Civil War: white, red, green. Green movement
Among the variety of terms that we use when talking about the world around us, there is one that was born during the Civil War and has survived to this day, but has received a completely different meaning. This is the green movement. In ancient times, this was the name given to rebel actions by peasants who defended their rights with arms in hand. Today this is the name given to communities of people who defend the rights of the nature around us.
Russian peasantry in the post-revolutionary years
The “green” movement during the Civil War was a mass uprising of peasants directed against the main contenders for seizing power in the country - the Bolsheviks, White Guards and foreign interventionists. As a rule, they saw the governing bodies of the state as free Councils, formed as a result of the independent expression of the will of all citizens and alien to any form of appointment from above.
The "green" movement was of great importance during the war, simply because its main force - peasants - made up the majority of the country's population. The course of the Civil War as a whole often depended on which of the warring parties they would support. All participants in the hostilities understood this very well and tried their best to win over the millions of peasant masses to their side. However, this was not always possible, and then the confrontation took extreme forms.
The negative attitude of the villagers towards both the Bolsheviks and the White Guards
For example, in the central part of Russia, the attitude of peasants towards the Bolsheviks was ambivalent. On the one hand, they supported them after the famous decree on land, which assigned landowners' lands to the peasants; on the other hand, wealthy peasants and most of the middle peasants opposed the food policy of the Bolsheviks and the forced confiscation of agricultural products. This duality was reflected during the Civil War.
The White Guard movement, socially alien to the peasants, also rarely found support among them. Although many villagers served in the ranks, most were recruited by force. This is evidenced by numerous recollections of participants in those events. In addition, the White Guards often forced peasants to perform various economic duties, without compensating for the time and effort expended. This also caused discontent.
Peasant uprisings caused by surplus appropriation
The “green” movement in the Civil War, directed against the Bolsheviks, as already mentioned, was caused mainly by dissatisfaction with the surplus appropriation policy, which doomed thousands of peasant families to starvation. It is no coincidence that the main intensity of passions occurred in 1919-1920, when the forced confiscation of agricultural products took on the widest scale.
Among the most active protests directed against the Bolsheviks are the “green” movement in the Stavropol region, which began in April 1918, and the mass uprising of peasants in the Volga region that followed a year later. According to some reports, up to 180,000 people took part in it. In general, during the first half of 1019, 340 armed uprisings took place, covering more than twenty provinces.
The Social Revolutionaries and their "Third Way" program
During the Civil War, representatives of the Mensheviks tried to use the “green” movement for their political purposes. They developed joint tactics of struggle aimed at two fronts. They declared both the Bolsheviks and A.V. Kolchak and A.I. Denikin as their opponents. This program was called the "Third Way" and was, according to them, a fight against reaction from the left and right. However, the Socialist Revolutionaries, far from the peasant masses, were unable to unite significant forces around themselves.
Peasant Army of Nestor Makhno
The slogan proclaiming the “third way” gained the greatest popularity in Ukraine, where the peasant rebel army under the command of N. I. Makhno fought for a long time. It is noted that its main backbone consisted of wealthy peasants who successfully farmed and traded grain.
They actively became involved in the redistribution of the landowners' land and had high hopes for it. As a result, it was their farms that became the objects of numerous requisitions carried out alternately by the Bolsheviks, White Guards and interventionists. The “green” movement that spontaneously arose in Ukraine was a reaction to such lawlessness.
The special character of Makhno’s army was given by anarchism, adherents of which were both the commander-in-chief himself and the majority of his commanders. In this idea, the most attractive was the theory of “social” revolution, destroying all state power and thus eliminating the main instrument of violence against the individual. The main provisions of Father Makhno’s program were people’s self-government and the rejection of any form of dictatorship.
People's movement under the leadership of A. S. Antonov
An equally powerful and large-scale “green” movement was observed in the Tambov province and the Volga region. After the name of its leader, it was called “Antonovshchina”. In these areas, as early as September 1917, peasants took control of the landowners' lands and began to actively develop them. Accordingly, their standard of living increased, and a favorable prospect opened up ahead. When large-scale food appropriation began in 1919, and the fruits of their labor began to be taken away from people, this caused the most severe reaction and forced the peasants to take up arms. They had something to protect.
The struggle became particularly intense in 1920, when a severe drought occurred in the Tambov region, destroying most of the harvest. Under these difficult conditions, what was nevertheless collected was confiscated in favor of the Red Army and the townspeople. As a result of such actions by the authorities, a popular uprising broke out, covering several counties. About 4,000 armed peasants and more than 10,000 people with pitchforks and scythes took part in it. The leader and inspirer was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party A.
