Kirsanov County in the Civil War. The End of Antonovshchina
End. Read the beginning. Quiet Kirsanov in the Civil War
History, as we know, does not know the subjunctive mood. More than a hundred years ago, the Bolsheviks won, although they had to defeat many enemies that they had made for themselves. And the situation in Tambov region towards the end of the Civil War was still continuing to develop in favor of the rebels.
Drastic measures
By the late autumn of 1920, the Antonovites already controlled almost the entire province, with the exception of Tambov itself and several cities that continued to remain strongholds of Soviet power. However, on April 11, 1921, the rebels managed to capture Rasskazovo and defeat a large garrison there, while an entire battalion of Red Army soldiers was captured.
This happened, forgive me for repeating myself, in Rasskazovo, which at that time was a real proletarian center of the Tambov province. It was there that the cloth and leather factories were located, which were engaged in the supply of uniforms to the Red Army.
At Aseev’s factory alone, whose mansion today adorns the center of Tambov, more workers worked than in the entire provincial city – the factory was the largest cloth factory in the country.
After the capture of Rasskazovo on April 16, 1921, Antonov attempted to take Kirsanov by storm. This is how the then commandant of the Kirsanov railway station, B. I. Popov, recalled it:
"Early in the morning that day, as soon as it was getting light, Antonov's units stormed into Kirsanov. It felt like the city was completely surrounded. They were shooting everywhere and from all sides. The shooting was especially intense in the area of the city cemetery and on Cathedral Square near the Assumption Cathedral.
But by lunchtime it was all over. Troops had been delivered to Kirsanov by rail from wherever they could, and all the Antonov attacks had been repelled. I went to see what was happening in the streets. All around, on the roads, in the alleys, in the gateways, there were corpses of people lying, strewn about. Mountains of corpses.
Everyone was dressed in every conceivable and inconceivable clothing, some in military uniform, some in tailcoats, some in sheepskin coats. There were no wounded. They were either taken away by the attackers or hid in the yards, and some were finished off by the defenders. There were many killed and wounded horses. Many horses were running around the streets of the city. Fluff from the pillows was flying everywhere, they were on the horses instead of saddles" ...
Something with the memory...
It should be noted that the rebels did not stand on ceremony with the representatives of the Soviet power, especially with the Chekists. They put responsible workers who fell into their hands to a painful death. According to archives, the rebels destroyed: shot, hanged, raped, tortured and humiliated more than two thousand party, Soviet, Komsomol workers.
However, the Antonovites did not engage in outright banditry or reprisals against the Red fighters. Captured Red Army soldiers were usually released after a preventive talk, and many of them went over to their side. And not all Red commanders were executed, even the communists.
In the memoirs of those who fought against Antonov, there is the following situation: "Antonovites" captured a food detachment in Gavrilovka and locked it in a barn, and the next morning the Reds came and freed them... If Antonov had been the bandit that Soviet propaganda portrayed him as, he should have shot all the prisoners on the very first evening. But he left everything until the trial, so that they could be judged by a people's assembly.
The rebel army had a temporary charter that prohibited robbing the local population, reprisals against prisoners and their families. But the province was flooded with various bandit gangs, even Tukhachevsky wrote that Antonov had only 10 thousand worthy fighters, and the remaining 40 thousand were in bandit and semi-bandit gangs. However, for ideological reasons, all the bandits were attributed to Antonov. It was very convenient to accuse him of banditry.
Meanwhile, Moscow was fully concerned about the situation in the region and created a plenipotentiary commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, headed by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. The future Marshal of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was appointed responsible for conducting all military operations in the province. The legendary brigade commander Grigory Kotovsky was also sent to Tambov. Genrikh Yagoda and Vasily Ulrikh (photo below) arrived from the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission.
According to the memoirs of the same B. I. Popov, the future Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General Mikhail Semenovich Khozin, also a native of Kirsanov, fought here as a commander of an armored division. Budyonny, Voroshilov, Uborevich, Blucher, Kalinin and other famous people were also in Kirsanov, but information about this is absent, or is hushed up, distorted, not advertised.
It is clear, who wants to be a hero, fighting with his own people. Even G.K. Zhukov in his memoirs dedicated a whole chapter to Antonov's rebellion in Tambov region, but about Kirsanov, where he was, fought, and received his first award - the Order of the Red Banner, not a word is written.
