The civil war, which swept throughout Russia, played an important role on Taman land.
After the February Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to establish their power everywhere. But the internal forces on which they could rely were not enough in Kuban. Therefore, the emphasis was placed on the Red Guard units of the Black Sea region, the 39th division under the command of A.I. Avtonomova, returning from the Caucasian Front. Later they were joined by detachments of poor people from other cities. The army was poorly armed, undisciplined, characterized by arbitrary commanders and often robbed the population, which paved the way for discontent. Local authorities were defended by barely formed military units of the regional government.
However, gradually the Bolsheviks managed to recapture some regions. First, the Soviet government won in the Black Sea region. Then the Bolsheviks established themselves in the Armavir region, where they held the First Congress of Soviets of the Kuban. And on March 1, revolutionary troops occupied Yekaterinodar. A joint military-revolutionary committee was formed in the city.
The regional government and part of the Rada, troops loyal to them, after the capture of Yekaterinodar, went on the so-called First Kuban Campaign. During the battles with units of the Red Army, they managed to unite with the detachment of General Kornilov and Alekseev, who became the core of the future Volunteer Army. Between the Kuban people and L.G. Kornilov concluded a cooperation agreement, according to which all military forces of the Kuban became subordinate to the command of the Volunteer Army. Cossacks made up the majority in the white armies of Southern Russia.
With the arrival of the Volunteer Army, Kuban for some time became the epicenter of an all-Russian revolutionary fire. The campaign to Kuban lasted 80 days. Political and strategic goals were not achieved: Ekaterinodar was not taken, Kornilov was killed. But, despite numerous human losses, the Whites won an ideological victory: a halo of heroes began to form around the Volunteer Army. After the First Kuban Campaign, the size of the army increased tenfold, even those who had previously doubted joined it.
The position of Soviet power in Kuban was complicated by the outbreak of intervention. In May 1918, German troops, who captured Crimea, landed troops on Taman, and detachments of various anti-Soviet forces became more active. On May 15, the Berlin regiment crossed from Crimea to the Taman Peninsula.
While the Bolsheviks were making attempts to cope with the current situation, Denikin, who led the Volunteer Army after the death of Kornilov, was considering a future military campaign. Soon he came up with a plan for the Second Kuban Campaign, supported by his closest circle. Denikin's army was divided into three infantry, one mounted division and one mounted Kuban brigade. The immediate goal was the capture of Yekaterinodar. But this goal required several operations. By capturing the Torgovaya and Velikoknyazheskaya stations, Denikin’s troops thereby interrupted the railway communication between the North Caucasus and the center of Russia. Then the Tikhoretskaya, Kushchevskaya and Kavkazskaya stations were captured. After fierce and bloody battles, the Whites entered Yekaterinodar on August 3.
Meanwhile, the Soviet command, having clarified and assessed the situation in the Kuban and the North Caucasus, made a belated decision to create a unified command and appointed Sorokin as commander of the troops of the North Caucasus, at the same time subordinating the troops of the Taman Army to him and ordering to continue the attempt to break through to Yekaterinodar. The Tamans were given the task of quickly connecting with Sorokin’s troops. And after fierce fighting, the Tamans completed their task. They managed to capture Stavropol and Armavir, but they could not hold these cities.
On August 17, the Volunteer Army occupied Yekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, the Taman Army under the command of Kovtyukh fought its way beyond the Kuban River along the Black Sea coast, where at that time the remnants of the defeated armies of Kalinin and Sorokin were located. By the end of August, the territory of Kuban, including Taman, was completely cleared of the Bolsheviks.
Landing operation of General S. G. Ulagai
In March 1920, white troops fled from Yekaterinodar. The last echoes of the Civil War in Kuban were heard in August 1920, when the Whites landed troops on Taman and near Novorossiysk.
Expeditionary Landing Corps under the command of Lieutenant General S.G. Ulagaya began preparing and forming units for the landing on the Taman Peninsula in June 1920. The task of the landing was to seize a bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula and develop an offensive in the direction of Ekaterinodar, with the aim of raising the Kuban Cossacks and underground counter-revolutionary detachments in the Kuban and North Caucasus to fight the Soviets.
In August 1920, General Ulagai began landing on the Taman Peninsula. Despite the fact that the Soviet command was very well informed about the plans, timing and size of the proposed landing on the Taman Peninsula and concentrated large forces here, the troops of General Ulagai achieved some success: they occupied the villages of Bryukhovetskaya, Timashevskaya, Starovelichkovskaya. But they were unable to retain the conquered territories.
Soviet troops intensified the pressure and pace of the offensive along the entire front, striking with landings on river boats at the rear of General Ulagai's troops. In heavy battles, the Red Army finally defeated the landing forces of General Ulagai on the Taman Peninsula. For the failure of the Taman landing operation, General Wrangel dismissed General Ulagai from the ranks of the Russian army.
Thus, already in November - December 1920, Soviet power was established in the territory of Kuban and the Black Sea region.
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Slides and text of this presentation
Slide 1
“And the golden domes blinded someone’s black eyes...” I. Talkov
Slide 2
War is “an event contrary to human reason and all human nature” (L. Tolstoy “War and Peace”)
Slide 3
Review questions
What events in political and social life preceded the civil war? How did the Cossacks in Kuban perceive the February bourgeois-democratic revolution? Why, after 2-3 months, did the Cossacks begin to express dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government? What is dual power? Why did A. Denikin, in his memoirs, define the political leadership in the Kuban as a “triarchy”?
How were the elections to the Rada held? By whom and when were the symbols of Kuban first approved? What do the colors mean? How is a civil war different from a domestic war? Why was Soviet power fully established in Russia by 1921, and in Kuban in 1923?
After the overthrow of the autocracy, only in the Black Sea region was an all-Russian version of “dual power” observed. In Kuban, the leading role was played by the class Cossack authorities - the Rada, the ataman and the government. A.I. Denikin called this situation “three powers.”
Slide 5
In November 1917 - January 1918, Soviet power was established in the Black Sea region, then in the Kuban. Red Guard detachments unsuccessfully tried to capture Ekaterinodar at the end of January. After the arrival of revolutionary units from the front in Armavir, on February 14-18, 1918, the First Congress of Soviets was held, headed by Ya.V. Poluyan, who proclaimed Soviet power throughout the Kuban.
Slide 6
A month later, Ekaterinodar was occupied by the Reds. The expelled Rada and the government with a detachment of General Pokrovsky approached the troops of Kornilov, who set out from Rostov-on-Don on the First Kuban (“Ice”) campaign, which lasted 80 days, the goal of which was Ekaterinodar. “We started the hike,” A.I. later wrote. Denikin, “in extraordinary conditions: a bunch of people lost in the wide Don steppe, in the middle of a raging sea that flooded their native land.”
February 22, 1918 The volunteer army left Rostov-on-Don. 04/01/1918 During the assault on Ekaterinodar, General L. Kornilov was mortally wounded.
Slide 7
There were catastrophically few horses, cartridges and other ammunition. They spent 44 days in battle, losing about 400 soldiers. About 3.5 thousand went on a campaign, and 5 thousand people returned - the Kuban Cossacks joined the ranks. The assault on the capital of Kuban ended with the death of L.G. Kornilov. Denikin led the Volunteer Army to the Salsk steppes.
L.G. Kornilov, commander of the Volunteer Army 01-04/1918
Slide 8
From the order of General L.G. Kornilov:
“...You will soon be sent into battle. In these battles you will have to be merciless. We cannot take prisoners, and I give you a very cruel order: do not take prisoners. I take responsibility for this order before God and before the Russian people.”
Slide 9
Slide 10
The small working class and out-of-town peasantry welcomed the first steps of Soviet power. But the abolition of estates, land limits and food requisitions hit the interests of the Cossacks, who supported General Denikin, who led the Second Kuban Volunteer Campaign in August 1918.
I.P. Uborevich in Ekaterinodar. 1920
Slide 11
From the statement of the Dobrarmiya headquarters:
“Let everyone know in the name of what the Volunteer Army is being created: an organized military force is needed that could be opposed to the impending anarchy and the German-Bolshevik invasion...” A. Denikin 1918.
Slide 12
By the beginning of the campaign, the goal was to capture Yekaterinodar; the Red army outnumbered Denikin's army. Whites totaled 8-9 thousand people with 21 guns and 2 armored cars. “The art of war is behind us...confidence in strength,” Denikin will write.
On August 3, the Whites entered the capital of Kuban. Soon Denikin's army will consist of 5 armored trains, 2 air squads with aircraft, 256 machine guns, 35-40 thousand bayonets and sabers, etc. Now Denikin will say: “I used to lead an army. Now I command her."
Slide 13
But the Reds were not broken; the Red Army of the North Caucasus under the command of I.L. Sorokin was concentrated in the eastern part of the Kuban region. It numbered up to 150 thousand fighters with 200 guns, later replenished with non-residents. The army managed to recapture Stavropol and Armavir from the Whites, but the Reds failed to hold them. By the beginning of November, the Kuban region was liberated from the Bolsheviks.
Slide 14
From April 1917 to March 1920 (with a six-month break), the Cossack government was in power in the Kuban, choosing its own third path. The confrontation between the Rada and the command of the White Army cost the life of its chairman N.S. Ryabovol. Kuban's attempt to join the League of Nations ended with the dispersal of the Rada and the murder of Kukharenko, a representative to the League of Nations from Kuban. After this, mass desertion of Kuban residents from the Denikin front began.
N.S. Ryabovol, Chairman of the regional and legislative Council of Kuban 04.1917 - 06.1919 1. Badge of the First Kuban (“Ice”) Campaign
2. Cross “For the salvation of Kuban”
White Army Awards
Slide 18
questions
What is an Ice Walk? Why couldn’t the Kornilovites take Ekaterinodar? How did A. Denikin save the Volunteer Army? What role did the village of Kurganaya play during the civil war?
The majority of the region's population, including the Cossacks, accepted the new order established after the overthrow of the autocracy. Rallies, meetings, demonstrations under anti-war and democratic slogans swept Kuban and the Black Sea region.
After the overthrow of the autocracy, the monarchists and Octobrists practically disappeared from the scene, their place was taken by the Cadets; By blocking with them, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries firmly established themselves in the center of this spectrum. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries occupied a central place in the political life of Kuban. Thus, the city councils in Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk were headed by Mensheviks, and the Ekaterinodar Civil Committee was headed by Socialist Revolutionaries. A similar situation was observed in other settlements.
If dual power arose in Russia after the February Revolution, then in the Kuban region a relationship of forces arose, which General A. I. Denikin described in “Essays on the Russian Time of Troubles” as “triple power.” Cossack class authorities began to quickly come to the fore. In the cities of the region, along with civil committees and councils, municipal non-estate governing bodies had real power. In such conditions, the newly elected Kuban Regional Council withdrew from the struggle for full power.
In the villages, power was concentrated in the village and farm boards, headed by atamans. Unlike the cities, the executive bodies representing the Provisional Government did not enjoy much authority here, and only in rare cases did the executive committees of local Soviets have any power in the villages. Usually they acted in the same direction as the Cossack bodies. There were no councils of Cossack deputies in Kuban.