The defeat of Antonovshchina
He, like other leaders of the “green” movement, put forward clear and simple slogans that every villager could understand. The main one was the call to fight the communists to build a free peasant republic. Credit should be given to his commanding abilities and ability to conduct flexible guerrilla warfare.
As a result, the uprising soon spread to other areas and took on an even larger scale. It took enormous efforts for the Bolshevik government to suppress it in 1921. For this purpose, units withdrawn from the Denikin Front, led by M.N. Tukhachevsky and G.I. Kotovsky, were sent to the Tambov region.
Modern social movement "Greens"
The battles of the Civil War died down, and the events described above became a thing of the past. Much of that era has sunk into oblivion forever, but it’s amazing that the term “Green Movement” has been preserved in our everyday life, although it has acquired a completely different meaning. If at the beginning of the last century this phrase meant the struggle for the interests of those who cultivated the land, then today participants in the movement are fighting to preserve the very breadwinner, the earth, with all its natural resources.
“Greens” is an environmental movement of our time that opposes the harmful effects of negative factors of technological progress on the environment. They appeared in our country in the mid-eighties of the last century and have gone through several stages of development during their history. According to data published at the end of last year, the number of environmental groups included in the all-Russian movement reaches thirty thousand.
Major NGO
Among the most famous are the Green Russia movement, Rodina, Green Patrol and a number of other organizations. Each of them has its own characteristic features, but they are all united by a commonality of tasks and the mass enthusiasm that is inherent in their members. In general, this sector of society exists in the form of a non-governmental organization. It is a kind of third sector, not related to either government agencies or private business.
The political platform of representatives of modern “green” movements is based on a constructive approach to restructuring the economic policy of the state in order to harmoniously combine the interests of people and the nature that surrounds them. There can be no compromises in such issues, since not only the material well-being of people, but also their health and life depends on their solution.
Greens vs Reds & Whites Candidate of Historical Sciences Ruslan Gagkuev outlined the events of those years as follows: “In Russia, the cruelty of the civil war was due to the breakdown of traditional Russian statehood and the destruction of the age-old foundations of life.” According to him, in those battles there were no vanquished, but only those destroyed. That is why rural people in entire villages, and even volosts, sought to protect the islands of their little world from an external deadly threat at any cost, especially since they had experience of peasant wars. This was the most important reason for the emergence of a third force in 1917-1923 - the “green rebels”.
In the encyclopedia edited by S.S. Khromov’s “Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR” gives a definition to this movement - these are illegal armed groups, whose participants were hiding from mobilizations in the forests. However, there is another version. So General A.I. Denikin believed that these formations and detachments got their name from a certain Ataman Zeleny, who fought against both the Whites and the Reds in the western part of the Poltava province. Denikin wrote about this in the fifth volume of “Essays on Russian Troubles.” “Fight among yourselves” The book by the Englishman H. Williamson “Farewell to the Don” contains the memoirs of one British officer who during the Civil War was in the Don Army of General V.I. Sidorina. “At the station we were met by a convoy of Don Cossacks... and units under the command of a man named Voronovich, lined up next to the Cossacks. The “greens” had practically no uniform; they wore mostly peasant clothes with checkered woolen caps or shabby sheep’s hats, on which a cross made of green fabric was sewn. They had a simple green flag and looked like a strong and powerful group of soldiers." “Voronovich’s soldiers” refused Sidorin’s call to join his army, preferring to remain neutral. In general, at the beginning of the Civil War, the peasantry adhered to the principle: “Fight among yourselves.” However, the “whites” and “reds” every day stamped decrees and orders on “requisitions, duties and mobilization,” thereby involving the villagers in the war. Village fighters Meanwhile, even before the revolution, villagers were sophisticated fighters, ready at any moment to grab pitchforks and axes. The poet Sergei Yesenin in the poem “Anna Snegina” cited the conflict between the two villages of Radovo and Kriushi. One day we caught them... They were in axes, so were we. The ringing and grinding of steel sent a shiver through my body. There were many such clashes. Pre-revolutionary newspapers were full of articles about mass fights and stabbings between residents of various villages, auls, kishlaks, Cossack villages, Jewish towns and German colonies. That is why each village had its own cunning diplomats and desperate commanders who defended local sovereignty. After the First World War, when many peasants, returning from the front, took with them three-line rifles and even machine guns, it was dangerous to just enter such villages. Doctor of Historical Sciences Boris Kolonitsky noted in this regard that regular troops often asked permission from the elders to pass through such villages and were often refused. But after the forces became unequal due to the sharp strengthening of the Red Army in 1919, many villagers were forced to go into the forests to avoid mobilization. Nester Makhno and Old Man Angel A typical commander of the “greens” was Nestor Makhno. He went through a difficult path from a political prisoner due to his participation in the anarchist group “Union of Poor Grain Growers” to the commander of the “Green Army”, numbering 55 thousand people in 1919. He and his fighters were allies of the Red Army, and Nester Ivanovich himself was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the capture of Mariupol.
