Post-Civil War Consolidation Flashcards
Social Impacts of the Civil War
- Autumn 1920 - The country is inflamed by peasant wars
- Peasants are forming bands to fight requisitioning brigades or joining larger peasant armies such as those of Makhno or Antonov
- While earlier strikes had been a means of bargaining with the regime, those of 1921 were an attempt to bring it down
Political Impacts of the Civil War
- The peasants had supported the Reds against the Whites only for as long as the Revolution was threatened
- As the urban food crisis deepened, workers went on strike
- Workers were angered by the Bolshevik attempts to subordinate trade unions to the Party-state
- Workers began calling for the end of the Communists’ privileges as well as the restoration of free trade, civil liberties and the Constituent Assembly
Economic Impacts of the Civil War
-1 million workers had left the big cities for the countryside
-Peasants reduced production, stored surplus and used their grain to fatten up cattle or sold it to black market
traders
-Workers traded tools and simple items with peasants
Kronstadt Rebellion - Beginnings
- First weeks of March
- The naval base had had a commune independent of the Communist authorities since the October Revolution
- Feb 26 - Crews of the battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol agree to send a delegation of thirty members to Petrograd and talk to civilians in wake of the increasing number of rebellions (with complete sympathy towards them)
- The delegation is arrested by the Bolshevik government
Kronstadt Rebellion - Uprising
- Mar 2nd - “Conference of Delegates”
- About a third of this committee was made up of Communists
- Kronstadt trade union committees were re-elected and a council of trade unions was formed
- Approximately 780 Communists left the party, expressing support for the rebellion and its aims
Kronstadt Rebellion - Bolshevik Response
- Claimed that the rebellion had been organised by French counter-intelligence and led by ex-Tsarist general Kozlovsky (who had ironically been placed in the fortress as a military specialist by Trotsky)
- About 300 defecting Communists were arrested and treated humanely in prison
- Many of the sailors’ families were taken hostage
- Refuse to open negotiations with anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkam - this angers many, as they had offered to negotiate with foreign governments before and yet treated the proletariat as the enemy
Kronstadt Rebellion - Attacks
- Mar 7 - Bolsheviks’ first attack fails
- Mar 17 - Bolsheviks’ final assault crushes the rebellion. However, they have to force their troops to fight
Kronstadt Rebellion - Aftermath statistics
- Soviet forces had lost 10,000 men in the assaults. There is no record for rebel losses
- 6,528 rebels are arrested
- 2,168 rebels are shot (33%)
Tambov Rebellion - Beginnings
- Feb 1921 - Peasant uprisings number 118
- 1920 - A political group named The Union of Toiling Peasants (UTP) is formed
- Dec 1920 - UTP issues a manifesto calling for political equality, land reform, an end to the Civil War and various liberal reforms
- Antonov’s army in Tambov numbered 20,000 men as well as supplies, weapons, and organised hierarchy and its own uniforms
Tambov Rebellion - Bolshevik Response
- Publicly dismisses the rebellion as an uprising of kulaks
- Rejects the UTP as propaganda written by Antonov (Lenin calls the rebellion “Antonovschina”)
- However, it was still taken seriously - experienced commanders and battalions are summoned, including a division led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Tambov Rebellion - Aftermath
- More than 100,000 Red troops are sent into Tambov and were once again forced to fight
- Poison gas is used to flush rebels out of hiding places
- Concentration camps are constructed to hold civilian hostages
- By mid 1921 the uprising had been suppressed
- Jun 24 1922 - Antonov, after having evaded capture, is killed in arrest attempt
Industrial Impact of the Civil War
The workforce fell from 250,000 to 50,000 in just six months
Kronstadt Rebellion - Impact on Kronstadt
- The Kronstadt Soviet is abolished and replaced with a “troika” (three-man committee)
- The battleships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol were named the Marat and Paris Commune respectively
- Families of rebels are deported to Siberia
- The rebellion proved that given a choice, the Bolsheviks would sooner ensure state power than workers’ rights
Kronstadt Uprising - “Conference of Delegates”
Mar 2nd - 303 delegates endorse the Petropavlovsk resolution and elect a five-person “Provisional Revolutionary Committee”
