Civil War: Whites are a hypermarket of knowledge. Civil War

To share with friends: In the history of the Civil War in Russia, an amazing fact is not only the brutal confrontation between the "Reds" and "Whites", with mass executions and bloody lynching, but also the unification of the warring parties in the fight against the typhus epidemic that swept Siberia in the fall of 1918. Shoulder to shoulder, the Russian people, regardless of their political "colour", launched a military offensive against the pestilence, which fell without counting both the military and the civilian population who fired at each other. This became known from the recently published materials of the Siberian historian Vladimir Semenovich Poznansky (1930-2005).
The epidemic was unleashed by Kolchak
In the state archives of Siberia, documents of the Kolchak period and the first years of Soviet power have been preserved, shedding light on the emergence, development and end of the epidemic of acute infectious diseases that spread across Russia from west to east. In addition to the "Spanish flu" - a pandemic form of H1N1 bird flu, captive Red Army soldiers brought "typhus" - typhus, typhoid, relapsing and other typhus into prisons and concentration camps of the Provisional Siberian Government, which contributed to the outbreak of diseases among prisoners. The captive Bolshevik I. A. Zakharov recalled this: “The conditions in the prison are terrible. Death hovered over everyone." The inaction of the authorities provoked uprisings in a number of prisons (Tobolsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk), which were bloodily suppressed in the end. After that, the prisoners' rations were cut, which did not contribute to recovery. Moreover, the criminals, who were kept together with the political ones, had access to the city - they removed clothes from the dead, which they sold in the markets and thereby spread the infection.
Soon the evacuation began. Retreating under the onslaught of the 5th army of Tukhachevsky, A. Kolchak was carried away by the maniacal idea of \u200b\u200btaking out everything and everything. The Trans-Siberian Railway was packed with wagon trains loaded with troops, equipment, raw materials, refugees, and soon stopped. The idea of leaving nothing “red” also includes Kolchak’s attempt to take out prisoners, sick and healthy, who were first driven in stages along the railway. The convoy shot the weakened, and the survivors were soon put into wagons and taken all the way to Transbaikalia, which was why all of Siberia was infected. The Trans-Siberian has become a bed of typhoid stream.

"Tifus" was transported by rail

If Lenin's appeal solved the issue of lice and socialism, that Sibchekatif posed the problem in such a plane: the epidemic turned into a pestilence. This means that the pestilence must be turned into an epidemic so that hospitals cease to be "filters of death."
Shoulder to shoulder
People fighting typhus were sorely lacking. An amazing thing happened. The doctors of the White Army who remained in the "red" occupation were recognized as military specialists and put on allowance. Healthy Kolchakites were mobilized from the filtration camps as assistants to the medical staff - someone had to manage the overgrown hospital facilities, bury the corpses. According to the historian B.C. Poznansky, a total of 54 companies (about 6 thousand) of White Guards were attracted, who in official documents began to be respectfully called the White Army. All of them were put on combat rations and rates of the Red Army! This was evidenced by the red commander P.K. Golikov, who headed Sibchekatif at a time when the main military task in the spring of 1919 was the burial of corpses. The delay, not without reason, threatened the consequences of the complete extinction of the population of Siberia. And here the commonwealth of former enemies in achieving goals has brought tangible benefits.
The military has tried a lot. At first they thought of blowing up piles of corpses with land mines. But there was not enough fickford cord, and the detonation method - when throwing grenades to the charges - many mistakes occurred. Doctors in the "troikas" banned the "explosive" method of burial. As if the only thing left was digging mass graves, which in winter conditions in Siberia brought a lot of trouble. White army economists calculated that the burial of one corpse costs the authorities 80 rubles (digging a hole of 6 arshins, sprinkling it with quicklime), and cremation - only 10 rubles. The corpses began to be shifted into piles in layers along with firewood, firewood was set on fire. Mournful conflagrations blazed. The resulting ashes were buried in shallow pits. This method has fully justified itself.
In total, Sibchekatif organized 150,000 beds for the sick and 80,000 for convalescents, which turned the plague into an epidemic. By 1920, the "troikas" began to note a decrease in the overall incidence of typhoid fever. Siberia was saved.

Causes:

1. Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly.

2. Brest peace.

These events caused discontent, a sharp rejection of the majority of political forces from monarchists to moderate socialists.

3. Strengthening the grain monopoly. The formation of committees, the creation of emergency food detachments, and food requisitioning caused discontent among the peasants.

4. The desire of the owners to return the property nationalized by the Bolsheviks.

Anti-Soviet forces are few and far between.

Can be distinguished:

1. Army officer corps . The officers participated in the Civil War both on the side of the white movement and against it. The higher and middle officers opposed the Soviet regime.

2. Cossacks (13 Cossack troops - 1917). The Cossacks strove for an independent autonomous existence. Don, Kuban, Terek, Orenburg created their military governments, but the working class in the industrial centers, the non-Cossack population advocated Soviet power. There was an armed struggle between them.

3. "Bourgeois counter-revolution" (the Cadets, other bourgeois parties and organizations, entrepreneurs, intelligentsia, etc.).

Ataman G.M. Semenov fought against the Soviet power in Transbaikalia.

The peasant movement in the conditions of the Civil War received the greatest scope and organization in the south of Ukraine under the leadership of N.I. Makhno.

The fate of the White movement was influenced by:

1. The absence of a real agricultural program.

2. The impossibility of establishing contact with national movements.

The program of the White movement included:

The destruction of the power of the Bolsheviks;

Restoration of a united and indivisible Russia;

Convening a people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage, guaranteeing civil liberties and freedom of religion;

Carrying out land reform.

The white movement had a pronounced national character.

Forces Opposing the Soviets

foreign intervention Goals: 1. Suppression of the seat of revolution. 2. Maximum weakening of Russia. 3. Territorial division of the former territory of the Russian Empire. 4. The struggle for the return of invested capital in the Russian economy. Progress: March 1918: British, Canadian, Serbian troops landed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. April 1918: Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok (remained there until October 1922). Soviet Russia went to the creation of the Far Eastern Republic, seeking to avoid war with Japan. The government of the Far Eastern Republic made the city of Chita its capital. Turkey sent troops to the territory of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Baku captured. In the rear of Russia, the Czechoslovak Corps acted as a striking force (uprising on May 25-26, 1918 - the entire Trans-Siberian Railway was captured).

During the years of the Civil War, the Russian Orthodox Church did not officially support either the "Whites" or the "Reds".

Course of the Civil War

The first outbreaks of the Civil War in Russia date back to the period after the establishment of Soviet power (October 1917) in the form of local resistance to the establishment of local Bolshevik power.

Stage 1. Summer-autumn 1918 the greatest danger arose in the east of the country. In the spring of 1918, the Entente Military Council decided to use the Czechoslovak Corps to fight the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks tried to disarm the corps. This, as well as rumors that the corps was handed over to Germany, was the reason for the corps to act against the Soviet regime. On May 25, 1918, parts of the corps raised an uprising, and the rebellion covered the territory from Penza to Vladivostok. Since May 1918, Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik anti-Bolshevik governments have been created in the territories controlled by the corps. In Samara - KOMUCH (committee of the constituent assembly), in Yekaterinburg - the Socialist-Revolutionary Ural government with the participation of the Cadets, in Tomsk - the Socialist-Revolutionary-Cadet government of Siberia. The first center of organized resistance to the power of the Bolsheviks was Siberia (A.V. Kolchak). Before the Kolchak coup (November 1918), power in Omsk belonged to the Socialist-Revolutionary Directory. In total, about 30 regional governments have been created.

In June 1918, the EASTERN FRONT was formed, which united all Soviet troops who fought against the White Guards and interventionists in the Volga, Urals, and Siberia regions. Formed 5 armies of the Eastern Front.

In early September 1918, the troops of the eastern front went on the offensive against Kazan. After fierce fighting, on September 10, 1918, Kazan was taken by the Red Army, on September 12 - Simbirsk, on October 7 - Samara. There were battles for Tsaritsyn.

Formation of the Red Army. Revolutionary Military Council.

In September 1918 - a law on universal military training.

April 1918 - the abolition of the election of command staff.

September 1918 - The Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (headed by L.D. Trotsky) was created to direct military operations at the front.

To coordinate the actions of the front and rear, at the end of November 1918, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense was established, in whose jurisdiction all the fullness of state power was concentrated. It was headed by V.I. Lenin.

The Red Army has 50,000 officers and generals of the tsarist army.

Stage 2. Fall 1918 - Spring 1920 In November 1918, Admiral A.V. Kolchak came to power in Siberia, proclaiming himself the supreme ruler of Russia.

By the spring of 1919, A.V. Kolchak created significant armed forces (400 thousand). Russia entered the most difficult stage of the war.

The Whites organized three large offensives against the Bolsheviks, which were poorly coordinated.

In March 1919, A.V. Kolchak launched an offensive from the Urals to the Volga. After the first successful operations, he did not undertake a maneuver to connect with the army of A.I. Denikin, did not coordinate his actions with the southern armies. He decided to advance to the east and be the first to enter Moscow.

This made it possible for the Bolsheviks to send their shock forces against Kolchak's army. At the end of April 1919, the troops of the Red Army under the command of L.B. Kamenev and M.V. Frunze went on the offensive. During July, they completely liberated the Urals from the Kolchakites and threw them back to Siberia. From August 1919, Soviet troops began the liberation of Siberia. By the beginning of 1920, the Kolchakites were defeated. The admiral was arrested and shot.

In order to divert the forces of the Red Army from the Eastern Front and alleviate the situation of A.V. Kolchak, in May 1919, the army of N.N. Yudenich launched an attack on Petrograd (it ended in failure).

The united forces of the south of Russia were created in January 1919 by the leader of the White movement A.I. Denikin. In the summer of 1919, the center of the armed struggle moved to the Southern Front. On June 3, 1919, the army of A.I. Denikin launched an offensive against Moscow. In September 1919, Kursk, Orel, Voronezh were captured.

In October 1919, N.N. Yudenich again launched an attack on Petrograd. On October 21, 1919, the troops of the Petrograd Front launched a counteroffensive and the army of N.N. Yudenich was defeated.

In October 1919, the troops of the Southern Front went on the offensive and defeated the formations of the Volunteer Army.

In March 1920, the entire Caucasus was liberated. The remnants of Denikin's army, led by Wrangel, fortified themselves in the Crimea. To fight the Wrangel troops, the Southern Front was created, commanded by M.V. Frunze. In 1920, the Red Army had to fight against the Polish troops that invaded Belarus and Ukraine. At the end of November 1920, the Red Army took the Crimea. In 1922, the Far East was finally liberated from the Japanese occupiers.

Outcome: The Bolsheviks won the Civil War and repelled foreign intervention. They managed to keep the main territory of the former Russian Empire. At the same time, Poland (with which a peace treaty was concluded in Riga in 1921), Finland, and the Baltic states seceded from Russia. Were lost Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Bessarabia.

Causes and main stages of the Civil War, the first speeches against the Soviet regime, the formation of the white movement, the creation of the Red Army

Causes and main stages of the Civil War

The civil war was a consequence of the 1917 revolution. The Bolsheviks, having come to power, ignoring the norms of democracy, actually pushed the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to armed methods of struggle. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the emergency policy in the villages in the spring and summer of 1918 made a great contribution to fanning the fire of the Civil War. It lasted from October 1917 to October 1922, from the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd to the end of the armed struggle in the Far East. It has three stages.

From October 1917 to the spring of 1918 - the first stage (soft). The hostilities were local in nature. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries either waged a political struggle against the Bolsheviks, or formed their own white movement.

Spring 1918 - autumn 1920 - the second stage (front-line). Spring-summer 1918. an open military confrontation began between the Bolsheviks and their opponents.

Summer - autumn 1918 - a period of escalation (expansion) of the war caused by the introduction of a food dictatorship, the organization of committees and the incitement of class struggle in the villages. Creation of a mass base for the anti-Bolshevik movement.

December 1918 - June 1919. Part of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries agreed to cooperate with the Soviet government. Strengthening of white and red terror.

Second half of 1919 - autumn of 1920. The military defeat of the white armies, the strengthening of Soviet power.

Late 1920 - 1922 - the third stage (small). Mass peasant uprisings against the economic policy of the Bolsheviks, the growth of workers' discontent, the speech of the Kronstadt sailors. The Bolsheviks introduced a new economic policy that helps to calm down the Civil War.

The first action against the Bolsheviks was organized by A.F. Kerensky, who managed to attract the cavalry corps of General P.N. Krasnov to the campaign against Petrograd. On October 27, the Cossacks captured Gatchina, on the 28th - Tsarskoye Selo. On October 26, a group of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who left the Second Congress of Soviets formed the Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution. The committee planned, simultaneously with the entry into Petrograd of Krasnov's troops, to raise an uprising of the junkers. However, on the night of October 29, these plans became known to the Military Revolutionary Committee. Therefore, the Salvation Committee ordered the demonstration to begin immediately.

The rebellion that broke out was relatively easily suppressed by the Red Guards and the soldiers of the garrison. On October 30, Krasnov's detachments were also defeated at the Pulkovo Heights. A spontaneous committee of ordinary Cossacks decided to arrest Kerensky in exchange for an amnesty for all those who took part in the struggle. However, Kerensky managed to escape.

At the head of the anti-Bolshevik movement on the Don stood Ataman A. M. Kaledin. He announced the insubordination of the All-Great Don Army to the Soviet government. Everyone dissatisfied with the new regime flocked to the Don. Simultaneously with the anti-Soviet speeches on the Don, the movement of the Cossacks in the South Urals began. A. I. Dutov, the ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army, stood at its head. In Transbaikalia, the ataman G.S. Semenov fought against the new government.

Formation of the white movement.

In November 1917 in Novocherkassk, the capital of the All-Great Don Army, the former chief of staff of the Supreme High Command, General M. V. Alekseev, arrived. Here he began to form the Volunteer Army. By the beginning of winter, about 2 thousand officers made their way to Novocherkassk. Famous politicians and public figures also fled here: P. N. Milyukov, P. B. Struve, M. V. Rodzianko and others. At a meeting of generals and public figures, the principles for creating an army and its management system were determined. L. G. Kornilov, who had escaped from prison, was appointed commander of the Volunteer Army. Civil power and foreign policy were transferred to the jurisdiction of General Alekseev. The management of the Don region remained with Ataman Kaledin.

This was the beginning of the white movement. The white color symbolized law and order. The main ideas of the white movement were: without prejudging the future final form of government, restore a single, indivisible Russia, mercilessly fight the Bolsheviks until they are completely destroyed. Initially, the formation of the white movement proceeded on a strictly voluntary and gratuitous basis. The volunteer gave a subscription to serve for four months and promised to unquestioningly obey the commanders. Since 1918, soldiers and officers began to receive allowances. The army was financed by voluntary donations from entrepreneurs and money kept in local branches of the State Bank. But already in 1918, the leaders of the movement began to print money of their own design.