At the same time, being a typical “green”, he did not see himself outside his native places, preferring to live by robbing landowners and wealthy people. The book “The Worst Russian Tragedy” by Andrei Burovsky contains the memoirs of S.G. Pushkareva about those days: “The war was cruel, inhumane, with complete oblivion of all legal and moral principles. Both sides committed the mortal sin of killing prisoners. The Makhnovists regularly killed all captured officers and volunteers, and we used the captured Makhnovists for consumption.” If at the beginning and in the middle of the Civil War the “greens” either adhered to neutrality or most often sympathized with the Soviet regime, then in 1920-1923 they fought “against everyone.” For example, on the carts of one “Father Angel” commander it was written: “Beat the Reds until they turn white, beat the Whites until they turn red.” Heroes of the “Greens” In the apt expression of the peasants of that time, the Soviet government was both mother and stepmother for them. It got to the point that the Red commanders themselves did not know where the truth was and where the lie was. Once, at a peasant gathering, the legendary Chapaev was asked: “Vasily Ivanovich, are you for the Bolsheviks or for the communists?” He replied: “I am for the International.” Under the same slogan, that is, “For the International,” the St. George cavalier A.V. Sapozhkov fought, who fought simultaneously “against the gold chasers and against the false communists who were entrenched in the Soviets.” His unit was destroyed, and he himself was shot. The most prominent representative of the “greens” is considered to be a member of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party A. S. Antonov, better known as the leader of the Tambov Uprising of 1921-1922. In his army, the word “comrade” was used, and the fight was waged under the banner “For Justice.” However, the majority of the “green army” did not believe in their victory. For example, in the song of the Tambov rebels “Somehow the sun doesn’t shine...” there are the following lines: They will lead us all out in droves, They will give the command “Fire!” C'mon, don't whine before the gun, don't lick the ground at your feet!..
In addition to the “reds” and “whites,” the “greens” also took part in the Civil War in Russia. Historians have mixed opinions regarding this category of those who fought; some consider them bandits, while others speak of them as defenders of their lands and freedom.
According to historian Ruslan Gagkuev, the Civil War in Russia led to the destruction of the foundations that had developed over centuries, as a result of which there were no vanquished in those battles, only those destroyed. Village residents tried to protect their lands as much as possible. This was the reason for the appearance in 1917 of rebel groups called “greens”.
These groups of people formed armed groups and hid in the forests, trying to avoid mobilization.
There is another version of the origin of the name of these units. According to General A. Denikin, these rebel detachments got their name from Zeleny, one of the atamans from the Poltava province, who fought both the whites and the reds.
Members of the green detachments did not wear uniforms; their clothing consisted of ordinary peasant shirts and trousers, and on their heads they wore woolen caps or sheepskin hats with a cross made of green fabric sewn on them. Their flag was also green.
It should be noted that the rural population had good fighting skills even before the war and were always ready to fend for themselves with pitchforks and axes. Even before the revolution, articles appeared in newspapers every now and then about clashes breaking out everywhere between villages.
When the First World War ended, a large number of rural residents who took part in hostilities took rifles with them from the front, and some even machine guns. It was dangerous for strangers to enter such villages.
Even army troops had to request permission from village elders to pass through such settlements. The elders' decisions were not always positive. In 1919, the influence of the Red Army became stronger, and many peasants hid in the forests, hiding from mobilization.
One of the most famous representatives of the “greens” was Nestor Makhno, who made a unique career from a political prisoner to the commander of a green army, which consisted of 55 thousand people. Makhno fought on the side of the Red Army, and for the capture of Mariupol he received the Order of the Red Banner.
However, the main activity of the greens from Nestor Makhno’s detachment was robberies of wealthy people and landowners. At the same time, the Makhnovists often killed prisoners.
In the early years of the Civil War, the Greens remained neutral, then fought on the side of the Red Army, but after 1920 they began to oppose everyone.