On March 23, the First All-Russian All-Cossack Congress met in Petrograd and decided to create a Union of Cossack Troops. By resolution of the congress, all lands, waters and mineral resources in the territories of the Cossack regions were declared the inviolable property of the Cossack troops. The congress decided to return state, appanage, monastic, church, and private lands located in the Cossack regions to military ownership on the terms that were to be worked out by the Constituent Assembly.
In the Black Sea province, revolutionary events developed differently.
However, no political force gained absolute dominance.
In March - April, peasant-Cossack unions appeared in the Black Sea province, and at the congress of peasant and Cossack deputies that met on June 14, they were transformed into the Councils of Peasant and Cossack Deputies. Peasant Soviets were formed in some villages of the Black Sea province. In a number of cases, peasants removed representatives of the old government and created their own executive committees, detachments of vigilantes, and militia.
On May 1, Muslim leaders convened a congress of Caucasian mountaineers in Vladikavkaz, which proclaimed the creation of a “Union of United Highlanders” consisting of Kabarda, Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Cherkessia, Karachay and Dagestan. The congress elected a spiritual Muslim government headed by N. Gotsinsky. Representatives of the Union of United Highlanders launched a campaign for the creation of local national committees. The leaders of the new movement declared support for the Provisional Government and at the same time provoked the local population with anti-Russian and anti-Cossack slogans.
Thus, the region was in the process of forming mutually exclusive systems of government and management. In this regard, in a special order, the Commissioner of the Provisional Government, K. L. Bardizh, explained that civil committees are not government bodies, they are just spokesmen for public opinion.
There was no unity among the Cossacks themselves. There were contradictions regarding the future of Kuban. Some Cossack leaders advocated a federal structure. These included the “Black Sea people”; they were supporters of broad autonomy for the Kuban, its “independent” existence, and after the Bolsheviks seized power and declared the independence of Ukraine, they sought rapprochement with it.
The other part - the “lineists” - supported the idea of developing Kuban as part of a single and indivisible Russia. The struggle between these groups did not stop until the end of the Civil War and became one of the reasons for the collapse of the White movement in southern Russia.
The civil war was already unfolding in the country.
In June 1918, when the issue of sinking the Black Sea Fleet was being decided, the majority in the leadership of the Kuban-Black Sea Republic spoke in favor of its formal separation from Russia, hoping to declare the fleet the property of their republic.
The deterioration of the situation at the front, the complication of the situation in general for the Soviet government forced them to overcome separatist sentiments, and a decision was made to unite the Kuban-Black Sea, Stavropol and Terek republics into one North Caucasus Soviet Republic with its center in Yekaterinodar. It should be noted that the central bodies of Soviet power used old administrative names in documents.
In an atmosphere of intense class struggle, new state structures carried out complex socio-economic transformations to establish economic life and take economic power from the bourgeoisie and overcome its resistance.
Workers' control was established at industrial enterprises. All social privileges and restrictions were abolished. Priority social measures were carried out: an 8-hour working day, restrictions on overtime, unemployment and sickness insurance, free universal education, free medical care.
In rural areas, land socialization was carried out. Equalization of land use increased the layer of middle peasants. The land was partially confiscated from the kulaks. Various collective farms were created on landowners' lands - communes, state farms, tozy.
The years 1918-1920 constitute one of the most tragic and at the same time heroic pages in the history of Russian society. The events of this period express several social processes.
The heroic struggle of the working people of Russia to preserve the gains of the revolution, for a new life against the attempt of the overthrown classes to restore their dominance became the apogee of the centuries-old social and cultural split in Russian society.
At the same time, the war for Russian independence against the interventionists and the national liberation struggle were waged.
But at the same time it was a fratricidal war; it became a tragedy of Russian society, a national catastrophe that brought enormous sacrifices and suffering.
The scale of armed struggle and mutual terror, the destruction of the economy and cultural heritage, social hatred and general bitterness had a heavy impact on the social and personal relations of people of more than one generation.
In conditions of the Civil War, international intervention and the difficult economic situation in the country, according to the decision of the III Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of the Kuban-Black Sea Republic, increased export of food to the revolutionary center began. The use of coercive measures and requisitions led to the fact that at the end of the spring of 1918, armed rebellions broke out in the Kuban region.
In August 1918, the Volunteer Army under the command of General A.I. Denikin, who led the army after the death of Kornilov, launched a large-scale offensive against Kuban. On August 4th the Whites took Yekaterinodar. But the Reds were not broken.
While military units loyal to the Bolsheviks were retreating and the Volunteer Army was advancing, Georgian military units crossed the border in the Adler area. As newspapers wrote in Tbilisi, the purpose of the military action was the decision of the Georgian government to “restore” the borders of its state in the 14th century.
At the beginning of 1920, the Red Army launched a decisive offensive in the North Caucasus. Back in 1919, the Committee for the Liberation of the Black Sea Province (KOCHG) began to act against the whites.
KOCHG transformed the partisan detachments of the red-greens (as they were then called) into the Red Army of the Black Sea Region, which managed to liberate a number of settlements from the whites.
Less than a year later, the Civil War ended. Soviet Russia moved to peaceful life, economic restoration and construction of a new society.
On January 9, 1919, in the area of the Holy Cross (now Budennovsk) - Mineralnye Vody - Kislovodsk, Denikin managed to dismember parts of the 11th Army into isolated groups. The administration of the army completely fell apart (not long before this, Army Commander Sorokin was also shot for arbitrariness). In harsh winter conditions, the main forces of the 11th Army retreated across the sandy steppes to Astrakhan. The 11th Army played its role in the Civil War, drawing off significant forces of the Volunteer Army. The formations under the command of: D. Zhloba, E. Kovtyukha, E. Voronov, I. Fedko, M. Demus, P. Zonenko, M. Kovalev, F. Shpak, I. Matveev, G. Baturin, M. Levandovsky showed themselves bravely , G. Mironenko and others. By January 1919, Denikin had captured the entire Kuban, while in the fall of 1918 the Entente landed its troops in Odessa, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk and Transcaucasia. However, already in the spring of 1919, the Entente troops were recalled, but assistance in money and weapons increased. In 1919, the war reached unprecedented proportions - the number of fronts increased to 6, and their length to 8 thousand kilometers. Denikin's volunteer army launched an offensive against Moscow, which ended in failure. At the beginning of 1919, about 40 underground Bolshevik cells operated in Kuban. The largest one operated in Yekaterinodar - 200 people. The most active cell was S.A. Vorobyov - it blew up 19 wagons with ammunition at the Yekaterinodar-1 station. Also during the civil war, partisans were active in Kuban. The partisan detachments of the Kuban and Black Sea regions in the summer of 1919 numbered about 15 thousand people. The main headquarters and the partisan army were led by M.T. Masliev. I would like to note the high activity of the so-called “greens”, who were on their own, but often “played along” with the red ones. On January 8, 1920, the Red Army liberated Rostov and entered the North Caucasus.
Armored trains in the Kuban To fight the partisans, 6 armored trains of the White Guards ran along the Novorossiysk - Ekaterinodar railway line: “To Moscow”, “Rurik”, “Eagle”, “Officer”, “Oleg” and “Ivan Kalita”. The partisans of the "Thunder and Lightning" detachment of the Krymskaya village derailed the "Eagle" armored train. The Yeisk Committee of the RCP(b), led by V. Norenko, created an armed strike group of port workers and railway workers. Having won over the Denikin garrison to their side, the group organized an uprising on the night of February 4. To suppress the uprising, White Guard punitive detachments were deployed, which on February 6 broke into Yeisk and started heavy street battles. The rebels retreated across the ice of the Azov Sea to Taganrog.
15. Question. Collectivization in Kuban and decossackization
Tensions initially developed between the Soviet state and the Russian Cossacks. The Bolsheviks, as true revolutionaries, even before coming to power in October 1917, were accustomed to calling the Cossacks “whipspots,” “satraps,” and “the support of the autocracy.” The apogee of the anti-Cossack policy of the Bolsheviks was the period of the civil war, when cruel measures were used against the Cossacks, and one of the leaders of the ruling party L.D. Trotsky called on his comrades in the “red camp”: “Destroy as such, decossack the Cossacks - that’s our slogan! Take off your stripes, prohibit calling yourself a Cossack, and deport en masse to other regions.” During the NEP period, despite the normalization of relations between the Cossacks and the Soviet government, the attitude towards “decossackization”, the dissolution of the Cossacks among the mass of the rural population, remained (although due to the multidimensionality of the historical process during the 1920s, there were also cases of strengthening the positions of local Cossack communities in level of the villages, which allowed contemporaries to talk about “rendering”). The anti-Cossack orientation of Bolshevik policy also manifested itself during complete collectivization, when in the South of Russia the Don, Terek, Kuban Cossacks became the primary target of “dekulakization,” repression, and deportations. It was during the years of collectivization, according to a number of experts, that the tragic process of “decossackization” received its natural conclusion.
In the scientific literature, polar points of view have emerged regarding “decossackization.” So, S.A. Kislitsyn, who devoted a number of serious works to this topic, identifies four stages in the process of “decossackization”: civil war (decossackization through the physical liquidation of representatives of the Cossack class), the stage from 1921 to 1924. (pressure on the Cossacks, restriction of their rights), hidden decossackization 1925 - 1928. and, finally, “the stage of persecution of opposition-minded elements of the Cossacks by methods of “dekulakization”, the fight against “pests” and “saboteurs” of grain procurements and direct repressions against members of “rebel organizations” 1929 - 1939.
On the contrary, according to V.E. Shchetnev, collectivization in relation to the Cossack regions cannot be characterized as decossackization, because “by this time the Cossacks had lost a significant part of their class and ethnic characteristics” as a result of previous actions of the authorities. Collectivization can be called, believes V.E. Shchetnev, “finishing off” the Cossacks, but not the final stage of de-Cossackization. Actually, E.N. also wrote about the same thing. Oskolkov, pointing out that the attempts of the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet state in the early 1930s. giving their violent actions in the North Caucasus region an anti-Cossack character were doomed to failure in advance: “the failure of this line was that the Cossacks as a class by the beginning of the 30s. was no longer there."
In the framework of the above discussion, we fully share the position of those researchers who believe it is impossible to interpret collectivization as the final stage of “decossackization.” At the same time, in our opinion, this position needs more serious justification, and in the course of attracting and analyzing specific historical materials, a number of provisions can be adjusted. For example, one can think about the extent to which the Cossacks were “finished off” during the “collective farm construction” in the villages and villages of the South of Russia during the 1930s. In this publication, we intend to document the hypothesis that collectivization was not the final stage of “decossackization,” despite all the anti-Cossack actions of the Soviet government (more precisely, the Stalinist regime) that took place in the late 1920s - 1930s.
