and even volosts, sought to protect the islands at any cost
their little world from an external deadly threat, especially since they had experience
peasant wars. This was the main reason for the emergence of a third force in
1917-1923 - "green rebels". "Green" movement during the Civil War
wars are mass actions of peasants directed against the main
contenders for the seizure of power in the country - the Bolsheviks, the Whites and foreign
interventionists. As a rule, they saw the governing bodies of the state as free
Councils formed as a result of the independent expression of the will of all citizens and
alien to any form of appointment from above. Green and black, as well as their combination
often used as the color of the banners of the rebels.

The green movement was of great importance during
war, already because its main force is the peasants
were the majority of the country's population. From
which of the opposing sides they
will provide support, the course of the Civil War often depended
war in general. It was well understood by all
combatants and tried to the best of their ability
attract millions of dollars to your side
peasant masses. However, this is not always
succeeded, and then the confrontation took
extreme forms. In the Central part of Russia
the attitude of the peasants towards the Bolsheviks was
dual character. On the one hand, they
supported after the well-known decree on land,
secured the landowners' land for the peasants, with
on the other hand, wealthy peasants and a large
part
middle peasants
spoke
against
food
politicians
Bolsheviks
and
forced seizure of agricultural products
economy.
socially
alien
peasants
the White Guard movement also rarely found
them support. Despite the fact that in the ranks of the white
many villagers served in the army, most of them
was taken by force.

Peasant army of Nestor Makhno.

A typical commander of the "greens" was Nestor Makhno. He
passed a difficult path from a political prisoner due to participation in
anarchist group "Union of Poor Grain Growers" to
commander of the "Green Army", numbering 55 thousand
man in 1919. He and his fighters were allies
Red Army. Makhno gave a special character to the army
anarchism, whose adherents were both
commander-in-chief and most of his commanders. AT
most attractive to this idea was the theory
"social"
revolution,
destructive
any
state power and thus eliminating
main instrument of violence against a person. Main
the position of the program of old man Makhno was the people's
self-government and rejection of any form of diktat. If in
beginning and in the middle of the Civil War, the "greens" either
adhered to
neutrality
or
more often
Total
sympathized with the Soviet government, then in 1920-1923 they
fought against everyone. For example, on carts of one
commander "Batko Angel" was written: "Beat the Reds until
if they don't turn white, beat the whites until they turn red.

Popular movement under the leadership of A. S. Antonov.

The most prominent representative of the "greens" is a member of the party
Left Social Revolutionaries A. S. Antonov. Under his leadership, no less powerful
and a large-scale movement of the "greens" was observed in the Tambov
provinces and in the Volga region. By the name of its leader, it received
the name "Antonovshchina". He, like other leaders of the "green"
movement, put forward clear and simple slogans, understandable to everyone
peasant. Chief among them was the call to fight the communists for
building a free peasant republic. In these areas
peasants in September 1917 took control
landed estates and began to actively develop them. When in 1919
year, a large-scale surplus appropriation began, and people began to take away
the fruits of their labor, this caused the sharpest reaction and forced
peasants take up arms. They had something to protect. In the army
Antonov, the word "comrade" was in use, and the struggle was conducted under
banner "For Justice". The struggle took on a special intensity in
1920, when a severe drought occurred in the Tambov region,
destroying most of the crop. In these difficult conditions,
what nevertheless managed to be collected was withdrawn in favor of the Red Army and
townspeople. As a result of such actions by the authorities, a
a popular uprising that engulfed several counties. It took
participation of about 4,000 armed peasants and more than 10,000 people with
pitchforks and braids. As a result, the uprising soon spread to
other areas and has taken on an even larger scale. Bolshevik
it cost the government enormous efforts to suppress it in 1921.

Reasons for the defeat of the green.

Lack of a clear political program.
The movement was not politically organized.
The partisan detachments could not
confront regular military units.