Another of the prominent representatives of the green army was A. Antonov, who was also a member of the left Socialist Revolutionaries, known as the leader of the Tambov Uprising of 1921-22. All members of his squad were “comrades,” and they carried out their activities under the slogan “For Justice.” At the same time, not all participants in the green movement were confident of their victory, which can be confirmed in the rebel songs.
Anton Posadsky.
Green movement in the Russian Civil War. Peasant front between Red and White. 1918-1922
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The work was carried out with financial support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 16-41-93579)
Introduction 1
The monograph was prepared with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Fund, project No. 16–41 -93579. The author expresses gratitude to F.A. Gushchin (Moscow) for the opportunity to familiarize himself with a number of memoir materials.
Revolution and internecine warfare are always very flowery, in every sense of the word. Vivid vocabulary, aggressive jargon, expressive names and self-designations, a real feast of slogans, banners, speeches and banners. Suffice it to recall the names of the units, for example in the American Civil War. The southerners had “Lincoln assassins”, all kinds of “bulldogs”, “thresherers”, “yellow jackets” and so on, the northerners had a grandiosely sinister anaconda plan. The civil war in Russia could not have been an exception, especially since in a country that was just approaching universal schooling, visual perception and marking meant a lot. No wonder the romantics of the world revolution expected so much from cinema. An incredibly expressive and understandable language has been found! Sound once again killed the aggressive revolutionary dream: films began to speak in different languages, dialogue replaced the irresistible power of a living poster.
Already in the revolutionary months of 1917, the banners of shock units and death units provided such expressive material that an interesting candidate’s dissertation was successfully defended on them 1 . It happened that a unit with the most modest actual combat strength had a bright banner.
The autumn of 1917 finally determined the names of the main characters - Reds and Whites. The Red Guard, and soon the army, were opposed by the Whites - the White Guards. The name “White Guard” itself is believed to have been adopted by one of the detachments in the Moscow battles of late October - early November. Although the logic of the development of the revolution suggested an answer even without this initiative. Red has long been the color of rebellion, revolution, and barricades. White is the color of order, legality, purity. Although the history of revolutions also knows other combinations. In France, whites and blues fought, under this name one of A. Dumas’s novels from his revolutionary series was published. The blue demi-brigades became the symbol of the victorious young revolutionary French army.
Along with the “main” colors, other colors were woven into the picture of the unfolding Civil War in Russia. Anarchist detachments called themselves the Black Guard. Thousands of Black Guards fought in the southern direction in 1918, very wary of their Red comrades.
Until the battles of the early 1930s, the self-name of the rebels “black partisans” appeared. In the Orenburg region, even the Blue Army is known among many rebel anti-Bolshevik formations. “Colored,” almost officially, will be the name given to the most united and combat-ready white units in the South - the famous Kornilovites, Alekseevites, Markovites and Drozdovites. They got their name from the color of their shoulder straps.
Color markings were also actively used in propaganda. In the leaflet of the headquarters of the recreated North Caucasus Military District in the spring of 1920, “yellow bandits are the sons of offended kulaks, Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, dads, Makhnovists, Maslaks, Antonovites and other comrades-in-arms and hangers-on of the bourgeois counter-revolution”, “black” bandits, “white”, “brown” 2.
However, the most famous third color in the Civil War remained green. The Greens became a significant force at some stages of the Civil War. Depending on the inclination of specific green formations to support one or another “official” side, white-green or red-green ones appeared. Although these designations could only record a temporary, momentary tactical line or behavior dictated by circumstances, and not a clear political position.
A civil war in a large country invariably creates certain main subjects of confrontation and a significant number of intermediate or peripheral forces. For example, the American Civil War pulled the Indian population into its orbit, Indian formations appeared both on the side of the northerners and on the side of the southerners; there were states that remained neutral. Many colors emerged in civil wars, for example, in multinational Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Russian Civil War, the main subjects of the confrontation crystallized quite quickly. However, within the white and red camps there were often very serious contradictions, not so much of a political nature, but at the level of political emotions. The Red partisans did not tolerate commissars, the White Cossacks did not trust the officers, etc. In addition, new state formations were structured with greater or less success on the national outskirts, striving first of all to acquire their own armed forces. All this made the overall picture of the struggle extremely varied and dynamically changing. Finally, active minorities always fight; they rally the broader masses of their fellow citizens behind them. In peasant Russia (and a landslide re-peasantization in 1917–1920 due to land redistribution and rapid deindustrialization) Russia, the main character in any prolonged struggle was the peasant. Therefore, the peasant in the armies of the warring parties, in the rebels, in the deserters - in any conditions created by a large-scale internal war - was already a very significant figure by its very mass nature. The Greens became one of the forms of peasant participation in the events of the Civil War.