Before moving on to a detailed substantiation of our position, it is necessary to determine the semantic content of “decossackization” as the basic concept of this work, since it is the particular interpretation of this concept that ultimately anticipates certain author’s judgments and hypotheses. What is the meaning of this concept?! Historiographic analysis allows us to identify several approaches to the interpretation of “decossackization” and indicate several of its meanings that are different from each other.
According to one interpretation, “decossackization” is the process of eliminating the Cossacks as a special social group within Russian society, “the abolition of the essential features of the Cossacks as a military service class: almost lifelong military service, allotment of a land share for service, abolition of equipping a Cossack for service for his account, the abolition of benefits for the Cossack, his equalization with the peasantry.” Actually, this is the original meaning of “decossackization,” which arose simultaneously with the beginning of this process in the second half of the 19th century, when, with the genesis of capitalism, Cossack communities began to gradually dissolve in other social strata (so, according to some sources, by the beginning of the 20th century around 8 thousand Don Cossacks worked in the factory industry and transport). At this time, “decossackization” was an evolutionary process, a peculiar response of the Cossacks to changing socio-economic conditions, in which the privileges of their class status no longer compensated for the costs and losses that accompanied the performance of duties. As rightly noted by V.P. Trud, “at that time no one even mentioned any violent measures against the Cossacks.” In our opinion, this interpretation of “decossackization” corresponds to historical reality.
According to another, more expanded interpretation, “decossackization” was nothing more than “the process of destroying the Cossacks as a special social community.” In this case, we are talking not only about the elimination of the Cossacks as an estate, but also in general about the elimination of the Cossacks as a social group that has (like any other social group) certain traditions, characteristics of life, collective psychology, etc. In addition, if “decossackization” , understood as the liquidation of the military service class, has more or less clear chronological boundaries (second half of the 19th century - 20s of the 20th century), then “decossackization” as the destruction of the “special social community” of the Cossacks can be extended and for the pre-Soviet, and for the entire Soviet period of time (for in this case, almost any anti-Cossack action, no matter which government it was undertaken, can be classified as “decossackization”). The lack of specifics makes this definition of “decossackization” inherently vulnerable.
Finally, according to another fairly widespread interpretation, “decossackization” (in the Soviet period) represented “the liquidation of the Cossacks as a socio-ethnographic community in general,” the elimination of “characteristic features, features, properties, signs of the Cossacks as a paramilitary class, a layer of wealthy landowners and partly as a separate subethnic group,” “the transformation of Cossacks into ordinary citizens.” This interpretation of “decossackization” is close to the one given above, but it concretizes it and seriously supplements it with an indication that during the Soviet period the government set itself the goal of partially eliminating the Cossacks not just as a class and even a social community, but as a subethnic group. In other words, in this case we are talking about the intentions of the authorities to completely (or almost completely) dissolve the Cossacks with their special culture, psychology, etc., in the mass of the population of Soviet Russia.
So, there is no unity of approaches to understanding the essence and characteristic features of “decossackization” (as a process and as a policy) among specialists. Naturally, the difference in approaches to the interpretation of “decossackization” directly affects the establishment of the chronological boundaries of this historical phenomenon. Above, we have already quoted statements from researchers that “decossackization,” if understood as the elimination of the special class status of the Cossacks, ended in the 1920s, when the Soviet government denied the Cossacks autonomy and equalized their rights with the peasants. Consequently, within the framework of this position, collectivization could not represent the final stage of “decossackization,” since the Cossacks, as a military service class, were eliminated by the early 1930s. no longer existed (despite the fact that in economic and property terms the Cossacks of the South of Russia in the pre-collective farm period still stood out from the mass of peasants).
In contrast to this interpretation, researchers who define “decossackization” as the liquidation of the Cossacks either as a “special social community” or as a “socio-ethnographic community”, a subethnic group, have the right to expand the chronological boundaries of this process (policy). Indeed, in this case, almost all anti-Cossack measures of the Bolsheviks, from mass repressions to the ban on wearing trousers with stripes, can be attributed to the policy of “de-Cossackization”, because, ultimately, they pursued the goal of eliminating the Cossacks as such. From these positions, it is quite possible to characterize collectivization as the final stage of “decossackization.”
In our opinion, the policy of “decossackization” in the North Caucasus region ended in the 1920s. equalization of the rights of Cossacks and nonresidents. The Cossacks as a class disappeared after the transformations of the 1920s, although the Cossacks, as a special ethnosocial group, to a certain extent retained their positions (both economic and social) in the south of Russia by the time the NEP was broken. In particular, despite the “middleization” of the Russian village in the 1920s. (and, despite the equalizing land redistribution of the early 1920s), the Cossacks still remained more prosperous than the majority of the peasants around them. According to the fair remark of N.A. Tokareva, in relation to the conditions of the Don and the North Caucasus, the criteria for distinguishing peasant and kulak farms did not work. If on average in Russia a farm was considered poor if it had no crops or had crops of up to 4 dessiatines, then on the Don in the 1920s. The allotment of an average Cossack family was 12–15 acres. In addition, under the NEP, the Cossacks continued to maintain a strong position in the countryside. The Cossacks did not lose their culture and customs, they were aware of their commonality and difference from the local peasants.
Nevertheless, the deprivation of the Cossacks of a special socio-legal status and class privileges contributed to the normalization of their relations with nonresidents and the merging of the peasant and Cossack populations. In any case, at the end of the 20s. such trends were noticeable. According to members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in the Kuban by the end of the 20s. XX century one could talk about “the weakening, in general, thanks to the policies of the Soviet regime, of class strife between the Cossacks and non-residents.” Even before the deployment of forced collectivization, part of the Cossacks entered the collective farms. Already in 1928, according to a survey of 102 collective farms in the North Caucasus region, in the Kuban district among the members of these collective farms, Cossacks made up 40.1%, in the Terek district - 45.6%, in the Don district - 17.7%. Moreover, the survey materials noted that “analysis of data on various forms [of collective farms] shows that the Cossacks in this case (that is, those who entered the collective farms - auto) is no different from those from other cities.”
Considering the socio-political results of the NEP, during collectivization there was no longer anyone to “uncossack”. We could no longer talk about the liquidation of the Cossacks as a class. But even if we define “decossackization” as a policy of eliminating Cossack communities in general (and not just as a policy of eliminating class remnants), then in this case, the analysis of specific historical materials does not allow us to either identify collectivization and “decossackization” or consider the process of “collective farm construction" was the final crushing blow to Cossack nature.
Of course, there is a lot of material that allows us to assert that, as part of collectivization, anti-Cossack actions were taken, wittingly or unwittingly, aimed at eliminating Cossack communities, involving Cossacks in collective farms and dissolving them into the faceless mass of collective farmers (and those who persisted were subject to eviction outside their native villages or in the North in general). -Caucasian region, or simply physical destruction). “Belonging to the Cossacks, participating in the civil war on the side of the whites could serve as the basis for classifying the middle peasants who rejected collectivization as kulaks,” V.V. rightly points out. Gatashov. It is obvious that during the “collective farm construction” in the North Caucasus region (since 1934 in the Azov-Black Sea and North Caucasus regions), the Cossacks suffered no less seriously than the peasantry, and often locally took the brunt of Stalin’s repressive machine.
Indeed, in the Cossack regions, collectivization, with its series of social conflicts, was strongly reminiscent of the times of the civil war. The fact is that the civil war (if we talk about public consciousness) did not end during the NEP period; the distrustful and often hostile attitude towards the Cossacks on the part of the poor, rural outcasts, nonresidents, and Bolshevik radicals persisted. V.S. In this regard, Sidorov subtly noted that “the military-communist consciousness succumbed to the efforts of the NEP, but only like a compressed spring.” As the chairman of the central Cossack commission S.I. said. Syrtsov at the April plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1925, “the Cossacks perceived the victory of Soviet power as a victory of nonresidents, and nonresidents perceived the change in situation in the sense that the Cossack power was over, that now the power of nonresidents and in many places began to show a tendency put the Cossacks in such a powerless position, in which the non-resident population itself found itself in the recent past.” If during the NEP the authorities, preoccupied with the search for civil peace, tried to fight such sentiments, then during the period of collectivization they became widespread and were actually approved by the country's leadership.
As a result, since the late 1920s. - in the first half of the 1930s. In the North Caucasus region, in connection with the deployment of complete collectivization, virtually anti-Cossack measures followed. Already on January 8, 1930, at the bureau of the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in the draft of a special resolution on collectivization and dispossession, among the “kulaks” subject to administrative eviction from the region, first of all, “Cossack ideologists and authorities”, “former whites” were named officers”, “punishers”, “repatriates”, “former white-green bandits with officer sons in emigration”, etc. During the “divestment” (in 1930 in the North Caucasus region 50 – 60 thousand farms) many Cossacks suffered, since, as already noted, their farms in their economic indicators often exceeded the farms of the peasants. In addition, it was the wealthy Cossacks (as well as wealthy peasants) and the Cossack intelligentsia, including the military, who were distinguished by the greatest socio-political activity and were the most dangerous for “collective farm construction.”
Information reports and indictments of the OGPU almost always emphasize the belonging of certain “counter-revolutionaries” to the Cossack class. Moreover, OGPU documents are often drawn up in such a way that the very fact that the accused or suspect belongs to a Cossack corporation is an accusation or evidence of guilt (that is, the Cossacks were again considered a class of “reactionaries”, the most dangerous for the “cause of socialism”). An even more serious charge for a Cossack who came to the attention of the OGPU was that he was one of the re-emigrants, that is, one of the Cossacks who returned to their homeland from abroad in the 1920s. under the amnesty granted by the Soviet government. Cossack re-emigrants (or, as the compilers of the OGPU reports often wrote, “repatriates”) were almost automatically considered “enemies”, since they once had the misfortune of hiding on the territory of other countries from the advancing Red Army (and then had the even greater misfortune of returning to Motherland, who turned out to be actually a stepmother). The logic here is simple: if he emigrated, he felt guilty, which means he was a real enemy of the Soviet regime, and therefore can again become its enemy. The fact that in this situation the Cossacks, in the figurative expression of A.I. Kozlov, “they hung dead dogs” (that is, they recalled past sins, in the actual absence of illegal acts in the present), the OGPU employees were not at all embarrassed.
The most famous and large-scale of the anti-Cossack actions of the collectivization period was carried out at the end of 1932 - beginning of 1933. deportation of the population of a number of “Chernodoschaty” villages in the North Caucasus region (residents of the South of Russia sometimes called these villages “Chernodoschaty”; this Ukrainized version of the name is found in sources). According to E.N. Oskolkov, who for the first time thoroughly studied this tragic page in the history of the Cossacks and peasantry of the South of Russia, in total more than 61.6 thousand residents of the “Chernodosochny” villages were deported. The villages of Poltavskaya, Medvedovskaya, Urupskaya (Armavir region) suffered the most: out of 47.5 thousand of their inhabitants, 45.6 thousand were evicted. Taking into account the prevalence of Cossacks in the population of these villages, E.N. Oskolkov rightly believed “that the leadership of the party and state sought to give their violent actions in the North Caucasus region an anti-Cossack character.”