The Soviet government managed to form an army of 10,000, which in mid-January 1918 entered the territory of the Don. Most of the Cossacks at that time took a position of benevolent neutrality towards the Soviet government. The Decree on Land did little for the Cossacks (they had land), but they were attracted by the Decree on Peace. Part of the population provided armed support to the Reds. Considering his cause lost, Ataman Kaledin shot himself.

The volunteer army, accompanied by convoys with the families of officers, politicians, civilians, went to the steppes, hoping to continue their work in the Kuban. On April 17, 1918, during an unsuccessful assault on the capital of the Kuban, Ekaterinodar, the army commander, General Kornilov, was killed. General A.I. Denikin took command.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947) was born in the family of a former serf who rose to the rank of major in the army. In 1892 he graduated from the Kiev cadet school, then entered the Academy of the General Staff. The Russo-Japanese War found Denikin in Warsaw. And although the troops of the Warsaw Military District were not to be sent to the Far East, Captain Denikin filed a report on his assignment to the army in the field. He ended the war with the rank of colonel. Then he served in staff positions in Saratov and Zhytomyr. In June 1914 he was promoted to major general. In September 1914, he was appointed head of the 4th Infantry Brigade, which was part of the 8th Army of the Southwestern Front, commanded by General A. A. Brusilov. In March 1917, he took the post of chief of staff under the Supreme Commander-in-Chief M. V. Alekseev. Denikin tried to resist the destructive processes in the army, advocated unity of command and strict discipline. With the formation of the first coalition government, he received command of the Western Front, and at the end of July he became commander in chief of the Southwestern Front. For his active support of General Kornilov, he was removed from his post and imprisoned, along with other Kornilovites, in the Bykhov prison. In November 1917 they managed to escape. Denikin decided to return to the Don, where in April 1918 mass uprisings of Cossacks began, dissatisfied with the policies of the Soviet government.

The first protests against the Soviet regime, although they were fierce, were spontaneous and scattered, did not enjoy mass support from the population and took place against the backdrop of a relatively quick and peaceful establishment of Soviet power in the country. The rebel chieftains were defeated fairly quickly. During this period, two centers of resistance to the power of the Bolsheviks began to take shape: to the east of the Volga, in Siberia, where a significant number of wealthy peasant proprietors lived, and in the south, in territories inhabited by Cossacks, known for their love of freedom and commitment to a special way of economic and social life. . It was there that the main fronts of the Civil War - the Eastern and Southern ones - were formed.

Already during the period of the “soft Civil War”, its horrific features were clearly manifested: incredible cruelty and mercilessness towards the enemy, rejection of any form of dissent, robbery and violence against the civilian population, executions of prisoners and hostages.

V. V. Shulgin on the Civil War

Those who undertook this did not know other ways, except for violence from above, except for coercion, power.

Creation of the Red Army.

The confrontation that began forced the Bolsheviks to come to grips with military issues. Even in the April Theses, V. I. Lenin called for the replacement of the regular army by the people's militia. In the new situation, he had to abandon his old views. On January 15, 1918, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was created, on January 29 - the Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet. The army was built on the principles of voluntariness and a class approach only from workers, the penetration of "exploiting elements" into it was excluded.

But the voluntary principle of manning did not contribute to the strengthening of combat capability and the strengthening of discipline. The Red Army suffered a number of serious defeats. Lenin, in order to maintain the power of the Bolsheviks, found it possible to return to the traditional, "bourgeois" principles of building an army on the basis of universal military service and unity of command.

In July 1918, a Decree was issued on the general military service of men aged 18 to 40 years. A network of military commissariats was created throughout the country to register those liable for military service, organize and conduct military training, and mobilize the population fit for military service. The size of the Red Army grew rapidly. In the autumn of 1918, there were 0.3 million fighters in its ranks, in the spring - 1.5 million, in the autumn of 1919 - already 3 million. And in 1920, about 5 million people served in the Red Army. Much attention was paid to the formation of command personnel. In 1917-1919. short-term courses and schools were opened to train the middle command level from distinguished Red Army soldiers, higher military educational institutions: the Academy of the General Staff, Artillery, Military Medical, Military Economic, Naval, Military Engineering Academy. In March 1918, a notice was published in the Soviet press about the recruitment of military specialists from the old army to serve in the Red Army. By January 1, 1919, about 165,000 former tsarist officers had joined the ranks of the Red Army.

The involvement of military experts was accompanied by strict "class" control over their activities. In April 1918, the party sent military commissars to the military units of the army and navy, who supervised the command cadres and carried out the political education of the Red Army.

In September 1918, a unified command and control structure for fronts and armies was created. Each front (army) was headed by a Revolutionary Military Council (Revolutionary Military Council, or RVS), which consisted of a front (army) commander and two political commissars. He headed all front-line and military institutions of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR), chaired by JI. D. Trotsky. Measures were taken to tighten discipline. Representatives of the Revolutionary Military Council, endowed with extraordinary powers, up to the execution of traitors and cowards without trial or investigation, traveled to the most tense sectors of the front. In November 1918, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense was formed, headed by V. I. Lenin. He concentrated in his hands the fullness of state power. Political confrontation in society after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks took the form of a Civil War. At the first stage, it expressed itself in local protests against the Soviet regime.

Source of the article: A.A. Danilov's textbook "History of Russia". Grade 9

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Printed counterpart: Simonov D.G. The call of recruits to the troops of the Provisional Siberian Government in the summer - autumn of 1918 // Power and society in Siberia in the XX century. Sat. scientific articles / Nauch. ed. IN AND. Shishkin. Novosibirsk, 2010, pp. 62–83. (, 348 Kb)

The study of the anti-Bolshevik armed forces is one of the priority areas in the modern historiography of the civil war in Russia. Within the framework of this direction, the military-political processes that took place in the east of Russia in the second half of 1918 are of particular interest, when large-scale military operations unfolded in the country and mass armies were created on the basis of the initially few volunteer armed formations of the opposing sides, staffed by forced mobilization of various categories of the population.

The largest and most combat-ready association of the anti-Bolshevik armed forces of eastern Russia was the Siberian Army, created under the auspices of the Provisional Siberian Government in the summer of 1918. General A. N. Grishin-Almazov was its commander and at the same time the head of the military ministry of the government. Initially, the army consisted of three corps: Central Siberian, Steppe Siberian and Ural, staffed by volunteers, as well as officers and Cossacks, subject to mandatory mobilization. During the three summer months, the troops of the Siberian Army, together with units of the Czechoslovak Corps, carried out the liquidation of Soviet power in the territory from the Urals to Lake Baikal. By August 10, 1918, there were 40.7 thousand soldiers in the ranks of the army with 51 guns and 184 machine guns. But these forces were clearly not enough to continue the anti-Bolshevik struggle on an all-Russian scale. Therefore, the leaders of white Siberia decided to replenish the army at the expense of recruits from 1898-1899. birth.

In Soviet historiography, the issue of recruiting new recruits to the Siberian army has not received any complete study, although it was touched upon when covering the socio-political situation in Siberia during the civil war. For example, P. I. Roschevsky wrote that "mobilization turned out to be a failure and dragged on for an indefinite period." L. A. Shikanov argued that the peasants opposed almost all the activities of the Provisional Siberian Government, including thwarted and mobilization into the army. However, these authors did not specifically study the course and results of recruiting recruits. Their conclusions are based on a biased selection of two or three separate cases of peasants refusing to join the army, and therefore cannot be considered scientifically sound.

A different point of view on the results of the conscription was expressed by G. Kh. Eikhe. In his opinion, "the calls were generally quite successful, contrary to the expectations of the whites themselves." Based on fragmentary data, he suggested that the total number of recruits drafted into the armed forces of the Provisional Siberian Government amounted to at least 145-150 thousand people. Yu. V. Zhurov, relying on the documents of the military service department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of the Provisional Siberian Government, reviewed the course of conscription on the territory of the Yenisei province. He came to the conclusion that the mobilization plan for the province was not fulfilled, since the turnout of recruits to the recruiting stations was about 75%. But, according to his data, the results of the call could not be assessed as a failure.

After the overthrow of Soviet power in the summer of 1918, the socio-political situation in Siberia generally favored the Whites. According to the information and propaganda department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Provisional Siberian Government, in relation to the anti-Bolshevik movement, the population of Siberia was divided into three main groups. The first actively anti-Soviet group, numbering approximately 25-30% of the population, consisted mainly of elderly, prosperous peasants. The second, active pro-Bolshevik-minded group, consisted of 10-15% of the population, mainly from former front-line soldiers, landless peasants and "hooligan youth". The third group, indifferent to this or that form of government and passive, was the most numerous. It reached 50-60% of the population, mainly from the environment of the middle working peasantry.

By order of A. N. Grishin-Almazov, on July 13, 1918, a commission was formed to develop drafting issues in detail, and on July 31, a decree of the Provisional Siberian Government was issued on the conscription of persons born in 1898-1899 into the Siberian army. The call was subject to all the indigenous Russian population and settlers who arrived in Siberia before January 1, 1915. Siberia, as the territory of the call, included the entire West Siberian and Irkutsk military districts with the addition of Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust and Troitsky counties in the west, and temporarily in the east , until the restoration of the Amur Military District, that part of it that will be occupied by the troops of the Provisional Siberian Government.

On August 16, 1918, A.N. Grishin-Almazov signed an order for the troops of the Siberian Army, in which he demanded that the relevant persons and institutions, when recruiting recruits, “order” and “demand”, and by no means ask and persuade. He ordered those who evaded military service to be arrested and tried according to the laws of war. With regard to openly disobeying the law on conscription, as well as in relation to agitators and instigators, the army commander demanded that the most drastic measures be applied, up to destruction at the scene of the crime.

August 25, 1918, was appointed as the first day of conscription. In each county, conscription was carried out by county military commanders or heads of local teams through the city and county police. For the medical examination of recruits, special commissions were created consisting of the district military commander (head of the local team) or his deputy, two doctors and one representative each from the district commissariat, city and zemstvo self-governments. Recruits deemed fit for military service were sent to the troops. Those who were recognized as unfit were forever exempted from military service, receiving the appropriate certificates.

The draft organizers assumed that about 150 thousand people would be able to be recruited into the ranks of the Siberian Army, including 90 thousand people in the West Siberian Military District, 30 thousand people each in the Kazan and Irkutsk military districts. On the territory of the Amur Military District, it was supposed to put into operation about 25 thousand recruits. However, due to the difficult military and political situation, the draft in the Far East in 1918 did not take place.

The conscription of recruits in the territory subject to the Provisional Siberian Government was carried out in a “mobilization order”, that is, recruits were not supposed to arrive at traditional recruiting stations, but directly at the disposal of district military commanders. The exception was the Novonikolaevsky uyezd and the uyezds that were part of the Chelyabinsk okrug. Thus, the following settlements of the Urals and Siberia were the places of initial gathering of recruits: in the Chelyabinsk district - Chelyabinsk, Sukhoborskoye, Kamenskoye, Talovskoye, Shadrinsk, Dolmatovo, Brodokalmatskoye, Uksyanskoye, Mekhonskoye, Smolenskoye, Ivashchenskoye, Verkhtechenskoye, Verkhneuralsk, Beloretsk, Kacha, Uchaly , Chrysostom, Lechzy, Emashi, Duvan, Mesyaguevo, Ailino, Yuryuzan, Satka, Miass, Polyakovka, Nikolaevka and Troitsk; in Tobolsk province - Tobolsk, Kurgan and Tyukalinsk; in the Turgai region - Kustanai; in the Akmola region - Omsk, Petropavlovsk, Kokchetav, Atbasar and Akmolinsk; in the Semipalatinsk region - Semipalatinsk, Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Zaisan; in the Altai province - Barnaul, Biysk, Zmeinogorsk, Kamen and Slavgorod; in the Tomsk province - Tomsk, Mariinsk, Kainsk, Novonikolaevsk, Aleksandrovskoye, Gutovo, Gorevskoye, Medvedskoye, Tulinskoye, Berdskoye, Kolyvan, Prokudskoye, Chulym, Yarki, Uzhanikhinsky, Verkhneremnevskoye, Kuznetsk, Kolchugino and Shcheglovo; in the Yenisei province - Krasnoyarsk, Achinsk, Kansk and Minusinsk; in the Irkutsk province - Irkutsk, Nizhneudinsk and Kirensk.

In each county, a recruiting schedule was drawn up. For example, in the Barnaul district, on the fourth day of mobilization (Wednesday, August 28), recruits who lived in Barnaul and its environs were supposed to appear at the assembly point of the local district military commander; on the fifth day (Thursday, August 29) - recruits from Beloyarsk, Shadrinsk and Shakhovskaya volosts; on the sixth day (Friday, August 30) - Cheremnovskaya, Sredne-Krayushinskaya, Pavlovskaya and Talmenskaya volosts; on the seventh day (Saturday, August 31) - Ust-Kalmak, Kosikhinsky and Okulovsky volosts; on the eighth day (Sunday, September 1) - Dudinskaya, Shilovskaya, Ilyinskaya and Siberian volosts; on the ninth day (Monday, September 2) - Sredne-Krasilovskaya, Talitskaya and Klochkovskaya volosts; on the tenth day (Tuesday, September 3) - Barnaul, Borovlyanskaya and Petrovsky volosts; on the 11th day (Wednesday, September 4) - Chumysh, Rebrikhinsky, Yazovskaya and Titovskaya volosts; on the 12th day (Thursday, September 5) - Savinskaya, Zimovskaya, Verkh-Chumyshskaya and Brusentsovskaya volosts; on the 13th day (Friday, September 6) - Panyushevskaya, Khmelevskaya, Zalesovskaya and Ozerno-Titovskaya volosts; on the 14th day (Saturday, September 7) - Borovsky, Karasevskaya and Borisovskaya volosts; on the 15th day (Sunday, September 8) - Mariinsky, Kadnikovskaya, Shipunovskaya, Zerkalskaya, Sharchinskaya, Elbanskaya and Zakovryashinskaya volosts; on the 16th day (Monday, September 9) - Nikolaev, Novochikhinsky, Krestyanskaya and Seliverstovskaya volosts; on the 17th day (Tuesday, September 10) - the 2nd Shipunovskaya, Nikonovskaya, Egorievskaya, Arkhangelsk and Kosmalinskaya volosts.

On the whole, the call for recruits was successful, but, as G.K. Gins noted, “with the usual picture of recruitment, with the inevitable drunkenness and riot.” The turnout of recruits to the recruiting stations was about 82%. Of those who appeared, about 12% were released from service for health reasons or received a deferment. By September 29, 1918, on the territory of nine provinces and regions subject to the Provisional Siberian Government, 161,842 recruits were accepted into the ranks of the Siberian Army (see table). But these data cannot be considered complete and final.