The Greens had obvious predecessors. The peasant always suffers from war, and is often drawn into it out of necessity, either while serving the state or defending his home. If we decide to draw close analogies, we can remember how the military successes of the French during the Hundred Years' War in the 1360s and 1370s grew out of the need for self-defense and the emerging national feeling. and in the era of Joan of Arc, successes and innovations in the military art of the Dutch Geese at the end of the 16th century with their “transfer” through the Swedes to the Russian militias of the Time of Troubles, led by M. Skopin-Shuisky. However, the era of the New Age has already separated the combat capabilities of the regular army and any improvised rebel formations too far. Probably, this situation was most clearly demonstrated by the epic of the klobmen - “bludgeoners” - during the civil wars in England in the 17th century.
Royalist cavaliers fought the parliamentary armies. The fight was carried out with varying degrees of success. However, any internal war primarily affects the non-combatants. The intemperate armies of both sides placed a heavy burden on the peasant population. In response, the bludgeoners rose. The movement was not widespread. It was localized in several counties. In Russian literature, the most detailed presentation of this epic remains the long-standing work of Professor S.I. Arkhangelsky.
The activity of the clobmen is one of the stages in the development of the peasant movement in England during the civil wars of the 17th century. The peak of development of this self-defense movement occurred in the spring - autumn of 1645, although evidence of local armed formations is known almost from the beginning of hostilities, as well as later, beyond 1645.
The relationship between the armed men and the main active forces of civil strife - the gentlemen and supporters of parliament - is indicative. Let us highlight some subjects that are interesting for our topic.
The Klobmen are mainly rural people who organized to resist looting and force peace between the warring parties.
The Clobmans had their own territory - these were primarily the counties of South-West England and Wales. These territories mainly stood for the king. At the same time, the movement spread beyond the core territory, covering, at its peak, more than a quarter of the territory of England. The Klobmen seemed to “not notice” the Civil War, expressing their readiness to feed any garrisons so that they would not commit outrages, expressing in petitions reverence for royal power and respect for parliament. At the same time, the outrages of the troops caused a rebuff, and sometimes quite effective. Ordinary klobmen were mainly rural residents, although their leadership included nobles, priests, and a significant number of townspeople. Different counties had different sentiments and motivations for participating in the Klobman movement. This is due to differences in socio-economic status. Everyone suffered from the war, but patriarchal Wales and the economically developed, wool-rich English counties paint a different picture.
In 1645 there were about 50 thousand people. This number exceeded the royal armed forces - about 40 thousand, and was slightly inferior to the parliamentary ones (60-70 thousand).
It is interesting that both the king and parliament tried to attract the klobmen to their side. First of all, promises were made to curb the predatory tendencies of the troops. At the same time, both sides sought to destroy the Klobmen organization. Both the cavalier Lord Goring and the parliamentary commander Fairfax equally prohibited Klobman meetings. Apparently, the understanding that the klobmen, in further development, are capable of growing into some kind of third force, existed both on the side of the king and on the side of parliament, and caused opposition. Both needed a resource, not an ally with their own interests.
It is believed that by the end of 1645 the Klobmen movement was largely eliminated by the efforts of parliamentary troops under the command of Fairfax. At the same time, organizations of many thousands, even relatively weakly structured ones, could not disappear overnight. Indeed, already in the spring of 1649, at a new stage of the mass movement, a case was recorded of the arrival of an impressive detachment of clobmen from Somerset County to the aid of the Levellers 3 .
Despite the riskiness of analogies after three centuries, let us note the plots themselves, which are similar in the civil wars in England and Russia. Firstly, the grassroots mass movement is inclined to a certain independence, although it is quite ready to listen to both “main” sides of the struggle. Secondly, it is geographically localized, although it tends to expand into neighboring territories. Thirdly, local interests prevail in the motives, primarily the tasks of self-defense from ruin and atrocities. Fourthly, it is the real or potential independence of the rebel movement that causes concern among the main active forces of the civil war and the desire to eliminate it or integrate it into their armed structures.