It is no coincidence that before the deportation, the leaders of the ruling party appealed to the experience of the civil war and deliberately focused attention on the ideological and political continuity of this action with the policy of “decossackization.” I recall the famous statement of L.M. Kaganovich, who actually led the deportation: “... it is necessary that all Kuban Cossacks know how in 21 the Terek Cossacks were resettled, who resisted Soviet power. So it is now - we cannot let the Kuban lands, the golden lands, not be sown, but littered, so that they are spat on, so that they are not taken into account... we will resettle you.”
It is characteristic that even after the eviction of the inhabitants of the “Chernodosochny” villages, the local population, especially the Cossacks, expected a repetition of the deportations and therefore willingly trusted the numerous rumors that were spreading. So, when in May 1934, on the collective farm “Socialist Agriculture” in the Kushchevsky district of the Azov-Black Sea Territory, there was suddenly talk about the eviction of all Cossacks to the North, the population reacted immediately. OGPU employees reported that “individual collective farmers,” in the wake of rumors of eviction, were preparing “to leave the village, selling property, preparing crackers and other products for the road, even to the point of digging up newly planted potatoes.” This means that not only government officials, but also local residents regarded deportations not only as occasional random actions, but as a return to a systematic policy of “decossackization.”
Following the deportation of the residents of the “Chernodosochny” villages, there followed the actions of the central and regional leadership to resettle new collective farmers there from other regions of the country, often from among the demobilized Red Army soldiers. According to E.N. Oskolkov, by mid-February 1933, approximately 50 thousand peasant households were resettled to the place of the deported Cossacks, including about 20 thousand Red Army peasants with their families. The settlers were mainly residents of other regions of the country. According to data as of November 9, 1933, the majority of the Red Army soldiers (about 60 trains) arrived from the northern, northwestern and northeastern military districts: Leningrad, Moscow, Belorussian, etc. Since Kuban suffered the most during the deportations, the main the flow of settlers was sent here to the villages of Armavir, Kanevsky, Slavyansky, Staro-Minsky, Tikhoretsky, Ust-Labinsky and other regions (in total, sources indicate 17 Kuban districts where the Red Army soldiers were sent). A small part of the settlers settled in the regions of Stavropol (Blagadnensky, Vorontsovo-Alexandrovsky, etc.) and Don (Taganrog, Kamensky, etc.). By April 10, 1934, in the Azov-Black Sea region (mainly in the Kuban) there were about 48.2 thousand Red Army migrants and members of their families, and in the North Caucasus region - only 572 people. The deportation of the inhabitants of the “Chernodosochny” villages (most of them were Cossacks) and the resettlement of Red Army soldiers in their place (mainly from the western and central regions of the USSR) inevitably resurrected in social memory typical scenarios of the civil war, when, for example, A. Frenkel called for the eviction of the Cossacks from Don and populate the Don Army Region with peasants and workers (“labor element”).
Subjected to economic and administrative pressure, political repression, the Cossacks in the south of Russia tried to protect their interests and entered into a fight with the authorities. In May 1929, in the Rodnikovsky farm of the Armavir region of the North Caucasus region, a middle peasant Cossack told the villagers: “this is the moment when the Cossacks should rebel. If the Cossacks rebelled now, they would cover all of Russia in two months, not like in 1918, when no one knew what kind of Soviet power it was.” A Cossack from the Maikop district then confessed to his acquaintances: “I can’t wait for war, then I would have fun. Kill all the communists and save the people from suffering.”
In the North Caucasus region, during collectivization, the OGPU authorities eliminated a number of “counter-revolutionary” “organizations” and “groups”, consisting mainly of Cossacks. Thus, in February 1930, in the Armavir district, OGPU officers arrested 47 people from an organization called “samzak” - “self-defense of the Cossacks” (leader - re-emigrant Malakhov). In July 1930, a secret organization led by the former captain A.S. was liquidated in the Veshensky district. Senin (the prototype of Yesaul Polovtsev from “Virgin Soil Upturned”), which had its own cells in populated areas even in neighboring areas, with a total number of participants of 98 people. In March - April 1933, the OGPU authorities uncovered the organization of the former military sergeant V.V. Semernikov, based in the city of Shakhty and adjacent villages, and prosecuted 115 people.
Ruined and “dispossessed” Cossacks, often deported, but fleeing from exile to their native lands, joined criminal communities (“gangs”), the very process of formation of which is a direct consequence of collectivization (which destabilized the situation in the village). Moreover, according to a number of reports, some Cossacks radically changed the nature of the activities of such communities. If the “gangs” were usually engaged in robbery and robbery, then under the influence of the Cossacks they sometimes turned to terror against representatives of the Soviet government and activists. So, at the end of March 1934, in the area of the village of Ivanovskaya in the Kuban, a “gang” of I.S. arose. Kerman (“26 years old, Cossack of Art. Ivanovskaya, individual farmer, no specific occupation, tried in 1929 for the murder of an activist, escaped from exile”). The activities of this group (consisting of 8 people, “mostly fugitives from exile”) “manifested themselves in systematic robberies, thefts and terrorist attacks against local party activists.” It is curious that, according to a report by OGPU employees, Kerman’s “gang” “in some cases, when robbing collective farmers, used asphyxiants made homemade from sulfur” (apparently, one of its members was related to chemistry).
After the resettlement of demobilized Red Army soldiers to the “Chernodosochnye” villages, a confrontation began between them and the local Cossacks (reminiscent of the times of the Civil War), often provoked by the actions of the authorities and the settlers themselves. The authorities showed increased concern for the Red Army soldiers (their social support in the Cossack villages) and opposed their mixing with the local population, ordering the creation of separate collective farms and brigades from them and warning that “the organization of mixed brigades should in no case be allowed.” Some settlers allowed themselves openly hostile statements: “We will ensure that there will be no Cossack spirit here. All Cossacks will be expelled from here. First individual farmers, and then collective farmers.” Naturally, local residents perceived the Red Army soldiers as invaders who came with the goal of finally surviving (destroying, evicting) the surviving Cossacks.
There is a lot of evidence of threats to the Red Army soldiers from local Cossacks, of attempts to rob their houses and steal property, which sometimes ended in injury or even murder of Red Army soldiers and members of their families. Evidence was recorded of deliberate murders (or attempted murders) and beatings of Red Army soldiers, and these excesses were sometimes accompanied by shouts of “beat the Katsaps, why did they come here in large numbers.” In a number of districts and villages of the Kuban (Korenovsky, Staro-Minskaya, etc.), vigilant OGPU officers identified and eliminated “counter-revolutionary groups” that set as their “task the disintegration and removal of Red Army settlers from the village” and for this purpose “systematically processed the Red Army soldiers, inducing them to flee." In particular, at the beginning of 1934, in the village of Novo-Myshastovskaya, Krasnodar region, Azov-Black Sea Territory, a group of 13 individual Cossacks (“former kulaks, former White Guards”), led by the “former kulak” Klinov, was liquidated. The group's goal was the moral decay of the settlers and their subsequent removal from the village. In addition, as OGPU agents claimed, Klinovoy created a terrorist group and supplied it with weapons (sawed-off shotguns). The group was supposed to beat and kill displaced activists, “so that they would remember Kuban for a long time.”
Representatives of the lower Soviet apparatus and employees of various organizations in the Kuban (who also often came from among the Cossacks) were not free from open hostility towards unwanted settlers. They allowed themselves rude attacks and statements against the settlers (even bans on collecting water from the village wells). Moreover, the local police and prosecutor's office looked at these offenses with indifference, which allows us to speak of their solidarity with those who opposed the settlers.
The above materials indicate that in relation to the Cossacks in the south of Russia, collectivization actually resurrected social stereotypes and scenarios from the times of the civil war. All this gives researchers grounds to interpret the process of “collective farm construction” as the final stage of “decossackization,” as “hidden decossackization.”
However, despite these (quite numerous) examples, collectivization, in our opinion, cannot be characterized as the time of completion of “decossackization.” Moreover, in this case it is not so important what content we assign to the term “decossackization.” Are we talking about decossackization as the elimination of class remnants, or as the destruction of a special social community of the Cossacks, or as the elimination of the socio-ethnographic characteristics of the Cossacks (the elimination of the Cossacks as a subethnic group).
First of all, it should be noted that there is not a single document where one of the objectives of the collectivization policy is the elimination of the Cossacks as a social group or subethnic group. But the resolution of the Bureau of the North Caucasus Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) “On work among the Cossack population of the North Caucasus” dated April 11, 1930 is widely known, which stated that “the mood among some local workers of a biased, distrustful attitude towards the Cossack only is un-Bolshevik and most harmful.” because part of the Cossacks was deceived by the generals and kulaks, participating in the white armies.” Here it was proposed to strengthen the representation of Cossacks in the collective farm leadership in the Cossack districts of the region, bringing their share to at least 50%. Of course, these were only words (often, indeed, at odds with deeds), and this document can be considered a simple declaration. However, the implementation of this resolution nevertheless contributed to the normalization of the situation in the Cossack regions and led to a sharp increase in the number of Cossacks in local councils.
The most important thing is that today we have archival documents (which also talked about the Cossacks), adopted by the party leadership of the North Caucasus region not for publication, but, as they say, “for a narrow circle of people” and were in the nature of strict instructions. We are talking, in particular, about an instructional letter signed by the first secretary of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the North Caucasus Territory B.P. Sheboldaev, sent to individual district committees on January 18, 1931. The letter ordered the eviction of 9 thousand kulak households “in order to cleanse the coastal, floodplain and forest mountain strip of the Kuban and Black Sea region.” Moreover, Sheboldaev warned specific executors that “it is necessary to observe a strict class approach when selecting households to be evicted, and in particular, a careful attitude towards the middle peasant Cossack, a former ordinary participant in the white movement,” is necessary. The letter further noted that “district party organizations should pay special attention to attracting the masses of Cossack collective farmers, poor and middle peasants to the discussion of the lists [of those evicted].”
Within the framework of the problem we have raised, one of the paragraphs of the letter deserves special attention, which emphasizes: “with special care it is necessary to achieve complete cleansing of these areas from the kulak-White Guard element from the so-called non-resident population, which is especially important in connection with the presence of attempts on the part of class-hostile elements to interpret the party slogan about the liquidation of the kulaks as “liquidation of the Cossacks,” and the measures to evict the kulaks as a measure of decossackization.” As we see, not only Cossacks, but also non-residents had to be evicted if they posed a danger to collective farms and the Soviet government.
It is important that the archival file contains both a draft letter with amendments made personally by Sheboldaev, and its final version. So, Sheboldaev added to the paragraph quoted above the words “and measures to evict the kulaks, as a measure of decossackization.” Apparently, the secretary of the regional committee of the ruling party had information about the population’s interpretation of “dekulakization” as persecution of the Cossacks and wanted to get the district committee secretaries and OGPU employees to eliminate any misunderstandings and make it clear to the population that they were not talking about decossackization.