Table 1 birth on the basis of the decree of the Provisional Siberian Government of July 31, 1918 *

Counties	Subject to call **	Accepted to the troops ***
Chelyabinsk district Zlatoust district Trinity county Verkhneuralsky district Shadrinsky district Total in the Chelyabinsk District	9 025 7 181 3 007 4 654 8 310 32 177	7 228 4 531 2 322 1 516 6 875 23 172
Tobolsk district Tyumen district Yalutorovsky district Kurgan district Tyukalinsky district Ishim county Tara County Turin County Total for Tobolsk province	3 000 3 000 5 300 6 700 8 900 10 000 6 400 2 500 45 800	1 734 2 618 3 949 6 399 3 363 7 083 3 489 1 423 30 058
Omsk district Akmola district Atbasar district Kokchetav district Petropavlovsk district Total in Akmola region	7 000 2 900 1 500 5 473 4 000 20 873	7 492 2 539 1 135 3 629 2 644 17 439
Semipalatinsk district Pavlodar and Karkaraly counties Ust-Kamenogorsk and Zaysan counties Total in Semipalatinsk region	? ? ? 7 000	1 472 1 187 2 736 5 395
Barnaul county Kamensky district Slavgorod county Biysk district Zmeinogorsky district Total in Altai province	? ? ? ? ? 45 000	11 334 5 604 2 840 10 916 5134 35 828
Tomsk district Mariinsky district Kuznetsk district Novonikolaevsky district Kainsky and Tatar counties Total in Tomsk province	8 432 6 905 4 430 6 286 9 072 35 125	6 556 4 633 3 800 9 182 5 838 30 009
Krasnoyarsk district Kansky district Minusinsk district Achinsk district Yenisei district Total in the Yenisei province	3 078 6 236 6 600 4 282 1 300 20 776	2 582 3 188 3 387 ? ? 9 157
Irkutsk, Balagansky and Verkholensky counties Kirensky uyezd with two mountain districts Nizhneudinsky district Total in Irkutsk province	? ? ? 12 650	6 576 1 199 1 486 9 261
Verkhneudinsk district Total in the Trans-Baikal region	? ?	1 523 1 523
TOTAL	219 401	161 842

* Compiled according to: GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 18. L. 2, 3; D. 59. L. 6; D. 4. L. 184–185, 191, 192; Op. 2. D. 10. L. 30, 49; GATO. F. 520. Op. 2. D. 321. L. 23; D. 323. L. 2; F. 1362. Op. 1. D. 220. L. 30; RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 164. L. 48.
** The number of persons subject to conscription was determined on the basis of telegrams sent by governors of provinces and regions to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Provisional Siberian Government.
*** As of September 29, 1918

The table does not take into account information about the results of conscription in the Kustanai district - the only district of the Turgai region, which was under the control of the anti-Bolshevik authorities. Meanwhile, this county was supposed to give about 4 thousand recruits. On August 26 and 30, and also on September 7, the regional commissar A. V. Matveev reported to the Ministry of the Interior that conscription in the county was “going well.” True, in the latter case, he said that in connection with the cholera epidemic, conscription was suspended in seven volosts of the southern part of the Kustanai district, until the end of the disease. There is no information on the Achinsk and Yenisei districts of the Yenisei province, on the territory of which 5,582 recruits were subject to conscription. The table does not include the Berezovsky and Surgut districts of the Tobolsk province, since recruits were not called up on their territory.

Taking into account the remarks made, the actual number of those called up clearly exceeded 161.8 thousand people. According to other data, as of September 25, 1918, 34 thousand people were accepted into the troops in the Kazan Military District, 119 thousand people in the West Siberian Military District, 22 thousand people in the Irkutsk Military District, and in total - 175 thousand recruits, or about 75% of those subject to conscription.

In some localities, the population reacted negatively to the call of recruits to the Siberian army. In many counties, local authorities recorded the presence of anti-government agitation. For example, in s. Anisimovskoye, Borovlyansky volost, Barnaul district, citizen Moksin urged recruits not to go to work, "since now there is no government and there is no one to serve." By order of the chief of police of the 17th district, he was detained and imprisoned in the Barnaul city prison. For agitation against the Provisional Siberian Government and opposition to the authorities, expressed in obstructing the registration of recruits, in the village. Sharchinsky, citizens S. Manakov, A. Burov and M. Stafeevsky were detained. By decision of the head of the district police, they were imprisoned in the Barnaul prison. For a similar campaign in with. Rozhnev Log detained I. Karakulin, I. Grankin and S. Tkachev. The ranks of the Barnaul district police arrested a peasant with. Kochegarki A. Sanarov, convicted of injecting a certain liquid into the knees of recruits, whose legs “became as if paralyzed” after this operation. As a result, recruits were deemed unfit for military service.

The largest excesses in connection with the call of recruits occurred in the Zmeinogorsk and Slavgorod districts of the Altai province. On August 31, an uprising began in the Zmeinogorsk district. On this day, the peasants of the village of Shemonayevsky put up armed resistance to a small government military detachment that arrived from Zmeinogorsk to forcibly send recruits to the assembly point. As a result, the detachment lost 11 people killed. In addition, the district police chief G.V. Kolobov and policeman L.P. Rybyakov died. Within a few days, the uprising engulfed in whole or in part 16 volosts of the county.

The center of the uprising in the Slavgorod district was the village of Arkhangelskoye (Cherny Dol). Early in the morning of September 2, the Chernodolsk people carried out an armed attack on Slavgorod. The officers and volunteers of the small local garrison at that time were in private apartments. Their attempt to gather at the military headquarters, where the weapons were stored, was unsuccessful. According to the head of the Slavgorod district militia, “the detachment of the garrison was almost half killed by shots from behind the corners, houses and roofs. The policemen are disarmed by the crowd.” Only two dozen officers and volunteers managed to escape from the city, who, firing back from the rebels pursuing them, tried to make their way to the Burla railway station, from where it was possible to get to Tatarsk. But on the way to the station near the village of Khomutino, “the detachment met armed gangs of peasants and, engulfed from all sides, fell victim, and there was no mercy: the wounded officers and volunteers were brutally finished off by the peasants with pitchforks and shovels, gouged out their eyes ... ". Only four riflemen, led by lieutenant Bernikov, managed to avoid reprisals and make their way to the Burla station.

Peasant uprisings in the Zmeinogorsk and Slavgorod districts were suppressed by the regular units of the Siberian army by the end of September 1918. The recruits subject to conscription were forcibly sent to the corresponding personnel regiments. But the socio-political situation in these counties remained difficult all subsequent time. It was here that in 1919 the main center of the anti-Kolchak partisan movement arose in Western Siberia.

The peasants of the Tyukalinsky district of the Tobolsk province actively resisted the draft. On the morning of August 29, the governor of the county, I. A. Klayshevich, reported by telegraph to Omsk: “There is shooting in the city, armed peasants are coming from the villages, they are advancing, preventing the conscription. Send emergency support. Some time later, the following telegram was sent from Tyukalinsk: “Now the telegraph and post office are occupied by a gang of armed rabble, sentries have been set up “in the name of the people”, revolvers, rifles and cartridges have been taken away, there is a hot shootout near the post office, there are dead and wounded.” The total number of rebels in the Tyukalinsky district was about 400 people. By September 14, the uprising was crushed by the forces of the combined Russian-Czech detachment.

In relative proximity to Tyukalinsk, in the city of Ishim, in the conditions of a large congestion of recruits, about 300 people developed skin and stomach diseases, in connection with which rumors began to spread rapidly about an outbreak of cholera in the Ishim district. Some recruits began to openly call on their comrades in order "not to die for everyone, take knapsacks and go home." All this led to a riot. The recruits began to "scold" the officers in Russian, got out of obedience and really began to go home. Since persuasion did not help stop the fugitives, the commander of the 4th Steppe Siberian personnel regiment stationed in Ishim, with the assistance of the military commandant and the police, was forced to restore order by force. The instigator of the riot was found and shot according to the laws of war.

Complications with the call arose in the Semipalatinsk region. On August 29, the regional commissar G. G. Krot reported to Omsk that in some villages of the Aleksandrovskaya and Karpovskaya volosts of the Semipalatinsk district, the population refused to give recruits, citing their ignorance of the goals of the draft and unwillingness to participate in the fratricidal war. In Pavlodar district, recruits from Bogdanovskaya and Efremovskaya volosts, after arriving at the recruiting station, went home. In both cases, G. G. Krot insisted on the need to use armed force against recruits who evaded the draft.

A number of excesses were accompanied by an appeal in the Yenisei province. On August 2, 1918, peasants from. Esaulovo and the village of Terentyeva, having discussed the order of the Krasnoyarsk district zemstvo council on the recruitment of recruits, demanded to clarify “where and to whom the modern government wants to send our sons”, and decided: “to prohibit the chairman of the Esaulskaya council to send lists of young people until the district zemstvo council clarifies ". Two weeks later, the peasants issued a more categorical resolution: “Conscription lists are to be delayed forever and the announcement of the call is not considered necessary due to the fact that the orders do not come from the whole people, but from a one-sided party, until the convening of the provincial peasant congress ... ".

A few days later, the Krasnoyarsk district zemstvo council received a statement from the chairman of the Esaul volost zemstvo council M. Khudonogov, in which he wrote:

“[…] conscripts, born in 1898–1899, came to the building of the volost government and, with weapons in their hands, demanded lists that had already been arrested by the Terentyevsky and Esaulsky societies, they took these lists and one of them, Pogrebotko Nikolai, put them in your pocket. Then he began to threaten me with violence, but I managed to escape through the window. Further, at my apartment, 4 of them threatened to shoot me, but I fled to the city ... Now I don’t consider it possible to return to the parish to serve. ”

On August 26, the Yenisei provincial commissar P.Z. Ozernykh telegraphed to Omsk addressed to the Minister of the Interior that the Esaul “peasants, under the influence of their Bolshevik agitators, had pronounced a sentence to refuse to give soldiers for eternity, in view of the fact that the government is not popular. For the arrest of several ringleaders, I sent the chief of police with policemen. The peasants refused to hand over the leaders. Then, having learned that lists were still being compiled in the volost council, they expelled the authorities, threatening them with weapons. Yesterday, having communicated with the chief of the garrison, he again sent the chief of militia with a company of soldiers to arrest the ringleaders and carry out the draft. I hope everything will be settled without the use of weapons. By August 29, after the arrival of a military detachment of 90 people in Esaulskoye, the incident was liquidated, and all recruits were taken to the assembly point under guard. The detachment arrested three suspected agitators, while the known agitators managed to escape. The peasants, in their defense, said that the sentence of not giving soldiers was made out of stupidity.

Similar events took place in the Shalinskaya, Zaledeevskaya, Voznesenskaya and Pogorelskaya volosts of the Krasnoyarsk district. Thus, the Georgievsky Society of the Shali Volost decided to detain recruits called for service because “we do not know for what right and whom to defend, for what to go and for whom; in extreme cases, we want to go to defend freedom, everything exclusively, in which we sign.

One of the members of the draft board, sharing his impressions of the draft, told the following story. A peasant delegate from the Pogorelsky volost comes to him. He has paper in his hand. He declares that since “other zemstvo councils refused to give soldiers, our society also decided not to give soldiers,” and submits a verdict. Then the delegate asks: “Well, how are you with the call?” “Yes, they became stubborn in Esaulova, so a military detachment was sent there.” The delegate hesitated, hesitated, then held out his hand and said: “So give me the paper back to me - we’ll probably take it too.”

On August 27, the governor of the Minusinsk district, P. N. Tarelkin, telegraphed to the Minister of Internal Affairs: “[...] the peasants of many villages draw up sentences not to give recruits, demanding the convening of a peasant congress. I sent detachments to the villages closest to the city, after which the recruits came for examination, but, thanks to the indiscretion of the military commander, only 26 recruits appeared at the assembly point, the vast majority went home. If they were detained and sent by the first ship, the rest of the volosts, seeing the firmness of the authorities, would unquestioningly obey the call. Now all my administrative activities are reduced to zero. Today it was required to send a detachment to one village, [but] the detachment was not given by the company commander Nesterov contrary to the order of the head of the garrison. At the head of the garrison with the officer company there are frictions that are not permissible under the conditions of the moment. I petition for the urgent expulsion of a company of soldiers with a platoon of Czechoslovaks. On August 29, the provincial commissar P. Z. Ozernykh reported to Omsk that "measures to suppress disobedience have been taken."

In the Yenisei district, the population of the Maklakovskaya volost resisted the draft. On August 26, the steamer "Grandfather" left Yeniseisk in the village. Maklakovskoye was greeted by a meeting of parents of conscripts, prisoners of war and former Red Army soldiers, who began to beg the recruits who were on board the ship to stay and not go to Krasnoyarsk. Under the influence of agitation, 25 young people went ashore, and the remaining 43 went on. According to the county commissar, five rural societies of the Maklakovskaya volost did not produce a single one of the 50 recruits to be drafted. But from the rest of the rural communities of this volost - Strelovsky, Karginsky, Tunguzsky and Abalakovsky - all 65 people came.

According to the report of the head of the Yenisei district police to the provincial commissar dated December 26, 1918, “since the fall of Soviet power, its adherents have been hiding and conducting underground agitation among the peasants.” The result of this work was the refusal of recruits from five rural societies of the Maklakovskaya volost to appear for military service. A little later, almost all the recruits from the Yenisei district who arrived at the recruiting station in Krasnoyarsk, with a few exceptions, deserted. Repeated exhortations and appeals to them by the authorities were not successful. At the same time, the peasants of the Belsk and Pirovskaya volosts demanded that all front-line soldiers be armed beforehand, after which they promised to send recruits to the army. The militia, due to its small number, did not have the opportunity to apply coercive force to the stubborn.

Young soldiers, drafted into the Siberian army on the basis of a decree of the Provisional Siberian Government of July 31, 1918, entered the reserve regiments. For 28 active rifle regiments of the army, which were part of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th divisions, 28 rifle reserve (personnel) regiments were formed at the corps . In these units, recruits had to undergo initial military training, after which they had to replenish the existing regiments of the Siberian Army. Even before the announcement of the draft, the territorial system of manning the army was recognized as the most optimal, as it did not require large movements of those drafted into the troops and to which the population itself was sympathetic. Possible objections that under such a system troops cannot be used if necessary to maintain internal order in the field, A. N. Grishin-Almazov recognized as insignificant. He believed that, firstly, no clashes were expected due to the completely benevolent attitude of the population towards the new government, and, secondly, with large Siberian distances, quartering points for military units would rarely coincide with the places of residence of those called up.