The count was in the thousands, tens of thousands
In total, up to 55 thousand Red Army servicemen were involved in suppressing the Tambov Uprising: 37,5 thousand bayonets, 10 thousand sabres, as well as 7 thousand servicemen in nine artillery brigades; 5 armored motor detachments, 4 armored trains, 6 armored cars, 2 air detachments, cadets of the Moscow and Oryol infantry and Borisoglebsk cavalry courses.
The entire province, as in wartime, was divided into combat areas, with their own commanders and units. The main principle of the fight against Antonovshchina was "execution on the spot without trial or investigation" in the event of resistance or even in the event of a refusal to give one's name upon arrest. In families sheltering rebels or weapon the eldest was shot, and the “bandit nest” itself was subject to destruction.
In addition, the practice of taking hostages with all the ensuing consequences was tightened - execution two hours after refusing to hand over a rebel or a weapon. The number of concentration camps, like a network entangling the province, increased several times. In Kirsanov alone, two more were established - in the area of Uvarovskina and the railway station.
The conditions in the camps, already harsh, became even more severe. Now not only accomplices and family members were sent there, but also close relatives and infants. In some, entire villages were kept as hostages. And to intimidate the population in the rebel zone, mass executions of hostages were used.
Thus, on June 27, 1921, the village of Osinovka was cordoned off by Red Army units, orders were issued setting a two-hour deadline for handing over the "bandits" and weapons, with a warning that hostages would be shot for failure to comply. Up to 40 hostages were taken. After the deadline, 21 hostages were shot in the presence of a peasant gathering, after which the peasants went to look for weapons and catch the "bandits".
In the end, three rifles and five "bandits" were issued. The families of the executed hostages, as well as the "bandits" hiding, were sent to concentration camps. Just as quickly, 36 hostages were shot on July 3-4 in the village of Bogoslovka.
When the threat of executions did not work, as in the village of Vtoraya Kareyevka, which consisted of 65-70 households, the villagers were evicted, their property was confiscated, and the village itself was burned. The total number of people in the Tambov province who were subjected to repression, according to archival data, is estimated at 50-70 thousand people.
It must be said that the harsh measures proved effective. Gradually, the peasantry began to cool towards their defenders. But there were other reasons that contributed to the collapse of the rebel army. Thus, after the capture of Crimea, it became possible to transfer regular units of the Red Army, experienced in combat, to Tambov.
There was another reason, perhaps more important - the Antonovites' ammunition reserves were rapidly running low, and there was no way to replenish them. And most importantly, at the end of March 1921, an amnesty was declared - a full pardon for privates, but liability in court for commanders.
The rebels began to come out of the forests to surrender. And finally, by decision of the 1921th Congress of the RCP(b), the food tax was replaced by a grain tax. By the end of May 10, the peasant army had practically ceased to exist - about XNUMX thousand of its fighters surrendered during military operations, and one and a half times more of them voluntarily came out of the forests.
Only the most irreconcilable remained, no longer expecting leniency, their hands stained with the blood of their fellow villagers. Until the end of June, they continued to fight against the Red Army units in small detachments. During one of these clashes, Pyotr Tokmakov was killed. Aleksandr Antonov managed to escape, he was only wounded...
Assault and…
With the remnants of his loyal units, Antonov hid on the Vorona River near Lake Kipets. At the end of July 1921, the Chekists found out where the rebels were, and at the beginning of August they began an operation - an assault. They carried out three daytime and one nighttime attacks, but were repelled. Then an air strike was carried out on Antonov's positions, artillery strike, and then the positions were shelled with shells containing toxic chemicals.
In this case, shells of the AZhO type with chloropicrin tear gas were used. Three cases of their use were documented. In particular, the combat diary of the artillery division of the Zavolzhsky Military District brigade recorded that on July 13, 1921, the following were used in battle: three-inch grenades - 160, shrapnel - 69, chemical grenades - 47.
On August 3, the battery commander of the Belgorod Artillery Courses reported to the artillery chief of the 6th combat section that 65 shrapnel shells, 49 grenades and 59 chemical shells were fired during the shelling of the island on Lake Kipets. According to local residents, the chemical shells led to the deaths of not only the rebels, but also the civilian population.
As a result, the main forces of the rebels suffered a defeat that was not yet final, but extremely heavy. At the end of July, the leadership of the rebellion issued an order according to which all detachments were offered to split into groups, hide in the forests and switch to guerrilla actions or go home.
Antonov himself goes underground. Part of his troops continues to resist, degenerating into bandit gangs. Antonov does not lead them, he hides underground for a whole year. A year later, in June 1922, the Chekists managed to establish that he is in the village of Nizhny Shibryay.