Since this letter is classified as “strictly secret” and was intended “for our own people,” we can say with confidence that its contents are not a declaration, but the real intentions of government officials. This instructional letter clearly proves that the regional authorities of the North Caucasus region were guided in their policy towards the Cossacks not by class, but by class principles. The regional leadership did not pursue a policy of “de-Cossackization” and did not aim to liquidate Cossack communities (with the exception of the deportation of residents of the “Chernodosochny villages”; however, this action was carried out with the support and pressure of Moscow and remained isolated). But, nevertheless, all “class-hostile”, “counter-revolutionary-minded” Cossacks who posed a danger to the authorities were subjected to repression (along with the same categories of peasant and non-resident population, as is clearly stated in the letter).
Another thing is that among the Cossacks, compared to non-residents, there were more “well-to-do” and “counter-revolutionaries”, that historically the Cossacks were regarded by the Bolsheviks as opponents of Soviet power (and therefore the fact that the “kulaks” belonged to the Cossacks or repatriated Cossacks in the eyes of the Stalinist regime aggravated their guilt) . And on the ground, specific executors who remembered the times of the Civil War often saw potential counter-revolutionaries in the Cossacks and acted accordingly towards them. But, unlike during the Civil War, during the period of collectivization such anti-Cossack actions, although encouraged by the authorities, were still not the implementation of a clear, well-thought-out policy of genocide of the Cossacks.
Resistance to the collectivization policy was also not divided into “peasant” or “Cossack” in most cases. Both Cossacks and peasants suffered equally from collectivization and jointly opposed the forced creation of collective farms, grain procurements, and “dekulakization.” A striking example in this case is the activity of the “Union of Grain Growers,” which arose on the basis of the publishing house of the magazine “The Path of the North Caucasian Grain Grower” and was headed, according to the OGPU, by the head of the publishing house Kravchenko, “an active participant in the civil war on the side of the Soviet government.” The organization had its own charter, program and issued a manifesto, which dealt with protecting the interests of grain growers. Moreover, in the manifesto the “Union of Grain Growers” was called “a peasant-Cossack political party to protect the interests of the working peasantry, Cossacks and workers.” The anti-Cossack actions of the government in the early 1930s, aimed at splitting the peasant-Cossack camp of opponents of collectivization, isolating the Cossacks, and increasing class hatred, were not successful. According to the fair remark of E.N. Oskolkov, the Stalinist regime failed to “galvanize class discord.” The failure of such attempts can only be explained by the fact that during the years of NEP, the Cossacks really ceased to exist as a class.
At the same time, taking into account new data, it seems possible to talk about the unity of the Cossacks during the period of collectivization in response to the actions of the authorities. Mentioned by A.V. Baranov reported on clashes between Cossacks and nonresidents in the late 1920s. can be interpreted not only as a conflict between the poor and rural outcasts and the wealthy strata of the village, but also as evidence of the revival of Cossack “nationalism”.
In the 1930s. the processes of ethnocultural consolidation of the Cossacks were spurred by inadequate political and administrative pressure from the authorities. The most noticeable example in this case is the position of the Kuban Cossacks (including those who were members of collective farms) and indigenous non-residents, which they took in relation to the settlers who arrived to replace the evicted residents of the “Chernodosochny” villages and the repressed “kulaks”. This topic deserves a separate study, but already now, based on the reports of the OGPU, we can state the fact that the Kuban Cossacks clearly separated themselves from the alien “Muscovites”, “Katsaps”. The Cossacks of the village of Novo-Derevyankovskaya directly declared to the Red Army soldiers: “there is no place for lapotniks here, we were and are Cossacks"(emphasis added - auto) (considering that the Red Army soldiers in the Kuban were called “bast workers,” the political department of the Leningrad MTS did them a real disservice by purchasing “several thousand bast shoes” for them!). So collectivization to some extent revived and strengthened the consolidation processes in the local communities of the Don, Kuban, and Terek Cossacks, which had been somewhat weakened during the years of NEP. True, in these times the Cossacks did not act as an estate; they positioned themselves as a special community (“people”) as part of the rural population, and later as part of the collective farm peasantry (“collective farm Cossacks”).
Finally, we note the well-known fact of a change in state policy towards the Cossacks actually since the mid-1930s. (campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks”). Despite the fact that at this time the Cossacks often aroused hostility among orthodox Bolsheviks or radically minded non-residents (this fact was sadly admitted by the secretary of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Azov-Black Sea Territory B.P. Sheboldaev in November 1935 in his article “ Cossacks on collective farms"), the Stalinist regime decided to establish allied relations with the Cossacks.
In the second half of the 1930s. Cossacks received the right to wear their uniform (both on and off duty - as everyday clothing), serve in the Red Army, develop and promote their culture. The training system for young Cossacks was recreated (of course, in a modernized form, imbued with socialist ideology), during which they received not only military skills, but also became acquainted with the culture and traditions of their subethnic group. These were the circles of “Voroshilov riflemen” (common to all youth of the USSR) and “Voroshilov cavalrymen” (especially common in the Cossack regions and popular among the Cossacks). So, in the Cossack collective farm “Donskoy Skakun” of the Tarasovsky district of the Rostov region in the early 1940s. There were 90 collective farmers who had the badge of a “Voroshilov cavalryman,” and another 50 people (20 collective farmers and 30 schoolchildren) learned horse riding and cutting vines in preparation for passing the standards. In the collective farm “Red Fighter” of the Primorsko-Akhtarsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, by August 1940 there were 68 “Voroshilov horsemen”.
The authorities considered it their task to promote the promotion of Cossack culture and Cossack folklore. Thus, at the bureau of the Rostov Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in December 1939, the issue “On the trip of the Rostov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Don Cossacks to Western Ukraine” was considered. The regional committee stated that the ensemble successfully fulfilled its cultural and educational mission, giving 36 concerts in a month (from November 20 to December 20) and providing great assistance in the development of Red Army amateur performances. It was decided to reward members of the ensemble (for which the bureau decided to ask the Department of Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR to allocate 30 thousand rubles), provide a permanent stage area and create conditions for creative activity, organize systematic training for the choir and ballet, take measures to collect and use repertoire of Cossack folklore. In addition, it was decided to include a political instructor in the ensemble (a tribute to the era!).
Essentially, the campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks” can be characterized as a set of measures to “provide support” to part of the population, especially since in March 1936, the Red Army cavalry inspector S.M. Budyonny in directed I.V. Stalin and K.E. Voroshilov’s memorandum on the mood of the Soviet Cossacks and the need to restore their traditions suggested that “the entire population of the Azov-Black Sea and North Caucasus territories, including the former Stavropol region, with the exception, of course, of the mountain peoples, should be considered Cossacks,” and also “in connection with desire, especially among young people, to wear Cossack uniforms, to grant the right to wear them to the entire population of these regions...”
Taking into account the campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks,” one cannot agree with the statements of those authors who interpret collectivization as the final stage of “decossackization.” It turns out that “decossackization” in this case implies the liquidation of the Cossacks as a special social community or even as a subethnic group (or as a number of characteristics of the Cossacks as a subethnic group). Then a natural question arises: if collectivization completed the process of “decossackization,” for whom was the campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks” conceived and carried out?! Obviously, such an interpretation is hasty and is refuted by specific historical materials. In the end, the number of Cossacks was quite high and by the end of the 1930s. Thus, according to the 1937 census, out of 2.7 million inhabitants, more than 1 million Cossacks “supposedly” lived in the Krasnodar Territory, which amounted to 38.6% of the total number of residents of the region and 78.3% of the number of Kuban Cossacks in 1915 (then there were more than 1.3 million).
Finally, it is difficult to talk about “finishing off” the Cossacks during collectivization or that “by the mid-30s. the most active part of the Cossacks, which consistently expressed the spiritual and material interests of this specific subethnic group, was either repressed or neutralized.” Undoubtedly, a significant part of the Cossacks - the most active and consistent opponents of Soviet power and the Stalinist regime - were subjected to repression in the 1930s. However, no one finally finished off the Cossacks. Firstly, the most active part of the Cossacks expressed the interests of this group (subethnos) not only in confrontation with the Soviet regime, but also in alliance with it. Collectivization brought forward many Cossacks - chairmen of Cossack collective farms, who achieved excellent results in economic activity. Secondly, even if we talk about opposition-minded Cossacks, they were not completely destroyed during collectivization.
This circumstance was clearly confirmed during the Great Patriotic War, when many Cossacks chose a new form of resistance to Soviet power and the Stalinist regime, a form of collaboration - cooperation with the Nazis. In the total mass of collaborators (according to various sources, from 800 thousand to 1 million), Cossacks made up a significant part - 94.5 thousand.
It can be said with good reason that for a significant part of the peasants and Cossack collaborators, the basis for cooperation with the Nazis was a sharp rejection of collectivization (and collective farms), and a desire to reckon with the authorities for violence and bullying. For example, “policemen” of villages and villages in the territory of the Rostov region temporarily occupied by the Nazis in their autobiographies (collected by the Germans in order to accumulate information about their accomplices) often indicated that before collectivization they ran their own households, and then did not want to join a collective farm and left the village. With the outbreak of the war, many of them were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, but often went over to the enemy’s side. As one of the policemen wrote in his autobiography: “in 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army, but at the first opportunity he surrendered,” and then returned to his native village and became “an auxiliary police officer.”
Moreover, which is typical, most of the Nazi collaborators in the territories of the South of Russia called themselves Cossacks or “Russian Cossacks” (in particular, this was the case in the northern regions of the Don). In fact, however, many of these people did not belong to the Cossacks and misled the Germans in order to achieve greater privileges in the service (since the Cossacks enjoyed the special favor of the Nazis). American journalist Alexander Werth, who was in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, wrote that in the Kuban the Nazis managed to attract up to 20 thousand Cossacks to their side in the military and police units, many of whom were actually “pseudo-Cossacks” and only “ pretended to be Cossacks." According to S.I. Drobyazko, approximately half of the personnel of the Cossack detachments who fought on the side of the Germans by April 1943 (that is, approximately 12 - 13 thousand people out of a total of 25 thousand) “... did not belong to either the former Cossack class or Cossack units the Red Army and called themselves Cossacks only in order to somehow escape from the prisoner of war camps and thereby save their lives.” In this case, we are again faced with the processes (or rather, policies) of “extermination”, only carried out not by the Soviet government, but by the Germans.
So, in our opinion, it is unlawful to use the term “decossackization” (no matter how it is understood) in relation to the period of collectivization, to characterize this policy as the final stage of “decossackization.” If we understand “decossackization” as the elimination of class remnants, then it is obvious that by the time collectivization began, the Cossacks as a class no longer existed. If we interpret “decossackization” in terms of the liquidation of the Cossacks as a special community or subethnic group, then a number of insoluble questions arise here, generated by the discrepancy between theoretical constructs and specific historical materials. Analysis of such materials indicates that a feature of the implementation of collectivization was its association with anti-Cossack actions. One can agree with researchers who believe that the process of “collective farm construction” in the South of Russia was mediated by anti-Cossack actionism. But talking about decossackization as a state policy in the 1930s seems unfounded, because there are no specific indications in this regard in the sources. Equally unfounded are the allegations about “hidden decossackization” during collectivization, for which individual anti-Cossack actions are passed off, relapses of the previous repressive policy towards the Cossacks as a class.