With the influx of recruits to the personnel regiments, the influx of complaints increased about the inability to accommodate all young soldiers in the barracks, to provide them with warm clothes, uniforms and shoes. In order to somehow improve the situation, the command of the Siberian army decided to send some of the already called-up recruits home. On September 20, 1918, the chief of staff of the army, General P.P. Belov, allowed the commanders of personnel regiments to dismiss up to 25% of the personnel regiments on vacation. Vacations could be granted to recruits "due to poor health" for a period of one to two months.

As a result of the call of recruits by October 1, 1918, the total number of the Siberian army reached 184.6 thousand military personnel. By December 3, its combat strength was expressed in 68.3 thousand bayonets and sabers with 86 guns and 462 machine guns.

After a short training, already from mid-September 1918, young soldiers began to be sent to the units of the Siberian army operating at the front. For example, by September 17, 1918, 50 recruits from the 4th Steppe personnel regiment and 66 recruits from the 6th Steppe personnel regiment arrived in the 4th Siberian Rifle Division; by September 19 - 97 recruits from the 1st and 3rd Steppe personnel regiments. On October 24, two officers and 14 recruits of the 8th Steppe personnel regiment were enrolled in the 14th Irtysh regiment. On November 10, marching companies from the 1st Steppe personnel regiment (233 people), from the 2nd Steppe personnel regiment (246 people), from the 3rd Steppe personnel regiment (504 people), a total of 983 recruits arrived in the division; November 14 - from the 1st Steppe personnel regiment (240 people), from the 2nd Steppe personnel regiment (209 people) and from the 4th Steppe personnel regiment (247 people), a total of 696 recruits; November 15 - from the 4th Steppe personnel regiment (250 people). In total, from the end of September to the end of November 1918, at least 2,126 recruits joined the 4th Siberian division. All of them were distributed among the active regiments as follows: in the 13th Omsk regiment - 415 people, in the 14th Irtysh regiment - 469 people, in the 15th Kurgan regiment - 478 people, in the 16th Ishim regiment - 37 people, in the 18th Tobolsk regiment - 298 people, in the 20th Tyumen regiment - 469 people. Thus, by the time the decisive battles for Perm began - at the end of November 1918 - the 4th Siberian Rifle Division almost half consisted of recruits.

Despite the poor preparedness of the recruits, the front-line commanders gave the most favorable reviews about them. The order for the Siberian Army dated November 30, 1918 cites an excerpt from the report of the head of the 4th Siberian Rifle Division, Major General G. A. Verzhbitsky: “Young soldiers, having received baptism of fire, led by selfless officers, behave excellently in battle.” The same order noted the outstanding stamina and discipline shown in recent battles by young soldiers of the 17th Semipalatinsk and 19th Petropavlovsk regiments of the 5th Siberian rifle division: “Having made 170 miles in three days, with the complete absence of backward ones, they went into battle with the enemy and fought beyond praise for a whole day in heavy rain, fording across the rivers.

In the rear areas of the Siberian army, recruits were often used as a punitive force. So, for “stopping illegal meetings in vil. On November 16, 1918, 20 recruits from the security company of the 8th Biysk personnel regiment were sent to Marushka of the Biysk district under the command of Lieutenant Kornilov. On November 17, this detachment was surrounded in the named village by an armed crowd, which demanded the extradition of officers. The recruit soldiers defended their officers and fought their way out of the encirclement, losing one officer and three soldiers killed.

November 24, 1918 from Tyumen to the village. Ievlevo, a detachment was sent, consisting of two officers and 54 soldiers of the training team of the 6th Steppe Siberian personnel regiment, to pacify the rebellion of deserters escorted to Tobolsk. For the successful operation, which resulted in the destruction of 56 rebels, the soldiers of the training team and the officers who led them were awarded the gratitude of the commander of the II Steppe Siberian Corps.

On the whole, however, the personnel units of the Siberian Army were not distinguished by high discipline. At the end of November 1918, the commander of the 1st Central Siberian Corps, General A.N. Pepelyaev, telegraphed to the chief commander of the corps district: “... information reaches me that discipline is falling in the rear, promiscuity is growing, drunkenness and hooliganism are flourishing, crowds of soldiers roam through the streets." Desertion became widespread in the personnel units. As of October 31, 1918, 17% of recruits deserted from the 1st personnel (reserve) regiment of the 1st Central Siberian Corps, 32% from the 2nd regiment, 25% from the 3rd regiment, 25% from the 4th regiment - 42%, from the 5th regiment - 20%. As of October 17, 1918, "on the run" was 8% of the payroll of the personnel units of the II Steppe Siberian Corps. In the personnel units of the III Ural Corps, out of 33,955 soldiers on the list, by October 14, 1918, 1,138 people, or 3%, had deserted. And, finally, in the IV East Siberian Corps, out of 9,114 recruits who were on October 9, 1918 in the lists of the 3rd Irkutsk personnel brigade, 986 people, or 11%, fled from service. The largest percentage of deserters (52%) was in the 12th Verkhneudinsky personnel regiment. A curious pattern emerges: the farther from the front the cadre units were deployed, the higher the percentage of deserters was in them.

The Siberian periodical press did not disregard this problem. For example, in the fall of 1918, the Cadet newspaper Narodnaya Svoboda tried to record all cases of capture of deserters in the territory of the Barnaul district. In the issue of September 25 it was reported that in the village. Savinskoye police detained recruits T. Konkov, I. Shirokov, I. Skopichevsky and Ya. Boromsky, who had fled from Barnaul. Probably, these were the first officially recorded deserters identified on the territory of the county, which explains their surname enumeration. But it soon became clear that the flight from the cadre regiments was massive, which is why the People's Freedom began to indicate only the number of fugitives discovered. On October 13, the newspaper informed readers about the capture on October 27, October 18 - 45, October 22 - October 12, October 24 - 43 deserters. In just one day, on October 27, the head of the 6th district police station during a special raid discovered fugitive recruits in the village. Rebrikha (33 people), in Panovaya (8 people), in Belovaya (9 people), in Lebyazhye (28 people) and in Borovlyanskaya (31 people), and in total - 109 fugitives. After an explanatory conversation held by the policemen, the parents of the recruits signed an agreement that their children would voluntarily return to their military units.

Thanks to the actions of the police, by the beginning of November, almost all deserters were identified in the settlements of the Barnaul district. On October 31, Narodnaya Svoboda reported the capture of four people, on November 1 - nine, on November 2 - five, on November 7 - eight. In total, from the end of September to the beginning of November 1918, according to the newspaper, 266 fugitive recruits were identified on the territory of the Barnaul district. All of them, with the exception of the 109 people mentioned above, who were to be returned to their regiments, were sent to the disposal of the Barnaul district military commander. Noteworthy is the rather “liberal” attitude of the authorities towards deserters, who were inclined to be treated as unintelligent children deserving a certain indulgence.

The commander of the IV East Siberian Corps, General A. V. Ellerts-Usov, explained the cases of desertion by the "extreme frivolity" of recruits. For educational purposes, on October 4, 1918, he ordered the establishment of a black sleeve patch for all guilty people with the inscription “deserter” in white letters. As a measure designed to reduce this phenomenon, detrimental to the army, was the introduction of corporal punishment in parts of the corps. However, the command of the corps failed to prevent the flight of recruits from service. The problem of desertion in the corps was most acute in connection with the dispatch of some units to the active army in early 1919. According to the commander of the IV East Siberian heavy artillery division, on the way to the front from January 26 to 31, 1919, 70 people escaped from the echelon. “Escapes ... were facilitated by the fact that from the composition of the soldiers given to me there was not a single one on whom one could rely. In two cases, the platoon not only did not hold their soldiers, but they themselves set an example and disappeared.

In the autumn and winter of 1918, a number of excesses took place in the personnel units of the Siberian army, some of which ended in armed uprisings. N. I. Blokhin, mobilized into the Siberian army in August 1918, in his memoirs cites the fact that recruits of the seventh and eighth companies of the 5th Steppe personnel regiment refused to wear shoulder straps. After arriving in the companies of the authorities, under pain of execution of every tenth, the recruits gave up two instigators, and the incident was over. The seventh company, according to Blokhin, received a different, "more strict" commander.

In early September, an armed uprising took place in the fourth company of the 7th Steppe personnel regiment stationed in Petropavlovsk. The details of this event are not yet known. But the court-martial, held on September 30, 1918, sentenced the "main culprits of the uprising" recruits Fedorin, Garzhu, Arsenyev and Mostkovsky to deprivation of all rights of property and death by firing squad. The corps commander approved the verdict against two recruits, and replaced the death penalty for the other two with indefinite hard labor.

The first armed uprising in parts of the Siberian army under anti-government slogans, which received an all-Siberian response, took place in Tomsk on the night of November 1, 1918. Soldiers of the 5th Tomsk personnel regiment took part in it. Back in September, a Bolshevik military organization arose in the regiment, which soon extended its influence to the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and assault companies. But the Tomsk underground committee of the RCP (b), with which the conspirators had contacts, had no direct relation to the organization of the uprising. The uprising itself was not properly prepared, and was of a spontaneous nature. The rebels seized the headquarters of the regiment, disarmed the prison guard consisting of 21 recruits of the 6th Mariinsky personnel regiment and released the political and criminal prisoners who were in prison. The organizers of the uprising did not take other, more decisive actions. The military authorities quickly restored order in the Tomsk garrison. An officer company, training teams of the 5th Tomsk and 6th Mariinsky personnel regiments, the 1st Tomsk personnel artillery battalion, and a squadron of the 1st Tomsk personnel cavalry regiment were sent to suppress the uprising.

The second, most resonant, was the uprising of the recruits of the personnel units of the II Steppe Siberian Corps in Omsk at the end of December 1918. According to S. G. Cheremnykh, a member of the Omsk Underground Committee of the RCP (b), these units included Omsk youth, among whom were former red guards. Through them, the Bolsheviks established contact with the recruits. In mid-December, an illegal Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, consisting of twelve people, was already operating in the city. On the night of December 22, 1918, the Bolsheviks planned to raise an armed uprising in Omsk. The underground military revolutionary headquarters expected that soldiers of the 1st, 2nd and 8th Steppe Siberian personnel regiments, as well as artillerymen of the 1st Omsk personnel division, would take part in the uprising. The hopes of the Bolsheviks were not fully realized. Most of the recruits did not respond to their calls. Active participation in the uprising was taken by the soldiers of three teams (sapper, commandant and communications) of the 2nd personnel regiment, as well as the first battalion and machine gun team of the 8th personnel regiment. In the morning, the uprising was liquidated by the forces of the 1st reserve Czechoslovak regiment of the non-commissioned officer school of the II Steppe Siberian Corps.

Similar, although on a smaller scale, events took place in the city of Kansk, Yenisei province. Local Bolsheviks, knowing about the uprising in Omsk, but, apparently, not having full information about its results, decided to act on the night of December 27, 1918. Relying on the workers, they easily managed to capture the railway station, post office, telegraph office, buildings of the county and city police. Insignificant resistance they met only in the premises of the officers' meeting. The rebels were supported by recruits from four companies of the 32nd Kansky Siberian Rifle Regiment, stationed in a military camp two miles from the city. An underground Bolshevik organization operated in the regiment, the core of which was a group of volunteers who joined the ranks of the Siberian army in order to disintegrate it. But in the military camp, the rebels did not even achieve temporary success, and were neutralized thanks to the energetic actions of the soldiers of the training team of the regiment and the guards of the prisoner of war camp who remained faithful to the oath. Order in Kansk and its environs was restored on December 28 after arrival from the station. Cranberry detachment of Colonel N.F. Petukhov and Cossack hundreds of podsaul A.S. Trofimov.

Let us note that the armed uprisings in Tomsk, Omsk and Kansk took place under the Bolshevik slogan of the restoration of Soviet power. At the same time, in all three cases, the organizers convinced the recruits that Soviet power had already been restored in the respective cities and almost all of Siberia, and the recruits only had to join the winners. Being misled, the young soldiers initially showed a revolutionary impulse, but then, realizing that they had been deceived, they fell into confusion and surrendered to the "mercy of the authorities."

Anti-government sentiment was not widespread among recruits. All of the above performances were quickly eliminated, but the ground for dissatisfaction with the recruits remained. One of the main reasons for this dissatisfaction was the unsatisfactory provision of uniforms, shoes, warm clothes and living quarters. The extremely deplorable financial situation of the recruits created fertile ground for the spread of anti-government sentiments among them. The situation was aggravated by some officers who allowed themselves to beat the soldiers. Quite a few examples of this kind can be cited, but it should be noted that hazing took place mainly in the rear garrisons of the Siberian army.

The most egregious incident occurred in Irkutsk on the evening of September 3, 1918. Staff Captain S.V. Belogolovy, who was walking along Bolshaya Street, did not apologize for pushing a lady, but responded to her remark that she needed to be more polite, responded with “square” abuse. The soldier Rosenberg, who observed this scene, remarked to his companion that “at least you can be more correct with the ladies.” Hearing this phrase, the officer shouted at the soldier: what did he say? And when Rosenberg repeated what he had said, with a cry of “Ah, so you are a Jew ...” he grabbed his saber and hit him on the head. The victim was given medical assistance, and staff captain Belogolovy was arrested.

On November 18, 1918, the commander of the IV East Siberian Corps, General A. V. Ellerts-Usov, ordered the arrest and dispatch of the commander of the 10th Baikal personnel regiment, captain Rudakov, to the Irkutsk garrison guardhouse. He was charged with the fact that back in October 1918, while on duty, he led the regiment of the soldier Ungerov, who was detained on charges of agitation, around the barracks; in the presence of his subordinates, he beat him in the face with his hands, scolded him with swear words and called him a "kid".

The order for the Siberian Army, signed by General A.F. Matkovsky on December 4, 1918, said: “I saw an officer in front of an infantry formation with a whip in his hands. Such panache is inappropriate, because it contradicts the military uniform, and dangerous, because if the whip is directed in the wrong place, it can bring the hot-tempered boss to court. I am sure that the commanders of the units will bring out such phenomena, if they still exist somewhere.

Hazing in the personnel units of the Siberian army was unlikely to be widespread. Apparently, the assault of the commanders in these units did not go beyond the limits generally accepted in any army. However, there was another extreme. According to General P.P. Petrov, "the officers of the cadre regiments, for the most part, were called up for mobilization and had all the sins of the mobilized, and the main one is caution in dealing with soldiers, sometimes even in violation of existing regulations."

But what was really characteristic of the officers of the cadre regiments was a rather indifferent attitude to the service and an unwillingness or, rather, an inability to become not only commanders, but also worthy educators of young soldiers. General V.V. Golitsyn noted in the order for the 7th Ural Division dated October 27, 1918, that in relation to the education and development of the consciousness of the young soldiers drafted into the ranks of the division, things were not up to par. The officers, according to him, “little, and in some units did not talk at all with the soldiers on such basic issues as, for example, explaining the meaning and purpose of military service and, in particular, the tasks of a real war, did not enter into the interests of the personal life of recruits enough” .

