The Tambov rising and the Kronstadt mutiny Flashcards
What was the Russian name for grain requisitioning?
Prodrazverstka.
What did grain requisitioning cause?
What was the exception this?
Enormous resentment in the countryside - but during the Civil War, peasant hostility towards the Bolsheviks was kept in check by fears of a White victory and its consequences
- Above all, return of land seized in 1917 to landowners
But, in 1920 - as fighting wound down and a poor harvest reduced villages to near-starvation - it boiled over
- By 1921 - much of the countryside in open revolt against Bolshevik rule
What did resentment about requisitioning lead to in Tambov?
The fiercest fighting that took place - in Tambov, South of Moscow - a 40,000-strong peasant force led by Alexander Antonov waged a guerrilla campaign against the Red Army.
Antonov - a former SR with long history of militancy - between 1909 and 1917, he was in prison for terrorist offences - died in a shoot-out with a Cheka unit in 1922.
What was the govt response to the Tambov rising?
Spearheaded by the Red Army - brutal in the extreme:
- Poison gas used against rebels
- Thousands of their wives and children were taken hostage
What was the impact of uprisings in Tambov and elsewhere?
1) Brought Russia close to paralysis
2) Large parts of country were effectively out of the authorities’ control
3) Railway transport seriously disrupted
4) Food crisis in towns
5) Red army stretched to the limit
Lenin forced to start thinking about major concessions to the peasantry
How did rural discontent have its parallel in the cities?
Urban protest largely fuelled by food shortages
- Also calls for restoration of trade union rights, lost under War Communism + allegations of widespread corruption within Bolshevik ranks
Angry towns expressed itself in form of strikes - Feb 1921 - Moscow virtually paralysed by strike action - huge crowds of demonstrators took to streets - Cheka units opened fire, killing several
Days later - similar clash in Petrograd - from city’s engineering, factories, docks and shipyards fired upon - at least 30 killed or wounded
What was the Kronstadt mutiny?
- March 1921 - 10,000 sailors of the Baltic fleet based at Kronstadt mutinied in support of strikers in nearby Petrograd
- Mutineers published 15-point manifesto - condemned Bolshevik abuses of power
- Called for legalisation of all socialist and anarchist parties, new soviet elections, rights for trade unions and an end to special privileges for senior Bolshvikes
How did the Kronstadt mutiny conclude?
- Lasted only a fortnight - suppressed by 50,000 Red Army troops - staged frontal assault on island fortress across the icebound Gulf of Finland - 10,000 killed in process
Was a profoundly embarrassing episode - in 1917, the Kronstadt sailors had been among the Bolsheviks’ strongest supporters
- Trotsky had called them ‘the pride and glory of the Russian Revolution’
- Their mutiny showed how extensive disillusionment with the Bolsheviks had become