Historically, it would be legitimate to say that a feature of the implementation of collectivization on the Don was the presence of anti-Cossack actionism, as a result of extrapolation of relations during the Civil War to the new historical situation of the socialist transformation of agriculture. At the same time, during the period of collectivization, there was a consolidation of the Cossacks in the face of nonresidents, including new settlers, which contributed to strengthening the position of the Cossacks as a cultural and ethnic community, even under pressure from the authorities. It is also impossible to ignore the facts of cooperation of a certain part of the Cossacks (the poor and middle peasants, who were regarded by the Stalinist regime as allies) with the Soviet regime. And, most importantly, we must keep in mind that the Stalinist regime actually restored the special status of the Cossacks in the second half of the 1930s. and, in fact, carried out the “extermination” of part of the population.
The political situation of the spring-summer of 1917 in Russia with the light hand of V.I. Lenin was commonly characterized as the “dual power” of the Provisional Government and the Soviets. In the Kuban region, as well as in the entire Cossack Southeast, there was a fundamentally different balance of forces, which General A.I. Denikin called it “three powers” in his memoirs. Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. The struggle of General Kornilov (August 1917 - April 1918). T. 2. book. 2. - Moscow, 2005. - P. 518. In addition to those mentioned, there was another really serious force present in the Kuban - the Cossack class authorities.
The news of the overthrow of the autocracy did not immediately lead to the removal of the old authorities in the Kuban and Black Sea regions. Head of the Kuban Region Ataman of the Kuban Cossack Army, General M.P. Babych declared subordination to the Provisional Government and continued to “lead” the region. Brovkin V.N. Russia in the civil war: power and social forces / V.N. Brovkin // Questions of history. - 1994. - No. 5. - P.29-30 In the departments and villages of Kuban, ataman rule and Cossack self-government were preserved. At the same time, new government bodies began to form in the cities of the region and province: civil committees, public safety committees and Soviets.
On March 2, 1917, from representatives of the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, the executive committee (executive committee) of the first Yekaterinodar Council of Workers' Deputies in the North Caucasus was elected. Soon the executive committee of the Council also included Cossacks and soldiers, and it began to be called the Council of Workers, Soldiers and Cossack Deputies. Since the Provisional Government transferred all local powers to civil committees, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, in addition to the Soviets, where they dominated, actively participated in their work. Thus, in Ekaterinodar the city council was headed by the Menshevik D.F. Sverchkov, the chairman of the civil committee was the Socialist Revolutionary Turutin, in Novorossiysk the Council was headed by the Menshevik B.O. Prokhorov, a similar picture was observed in other large settlements of Kuban and the Black Sea region. Gordeev A.A. History of the Cossacks. - Moscow, 1993. - P. 227. But the cadets had the predominant influence in the civil committees. It was the representatives of the “people's freedom party,” as the constitutional democrats called themselves, that the Provisional Government sent to the localities as its commissars. In this role, on March 16, 1917, Cossack deputy of the IV State Duma, cadet K.L., arrived in Yekaterinodar. Bardizh, who was immediately elected chairman of the temporary Kuban regional executive committee. Cadet N.N. was appointed Commissioner of the Provisional Government in the Black Sea Province. Nikolaev. On March 26, control in both territories officially passed to the commissioners of the Provisional Government, and by Bardizh’s decree, the last Kuban ataman Babych was dismissed “due to illness, with a uniform and a pension.” Civil War: Materials on the history of the Red Army. - Moscow, 1923-1924. - P. 460
The first major disagreements between the Cossacks and non-residents appeared at the regional congress of authorized settlements of the Kuban region, held in Yekaterinodar from April 9 to April 18, 1918. More than a thousand people arrived there: representatives of villages, villages and hamlets, auls, as well as delegates from various parties (mainly the Socialist Revolutionaries) and public organizations. The congress confirmed the powers of civil committees as bodies of the new government, but did not extend their functions to the Cossack population, for whom ataman rule was maintained.
Thus, the existence of two parallel regional management structures was established. Instead of the temporary Kuban Executive Committee, the congress elected a regional council headed by an executive committee, which included two Cossacks and non-residents from each of the seven departments of the region and four highlanders. However, the congress was unable to reach agreement on issues of managing the region, granting the non-military population equal rights with the Cossacks, and settling land disputes. Having confirmed the rights of the Cossacks to shared lands and military property, the congress postponed making a final decision until the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Brovkin V.N. Russia in the civil war: power and social forces / V.N. Brovkin // Questions of history. - 1994. - No. 5. - P.29-30.
In Kuban, the all-Russian stalemate was repeated: “only the Constituent Assembly has the authority to decide the question of land, its convening is possible only after the end of the war, war to a victorious end.” But a quick end to the war, much less a victorious one, was not expected. In this situation, from April 17 to April 22, a congress of representatives of the villages of the Kuban region was held in Yekaterinodar. On the very first day, its delegates proclaimed the creation of a military Rada and a provisional military government. It included Cossacks - members of the Kuban Regional Executive Committee and those who were elected by the Rada itself. N.S. became the Chairman of the Rada. Ryabovol, and the government was headed by Colonel A.P. Filimonov. Some of the Rada deputies from among the wealthy Black Sea Cossacks, to whom Ryabovol belonged, were supporters of the “independent” path of development of Kuban as part of “Nenka Ukraine”. Representatives of the land-poor linear Cossacks have traditionally gravitated towards Russia. Among them was the chairman of the first Kuban government A.P. Filimonov, future military chieftain. Throughout the entire period of the existence of the Rada, there was a political struggle between these groups, which did not subside even in exile. Venkov A.V. Anti-Bolshevik movement in the south of Russia at the initial stage of the civil war / A.V. Venkov. - Rostov-on-Don, 1995. - P. 314.
The contradiction between the Cossacks and non-residents grew, which appeared in the spring at the regional congress of peasants and Cossack representatives, and intensified by the summer. Events in Kuban developed ahead of the all-Russian ones, and according to a different scenario: on July 2, members of the Kuban military government left the meeting of the regional executive committee, two days later the military Rada declared the Kuban Regional Council dissolved, and on July 9, Commissioner of the Provisional Government Bardizh transferred to it full power in the region. The Rada immediately began to liquidate the local Soviets. Polikarpov V.D. The initial stage of the civil war / V.D. Polikarpov. - Moscow, 1980. - P. 390. In the verdicts of the villages, their executive committees were recognized as “undesirable” and were dissolved.
Thus, if in the center of the country on July 4 the period of dual power ended with the transfer of power into the hands of the Provisional Government, then in the Kuban the Cossack administration began to play the first fiddle. Neither the “tops” nor the “bottoms” of the Kuban Cossacks, both at the front and in the rear, supported the August speech of General JI.G. Kornilov. The first understood that his victory could lead to the loss of the democratic institutions acquired by the army after the February Revolution (elected military chieftain, revived Rada, own Cossack government). The threat of restoration of the previous system of military command and control frightened the emerging Cossack political elite no less than the specter of Bolshevism. The Kuban people had a saying: “We are not Bolsheviks and not cadets, we are neutral Cossacks.” Galin V.V. Intervention and civil war. - Moscow, 2004. - P. 358 In Kuban, “cadets, after they supported Korinlov, began to call all “counter-revolutionaries.” According to the leader of constitutional democrats P.N. Miliukov, the very word “cadet” became popular among the people long before the Council of People’s Deputies declared the cadet party a party of “enemies of the people.”
After the defeat of Kornilov's speech, the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks also lost their positions in the political arena to the Bolsheviks. In the newly elected regional Soviet in September, the Bolsheviks held two-thirds of the votes, and in its executive committee the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries received only one seat each. Petrograd Bolshevik I.I. became the chairman of the Kuban Regional Executive Committee. Yankovsky, the Ekaterinodar Council elected the Cossack Bolshevik Ya.V. as its chairman. Poluyana from the village of Elizavetinskaya. Yanchevsky N.L. Civil struggle in the North Caucasus. T.1. / N.L. Yanchevsky. - Rostov-on-Don, 1927. The Bolsheviks managed to get half the seats in the Armavir Soviet, strengthen their positions in the Tuapse, Maikop, Novorossiysk and a number of other Soviets. The Second Regional Rada, which met from September 24 to October 14, that is, even before the armed uprising in Petrograd, adopted the first constitution of the Kuban “Temporary Basic Provisions on the Supreme Bodies of Power in the Kuban Territory” on October 7. Ibid. On its basis, management in the region was transferred to the regional Rada, which was to be elected by the “eligible” population: Cossacks, highlanders and indigenous peasants. At the same time, non-residents who had less than three years of residence and workers were deprived of the right to vote. The “Regulations” provided that the regional Rada would form a legislative Rada from among its members and elect a military chieftain.
Executive power was exercised by the regional government consisting of a chairman and ten members. Three seats were allocated to representatives of the non-Cossack population, including one to a representative of the highlanders. Perekhov Ya.A. Power and the Cossacks: the search for agreement (1920-1926)/Ya.A. Perekhov. - Rostov-on-Don, 1997. - P. 220 Thus, not only the military class, but also the rest of the population of the region fell under the jurisdiction of the Kuban regional legislation. At the same time, non-residents, along with workers, were infringed on their voting rights and were actually not allowed into the legislative and executive bodies. Naturally, in the region where the Cossacks constituted a minority of the population, the adoption of such a constitution was perceived as an act of coup d'etat.
Socialist parties sounded the alarm about the creation of an “aristocratic republic” in Kuban. As in July, Kuban legislators anticipated the development of events in Petrograd, preparing a Cossack republic as an alternative to the not yet proclaimed state of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its “intra-class” democracy was in no way combined with authoritarianism in relation to the rest of the population of the region. And this became especially obvious after receiving news from Petrograd about the establishment of workers' and peasants' Soviet power.
The news of the fall of the Provisional Government led to the introduction of martial law in the region, which, along with the measures taken the day before, allowed the Kuban government to keep the situation under control. November 1, 1917, under the chairmanship of N.S. Ryabovol opened the first session of the Kuban Legislative Rada. The military government was replaced by the regional government, its chairman instead of the military ataman elected in October A.P. Filimonov became one of the leaders of the Black Sea residents L.L. Bych, which took place on the same days, rejected the first regional congress of nonresidents. . Novikova L.G. Civil war in Russia / L.G. Novikova // Domestic history. 2005. No. 6. - P. 142 - 158.