Finally, the Russian Civil War unfolded when a large civil strife with active peasant participation was burning out on another continent - in Mexico. A comparative study of the civil war in America and Russia has obvious scientific prospects. In fact, the activities of the peasant armies of Zapata and Villa provide rich and picturesque material for the study of the rebellious peasantry. However, what is more important for us is that this analogy was already visible to contemporaries. The famous publicist V. Vetlugin wrote about “Mexican Ukraine” in the white press in 1919; the image of Mexico also appears in his book of essays “Adventurers of the Civil War,” published in 1921. The steppe daredevils who mercilessly plundered railroads in the South are quite naturally evoked such associations. True, I visited relatively little in the “green” areas of “Mexico”; this is more a property of the steppe ataman region.
To designate the insurrection and anti-Bolshevik insurgent struggle in the RSFSR, already in 1919, the term “political banditry” appeared, firmly and for a long time included in historiography. At the same time, the main subject of this banditry was the kulaks. This evaluative standard also applied to situations of other civil wars, as a result of which the communists came to power. Thus, a book on the history of China published in 1951 in the USSR reported that in the PRC in 1949 there were still a million “Kuomintang bandits.” But by the first anniversary of the republic, the number of “bandits” had decreased to 200 thousand 4. During the perestroika years, this plot caused controversy: “rebels” or “bandits”? The inclination towards one designation or another determined the research and civic position of the writer.
The “big” civil war did not attract as much attention from analysts of the Russian diaspora as the initial volunteer period. This is clearly seen in the famous works of N.N. Golovin and A.A. Zaitsova. Accordingly, the green movement was not the focus of attention. It is significant that the late Soviet book about the red partisans does not deal at all with the green movement, even the red-green one. At the same time, for example, in the Belarusian provinces the largest possible number, hardly corresponding to reality, of communist partisans is shown 5. The recent seminal attempt to present a non-communist view of Russian history 6 also does not specifically highlight the green movement.
The green movement is sometimes interpreted as broadly as possible, as any armed struggle within the Civil War outside the boundaries of white, red and national formations. So, A.A. Shtyrbul writes about “a broad and numerous, albeit scattered, all-Russian partisan-insurgent movement of the greens.” He draws attention to the fact that anarchists played a significant role in this movement, and also to the fact that for most representatives of this environment, whites were “more unacceptable” than reds. An example is given by N. Makhno 7 . R.V. Daniele attempted to provide a comparative analysis of civil wars and their dynamics. In his opinion, the Russian revolutionary peasantry, alienated by the surplus appropriation policy, “became a free political force in many parts of the country,” opposing the whites and the reds, and this situation was most dramatically manifested in the “Green movement” of Nestor Makhno in Ukraine” 8 . M.A. Drobov examines the military aspects of guerrilla warfare and small war. He examines in detail the Red insurgency of the Civil War. For him, the Greens are, first of all, an anti-White force. “Among the “greens” it is necessary to distinguish between gangs of bandits, self-dealers, various types of criminal punks who had nothing to do with the insurrection, and groups of poor peasants and workers scattered by whites and interventionists. It was these last elements... having no connections either with the Red Army or with the party organization, who independently organized detachments with the aim of harming the whites at every opportunity” 9. M. Frenkin writes about the operations of the greens in Syzran and other districts of the Simbirsk province, in a number of districts of Nizhny Novgorod and Smolensk, in the Kazan and Ryazan provinces, clusters of greens in Belarus with its vast forest and swampy areas 10. At the same time, the name “green” is uncharacteristic for, for example, the Kazan or Simbirsk regions. An expanded understanding of the green movement is also inherent in historical journalism 11 .
T.V. played a major role in the study of peasant participation in the Civil War. Osipova. She was one of the first to raise the topic of the subjectivity of the peasantry in the internecine war 12. Subsequent works by this author 13 developed a picture of peasant participation in the revolutionary and military events of 1917–1920. T.V. Osipova focused on the fact that the protest movement of the Great Russian peasantry was not noticed in Western literature, but it existed and was massive.
M. Frenkin’s well-known essay on peasant uprisings naturally also concerns the topic of greens. He quite correctly assesses the green movement as a specific form of peasant struggle that appeared in 1919, that is, as a kind of innovation in the peasant struggle with the authorities. He connects with this movement the active work of peasants in destroying Soviet farms during Mamontov's raid 14. M. Frenkin is right from the point of view of the general logic of the peasant struggle. At the same time, one should be careful in accepting his value judgments about the unchanged multi-thousandth greens. Sometimes, in this matter, conscious distortions gave rise to a whole tradition of incorrect perception. So, E.G. Renev showed that Colonel Fedichkin’s memoirs about the Izhevsk-Botkin uprising, published abroad, were subjected to serious editing by the editors of the publication with deliberate distortion of the content. As a result, instead of peasant detachments of one hundred people who supported the workers' uprising in the Vyatka province, detachments of ten thousand people appeared in the publication 15. M. Bernshtam, in his work, proceeded from the published version and counted the active fighters on the side of the rebels, reaching a quarter of a million people 16. On the other hand, a small active detachment could operate successfully with the total support and solidarity of the local population, sometimes from a fairly impressive area. Therefore, when calculating insurgent, weakly armed and poorly organized (in the military sense of the word) forces, it may be appropriate to estimate not only the number of fighters, but also the total population involved in an uprising or other protest movement.