In 1918, the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik movement in Siberia had favorable conditions and a real opportunity to attract the population of the region to their side. The results of recruiting recruits to the Siberian army are the most striking confirmation of this. The success of the conscription can be explained by the fact that the recruits, due to their age, had not yet had time to experience the destructive impact of revolutionary events, and, together with their parents, already quite old people, they were inclined to obey the orders of the authorities. One should also take into account the youthful romanticism characteristic of 18–19-year-old young people, within which military service has traditionally been perceived as the first step towards self-assertion in adult life. In this context, youth has been and is the optimal material for recruiting any armed formation, regardless of its political and ideological base.

But, having brought the size of the Siberian army to almost 200 thousand people, its political and military leaders paid very little attention to educating the personnel in the appropriate political spirit, to introduce into the mass of many thousands of illiterate village boys an awareness of the need to fight Bolshevism. As a result, the agitation and propaganda vacuum that took place in the armed forces of the Provisional Siberian Government began to gradually fill with other political ideologies.

The officers, who were the backbone of the Siberian army, turned out to be not ready to fully solve the tasks that the civil war set before them. The officers, for the most part, continued to think in pre-revolutionary categories. This also applied to relationships with subordinates, including conscious distancing from them, and the desire to limit one's activities solely to the requirements of military regulations. In the cycle of civil confrontation, when everyday reality posed intractable political questions, the mobilized contingent of the White armies in search of answers to them was left to itself.

NOTES

Simonov D. G. From the history of the armed forces of the Provisional Siberian Government (1918) // Siberia during the Civil War. Kemerovo, 1995, p. 78.
Roschevsky P.I. Civil war in the Trans-Urals. Sverdlovsk, 1966, p. 156; Shikanov L. A. Siberian counter-revolution at the initial stage of the civil war (October 1917 - November 1918). Abstract dis. …cand. ist. Sciences. Tomsk, 1989.
Eikhe G.H. Overturned rear. M., 1966. S. 140.
Zhurov Yu.V. Yenisei peasantry during the civil war. Krasnoyarsk, 1972. S. 97.
GARF. F. 1700. Op. 7. D. 88. L. 3.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 4. L. 1; Akmola regional statements (Omsk). 1918. 31 Aug.
Siberian Bulletin (Omsk). 1918. 21 Aug.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 1. L. 53, 65.
People's Freedom (Barnaul). 1918. 30 Aug.
Gins G.K. Siberia, allies and Kolchak. Beijing, 1921. S. 194.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 4. L. 189
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 1–3.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 54. L. 99.
People's freedom. 1918. 25, 30 Aug.
People's freedom. 1918. 29 Oct.
TSHAFAK. F. 235. Op. 1. D. 7. L. 63 64, 71.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 243. L. 80; TSHAFAK. F. 235. Op. 1. D. 7. L. 36–38
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 6. L. 3, 6.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 243. L. 100.
Morning of Siberia. 1918. 18 Sept.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 11. L. 2, 4.
Zhurov Yu.V. Decree. op. pp. 95–96.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 9. L. 1, 7.
Siberian Bulletin. 1918. 6 Sept.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 9. L. 4, 7.
GARF. F. 182. Op. 1. D. 9. L. 9; Siberian Bulletin. 1918. 6 Sept.
Zhurov Yu.V. Decree. op. pp. 96–97.
On September 1, 1918, all the spare parts of the Siberian Army were renamed "personnel", because "the name of the spare parts and brigades is associated with sad memories of their role in the decomposition of the Russian army in 1917."
GARF. F. 176. Op. 5. D. 535. L. 1–3.
Siberian Bulletin. 1918. 3 Oct.
RGVA. F. 40308. Op. 1. D. 72. L. 1.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 152. L. 54.
RGVA. F. 39877. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 8, 10, 24, 37.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 256. L. 77.
RGVA. F. 39498. Op. 1. D. 13. L. 74–75.
GANO. F. P. 5. Op. 2. D. 1507. L. 38.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 151. L. 139.
RGVA. F. 39512. Op. 1. D. 66. L. 220, 224.
RGVA. F. 39515. Op. 1. D. 28. L. 58.
People's freedom. 1918. Sept. 25, 13, 18, 22, 24, 29, 31 Oct., 1, 2, 7 Nov.
RGVA. F. 39513. Op. 1. D. 17. L. 28. The patch was made of calico and was worn in the form of a bandage on the right sleeve of an overcoat, shirt or quilted jacket (the width of the bandage is 5 inches, the height of the letters is 4 inches). Combat commanders were given the right to petition the corps commander to remove this shameful stripe, "if the guilty of honest service to the Motherland has already made amends for his misconduct."
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 152. L. 20.
Kadeikin V. A. Siberia is unconquered. Kemerovo, 1968, p. 332.
GAAC. F. 5876. Op. 1. D. 59. L. 1–2.
GARF. F. 176. Op. 2. D. 38. L. 222.
RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 152. L. 8; Flerov V. S., Chugunov M. I.. The uprising in Tomsk on November 1, 1918 // The struggle for the power of the Soviets in Siberia and the Far East. Tomsk, 1968, pp. 144–166.
Cheremnykh S.G. Omsk uprising // The defeat of Kolchak. Memories. M., 1969. S. 239–255.
GANO. F. 143. Op. 1. D. 39. L. 12–15; Kadeikin V. A. Decree. op. pp. 276–278.
Siberia. 1918. 6 Sept.
RGVA. F. 39513. Op. 1. D. 17. L. 129.
Military news. Dec. 14, 1918
Petrov P.P. From the Volga to the Pacific Ocean in the ranks of the Whites. 1918–1922 Riga, 1930. S. 59. General Petrov made this observation in relation to the regiments of the 6th Ural division of mountain riflemen.
RGVA. F. 39517. Op. 1. D. 35. L. 124.

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CIVIL WAR IN RUSSIA

Causes and main stages of the civil war. After the liquidation of the monarchy, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries feared civil war most of all, which is why they agreed to an agreement with the Cadets. As for the Bolsheviks, they regarded it as a "natural" continuation of the revolution. Therefore, many contemporaries of those events considered the armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks to be the beginning of the civil war in Russia. Its chronological framework covers the period from October 1917 to October 1922, that is, from the uprising in Petrograd to the end of the armed struggle in the Far East. Until the spring of 1918, hostilities were mostly local in nature. The main anti-Bolshevik forces were either engaged in political struggle (moderate socialists) or were in the stage of organizational formation (white movement).

From the spring-summer of 1918, a fierce political struggle began to develop into the form of an open military confrontation between the Bolsheviks and their opponents: moderate socialists, some foreign formations, the White Army, and the Cossacks. The second - "front stage" stage of the civil war begins, which, in turn, can be divided into several periods.

Summer-autumn 1918 - the period of escalation of the war. It was caused by the introduction of a food dictatorship. This led to the discontent of the middle peasants and wealthy peasants and the creation of a mass base for the anti-Bolshevik movement, which, in turn, contributed to the strengthening of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik "democratic counter-revolution" and the White armies.

December 1918 - June 1919 - the period of confrontation between the regular red and white armies. In the armed struggle against the Soviet regime, the white movement achieved the greatest success. One part of the revolutionary democracy agreed to cooperate with the Soviet government, the other fought on two fronts: with the White regime and the Bolshevik dictatorship.

The second half of 1919 - autumn 1920 - the period of the military defeat of the Whites. The Bolsheviks somewhat softened their position in relation to the middle peasantry, declaring "the need for a more attentive attitude towards their needs." The peasantry bowed to the side of the Soviet government.

The end of 1920 - 1922 - the period of the "small civil war". Deployment of mass peasant uprisings against the policy of "war communism". Growing dissatisfaction of the workers and the performance of the Kronstadt sailors. The influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks increased again. All this forced the Bolsheviks to retreat, to introduce a new economic policy, which contributed to the gradual fading of the civil war.

The first outbreaks of the civil war. Formation of the white movement.

At the head of the anti-Bolshevik movement on the Don stood Ataman A. M. Kaledin. He declared the insubordination of the Don Cossacks to Soviet power. Everyone dissatisfied with the new regime began to flock to the Don. At the end of November 1917, General M.V. Alekseev began to form the Volunteer Army from the officers who had made their way to the Don. L. G. Kornilov, who had escaped from captivity, became its commander. The volunteer army marked the beginning of the white movement, so named in contrast to the red - revolutionary. The white color symbolized law and order. The participants in the white movement considered themselves to be the spokesmen for the idea of restoring the former power and might of the Russian state, the "Russian state principle" and a merciless struggle against those forces that, in their opinion, plunged Russia into chaos and anarchy - with the Bolsheviks, as well as with representatives of other socialist parties.

The Soviet government managed to form an army of 10,000, which in mid-January 1918 entered the territory of the Don. Most of the Cossacks adopted a policy of benevolent neutrality towards the new government. The decree on land gave little to the Cossacks, they had land, but they were impressed by the decree on peace. Part of the population provided armed support to the Reds. Considering his cause lost, Ataman Kaledin shot himself. The volunteer army, burdened with carts with children, women, politicians, went to the steppes, hoping to continue their work in the Kuban. On April 17, 1918, its commander Kornilov was killed, this post was taken by General A. I. Denikin.

Simultaneously with the anti-Soviet speeches on the Don, the movement of the Cossacks in the South Urals began. A. I. Dutov, the ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army, stood at its head. In Transbaikalia, the ataman G.S. Semenov fought against the new government.

The first uprisings against the Bolsheviks were spontaneous and scattered, did not enjoy the mass support of the population and took place against the backdrop of a relatively quick and peaceful establishment of the power of the Soviets almost everywhere ("the triumphal march of Soviet power", as Lenin said). However, already at the very beginning of the confrontation, two main centers of resistance to the power of the Bolsheviks developed: to the east of the Volga, in Siberia, where wealthy peasant owners predominated, often united in cooperatives and under the influence of the Social Revolutionaries, and also in the south - in the territories inhabited by the Cossacks, known for his love of freedom and commitment to a special way of economic and social life. The main fronts of the civil war were the Eastern and Southern.

Creation of the Red Army. Lenin was an adherent of the Marxist position that after the victory of the socialist revolution, the regular army, as one of the main attributes of bourgeois society, should be replaced by a people's militia, which would be convened only in case of military danger. However, the scope of anti-Bolshevik speeches required a different approach. On January 15, 1918, a decree of the Council of People's Commissars proclaimed the creation of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA). On January 29, the Red Fleet was formed.

The volunteer recruitment principle, which was initially applied, led to organizational disunity and decentralization in command and control, which had a detrimental effect on the combat effectiveness and discipline of the Red Army. She suffered a number of serious defeats. That is why, in order to achieve the highest strategic goal - to preserve the power of the Bolsheviks - Lenin considered it possible to abandon his views in the field of military development and return to the traditional, "bourgeois", i.e. to universal military service and unity of command. In July 1918, a decree was published on the general military service of the male population aged 18 to 40 years. During the summer - autumn of 1918, 300 thousand people were mobilized into the ranks of the Red Army. In 1920, the number of Red Army soldiers approached 5 million.

Much attention was paid to the formation of command personnel. In 1917-1919. in addition to short-term courses and schools, higher military educational institutions were opened to train the middle command level from the most distinguished Red Army soldiers. In March 1918, a notice was published in the press about the recruitment of military specialists from the tsarist army. By January 1, 1919, approximately 165,000 former tsarist officers had joined the ranks of the Red Army. The involvement of military experts was accompanied by strict "class" control over their activities. To this end, in April 1918, the party sent military commissars to the ships and troops, who supervised the command cadres and carried out the political education of sailors and Red Army men.

In September 1918, a unified command and control structure for fronts and armies was created. Each front (army) was headed by a Revolutionary Military Council (Revolutionary Military Council, or RVS), which consisted of a front (army) commander and two commissars. All military institutions were headed by the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, headed by L. D. Trotsky, who also took the post of People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs. Measures were taken to tighten discipline. Representatives of the Revolutionary Military Council, endowed with emergency powers (up to the execution of traitors and cowards without trial or investigation), went to the most tense sectors of the front. In November 1918, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense was formed, headed by Lenin. He concentrated in his hands the fullness of state power.

Intervention. From the very beginning, the civil war in Russia was complicated by the intervention of foreign states in it. In December 1917, Romania, taking advantage of the weakness of the young Soviet government, occupied Bessarabia. The government of the Central Council proclaimed the independence of Ukraine and, having concluded a separate agreement with the Austro-German bloc in Brest-Litovsk, returned to Kyiv in March together with the Austro-German troops, which occupied almost all of Ukraine. Taking advantage of the fact that there were no clearly fixed borders between Ukraine and Russia, German troops invaded the Orel, Kursk, Voronezh provinces, captured Simferopol, Rostov and crossed the Don. In April 1918, Turkish troops crossed the state border and moved into the depths of Transcaucasia. In May, a German corps also landed in Georgia.

From the end of 1917, British, American and Japanese warships began to arrive at Russian ports in the North and the Far East, ostensibly to protect them from possible German aggression. At first, the Soviet government took this calmly and even agreed to accept aid from the Entente countries in the form of food and weapons. But after the conclusion of the Brest Peace, the presence of the Entente began to be seen as a threat to Soviet power. However, it was already too late. On March 6, 1918, an English landing force landed in the port of Murmansk. At a meeting of the heads of government of the Entente countries, it was decided not to recognize the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia. In April 1918, Japanese paratroopers landed in Vladivostok. Then they were joined by British, American, French troops. And although the governments of these countries did not declare war on Soviet Russia, moreover, they covered themselves with the idea of fulfilling "allied duty", foreign soldiers behaved like conquerors. Lenin regarded these actions as an intervention and called for a rebuff to the aggressors.

Since the autumn of 1918, after the defeat of Germany, the military presence of the Entente countries has become more widespread. In January 1919, landings were made in Odessa, the Crimea, Baku, and the number of troops in the ports of the North and the Far East was increased. However, this caused a negative reaction from the personnel of the expeditionary forces, for whom the end of the war was delayed for an indefinite period. Therefore, the Black Sea and Caspian landing forces were evacuated in the spring of 1919; the British left Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in the autumn of 1919. In 1920, British and American units were forced to leave the Far East. Only the Japanese remained there until October 1922. A large-scale intervention did not take place, primarily because the governments of the leading countries of Europe and the USA were frightened by the growing movement of their peoples in support of the Russian revolution. Revolutions broke out in Germany and Austria-Hungary, under the pressure of which these major monarchies collapsed.

"Democratic counter-revolution". Eastern front. The beginning of the "front" stage of the civil war was characterized by an armed confrontation between the Bolsheviks and moderate socialists, primarily the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which, after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, felt itself forcibly removed from its legitimate power. The decision to start an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks was strengthened after the latter dispersed in April-May 1918 many newly elected local Soviets, which were dominated by representatives of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary bloc.