The proposal of the Kuban Bolsheviks to recognize the power of the Council of People's Commissars and abolish martial law, but at the same time demonstrated to Cossack politicians that continuing to ignore the interests of the nonresident population means repeating the Russian experience. In the face of the threat of Bolshevisation of the region, the Rada and the government made a forced compromise. The consequence of this was the unification of the Kuban Rada in December with a smaller part of the split second regional congress of nonresident peasants. The second regional congress of representatives of Cossacks, non-residents and mountaineers, gathered in the Winter Theater, declared non-recognition of the power of the Council of People's Commissars. A united legislative Rada was immediately elected with equal representation (45 people each) of Cossacks and nonresidents, as well as a coalition government (5 people each). 8 representatives and 1. Kutsenko I.Ya. were elected from the mountain population respectively. Pages of history. Civil war in Kuban. Problems of methodology I.Ya. Kutsenko. - Krasnodar, 1991. - P. 228. At the same time, the Rada reduced the electoral qualification for residence of non-residents to two years and decided that one of the ataman’s assistants should be appointed from among them. In the parity government L.L. Bych, all five ministerial portfolios that went to non-residents were given to socialists - 4 Socialist Revolutionaries and a Menshevik. In addition, in the recent past, both Bych himself and the Minister of Agriculture D.E. Skobtsov took part in the socialist movement. Ibid.
Thus, the new Kuban coalition government has moved significantly to the left. But this political move was very late, and given the sad fate of the Provisional Government, it was completely doomed to failure. Delegates of the second regional congress of nonresident and working Cossacks demanded the transfer of all power to the hands of the Soviets. The congress decided to recognize the Council of People's Commissars, while simultaneously adopting the resolution “On the organization of power in the Kuban” and canceling all decisions of the Rada and the government. Meanwhile, in the Black Sea province, events developed according to the all-Russian scenario.
The first settlement on its territory in which Soviet power won was the city of Tuapse. On November 3, power peacefully passed to the Tuapse Military Revolutionary Committee (Military Revolutionary Committee). On November 23, the Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the Black Sea Province met in Novorossiysk. A week later, power in the province passed to the Central Executive Committee (Central Executive Committee) of the proclaimed Black Sea Soviet Republic. Another outpost of the revolution in the region were units of the 39th Infantry Division, which arrived in Kuban in an organized manner from the Caucasian Front and were stationed along the Armavir-Kavkazskaya-Tikhoretskaya railway line. Staffed with non-residents drafted from the Kuban region, the division played the role of a “Trojan horse” in the rear of the Kuban Rada. Kozlov A.I. From revolutionary committees to Soviets in Kuban / A.I. Kozlov. - Maykop, 1989. - P. 224. It was in Armavir - the first of the cities of Kuban - that Soviet power was established on January 2, 1918. Ermolin A.P. Revolution and the Cossacks (1917-1920). - Moscow, 1982. - P. 180. A month and a half later, the first Congress of Soviets of the Kuban Region took place here, chaired by the Bolshevik Ya.V. Poluyana.
Only the capital of Kuban remained in the hands of the regional government. The decision to capture Yekaterinodar was made at a meeting of representatives of the revolutionary committees and Soviets of the Kuban on January 17, 1918 in the village of Krymskaya. Yanchevsky N. Civil war in the North Caucasus. - Rostovn/D, 1927; The Kuban Regional Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), elected there, headed by Poluyan, sent a telegram to the regional government with a proposal to surrender the city without a fight. Warning that if there is “shedding of blood, the blame is on you,” the Military Revolutionary Committee sent envoys to Yekaterinodar. However, the ataman and the Rada did not respond to the proposal of the revolutionary committee, and the envoys died. The Red Guards of the Black Sea province were more determined, making two armed attempts to “export the revolution” to Kuban.
On January 22, the detachments of the chairman of the Novorossiysk Revolutionary Committee, cadet A.A. Yakovlev's side of Enem began the first assault on the capital of Kuban. Volunteer officers of military sergeant major P.A. Galaev and captain V.L. Pokrovsky was defeated by the scattered forces of the Reds. In this battle, Commander Yakovlev himself and his deputy S.N. died. Perov. On January 24, at Georgie-Afipskaya, the second expedition of the Novorossiysk Red Guards (under the command of ensign, Socialist Revolutionary I.A. Seradze) was defeated. Kuban's military sergeant-major Galaev died in this clash. The glory of the winner of the “Bolshevik gangs” went to Pokrovsky alone, who was immediately promoted to colonel by the Rada and appointed commander of the troops of the Kuban region. The creation of volunteer officer detachments was a necessary measure, since the ataman and the government could not rely on the front-line Cossack units returning to Kuban. Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. The struggle of General Kornilov (August 1917 - April 1918). T. 2. book. 2. - Moscow, 2005. - P. 514. Moreover, the head of the regional government L.L. Bych was forced to admit that the front-line soldiers “made their contribution, and a big one, in the sense of accelerating the process of Bolshevisation.” He was echoed by General M.V. Alekseev, who wrote that “the Kuban Cossacks have become morally corrupt.” Indeed, what was returning from the front at the end of 1917 was not the “daring Cossacks” of the type of jingoistic propaganda of 1914, but warrior-workers tired of an unsuccessful war and yearning for the land.
After eight months of fruitless promises from the Provisional Government, they saw in the first decrees of the Bolsheviks what they had been waiting for a long time: peace and land. In the “German” trenches, the attitude of the Cossacks towards non-resident peasants, who pulled together with them the burden of hateful military service, also changed. The war changed the psychology and behavior of the front-line Cossacks. These “children of war” were radically different from the “fathers” who remained in the rear - the villagers. On March 14, 1918, Red troops under the command of former centurion I.L. Sorokin was busy with Ekaterinodar. The expelled Rada and the government under the protection of V.L.’s detachment. Pokrovsky sought a meeting with the Volunteer Army of General L.G. Kornilov. Denikin A.I. The campaign and death of General Kornilov. Budberg A. Diary 1918-1919. - Moscow, 1990. - P. 108.
As in August 1917, Kuban politicians again had to choose between two dictatorships - Red and White. This time, the real threat of Bolshevism pushed the Rada to the other extreme - into the camp of the White movement. On February 23, 1918, the Volunteer Army, having left Rostov-on-Don, entered the Kuban, trying to gain mass support here to fight the Bolsheviks. However, these hopes were not destined to come true. “The Kuban people waited,” General A.I. later recalled. Denikin. The villages, with rare exceptions, did not provide significant reinforcements. Fighting off the advancing enemy, continuously maneuvering and moving up to 60 miles a day, the army fought its way towards Yekaterinodar. Ibid.
The key day in the history of the campaign was March 28, when Kornilov’s “volunteers” and Pokrovsky’s detachment united near the village of Novo-Dmitrievskaya. The Kuban campaign was called "Ice". Bogaevsky A.P. 1918 // White Case: Ice March. - Moscow, 1993. P. 27. On April 9, the battles for Ekaterinodar began. The combined forces of the Volunteer Army numbered, according to various estimates, from 6 to 9 thousand fighters. They were opposed by 20 thousand Red Guards under the overall command of the former cornet A.I. Avtonomova and almost the entire working population of the city. During the fighting, the volunteers lost about a thousand people, and the defenders lost twice as many. It seemed that the victory of the volunteers was close, but neither the capture of the village of Pashkovskaya, nor even the breakthrough to Sennaya Square brought them the expected success.
The outcome of the battle was predetermined on the morning of April 13, when L.G. was killed by a shell fragment. Kornilov. A.I., who took command Denikin, taking advantage of the miscalculation of the leadership of the Red Army of the North Caucasus, who did not organize the pursuit of the Volunteer Army, took the remnants of his units to the Salsky steppes, where he began to prepare for a new campaign against the Kuban. The defeat of the volunteers in the First Kuban Campaign was not an accident. Nadezhdam L.G. Kornilov’s proposal to create a “national militia” similar to the militia of 1612 was not destined to come true. According to the bitter admission of A.I. Denikin, “the army in its very embryo concealed a deep organic flaw, acquiring a class character. There is no need that its leaders came from the people, that the officers for the most part were democratic... The stamp of class selection lay firmly on the army and gave ill-wishers a reason to arouse distrust and fear against it among the masses of the people...” Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. The struggle of General Kornilov. In 3 books. T. 2. Book. 2. - Moscow, 2005. - P. 602. Indeed, the creators and leaders of the Volunteer Army, Alekseev, Kornilov and Denikin, although they were tsarist generals, literally “came from the people.” Thus, Adjutant General Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseev was the son of an officer who had been promoted from among the sergeant majors and a participant in the Sevastopol defense. Infantry General Lavr Georgievich Kornilov was born into the family of a retired cornet of the Siberian Cossack army. . Bordyugov G.A. White matter: ideology, foundations of regimes of power. Historiographical essays. - Moscow, 1998. - P. 260 And, finally, Lieutenant General of the General Staff Anton Ivanovich Denikin is the son of a simple soldier who rose to the rank of major of the border guard. “Blue” noble blood did not flow in their veins, they did not own estates and fortunes. They were loyal soldiers of the Russia that they were deprived of in 1917. At the same time, Russia became acquainted with the deceptive fruits of Bolshevik slogans.
Finally convened in January 1918, the Constituent Assembly “owner of the Russian land” was immediately dispersed by the Bolsheviks, the long-awaited peace turned into a civil war, the land and freedom promised to the peasants - by the poor peasants’ committees and surplus appropriations. In the Kuban, inter-class antagonism was added to class antagonism: representatives of the poorest Cossacks and non-resident peasantry who came to power demanded an equal redistribution of land in favor of the majority of the population. Under these conditions, the Volunteer Army under the command of General A.I. Denikina took part in the Second Kuban Campaign. Units of the Red Army of the North Caucasus fought stubborn battles, managing to stop the enemy in the area from Korenovskaya to Vyselki at the end of July - beginning of August 1918. The Central Executive Committee of the North Caucasus Republic prematurely regarded this success as a complete defeat of the Whites. Dzidzoev V.D. White and red terror in the North Caucasus in 1917-1918 - Vladikavkaz, 2000. -P. 172
Meanwhile, the volunteers once again managed to take Korenovskaya and launch an attack on Yekaterinodar. Inconsistency of actions and disagreements between the Soviet, party and military leadership led to the fact that no single decision was made on the defense of Yekaterinodar. Although after the start of the fighting on August 14, the village of Pashkovskaya changed hands several times, at the end of August 16, the last Red detachments left Yekaterinodar, since their main forces had already retreated beyond the Kuban. At two o'clock in the morning on August 17, the Kornilovsky regiment of the Volunteer Army entered the city. Without using their numerical superiority and defensive advantages at such a natural line as the Kuban River, the Red troops retreated to Armavir and further to Nevinnomyssk and Pyatigorsk. Ermolin A.P. Revolution and the Cossacks (1917-1920). - Moscow, 1982. - P. 180. The decisive role in the victory of Denikin’s army was played by the Kuban Cossacks, who responded to the order of the government and the ataman to conscript ten ages of Cossacks into the army.
