The Tambov village of Algasovo, located on a trade route 28 versts from the district town, has long been famous for its noisy fairs. Two churches, more than 1.5 thousand households, over 9000 inhabitants - a prosperous village! The peasants sowed Algasian grain, traded, and grew rich in peasant labor. Unfortunately …
The first swallow
On August 18, 1918, a food detachment in the amount of 23 people arrived in the village in a truck with one machine gun. They raked everything out under a whisk - they took away the bread, took the cattle away from the yards. And who does not like it - a revolver in the teeth! Power must be afraid! And the peasants could not stand it. They grabbed axes and pitchforks and by the end of the day the detachment was dispersed. Some of his fighters managed to escape. Several food soldiers were seriously injured and were captured by the rebels. The villagers also managed to take a machine gun.
The next day, a punitive detachment of 120 people with four machine guns and a three-inch gun was hastily sent from Morshansk to Algasovo. Having settled in the neighboring village of Rybnoye, the punishers subjected the rebels to machine-gun and artillery fire. Having suppressed the resistance in this way, the detachment entered Algasovo and began to restore order. The responsible agent of the provincial food committee Akimenkov, who was in charge of the punitive detachment, reported on August 22, 1918: “… they gathered a gathering, arrested one priest, despite the outrage of the crowd, and several other persons involved in this. Now there is an investigation … Tomorrow we will liquidate everything. We'll probably shoot the priest. That's all the consequence …
By the way, the Bolsheviks in their documents call the detachments sent to suppress the uprisings, precisely punitive.
Outlaw
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Less than a week later, an uprising broke out in the village of Otyassy in the south of the Morshansk district, led by the Merkulov brothers, the SRs - Ephraim, Pavel and Timofey Nikitovich. Red Army men, security officers and food detachments were sent to suppress it. But it was not possible to quickly deal with the rebels. The rebel detachments were mobile, in addition, unlike the Red Army, they enjoyed the support of the local population. As a result of the actions of the rebels, traffic on the Morshansk-Tambov road was practically paralyzed.
By order of the chairman of the Morshansk district Cheka, Shvedov, dated October 24, 1918, the leaders of the uprising, as well as all "their henchmen", were outlawed. The same order sanctioned the execution on the spot without trial or investigation for persons "seen in aiding" the rebels.
A strong partisan detachment (possibly part of the Merkulov detachment) operated in the area of the villages of Ivenye, Gumny, Levino. The rebels interfered with the actions of food detachments, not allowing them to enter the villages. The attempts of the Reds to bring down the rebels from their positions on the Houmen mountain were not crowned with success. Then artillery was brought up from Morshansk. Only after a massive shelling were the Red Army men able to push the rebels into the forest.
Riots swept through the entire county. The rebels took control of the villages of Algasovo, Vanovye, Kuliki, Raksha and a number of small villages. A detachment under the command of the chairman of the headquarters for the elimination of the mutiny in the Morshansk district, IE Atyunin, was sent to suppress the uprising. At the beginning of November 1918, the punitive forces took several villages, including Algasovo, on November 5, Vanovye was taken.
But the rebels did not surrender. Moreover, on November 6, Atyunin and members of his headquarters Sokolov and Shcheglov almost fell into the hands of the rebels. When the headquarters was redeployed, they were surrounded by a detachment of peasants, armed, as Atyunin himself reported in Tambov, with axes, pitchforks and scythes. The punitive commanders managed to escape only thanks to the speed of their horses.
At the same time, in 1918, aviation was first used against the Morshan rebels (and not at all against the armies of Antonov in 1920-1921). This is evidenced by the document preserved in the archives - the report of the commander of the 2nd Morshansk air group Kozhun dated November 4, 1918, where he reports: “This number, three planes from the group entrusted to me flew from 11 to 14 hours to reconnaissance of the Raksha - Ostrovka - Rybnoye region … Please let me know if I can in the future, in case of detection of accumulations of troops and rallies, give the order to disperse them with machine-gun fire from aircraft."
Avalanche
The county town itself was seized with panic. The mobilized local residents "behaved passively" during the suppression of the riots. The military leadership of the district asked to allocate troops from other provinces at its disposal, since "the soldiers of their district are extremely undesirable for the garrison."
On November 7, the revolted mobilized officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers seized the Fitinghof station, which is 27 versts west of the city. On November 9, a detachment of railway security sent to suppress the rebellion with an armored car and machine guns was utterly defeated by the rebels during a heavy battle. Inspired by the victory, they moved to Morshansk, dismantling and destroying the railway line along the way. Panic telegrams were sent to Tambov: “Thousands of crowds of rebels are moving towards the city. We need urgent military assistance with artillery."
Large military forces were drawn to Morshansk. Detachments from Tambov, Penza, Shatsk were sent to suppress the rebellion. With machine guns, armored vehicles and artillery. Plus the same aviation. Plus the prodarmies and the district party activists. There are about 5,000 bayonets in total.
Then the rebels refused to march on Morshansk. Perhaps they were frightened by the number and equipment of the enemy troops. But it is also quite possible that the rebels began to simply scatter. According to the recollections of old-timers, a detachment of rebels, retreating from Morshansk, flooded several boxes with rifles and machine guns in one of the reservoirs. And this means that this weapon was simply unclaimed.
Be that as it may, the rebels turned away from Morshansk and headed for the village of Rudovka, on the border of the Morshansk and Kirsanovsk districts, where another uprising was gaining strength. Probably, the Morshans merged with the Rudov rebels and were later destroyed.
Suppression of the uprising
The troops who arrived immediately began to pacify the rioters. Mass executions were carried out throughout the district. The village of Raksha was practically destroyed by artillery fire, and most of its inhabitants were shot and buried in a common grave at the edge of the forest. In Morshansk itself, the executions took place in a garden on the right bank of the Tsna River near the Trinity Cathedral. The captured rebels and their sympathizers were mass shot at the wall of the city cemetery. There is information that eight peasants, including Markov, Suchkov, Kostyaev and Kuzmin, were buried in the grave while still alive. The total number of those executed is unknown. Who counted them? …
Only at the beginning of 1919, the district authorities reported with relief to Tambov that "the rebellion was basically suppressed." The Morshan rebels did not find a talented leader capable of uniting disparate detachments under a single command. The spark did not ignite the flame.
All means are good
In total, up to 55,000 soldiers of the Red Army were involved in the suppression of the Tambov uprising: 37,500 bayonets, 10,000 sabers, as well as 7,000 servicemen in 9 artillery brigades; 5 armored detachments, 4 armored trains, 6 armored vehicles, 2 air squadrons, cadets of the Moscow and Oryol infantry and Borisoglebsk cavalry courses. Cruel repressive measures against the rebels, their families and fellow villagers played an important role in the defeat of the peasant revolt in the Tambov region. Commander of the troops of the Tambov district M. N. Tukhachevsky staged a real terror against the population of the province - with the taking of hostages, the destruction of villages and villages, the creation of concentration camps and mass executions. In hastily set up concentration camps for hostages, along with adults, children, including infants, were also held in large numbers.