The turning point of the new stage of the civil war was the appearance of the corps, consisting of prisoners of war of the Czechs and Slovaks of the former Austro-Hungarian army, who expressed a desire to participate in hostilities on the side of the Entente. The leadership of the corps proclaimed itself part of the Czechoslovak army, which was under the command of the commander-in-chief of the French troops. An agreement was concluded between Russia and France on the transfer of the Czechoslovaks to the western front. They were supposed to follow the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, there they boarded ships and sailed to Europe. By the end of May 1918, echelons with parts of the corps (more than 45 thousand people) were stretched by rail from the Rtishchevo station (in the Penza region) to Vladivostok for 7 thousand km. There was a rumor that the local Soviets were ordered to disarm the corps and extradite the Czechoslovaks as prisoners of war to Austria-Hungary and Germany. At a meeting of regimental commanders, a decision was made - not to hand over weapons and fight their way to Vladivostok. On May 25, the commander of the Czechoslovak units, R. Gaida, ordered his subordinates to seize the stations where they were at the moment. In a relatively short time, with the help of the Czechoslovak corps, Soviet power was overthrown in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.

The main springboard for the Socialist-Revolutionary struggle for national power was the territories liberated by the Czechoslovaks from the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1918, regional governments were created, consisting mainly of members of the AKP: in Samara - the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), in Yekaterinburg - the Ural Regional Government, in Tomsk - the Provisional Siberian Government. The Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik authorities acted under the flag of two main slogans: "Power not to the Soviets, but to the Constituent Assembly!" and "Liquidation of the Brest Peace!" Part of the population supported these slogans. The new governments managed to form their own armed detachments. With the support of the Czechoslovaks, Komuch's People's Army took Kazan on August 6, hoping then to move on Moscow.

The Soviet government created the Eastern Front, which included five armies formed in the shortest possible time. The armored train of L. D. Trotsky went to the front with a select combat team and a military revolutionary tribunal, which had unlimited powers. The first concentration camps were set up in Murom, Arzamas, and Sviyazhsk. Between the front and the rear, special barrage detachments were formed to deal with deserters. On September 2, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared the Soviet Republic a military camp. In early September, the Red Army managed to stop the enemy, and then go on the offensive. In September - early October, she liberated Kazan, Simbirsk, Syzran and Samara. Czechoslovak troops retreated to the Urals.

In September 1918, a meeting of representatives of the anti-Bolshevik forces was held in Ufa, which formed a single "All-Russian" government - the Ufa directory, in which the Socialist-Revolutionaries played the main role. The offensive of the Red Army forced the directory to move to Omsk in October. Admiral A. V. Kolchak was invited to the post of Minister of War. The Socialist-Revolutionary leaders of the directory hoped that the popularity he enjoyed in the Russian army would make it possible to unite the disparate military formations that acted against the Soviet regime in the expanses of the Urals and Siberia. However, on the night of November 17-18, 1918, a group of conspirators from the officers of the Cossack units stationed in Omsk arrested the socialists - members of the directory, and all power passed to Admiral Kolchak, who accepted the title of "Supreme Ruler of Russia" and the baton of the fight against the Bolsheviks on the Eastern Front.

"Red Terror". Liquidation of the House of Romanov. Along with economic and military measures, the Bolsheviks began to pursue a policy of intimidation of the population on a state scale, which was called the "Red Terror". In the cities, it assumed wide proportions from September 1918 - after the assassination of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky, and the attempt in Moscow on the life of Lenin.

The terror was widespread. Only in response to the assassination attempt on Lenin, the Petrograd Chekists shot, according to official reports, 500 hostages.

One of the sinister pages of the "red terror" was the destruction of the royal family. October found the former Russian emperor and his relatives in Tobolsk, where in August 1917 they were sent into exile. In April 1918, the royal family was secretly transferred to Yekaterinburg and placed in a house that had previously belonged to the engineer Ipatiev. On July 16, 1918, apparently in agreement with the Council of People's Commissars, the Ural Regional Council decided to execute the tsar and his family. On the night of July 17, Nikolai, his wife, five children and servants were shot - a total of 11 people. Even earlier, on July 13, the tsar's brother Mikhail was killed in Perm. On July 18, 18 more members of the imperial family were executed in Alapaevsk.

Southern front. In the spring of 1918, the Don was filled with rumors about the upcoming equalizing redistribution of land. The Cossacks murmured. Then the order arrived in time for the surrender of weapons and the requisition of bread. The Cossacks revolted. It coincided with the arrival of the Germans on the Don. The Cossack leaders, forgetting about past patriotism, entered into negotiations with a recent enemy. On April 21, the Provisional Don Government was created, which began the formation of the Don Army. On May 16, the Cossack "Round of Don Salvation" elected General P. N. Krasnov as ataman of the Don Cossacks, endowing him with almost dictatorial powers. Relying on the support of the German generals, Krasnov declared the state independence of the Region of the Great Don Army. Parts of Krasnov, together with the German troops, launched military operations against the Red Army.

From the troops located in the region of Voronezh, Tsaritsyn and the North Caucasus, the Soviet government created in September 1918 the Southern Front, consisting of five armies. In November 1918, Krasnov's army inflicted a serious defeat on the Red Army and began to move north. At the cost of incredible efforts in December 1918, the Reds managed to stop the advance of the Cossack troops.

At the same time, the Volunteer Army of A.I. Denikin began its second campaign against the Kuban. The "volunteers" adhered to the Entente orientation and tried not to interact with Krasnov's pro-German detachments. Meanwhile, the foreign policy situation has changed dramatically. At the beginning of November 1918, the World War ended with the defeat of Germany and its allies. Under pressure and with the active help of the Entente countries, at the end of 1918, all the anti-Bolshevik armed forces of the South of Russia were united under the command of Denikin.

Military operations on the Eastern Front in 1919. On November 28, 1918, Admiral Kolchak, at a meeting with representatives of the press, stated that his immediate goal was to create a strong and efficient army for a merciless struggle against the Bolsheviks, which should be facilitated by the sole form of power. After the liquidation of the Bolsheviks, the National Assembly should be convened "for the establishment of law and order in the country." All economic and social reforms must also be postponed until the end of the fight against the Bolsheviks. Kolchak announced mobilization and put 400 thousand people under arms.

In the spring of 1919, having achieved a numerical superiority in manpower, Kolchak went on the offensive. In March-April, his armies captured Sarapul, Izhevsk, Ufa, Sterlitamak. The advanced units were located several tens of kilometers from Kazan, Samara and Simbirsk. This success allowed the Whites to outline a new perspective - the possibility of Kolchak's campaign against Moscow while simultaneously leaving the left flank of his army to join Denikin.

The counteroffensive of the Red Army began on April 28, 1919. The troops under the command of M.V. Frunze in the battles near Samara defeated the elite Kolchak units and took Ufa in June. On July 14 Yekaterinburg was liberated. In November, the capital of Kolchak, Omsk, fell. The remnants of his army rolled further east. Under the blows of the Reds, the Kolchak government was forced to move to Irkutsk. On December 24, 1919, an anti-Kolchak uprising was raised in Irkutsk. Allied troops and the remaining Czechoslovak detachments declared their neutrality. In early January 1920, the Czechs handed over Kolchak to the leaders of the uprising, in February 1920 he was shot.

The Red Army suspended its offensive in Transbaikalia. On April 6, 1920, in the city of Verkhneudinsk (now Ulan-Ude), the creation of the Far Eastern Republic was proclaimed - a "buffer" bourgeois-democratic state, formally independent of the RSFSR, but actually led by the Far Eastern Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

Campaign to Petrograd. At a time when the Red Army was winning victories over the Kolchak troops, a serious threat hung over Petrograd. After the victory of the Bolsheviks, many senior officials, industrialists and financiers emigrated to Finland. About 2.5 thousand officers of the tsarist army found shelter here. The emigrants created a Russian political committee in Finland, headed by General N. N. Yudenich. With the consent of the Finnish authorities, he began to form a White Guard army in Finland.

In the first half of May 1919, Yudenich launched an offensive against Petrograd. Having broken through the front of the Red Army between Narva and Lake Peipsi, his troops created a real threat to the city. On May 22, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) issued an appeal to the inhabitants of the country, which said: "Soviet Russia cannot give up Petrograd even for the shortest time ... The importance of this city, which was the first to raise the banner of insurrection against the bourgeoisie, is too great."

On June 13, the situation in Petrograd became even more complicated: anti-Bolshevik demonstrations by the Red Army broke out in the forts of Krasnaya Gorka, Gray Horse, and Obruchev. Not only the regular units of the Red Army, but also the naval artillery of the Baltic Fleet were used against the rebels. After the suppression of these speeches, the troops of the Petrograd Front went on the offensive and threw Yudenich's units back into Estonian territory. In October 1919, Yudenich's second offensive against Petrograd also ended in failure. In February 1920, the Red Army liberated Arkhangelsk, and in March, Murmansk.

Events on the Southern Front. Having received significant assistance from the Entente countries, Denikin's army in May-June 1919 went on the offensive along the entire front. By June 1919, she captured the Donbass, a significant part of Ukraine, Belgorod, Tsaritsyn. An attack on Moscow began, during which the Whites entered Kursk and Orel, and occupied Voronezh.

On Soviet territory, another wave of mobilization of forces and means began under the motto: "Everyone to fight Denikin!" In October 1919, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. S. M. Budyonny's First Cavalry Army played a major role in changing the situation at the front. The rapid advance of the Reds in the autumn of 1919 led to the division of the Volunteer Army into two parts - the Crimean (it was headed by General P. N. Wrangel) and the North Caucasian. In February-March 1920, its main forces were defeated, the Volunteer Army ceased to exist.

In order to involve the entire Russian population in the fight against the Bolsheviks, Wrangel decided to turn the Crimea - the last springboard of the White movement - into a kind of "experimental field", recreating the democratic order interrupted by October there. On May 25, 1920, the "Law on Land" was published, the author of which was Stolypin's closest associate A.V. Krivoshey, who headed the "government of the South of Russia" in 1920.

For the former owners, part of their possessions is retained, but the size of this part is not fixed in advance, but is the subject of judgment of the volost and uyezd institutions, which are most familiar with local economic conditions ... Payment for alienated land must be paid by the new owners in grain, which is annually poured into the state reserve ... The state's proceeds from the new owners' grain contributions should serve as the main source for remuneration for the expropriated land of its former owners, with whom the Government considers it obligatory to pay.

The "Law on Volost Zemstvos and Rural Communities" was also issued, which could become bodies of peasant self-government instead of rural Soviets. In an effort to win over the Cossacks, Wrangel approved a new regulation on the order of regional autonomy for the Cossack lands. The workers were promised factory legislation that really protected their rights. However, time has been lost. In addition, Lenin was well aware of the threat to the Bolshevik government posed by the plan conceived by Wrangel. Decisive measures were taken to eliminate as quickly as possible the last "hotbed of counter-revolution" in Russia.

War with Poland. Defeat of Wrangel. Nevertheless, the main event of 1920 was the war between Soviet Russia and Poland. In April 1920, the head of independent Poland, J. Pilsudski, ordered an attack on Kyiv. It was officially announced that it was only a matter of helping the Ukrainian people to eliminate Soviet power and restore the independence of Ukraine. On the night of May 7, Kyiv was taken. However, the intervention of the Poles was perceived by the population of Ukraine as an occupation. These sentiments were taken advantage of by the Bolsheviks, who were able to rally various sections of society in the face of external danger.

Almost all the forces of the Red Army were thrown against Poland, united in the Western and Southwestern fronts. Their commanders were former officers of the tsarist army M.N. Tukhachevsky and A.I. Egorov. On June 12, Kyiv was liberated. Soon the Red Army reached the border with Poland, which aroused hopes among some of the Bolshevik leaders for the speedy implementation of the idea of a world revolution in Western Europe. In an order on the Western Front, Tukhachevsky wrote: "On our bayonets we will bring happiness and peace to working humanity. To the West!" However, the Red Army, which entered Polish territory, was rebuffed. The idea of a world revolution was not supported by the Polish workers, who defended the state sovereignty of their country with weapons in their hands. On October 12, 1920, a peace treaty was signed in Riga with Poland, according to which the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus passed to it.

Having made peace with Poland, the Soviet command concentrated all the power of the Red Army to fight Wrangel's army. The troops of the newly created Southern Front under the command of Frunze in November 1920 stormed the positions on Perekop and Chongar, forced the Sivash. The last fight between the Reds and the Whites was especially fierce and cruel. The remnants of the once formidable Volunteer Army rushed to the ships of the Black Sea squadron concentrated in the Crimean ports. Almost 100 thousand people were forced to leave their homeland.

Peasant uprisings in Central Russia. The clashes between the regular units of the Red Army and the White Guards were a facade of the civil war, demonstrating its two extreme poles, not the most numerous, but the most organized. Meanwhile, the victory of one side or another depended on the sympathy and support of the people, and above all the peasantry.

The decree on land gave the villagers what they had been striving for so long - landowners' land. On this, the peasants considered their revolutionary mission ended. They were grateful to the Soviet government for the land, but they were in no hurry to fight for this power with weapons in their hands, hoping to wait out the anxious time in their village, near their own allotment. The emergency food policy was met with hostility by the peasants. Clashes with food detachments began in the village. In July-August 1918 alone, more than 150 such clashes were recorded in Central Russia.

When the Revolutionary Military Council announced mobilization into the Red Army, the peasants responded by mass evasion of it. Up to 75% of recruits did not appear at the recruiting stations (in some districts of the Kursk province, the number of evaders reached 100%). On the eve of the first anniversary of the October Revolution, peasant uprisings broke out almost simultaneously in 80 districts of Central Russia. The mobilized peasants, seizing weapons from the recruiting stations, raised their fellow villagers to defeat the commanders, the Soviets, and party cells. The main political demand of the peasantry was the slogan "Soviets without communists!". The Bolsheviks declared the peasant uprisings to be "kulak", although both the middle peasants and even the poor took part in them. True, the very concept of "fist" was very vague and had more political than economic meaning (if you are dissatisfied with the Soviet regime, it means "fist").

Units of the Red Army and detachments of the Cheka were sent to suppress the uprisings. Leaders, instigators of protests, hostages were shot on the spot. The punitive organs carried out mass arrests of former officers, teachers, officials.

"Retelling". Wide sections of the Cossacks hesitated for a long time in choosing between red and white. However, some Bolshevik leaders unconditionally considered the entire Cossacks as a counter-revolutionary force, eternally hostile to the rest of the people. Repressive measures were carried out against the Cossacks, which were called "decossackization".