In 2002, two dissertations were defended on the military-political activity of the peasantry in the Civil War, specifically addressing the issues of the green movement. These are the works of V.L. Telitsyn and P.A. Pharmacist 17. Each of them contains a separate story dedicated to the “Zelenovism” of 1919. 18 The authors published these stories 19 . P. Aptekar gives a general outline of the green uprisings, V. Telitsyn actively used Tver material.
The green movement has been actively studied in the regions over the past two and a half decades. Some stories are well developed using local funds from Soviet institutions and archival and investigative files. S. Khlamov explores the history of the most organized Vladimir greens operating in Yuryevsky (Yuryev-Polsky) district. S.V. Zavyalova studies the Kostroma Zelenism in Varnavinsky and Vetluzhsky districts, including the Urensky region, as an integral part of the uprising in these areas, which began in the summer of 1918. 20 A.Yu. Danilov offers a detailed picture of the performances of the Yaroslavl greens, primarily in Danilovsky and Lyubimsky, as well as Poshekhonsky districts 21. In the Yaroslavl region, the activities of the law enforcement and punitive system are being actively and successfully studied, including in the early Soviet period 22 . Departmental historiography raises important questions, for example about the motives for brutality in suppressing the green movement. M. Lapshina clarified in detail a number of plots of the Kostroma greenism 23. Based on the Tver performances of both 1918 and 1919. In recent years, K.I. has been working productively. Sokolov 24. The largest green uprising in Spas-Yesenovichi prompted a detailed reconstructive analysis by Vyshnevolotsk local historian E.I. Stupkina 25. Ryazan authors formed a fairly detailed picture of the so-called Goltsovshchina - the struggle of an active rebel group in the Riga district. It was led by successively different people, the most famous figure of them being Ogoltsov, who in fact raised a fairly massive green movement in several volosts, and the most interesting was S. Nikushin. G.K. is actively working on this topic. Goltseva 26. S.V. Yarov proposed a typology of the uprisings of 1918–1919. based on materials from the North-West of Russia 27. In 1919, the young researcher M.V. was actively working in the Pskov region. Vasiliev 28. The Prikhoper Zelenism is being studied by Balashov researcher A.O. Bulgakov, who, in particular, carried out field research 29, a voluminous study on this region was published by the author of this book 30. Northern material was worked on in a significant number of works by V.A. Sablin, T.I. Troshina, M.V. Taskaev and other researchers 31. Kaluga local historian K.M. Afanasyev built a documentary chronicle of provincial life during the years of war communism, touching, naturally, on the topic of desertion and its attendant issues 32 . A significant amount of material on the rebel movement, including the green movement, during the Civil War has been published in a series of collections edited by us 33 .
At the same time, some subjects remain in the shadows due to the lack of professional research “hands”.
Thus, the Zhigalovshchina has been little studied - a major movement raised in 1918 in the Porechensky (in Soviet Demidovsky) district of the Smolensk province, which had a long history. At the origins of the insurrectionary movement were the three Zhigalov (Zhegalov) brothers. The active green movement in the Novgorod province remains in the shadows.
The green movement is best known as a more or less reflected position of the “third force” in the Black Sea province. There are Soviet memoirs on this plot, and there are many mentions in the memoirs of the white side. The epic, which is rare for rebel stories, was described by one of the initiators of the case, guards officer Voronovich, who published a book of documents on the topic 34. In modern historiography, we should highlight a comprehensive study conducted by Sochi researcher A.A. Cherkasov 35, and the work of N.D. Karpova 36.
Belarusian atamans of national orientation have their share of attention in Belarusian historiography; first of all, the names of N. Stuzhinskaya and V. Lyakhovsky should be mentioned.