During the entire rebellion there were no troops there - neither Reds nor Antonov's, so the village was calm. Many residents knew that Antonov was hiding there, they respected him and helped him - they supplied him with food, went to Uvarovo for medicine.
Antonov was ill, after all he had been through he had malaria, his right hand was withering from a bullet wound, he learned to do everything with his left. Antonov hid at Natalya Ivanovna Katasonova's. However, to this day, local residents claim that the miller Ivanov hid him, and Katasonova helped the miller with the housework. There she met Antonov, they had an affair, she became pregnant, then a daughter was born.
As a result of a well-organized and executed operation by the Chekists, the house in the village was surrounded. Aleksandr Antonov, who was hiding in it with his brother Dmitry, refused to surrender, and during the shootout both were killed. On July 16, 1922, the liquidation of the "Socialist Revolutionary-kulak" rebellion in the Tambov province was officially announced.
However, people did not believe that the "invincible" Antonov was killed. The bodies of the brothers were brought to Kirsanov for identification and presentation to the people. Thousands of leaflets with photographs of the murdered Antonov brothers were made and pasted in all populated areas - in churches and stores and on almost every fence and pole, scattered from airplanes.
Later they were transported to Tambov and thrown into one of the storerooms of the Kazan Monastery, where the Tambov GPU was located at the time. They were buried somewhere nearby – probably on the slope of the Tsna River, in the area of today's Music Square…
Without anger and addiction
Those terrible times have long passed. Another terrible one, the Great Patriotic War, was and has passed… This year we will celebrate its 75th anniversary of victory. Everything should have been forgotten, everything reconciled. But, to this day, the residents of Kirsanov are still seized with horror at the very name of Alexander Stepanovich Antonov.
He divided everyone - into those who fought with him and the victims of his struggle. To this day, the descendants of both are alive. To this day, the townspeople in Kirsanov or Rasskazovo quietly pass on stories and events of those times from mouth to mouth.
The ghost of Alexander Stepanovich is alive! Despite all the legends about Antonov's support by the overwhelming majority of the peasant population of Tambov province, the facts do not confirm this.
The peasants preferred neutrality. “They will never say either about the Antonovites or the Chekists – ‘ours’, the former will be called ‘whites’, the latter – ‘reds’ – this is what is written in the operational reports of those years.
Throughout the country, even on Cossack lands, monuments to the reconciliation of the participants in that cruel, bloody civil war have long been erected. In the center of Kirsanov there are mass graves of participants in the civil war, or more precisely, a burial site for those killed during the Civil War.
According to the lists, more than 50 people are buried in three mass graves. A sculpture is installed on the grave - a figure of a soldier of the civil war. And the inscription: "Here are buried the heroes of the Civil War who died in the fight for Soviet power." The pedestal is three and a half meters; the figure of the soldier is three meters. And that's it!
The same monuments and memorials to the victims of the rebellion are scattered throughout many villages and towns in Tambov region. Isn't that why it is so difficult to argue with any of the numerous characteristics of Alexander Stepanovich Antonov given to him by historians?
A sadist? Yes. Throughout his entire adult life he has killed many innocent people.
A revolutionary? Undoubtedly. Until the very end he believed in the revolution and felt obliged to its ideas.
A romantic? Definitely. Awkwardly, but sincerely tried to build a peasant utopia and fought for it…
One could go on, and all the definitions would not be enough – because there is something timeless about him: he was born a people's leader, cruel, inventive, vengeful, but also magnanimous, dreamy, and even simple-minded in some ways. Not all epic heroes are beautiful – some have bloody hands and eyes that sparkle in the dark…
In the holy book of many religions – the Old Testament, there is a story that tells of a great fratricidal war and ends with the episode: the king of one of the opposing sides dies and goes to heaven.
He is invited to the banquet table, but he suddenly notices that there are no fallen comrades or heroes from the enemy camp at the table. In addition to their exploits, they tell him, they have done many evil deeds, and so they are now sitting in hell - only you, who have not done evil, are worthy of being here.
“No,” the king objects, “if these great heroes are in hell, then my place is there too.” But everyone smiles at him: "We have put you to the final test to see if you are truly the king of justice." - and they open his eyes: his former friends and enemies have been feasting at the table for a long time.
They joyfully greet the Tsar and stand up to let him take his place. A wise book. Isn't it time for us, who for a hundred years have been unable to forgive the titans of the civil war for their sins, to finally seat everyone at one, common banquet table of heroes.
Text prepared by Vladimir Polyansky, Kirsanov - Smolensk
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