In response, an uprising broke out in Veshenskaya and other villages of Verkh-nedonya. The Cossacks announced the mobilization of men from 19 to 45 years old. The created regiments and divisions numbered about 30 thousand people. Handicraft production of pikes, sabers, and ammunition developed in forges and workshops. The approach to the villages was surrounded by trenches and trenches.

The Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front ordered the troops to crush the uprising "by applying the most severe measures" up to the burning of the rebelled farms, the merciless execution of "all without exception" participants in the speech, the execution of every fifth adult male, and the mass taking of hostages. By order of Trotsky, an expeditionary corps was created to fight the rebellious Cossacks.

The Veshensk uprising, having chained significant forces of the Red Army to itself, suspended the offensive of units of the Southern Front that had successfully begun in January 1919. Denikin immediately took advantage of this. His troops launched a counteroffensive along a wide front in the direction of the Donbass, Ukraine, Crimea, the Upper Don and Tsaritsyn. On June 5, the Veshenskaya rebels and parts of the White Guard breakthrough united.

These events forced the Bolsheviks to reconsider their policy towards the Cossacks. On the basis of the expeditionary corps, a corps was formed from the Cossacks who were in the service of the Red Army. F. K. Mironov, who was very popular among the Cossacks, was appointed its commander. In August 1919, the Council of People's Commissars declared that "it is not going to forcibly tell anyone, it does not go against the Cossack way of life, leaving the working Cossacks their villages and farms, their lands, the right to wear whatever uniform they want (for example, stripes)". The Bolsheviks assured that they would not take revenge on the Cossacks for the past. In October, by decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Mironov turned to the Don Cossacks. The appeal of the most popular figure among the Cossacks played a huge role, the Cossacks in their bulk went over to the side of the Soviet authorities.

Peasants against whites. The mass discontent of the peasants was also observed in the rear of the white armies. However, it had a slightly different focus than in the rear of the Reds. If the peasants of the central regions of Russia opposed the introduction of emergency measures, but not against the Soviet regime as such, then the peasant movement in the rear of the White armies arose as a reaction to attempts to restore the old land order and, therefore, inevitably took on a pro-Bolshevik orientation. After all, it was the Bolsheviks who gave the peasants land. At the same time, the workers also became allies of the peasants in these areas, which made it possible to create a broad anti-White Guard front, which was strengthened by the entry into it of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who did not find a common language with the White Guard rulers.

One of the most important reasons for the temporary victory of the anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia in the summer of 1918 was the vacillation of the Siberian peasantry. The fact is that in Siberia there was no landownership, so the decree on land changed little in the position of local farmers, nevertheless, they managed to get hold of at the expense of cabinet, state and monastery lands.

But with the establishment of the power of Kolchak, who canceled all the decrees of the Soviet government, the position of the peasantry worsened. In response to mass mobilization into the army of the "supreme ruler of Russia," peasant uprisings broke out in a number of districts of the Altai, Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Yenisei provinces. In an effort to turn the tide, Kolchak embarked on the path of exceptional laws, introducing the death penalty, martial law, organizing punitive expeditions. All these measures caused mass discontent among the population. Peasant uprisings engulfed all of Siberia. The partisan movement expanded.

Events developed in the same way in the South of Russia. In March 1919, the Denikin government published a draft land reform. However, the final solution of the land question was postponed until the complete victory over Bolshevism and was assigned to the future legislative assembly. In the meantime, the government of the South of Russia demanded that a third of the entire crop be provided to the owners of the occupied lands. Some representatives of Denikin's administration went even further, starting to settle the expelled landowners in the old ashes. This caused massive discontent among the peasants.

"Greens". Makhnovist movement. The peasant movement developed somewhat differently in the areas bordering the Red and White fronts, where power was constantly changing, but each of them demanded obedience to its own orders and laws, sought to replenish its ranks by mobilizing the local population. Deserting from both the White and the Red Army, the peasants, fleeing from the new mobilization, took refuge in the forests and created partisan detachments. They chose green as their symbol - the color of will and freedom, at the same time opposing themselves to both red and white movements. "Oh, apple, ripe colors, we beat red on the left, white on the right," they sang in the peasant detachments. The performances of the "greens" covered the entire south of Russia: the Black Sea region, the North Caucasus, and the Crimea.

The peasant movement reached its greatest extent in the south of Ukraine. This was largely due to the personality of the leader of the rebel army N. I. Makhno. Even during the first revolution, he joined the anarchists, participated in terrorist acts, and served indefinite hard labor. In March 1917, Makhno returned to his homeland - to the village of Gulyai-Pole, Yekaterinoslav province, where he was elected chairman of the local Council. On September 25, he signed a decree on the liquidation of landownership in Gulyai-Pole, ahead of Lenin in this matter by exactly a month. When Ukraine was occupied by Austro-German troops, Makhno assembled a detachment that raided German posts and burned down landlords' estates. Fighters began to flock to the "dad" from all sides. Fighting both the Germans and the Ukrainian nationalists - Petliurists, Makhno did not let the Reds with their food detachments into the territory liberated by his detachments. In December 1918, Makhno's army captured the largest city in the South - Ekaterino-Slav. By February 1919, the Makhnovist army had grown to 30,000 regular fighters and 20,000 unarmed reserves. Under his control were the most grain-growing districts of Ukraine, a number of the most important railway junctions.

Makhno agreed to join the Red Army with his detachments for a joint fight against Denikin. For the victories won over Denikin, he, according to some reports, was among the first to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner. And General Denikin promised half a million rubles for Makhno's head. However, while providing military support to the Red Army, Makhno took an independent political position, establishing his own rules, ignoring the instructions of the central authorities. In addition, in the army of the "father" partisan orders reigned, the election of commanders. The Makhnovists did not disdain robberies and wholesale executions of white officers. Therefore, Makhno came into conflict with the leadership of the Red Army. Nevertheless, the rebel army took part in the defeat of Wrangel, was thrown into the most difficult areas, suffered huge losses, after which it was disarmed. Makhno, with a small detachment, continued the struggle against the Soviet regime. After several clashes with units of the Red Army, he went abroad with a handful of loyal people.

"Small Civil War". Despite the end of the war by the Reds and Whites, the policy of the Bolsheviks towards the peasantry did not change. Moreover, in many grain-producing provinces of Russia, the surplus appraisal has become even more stringent. In the spring and summer of 1921, a terrible famine broke out in the Volga region. It was provoked not so much by a severe drought, but by the fact that after the confiscation of surplus products in the autumn, the peasants had neither grain for sowing, nor the desire to sow and cultivate the land. More than 5 million people died from starvation.

A particularly tense situation developed in the Tambov province, where the summer of 1920 turned out to be dry. And when the Tambov peasants received a surplus plan that did not take this circumstance into account, they rebelled. The uprising was led by the former police chief of the Kirsanov district of the Tambov province, the Social Revolutionary A. S. Antonov.

Simultaneously with Tambov, uprisings broke out in the Volga region, on the Don, Kuban, in Western and Eastern Siberia, in the Urals, in Belarus, Karelia, and Central Asia. The period of peasant uprisings 1920-1921. was called by contemporaries a "small civil war". The peasants created their own armies, which stormed and captured cities, put forward political demands, and formed government bodies. The Union of the Working Peasantry of the Tambov Province defined its main task as follows: "the overthrow of the power of the Communist Bolsheviks, who brought the country to poverty, death and disgrace." The peasant detachments of the Volga region put forward the slogan of replacing Soviet power with a Constituent Assembly. In Western Siberia, the peasants demanded the establishment of a peasant dictatorship, the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, the denationalization of industry, and equal land tenure.

The whole power of the regular Red Army was thrown to suppress the peasant uprisings. Combat operations were commanded by commanders who became famous on the fields of the civil war - Tukhachevsky, Frunze, Budyonny and others. Methods of mass intimidation of the population were used on a large scale - taking hostages, shooting relatives of "bandits", deporting entire villages "sympathetic to the bandits" to the North.

Kronstadt uprising. The consequences of the civil war also affected the city. Due to the lack of raw materials and fuel, many enterprises were closed. The workers were on the street. Many of them went to the countryside in search of food. In 1921 Moscow lost half of its workers, Petrograd two thirds. Labor productivity in industry fell sharply. In some branches it reached only 20% of the pre-war level. In 1922, there were 538 strikes, and the number of strikers exceeded 200,000.

On February 11, 1921, 93 industrial enterprises, including such large plants as Putilovsky, Sestroretsky, and Triangle, were announced in Petrograd due to the lack of raw materials and fuel. Outraged workers took to the streets, strikes began. By order of the authorities, the demonstrations were dispersed by parts of the Petrograd cadets.

The unrest reached Kronstadt. On February 28, 1921, a meeting was convened on the battleship Petropavlovsk. Its chairman, the senior clerk S. Petrichenko, announced the resolution: immediate re-election of the Soviets by secret ballot, since "real Soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants"; freedom of speech and press; the release of "political prisoners - members of the socialist parties"; liquidation of food requisitioning and food orders; freedom of trade, freedom for the peasants to work the land and have livestock; power to the Soviets, not to the parties. The main idea of the rebels was the elimination of the Bolsheviks' monopoly on power. On March 1, this resolution was adopted at a joint meeting of the garrison and the inhabitants of the city. A delegation of Kronstadters sent to Petrograd, where there were mass strikes of workers, was arrested. In response, a Provisional Revolutionary Committee was set up in Kronstadt. On March 2, the Soviet government declared the Kronstadt uprising a mutiny and introduced a state of siege in Petrograd.

Any negotiations with the "rebels" were rejected by the Bolsheviks, and Trotsky, who arrived in Petrograd on March 5, spoke to the sailors in the language of an ultimatum. Kronstadt did not respond to the ultimatum. Then troops began to gather on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army S. S. Kamenev and M. N. Tukhachevsky arrived to lead the operation to storm the fortress. Military experts could not help but understand how great the victims would be. But still the order to go on the assault was given. The Red Army soldiers advanced on loose March ice, in open space, under continuous fire. The first assault was unsuccessful. Delegates from the 10th Congress of the RCP(b) took part in the second assault. On March 18, Kronstadt ceased resistance. Part of the sailors, 6-8 thousand, went to Finland, more than 2.5 thousand were taken prisoner. Severe punishment awaited them.

Causes of the defeat of the white movement. The armed confrontation between the Whites and the Reds ended in victory for the Reds. The leaders of the white movement failed to offer the people an attractive program. In the territories they controlled, the laws of the Russian Empire were restored, property was returned to its former owners. And although none of the white governments openly put forward the idea of restoring the monarchical order, the people perceived them as fighters for the old power, for the return of the tsar and the landowners. The national policy of the white generals, their fanatical adherence to the slogan "united and indivisible Russia" was not popular either.

The White movement could not become the core consolidating all the anti-Bolshevik forces. Moreover, by refusing to cooperate with the socialist parties, the generals themselves split the anti-Bolshevik front, turning the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists and their supporters into their opponents. And in the white camp itself there was no unity and interaction either in the political or in the military field. The movement did not have such a leader, whose authority would be recognized by all, who would understand that a civil war is not a battle of armies, but a battle of political programs.

And finally, according to the bitter admission of the white generals themselves, one of the reasons for the defeat was the moral decay of the army, the use of measures against the population that did not fit into the code of honor: robberies, pogroms, punitive expeditions, violence. The White movement was started by "almost saints" and ended by "almost bandits" - such a verdict was passed by one of the ideologists of the movement, the leader of Russian nationalists V. V. Shulgin.

The emergence of nation-states on the outskirts of Russia. The national outskirts of Russia were drawn into the civil war. On October 29, the power of the Provisional Government was overthrown in Kyiv. However, the Central Rada refused to recognize the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars as the legitimate government of Russia. At the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets convened in Kyiv, the supporters of the Rada had the majority. The Bolsheviks left the congress. On November 7, 1917, the Central Rada proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

The Bolsheviks who left the Kyiv Congress in December 1917 in Kharkov, populated mainly by Russians, convened the 1st All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, which proclaimed Ukraine a Soviet republic. The congress decided to establish federal relations with Soviet Russia, elected the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets and formed the Ukrainian Soviet government. At the request of this government, troops from Soviet Russia arrived in Ukraine to fight the Central Rada. In January 1918, armed protests by workers broke out in a number of Ukrainian cities, during which Soviet power was established. On January 26 (February 8), 1918, Kyiv was taken by the Red Army. On January 27, the Central Rada turned to Germany for help. Soviet power in Ukraine was liquidated at the cost of the Austro-German occupation. In April 1918 the Central Rada was dispersed. General P. P. Skoropadsky became the hetman, proclaiming the creation of the "Ukrainian State".

Relatively quickly, Soviet power won in Belarus, Estonia and the unoccupied part of Latvia. However, the revolutionary transformations that had begun were interrupted by the German offensive. In February 1918, Minsk was captured by German troops. With the permission of the German command, a bourgeois-nationalist government was created here, which announced the creation of the Belarusian People's Republic and the separation of Belarus from Russia.

In the frontline territory of Latvia, controlled by Russian troops, the positions of the Bolsheviks were strong. They managed to fulfill the task set by the party - to prevent the transfer of troops loyal to the Provisional Government from the front to Petrograd. The revolutionary units became an active force in the establishment of Soviet power in the unoccupied territory of Latvia. By decision of the party, a company of Latvian riflemen was sent to Petrograd to protect the Smolny and the Bolshevik leadership. In February 1918, the entire territory of Latvia was captured by German troops; the old order began to be restored. Even after the defeat of Germany, with the consent of the Entente, its troops remained in Latvia. On November 18, 1918, the Provisional Bourgeois Government was established here, declaring Latvia an independent republic.

On February 18, 1918 German troops invaded Estonia. In November 1918, the Provisional Bourgeois Government began to operate here, signing on November 19 an agreement with Germany on the transfer of all power to it. In December 1917, the "Lithuanian Council" - the bourgeois Lithuanian government - issued a declaration "on the eternal allied ties of the Lithuanian state with Germany." In February 1918, with the consent of the German occupation authorities, the "Lithuanian Council" adopted an act of independence for Lithuania.

Events in Transcaucasia developed somewhat differently. In November 1917, the Menshevik Transcaucasian Commissariat and national military units were created here. The activities of the Soviets and the Bolshevik Party were banned. In February 1918, a new body of power arose - the Seim, which declared Transcaucasia "an independent federal democratic republic." However, in May 1918 this association collapsed, after which three bourgeois republics arose - Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian, headed by governments of moderate socialists.

Construction of the Soviet Federation. Part of the national outskirts, which declared their sovereignty, became part of the Russian Federation. In Turkestan, on November 1, 1917, power passed into the hands of the Regional Council and the executive committee of the Tashkent Council, which consisted of Russians. At the end of November, at the Extraordinary All-Muslim Congress in Kokand, the question of the autonomy of Turkestan and the creation of a national government was raised, but in February 1918, the Kokand autonomy was liquidated by detachments of local Red Guards. The Regional Congress of Soviets, which met at the end of April, adopted the "Regulations on the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic" as part of the RSFSR. Part of the Muslim population perceived these events as an attack on Islamic traditions. The organization of partisan detachments began, challenging the Soviets for power in Turkestan. The members of these detachments were called Basmachi.