The study of the green movement cannot be named among the priority topics of Western historiography of the Russian Civil War. However, there is an interesting work directly devoted to this plot. This is an article by E. Landis 37, author of the English-language monograph “Bandits and Partisans,” dedicated to the Tambov uprising of 1920–1921. Landis argues using the concept of “collective identity” and correctly connects the green movement with mobilizations and defections. He correctly points out that the green army is a collective name.
Defenders of their world
Historian Ruslan Grigorievich Gagkuev very aptly described the events in our country associated with the change of power: “In Russia, the cruelty of the civil war was due to the breakdown of traditional Russian statehood and the destruction of the age-old foundations of life.” And since there were no “defeated” in the battles, but only “destroyed”, the level of human confrontation reached a different level. Because of this, rural residents, most often, put their entire small homeland to defend the territory. The external threat was too dangerous and insidious. It concealed radical changes in everything. And the peasants were afraid of this. It was they who became the third force in the Civil War - the Green Army.
The peasants were afraid of changing life
The encyclopedia “Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR” has a clear definition of this phenomenon. The book says that these are illegal armed groups, whose members were hiding from mobilizations in the forests.
But General Denikin thought differently. He said that this force received such an “ecological” name not because of its deployment in the forests, but by the name of its leader, Ataman Zeleny. The officer mentioned this in “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” Ataman is known for having fought in the Poltava region against the Whites, the Reds, the Hetmans, and the German invaders. He himself simply called himself father (ataman) Bulak-Bulakhovich.
Green Army flag
There are mentions of greens among foreigners as well. For example, the Englishman Williamson in “Farewell to the Don” cited the memoirs of his compatriot, who happened to find himself during the Civil War as part of the Don Army of General Sidorin. Here's what Williamson wrote: “At the station we were met by a convoy of Don Cossacks... and units under the command of a man named Voronovich, lined up next to the Cossacks. The “greens” had practically no uniform; they wore mostly peasant clothes with checkered woolen caps or shabby sheep’s hats, on which a cross made of green fabric was sewn. They had a simple green flag and looked like a strong and powerful group of soldiers."
At the beginning of the Civil War, the Greens tried to remain neutral
Vladimir Ilyich Sidorin invited Voronovich to join him, but was refused. Green declared his neutrality. But, of course, the peasants were unable to stay between two fires for long. After all, both the Reds and the Whites constantly tried to infuse the powerful forces of the villagers into their armies.
Peasant power
But even before the beginning of troubled times in Russia, the peasants represented a special stratum, whose peaceful activities could mislead an inexperienced person. The peasants constantly fought... among themselves. At any moment, under any pretext, they could grab axes and pitchforks. Such a conflict between two villages was well shown by Sergei Yesenin in the poem “Anna Snegina”. There, an “apple of discord” swept between Radovo and Kriushi.
And such confrontations were constant. Pre-revolutionary newspapers were not shy and did not hesitate to write about this. Every now and then they were full of articles about how the peasants had staged a mass brawl or a stabbing. Moreover, nothing much changed in those articles, except for settlements. Instead of villages they wrote auls, instead of auls - Cossack villages, and so on. They went, of course, to deal with both the Jews and the Germans. In general, pre-revolutionary Russia was restless.
Due to this situation, each village had its own cunning elders, hardened warriors who, without hesitation, would give their lives to protect the sovereignty of their little world.
Peasants returned from World War I armed
And after Russia stopped participating in the First World War, most of the peasants returning from the front took firearms with them. Some are rifles, and some, the luckiest and most cunning, are machine guns. Accordingly, strangers in such an armed village could be given a worthy rebuff.
There is a lot of evidence that says that during the Civil War, both the Reds and the Whites asked the village elders for permission to pass through the village. And they often received refusals. The Greens hoped until the last that the situation in the country would “somehow” be resolved and their familiar world would not collapse.
Cruel realities
But the world soon collapsed. It was possible to keep the “hut on the edge” only until 1919. But then the Red Army became too strong. The village could no longer talk on equal terms with the Bolshevik commanders. Therefore, many peasants, in order not to go over to their side, abandoned everything and went into the forests.
But there were also those who accepted the challenge. They fought against everyone. And at the head of the “green movement” was Father Angel. So he ordered to write on the carts: “Beat the reds until they turn white, beat the whites until they turn red.”
After 1919 it was no longer possible to remain on the sidelines
The Greens also had another hero - a member of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, Alexei Stepanovich Antonov. He became famous after becoming the leader of the Tambov (Antonov) uprising in 1921-1922. His army fought under the banner “For Justice.” But few believed in victory. After all, the forces of the outside world were on a completely different scale. And the peasants, of course, failed to preserve their familiar little world intact.