At the end of 1919, the contradictions between the Rada and the command of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR) reached their climax. But the fate of Kuban was now being decided on the fronts of the Civil War. At the end of February - beginning of March 1920, a turning point occurred during the fighting in the North Caucasus direction. Contrary to the encouraging saying of the whites, “Winter is yours, summer is ours,” which was confirmed by their victories in the campaigns of 1918 and 1919, the command of the Red Army went on the offensive. Kozlov A.I. From revolutionary committees to Soviets in Kuban / A.I. Kozlov. - Maykop, 1989. - P. 224. Decisive battles took place on the borders of the Don and Kuban near the village of Yegorlykskaya and the village of Belaya Glina. On February 25, 1920, during a bloody battle in which up to 15 thousand red and 10 thousand white cavalry took part, Denikin’s main striking force, the Cossack cavalry, was defeated. On March 1, units of the 1st Cavalry, 9th and 10th Armies went on the offensive.
To avoid complete defeat, the White Guards began to retreat: the Volunteer Corps - in the Kushchevsky direction, the Don Army - in the Tikhoretsk direction, and the Kuban Army - in the Novorossiysk direction. At dawn on March 17, 1920, units of the 9th Army under the command of I.P. Uborevich began the assault on the capital of Kuban. The regiments of the 22nd Infantry Division S.P. were the first to enter the northern outskirts of the city. Zakharova. Cavalry Corps D.P. Zhloby captured Pokrovka, Dubinka, the railway station and the crossing across the Kuban. General A.G. Shkuro wrote: “I personally saw the shameful abandonment of Ekaterinodar. Entire divisions, drunk on looted alcohol and vodka, are fleeing from enemy patrols without a fight. The units covering Yekaterinodar are also fleeing criminally... Thousands of carts and a lot of valuable property were abandoned. Shame and disgrace to the Cossacks... I swear that I will slaughter the entire settlement of Dubinka for the uprising.” The White Army has changed so dramatically compared to the one that Ekaterinodar saw in the spring of 1918 during its assault by L.G. volunteers. Kornilov - heroes of the Ice March. The defeat was complete. Denikin A.I. The campaign and death of General Kornilov. Budberg A. Diary 1918-1919. - Moscow, 1990. - P. 108.
In the Ekaterinodar area, more than 20 thousand prisoners, about 20 guns, more than 100 machine guns, 20 thousand rifles, 5 million 600 thousand cartridges, 300 thousand shells, 4 armored trains, 3 airplanes were captured. On the day of the liberation of Yekaterinodar, newspapers reported the entry of the Red Army into Armavir. On March 22, units of the 1st Cavalry Army entered Maykop, which had been surrendered the day before to a detachment of the Red Army of the Black Sea by the ataman of the Maykop department. On the night of March 27, 1920, the 22nd Division entered Novorossiysk from the north, and units of the Black Sea Red Army entered Novorossiysk from the west. On May 2, the 60,000-strong Kuban army of General V. I. Morozov capitulated in the Adler region.
The last echoes of the Civil War were heard in the Kuban in the second half of August 1920. The landing forces under the command of General S.G. The Ulagaya began fighting in the Primorsko-Akhtarskaya area, on the Taman Peninsula and near Novorossiysk. The day before, the “Russian Revival Army” under the command of General M.A. moved to join Wrangel’s troops from the Maikop, Labinsky and Batalpashinsky departments. Fostikova. Ladokha G. Essays on the civil struggle in Kuban. - Krasnodar, 1923. -S. 23. However, some of his detachments were scattered by divisions of the 9th Army and special forces units (CHON) even before the landing in the Kuban. On August 18, the main landing group captured the villages of Bryukhovetskaya and Timashevskaya, creating a bridgehead for a breakthrough to Yekaterinodar. But it was not possible to develop the success, since the Kuban Cossacks avoided mobilization in every possible way. During the week-long battles on August 24 - 30, the troops of the 9th Kuban Army M.K. Levandovsky, reinforced with reserves, defeated the landing force. On August 31, Wrangel’s troops began the evacuation from Achuev, which ended on September 7. At the same time, the detachments of General M.A. were finally defeated. Fostikova, who tried to advance on Armavir on August 21-24.
The insurgent movement played an important role in the development of events in the Kuban and Black Sea regions. Cherkasov A.A. Kuban-Black Sea insurgent movement (1920-1922): brief description // Bye years. - 2006. - No. 2. Since the late spring of 1920, the peasant and Cossack uprising was called the white-green movement. In general, the white-greens are anti-Soviet units that could unite the entire broad front of parties and class groups opposed to the Bolsheviks. As a result, the white-green movement included representatives from moderate parties (mainly the Socialist Revolutionaries) to the right (traditionalist monarchists). In terms of class, the rebels were represented by Cossacks, non-residents, and Black Sea peasants (only workers were missing). Thus, the white-greens are the remnants of political forces that were at war with each other throughout the late 1918 - spring of 1920. Zhupikova E. Insurgency in the North Caucasus in 1920-1925: Documentary publications and the latest domestic historiography // Domestic history. -2004. - No. 2.
The Whites were supporters of the monarchy and relied on the officers, the former administration of the Volunteer Army and a significant number of Cossacks. The Greens were the exponents of the idea of “land and freedom” and relied on the peasantry. The white-green insurgency itself did not represent a single organization, but was united by the Bolsheviks only because of their hostility and opposition to the Soviet regime.
Since 1920, the white and green movements tried to maintain neutrality in their relations. As already noted, on the territory of Kuban the main role was played by the Cossack opposition to Soviet power, which was active in 1920-1922. Typically, the long period from the inception to the formation of the insurgency in the Kuban passed extremely quickly. In May 1920, the Kuban Cossacks, who operated as part of the troops of the Caucasian coast, returned to their homeland in columns of prisoners of war. By this time, the population of Kuban had already appreciated the activities of the Soviet government, and by mid-May 1920, the Cheka began to receive information about the formation of white-green groups. Kuban Cheka: Kuban security agencies in documents and memoirs / Comp. N.T. Panchishkin, V.V. Gusev, N.V. Sidorenko. Under general Ed. E.L. Vorontsova. - Krasnodar, 1997.
The process of creating the first rebel detachments was hampered by one circumstance - the new government carried out complete disarmament of the villages on the territory of Kuban. This forced the population to seek a compromise with the Soviet regime; without finding one, a significant part of the population went into the forests, floodplains and mountains. The first rebel detachments were created during uprisings caused by surplus appropriation, the anti-church policy of the state, as well as pressure on the Cossacks themselves. Insurgency on the territory of the North Caucasus Military District // Red Army. - 1921. - No. 2
Almost all Cossack rebel detachments were created spontaneously, and much of their further activity depended on the abilities of their commanders. Insurgent detachments in the Kuban must be divided into two types: a one-day detachment and a classic detachment. The differences concerned the timing of their existence. Almost all units went through the stage of rearmament, as they often began their activities with pikes, pitchforks and axes. This stage is a significant test of the combat effectiveness of the rebel detachment, and the first major losses accompanied the detachment precisely at this time. If the detachment at this stage was destroyed by the enemy and scattered, then it should be considered a one-day detachment, incapable of organizing partisan activity.
The detachment became a classic after rearmament. Such a detachment received some constancy. After rearmament, the rebel detachment was busy providing itself with food and a base. The location for the future rebel base was chosen with special care. Here, factors such as the advantageous location were taken into account, that is, the equidistance of the base from the nearest populated areas, the possibility of movement both on horseback and on foot, and the difficulty of access to the base. In addition to the main base, several spare ones were provided.
In combat activities, the units behaved differently, it depended on the number of rebels and their armament. Thus, the rebel detachment of Cornet Ryabokon, numbering from 18 to 25 bayonets and sabers, went on night raids in groups of 3-5 people. and attacked in different places. This was done with the aim of creating the illusion of a large number of rebels. The rebels of the cornet Karasyuk and others also acted. Zhupikova E. Insurgency in the North Caucasus in 1920-1925: Documentary publications and the latest domestic historiography // Domestic history. -2004. - No. 2.
The rebels also used all sorts of military tricks, among which the deployment of horseshoes on horse hooves enjoyed particular success. This often misled representatives of law enforcement agencies. This trick was used by the rebels from the detachment of the cornet Ryabokon. The Red Army soldiers joked that the Ryabokonians drove backwards.
Thus, the activities and life of rebel groups in the Kuban have their own characteristic features associated with local conditions, the use of rebel methods of struggle and tactics.
The reasons for the end of the white-green insurgency were: the repressive activities of the Soviet government aimed at eradicating the insurgency (hostage taking, mass executions, concentration camps); the desire of the rebellious peasantry to preserve at least what was not taken away by the Bolsheviks, that is, to preserve material values; fatigue from war. Soviet propaganda in the fight against the white-greens did not cause the end of the uprising. So, in 1922, 609 rebels were killed, captured or surrendered on the Black Sea coast, of which only 1 person surrendered voluntarily. Baranov A.V. The insurgent movement of the “white-greens” in the Cossack regions of the South of Russia (1920-1924) // White Guard. 2005. - No. 8. This is evidence of the rebels’ distrust of Soviet power.
In 1920, white-green detachments numbering from several hundred to several tens of thousands of people operated in the Kuban region. One of the most numerous is the Russian Renaissance Army under the command of General Fostikov. Venkov A.V. Anti-Bolshevik movement in the south of Russia at the initial stage of the civil war / A.V. Venkov. - Rostov-on-Don, 1995. - P. 314. The rebel units were armed with machine guns and artillery, although the number of the latter was not significant. The main goal of the rebel detachment was active military operations aimed at capturing the entire territory of Kuban with the goal of spreading the uprising in the future throughout the entire territory of Russia.
The insurgent movement in the Kuban in 1920 was generally characterized by infantry and cavalry combat tactics. Often the rebels tried to keep settlements in their hands, since in the villages it was possible to obtain food and recruit reinforcements. In 1921, the insurgency declined somewhat. At the same time, dozens of detachments with an average strength of 100 bayonets or sabers and one machine gun are operating in the Kuban. The insurgency suffered significant losses in the fight against Soviet power, but nevertheless tried to capture Krasnodar.
Throughout the entire period 1920-1922. The insurgency was most active in the warm season, that is, from late spring to mid-autumn. During the rest of the year, the insurgency was not regular. The reasons for the defeat of the rebel movement in Kuban were the harsh repressive policies towards not only the rebels, but also their supporters. Cherkasov A.A. Kuban-Black Sea insurgent movement (1920-1922): brief description // Bye years. - 2006. - No. 2.
Insurgency in 1920-1922 in Kuban manifested itself in all its diversity. Here there were murders of Soviet and communist activists, military clashes with strike groups of the Kuban-Black Sea Cheka, special forces, police and army teams. After the lifting of martial law in the Kuban, the Bolsheviks were finishing off the last pockets of white-green resistance. Dzidzoev V.D. White and red terror in the North Caucasus in 1917-1918 - Vladikavkaz, 2000. -P. 172
Thus, the fighting in the Kuban and Black Sea regions was completed. The civil war entered its final phase, when only scattered “white-green” detachments fought against Soviet power. In November - December 1920, Soviet power was finally established throughout the Kuban and Black Sea regions