In March 1918, a decree was published declaring part of the territory of the Southern Urals and the Middle Volga the Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic within the RSFSR. In May 1918, the Congress of Soviets of the Kuban and the Black Sea Region proclaimed the Kuban-Black Sea Republic an integral part of the RSFSR. At the same time, the Don Autonomous Republic, the Soviet Republic of Taurida in the Crimea were formed.

Having proclaimed Russia a Soviet federal republic, the Bolsheviks at first did not define clear principles for its structure. Often it was conceived as a federation of Soviets, i.e. territories where Soviet power existed. For example, the Moscow region, which is part of the RSFSR, was a federation of 14 provincial Soviets, each of which had its own government.

As the power of the Bolsheviks consolidated, their views on the construction of a federal state became more definite. State independence began to be recognized only for the peoples who organized their national councils, and not for each regional council, as was the case in 1918. The Bashkir, Tatar, Kirghiz (Kazakh), Mountain, Dagestan national autonomous republics were created as part of the Russian Federation, and also the Chuvash, Kalmyk, Mari, Udmurt Autonomous Regions, the Karelian Labor Commune and the Commune of the Volga Germans.

The establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. On November 13, 1918, the Soviet government annulled the Brest Treaty. The issue of expanding the Soviet system through the liberation of the territories occupied by the German-Austrian troops was on the agenda. This task was completed rather quickly, which was facilitated by three circumstances: 1) the presence of a significant number of the Russian population, which sought to restore a single state; 2) armed intervention of the Red Army; 3) the existence in these territories of communist organizations that were part of a single party. "Sovietization", as a rule, took place according to a single scenario: the preparation of an armed uprising by the communists and the call, allegedly on behalf of the people, to the Red Army to provide assistance to establish Soviet power.

In November 1918, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was recreated, and the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine was formed. However, on December 14, 1918, the bourgeois-nationalist Directory, headed by V.K. Vinnichenko and S.V. Petlyura, seized power in Kyiv. In February 1919, Soviet troops occupied Kyiv, and later the territory of Ukraine became the arena of confrontation between the Red Army and Denikin's army. In 1920, Polish troops invaded Ukraine. However, neither the Germans, nor the Poles, nor the White Army of Denikin enjoyed the support of the population.

But the national governments - the Central Rada and the directory - did not have mass support either. This happened because national issues were paramount for them, while the peasantry was waiting for the agrarian reform. That is why the Ukrainian peasants ardently supported the Makhnovist anarchists. The nationalists could not count on the support of the urban population either, since in large cities a large percentage, primarily of the proletariat, were Russians. Over time, the Reds were able to finally gain a foothold in Kyiv. In 1920, Soviet power was established in the left-bank Moldavia, which became part of the Ukrainian SSR. But the main part of Moldova - Bessarabia - remained under the rule of Romania, which occupied it in December 1917.

The Red Army was victorious in the Baltics. In November 1918, the Austro-German troops were expelled from there. Soviet republics emerged in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In November, the Red Army entered the territory of Belarus. On December 31, the communists formed the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government, and on January 1, 1919, this government proclaimed the creation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee recognized the independence of the new Soviet republics and expressed its readiness to render them all possible assistance. Nevertheless, Soviet power in the Baltic countries did not last long, and in 1919-1920. with the help of European states, the power of national governments was restored there.

Establishment of Soviet power in Transcaucasia. By mid-April 1920, Soviet power was restored throughout the North Caucasus. In the republics of Transcaucasia - Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia - power remained in the hands of national governments. In April 1920, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) formed a special Caucasian Bureau (Kavbyuro) at the headquarters of the 11th Army operating in the North Caucasus. On April 27, Azerbaijani communists presented the government with an ultimatum to transfer power to the Soviets. On April 28, units of the Red Army were introduced into Baku, with which prominent figures of the Bolshevik Party G.K. Ordzhonikidze, S.M. Kirov, A.I. Mikoyan arrived. The Provisional Revolutionary Committee proclaimed Azerbaijan a Soviet Socialist Republic.

On November 27, Ordzhonikidze, chairman of the Kavburo, issued an ultimatum to the Armenian government: to transfer power to the Revolutionary Committee of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, formed in Azerbaijan. Without waiting for the expiration of the ultimatum, the 11th Army entered the territory of Armenia. Armenia was proclaimed a sovereign socialist state.

The Georgian Menshevik government enjoyed authority among the population and had a fairly strong army. In May 1920, during the war with Poland, the Council of People's Commissars signed an agreement with Georgia, which recognized the independence and sovereignty of the Georgian state. In return, the Georgian government undertook to allow the activities of the Communist Party and withdraw foreign military units from Georgia. S. M. Kirov was appointed Plenipotentiary Representative of the RSFSR in Georgia. In February 1921, a Military Revolutionary Committee was created in a small Georgian village, asking the Red Army for help in the fight against the government. On February 25, the regiments of the 11th Army entered Tiflis, Georgia was proclaimed a Soviet socialist republic.

The fight against Basmachi. During the civil war, the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was cut off from Central Russia. The Red Army of Turkestan was created here. In September 1919, the troops of the Turkestan Front under the command of M.V. Frunze broke through the encirclement and restored the connection of the Turkestan Republic with the center of Russia.

On February 1, 1920, under the leadership of the Communists, an uprising was raised against the Khan of Khiva. The rebels were supported by the Red Army. The Congress of Soviets of People's Representatives (Kurultai) held soon in Khiva proclaimed the creation of the Khorezm People's Republic. In August 1920, the pro-communist forces raised an uprising in Chardzhou and turned to the Red Army for help. The Red troops under the command of M.V. Frunze took Bukhara in stubborn battles, the emir fled. The All-Bukhara People's Kurultai, which met in early October 1920, proclaimed the formation of the Bukhara People's Republic.

In 1921, the Basmachi movement entered a new phase. It was headed by the former Minister of War of the Turkish government, Enver Pasha, who hatched plans to create a state allied with Turkey in Turkestan. He managed to unite the scattered Basmachi detachments and create a single army, establish close ties with the Afghans, who supplied the Basmachi with weapons and gave them shelter. In the spring of 1922, the army of Enver Pasha captured a significant part of the territory of the Bukhara People's Republic. The Soviet government sent a regular army from Central Russia to Central Asia, reinforced by aviation. In August 1922, Enver Pasha was killed in battle. The Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee compromised with the adherents of Islam. Mosques were given back their land holdings, Sharia courts and religious schools were restored. This policy has paid off. Basmachism lost the mass support of the population.

What you need to know about this topic:

Socio-economic and political development of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Nicholas II.

Domestic policy of tsarism. Nicholas II. Strengthening repression. "Police socialism".

Russo-Japanese War. Reasons, course, results.

Revolution of 1905 - 1907 The nature, driving forces and features of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907. stages of the revolution. The reasons for the defeat and the significance of the revolution.

Elections to the State Duma. I State Duma. The agrarian question in the Duma. Dispersal of the Duma. II State Duma. Coup d'état June 3, 1907

Third June political system. Electoral law June 3, 1907 III State Duma. The alignment of political forces in the Duma. Duma activities. government terror. The decline of the labor movement in 1907-1910

Stolypin agrarian reform.

IV State Duma. Party composition and Duma factions. Duma activities.

The political crisis in Russia on the eve of the war. The labor movement in the summer of 1914 Crisis of the top.

The international position of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Beginning of the First World War. Origin and nature of war. Russia's entry into the war. Attitude towards the war of parties and classes.

The course of hostilities. Strategic forces and plans of the parties. Results of the war. The role of the Eastern Front in the First World War.

The Russian economy during the First World War.

Workers' and peasants' movement in 1915-1916. Revolutionary movement in the army and navy. Growing anti-war sentiment. Formation of the bourgeois opposition.

Russian culture of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

Aggravation of socio-political contradictions in the country in January-February 1917. The beginning, prerequisites and nature of the revolution. Uprising in Petrograd. Formation of the Petrograd Soviet. Provisional Committee of the State Duma. Order N I. Formation of the Provisional Government. Abdication of Nicholas II. Causes of dual power and its essence. February coup in Moscow, at the front, in the provinces.

From February to October. The policy of the Provisional Government regarding war and peace, on agrarian, national, labor issues. Relations between the Provisional Government and the Soviets. The arrival of V.I. Lenin in Petrograd.

Political parties (Kadets, Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks): political programs, influence among the masses.

Crises of the Provisional Government. An attempted military coup in the country. Growth of revolutionary sentiment among the masses. Bolshevization of the capital Soviets.

Preparation and conduct of an armed uprising in Petrograd.

II All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Decisions about power, peace, land. Formation of public authorities and management. Composition of the first Soviet government.

The victory of the armed uprising in Moscow. Government agreement with the Left SRs. Elections to the Constituent Assembly, its convocation and dissolution.

The first socio-economic transformations in the field of industry, agriculture, finance, labor and women's issues. Church and State.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, its terms and significance.

Economic tasks of the Soviet government in the spring of 1918. Aggravation of the food issue. The introduction of food dictatorship. Working squads. Comedy.

The revolt of the left SRs and the collapse of the two-party system in Russia.

First Soviet Constitution.

Causes of intervention and civil war. The course of hostilities. Human and material losses of the period of the civil war and military intervention.

The internal policy of the Soviet leadership during the war. "War Communism". GOELRO plan.

The policy of the new government in relation to culture.

Foreign policy. Treaties with border countries. Participation of Russia in the Genoa, Hague, Moscow and Lausanne conferences. Diplomatic recognition of the USSR by the main capitalist countries.

Domestic policy. Socio-economic and political crisis of the early 20s. Famine of 1921-1922 Transition to a new economic policy. The essence of the NEP. NEP in the field of agriculture, trade, industry. financial reform. Economic recovery. Crises during the NEP and its curtailment.

Projects for the creation of the USSR. I Congress of Soviets of the USSR. The first government and the Constitution of the USSR.

Illness and death of V.I. Lenin. Intraparty struggle. The beginning of the formation of Stalin's regime of power.

Industrialization and collectivization. Development and implementation of the first five-year plans. Socialist competition - purpose, forms, leaders.

Formation and strengthening of the state system of economic management.

The course towards complete collectivization. Dispossession.

Results of industrialization and collectivization.

Political, national-state development in the 30s. Intraparty struggle. political repression. Formation of the nomenklatura as a layer of managers. Stalinist regime and the constitution of the USSR in 1936

Soviet culture in the 20-30s.

Foreign policy of the second half of the 20s - mid-30s.

Domestic policy. The growth of military production. Extraordinary measures in the field of labor legislation. Measures to solve the grain problem. Military establishment. Growth of the Red Army. military reform. Repressions against the command personnel of the Red Army and the Red Army.

Foreign policy. Non-aggression pact and treaty of friendship and borders between the USSR and Germany. The entry of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus into the USSR. Soviet-Finnish war. The inclusion of the Baltic republics and other territories in the USSR.

Periodization of the Great Patriotic War. The initial stage of the war. Turning the country into a military camp. Military defeats 1941-1942 and their reasons. Major military events Capitulation of Nazi Germany. Participation of the USSR in the war with Japan.

Soviet rear during the war.

Deportation of peoples.

Partisan struggle.

Human and material losses during the war.

Creation of the anti-Hitler coalition. Declaration of the United Nations. The problem of the second front. Conferences of the "Big Three". Problems of post-war peace settlement and all-round cooperation. USSR and UN.

Beginning of the Cold War. The contribution of the USSR to the creation of the "socialist camp". CMEA formation.

Domestic policy of the USSR in the mid-1940s - early 1950s. Restoration of the national economy.

Socio-political life. Politics in the field of science and culture. Continued repression. "Leningrad business". Campaign against cosmopolitanism. "Doctors' Case".

Socio-economic development of Soviet society in the mid-50s - the first half of the 60s.

Socio-political development: XX Congress of the CPSU and the condemnation of Stalin's personality cult. Rehabilitation of victims of repressions and deportations. Intra-party struggle in the second half of the 1950s.

Foreign policy: the creation of the ATS. The entry of Soviet troops into Hungary. Exacerbation of Soviet-Chinese relations. The split of the "socialist camp". Soviet-American Relations and the Caribbean Crisis. USSR and third world countries. Reducing the strength of the armed forces of the USSR. Moscow Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Tests.

USSR in the mid-60s - the first half of the 80s.

Socio-economic development: economic reform 1965

Growing difficulties of economic development. Decline in the rate of socio-economic growth.

USSR Constitution 1977

Socio-political life of the USSR in the 1970s - early 1980s.

Foreign Policy: Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Consolidation of post-war borders in Europe. Moscow treaty with Germany. Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Soviet-American treaties of the 70s. Soviet-Chinese relations. The entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Exacerbation of international tension and the USSR. Strengthening of the Soviet-American confrontation in the early 80s.

USSR in 1985-1991

Domestic policy: an attempt to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country. An attempt to reform the political system of Soviet society. Congresses of People's Deputies. Election of the President of the USSR. Multi-party system. Exacerbation of the political crisis.

Exacerbation of the national question. Attempts to reform the national-state structure of the USSR. Declaration on State Sovereignty of the RSFSR. "Novogarevsky process". The collapse of the USSR.

Foreign policy: Soviet-American relations and the problem of disarmament. Treaties with leading capitalist countries. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Changing relations with the countries of the socialist community. Disintegration of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.

Russian Federation in 1992-2000

Domestic policy: "Shock therapy" in the economy: price liberalization, stages of privatization of commercial and industrial enterprises. Fall in production. Increased social tension. Growth and slowdown in financial inflation. The aggravation of the struggle between the executive and legislative branches. The dissolution of the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies. October events of 1993. Abolition of local bodies of Soviet power. Elections to the Federal Assembly. The Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993 Formation of the presidential republic. Aggravation and overcoming of national conflicts in the North Caucasus.

Parliamentary elections 1995 Presidential elections 1996 Power and opposition. An attempt to return to the course of liberal reforms (spring 1997) and its failure. The financial crisis of August 1998: causes, economic and political consequences. "Second Chechen War". Parliamentary elections in 1999 and early presidential elections in 2000 Foreign policy: Russia in the CIS. The participation of Russian troops in the "hot spots" of the near abroad: Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan. Russia's relations with foreign countries. The withdrawal of Russian troops from Europe and neighboring countries. Russian-American agreements. Russia and NATO. Russia and the Council of Europe. Yugoslav crises (1999-2000) and Russia's position.

Danilov A.A., Kosulina L.G. History of the state and peoples of Russia. XX century.