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Title: The Kolesnikov uprising Author: Nick Heath Date: November 28, 2009 Language: en Topics: Makhnovists, Russian Revolution, Ukraine Source: https://libcom.org/history/kolesnikov-uprising
Ivan Sergeevich Kolesnikov was born in 1894 in the settlement of Stara
Kalitva in Ostrogozh county of Voronezh province in a large but
prosperous farming family of four sons and four daughters. He is
described as having blond hair, and as being of medium height with a
stocky build. During the First World War he went from private to junior
non-commissioned officer and platoon commander, fighting in the Caucasus
on the Turkish front. From May 1919 he served in the 107^(th) Red Army
cavalry reconnaissance detachment and from August 1919 in the 357^(th)
Infantry Regiment, 40^(th) Infantry Division. At the end of May 1919 he
was appointed platoon commander and then commandant of the regiment
headquarters and in early January 1920 temporarily filled the post of
commander of the 3^(rd) Battalion, 357^(th) Infantry Regiment. His
career in the Red Army was characterised by an exemplary combat record.
In the second half of 1919 he received gunshot wounds in combat at least
twice. Apparently after being wounded once more he was made regimental
treasurer on June 18, 1920. While in this position he was involved in a
great waste of money (embezzlement?) and then deserted and returned to
Stara Kalitva.
In early November 1920 a mass uprising against Bolshevik grain
requisition broke out in Ostrogozh county. A famine and a poor harvest
in the summer of that year were not taken into account in the autumn
grain requisitioning. Many grain stores of local peasants were
completely expropriated with the requisition squads acting as a law unto
themselves and in a high handed way. As a result, in the southern
districts of Voronezh province deserters from the Red Army set up armed
detachments. One of these groups was led by a cousin of Ivan, Grigori
Kolesnikov, and was raised widely supported by the local peasantry. In
the first days of the rebellion the major challenge for the rebels was
to organise an effective armed struggle against the Soviet authorities.
In this regard, it was necessary that the revolt was headed by a man who
had a rich military experience and leadership qualities. Kolesnikov
fitted the bill. On November 7^(th) 1920 at a mass meeting in Stara
Kalitva he was elected as the military leader of the uprising.
Immediately after taking command of all rebel forces Kolesnikov
announced the mobilisation of the male population aged 17 to 50 years.
In a short time he managed to equip a detachment of a thousand people.
It furnished itself with large number of weapons left behind by the Red
and White armies during the Civil War and hidden by the peasantry.
Kolesnikov begins to operate successfully in mid-November, with the
broad support of the local population, destroying two large punitive
detachments. The head of the Voronezh Cheka with other top-ranking
Bolshevik officials and a death squad came to Stara Kalitva to impose
order, believing the uprising was small and marginalised. They took up
residence in a house on the outskirts of the settlement. During the
night the house was surrounded by insurgents and shooting broke out. By
the morning all the Bolsheviks had been shot dead (a monument was later
raised in their memory by the Soviet authorities). The first success not
only raised the morale of the insurgent peasantry, but also allowed
Kolesnikov to broaden the area of the uprising. Insurgency spread to the
villages and settlements of Bogucharsky and Pavlovsky counties. Under
the motto “against hunger and looting”, the Kolesnikovists wherever they
appeared, dispersed the requisition squads and gave the bread back to
the peasants. It should be noted that local soviets were not destroyed,
but taken over by the insurgents.
In the second half of November an insurgent detachment led by Emelyan
Barabbas, hitherto operating in the area to the south, joined the
Kolesnikov forces. A cavalry unit formed under the command of Ivan
Pozdnyakov. At first it had only 35 horses, but grew from day to day as
many peasants flocked to the insurgents with their own horses. There was
a special regiment under the leadership of Alexander Konotoptsev, a
former Chekist who had sided with the insurgents. He directed their
counter-intelligence unit, which reported on the movements of the Soviet
authorities and Red Army, with great effectiveness. A headquarters was
set up at Stara Kalitva with several observation posts to protect it.
By the end of November 1920 the Kolesnikov forces had already covered a
large part of Voronezh province in the south. There were up to 10
thousand armed insurgents, according to Bolshevik military intelligence.
By 25^(th) November, the apex of the movement, the Kolesnikov
detachments had become a full division with 5,500 infantry and 1,250
cavalry, with 6 artillery pieces and 7 machine guns.
The rapid spread of the insurrection compelled the local authorities to
seek help from the centre. Large red army forces soon began arriving in
the Voronezh area. In early December 1920 in Bogucharsky county Red
cavalry utterly defeated the combined forces of Kolesnikov. However the
following day Kolesnikov’s forces together with a detachment led by
Kamenev (Kamenyuk) an anarchist-Makhnovist flying a black banner
captured Starobelsk in Kharkov province in the neighbouring Ukraine.
Kolesnikov wintered in this area alongside the detachments of Kameniuk
and Marusia (not the redoubtable anarchist Marusia Nikiforova but
another female Makhnovist commander).
This caused great concern to the Bolshevik commander in the Ukraine and
Crimea, Mikhail Frunze. Repeated attempts to smash the Kolesnikov unit
failed as it avoided direct confrontation moving over the border into
the neighbouring Don region when necessary.
On January 29^(th) 1921, the Kolesnikov detachment appeared in
Bogucharsky county. At this time the military leadership of the province
were concentrating all their efforts to fight the Antonov uprising in
the northern counties and units led by Makhno which had suddenly
appeared in the south-western counties. Consequently the forces of the
Reds in the southern district were small and scattered. Also worthy of
special attention is the fact that the local population there were still
very dissatisfied with Bolshevik food policies. As a result the slogans
of the Kolesnikov forces of “Against Hunger, Against Robbery” had a
great resonance among it.
Returning to his native land Kolesnikov consolidated himself again,
operating with three other insurgent units, those of Demian Strezhnev,
Emelyan Varavva, and the anarchist-Makhnovist Parkhomenko. The rebels
were well armed with artillery pieces, although suffering from lack of
large supplies of ammunition. From 29^(th) January to 3^(rd) February
the Kolesnikov forces easily took control of the entire southern
Bogucharsky county. The ranks of the rebel units were rapidly reinforced
by former combatants and Red Army deserters. On February 4^(th) after an
unsuccessful attack on Boguchar, the insurgent detachments started
moving to Stara Kalitva.
Encountering no resistance, as a result of a mass evacuation by the
Bolsheviks, the insurgents reached the area of Novy Kalitva and Stara
Kalitva on the following day. Here they were reinforced by many
volunteers; in Stara Kalitva alone two hundred local peasants joined
them. The Kolesnikovists now had 500 cavalry and 700 infantry. Divided
into several units, the Kolesnikovists occupied all the surrounding
villages and settlements during the day. There they seized government
warehouses and granaries and a large part of their contents were
immediately distributed under the direction of Kolesnikov to the local
peasantry.
On 6^(th) February, Kolesnikov led a 500 strong detachment to the
village of Evstratovka, located a few miles from the station of the same
name. It was obvious that the Soviet authorities would not give up such
an important railway junction without a fight. To support the garrison
at the railway junction an infantry battalion was dispatched from
Pavlovsk, and two armoured trains from the stations of Millerovo and
Mitrofanovka. Despite the fact that the Reds did not arrive to the
8^(th) Kolesnikov made no attempt to take the station. The purpose of a
strange manoeuvre can be understood if we take into account the fact
that just a week before him near the same station Makhno turned up with
his forces. The Reds foiled his breakthrough to Voronezh province.
Borisov advances the hypothesis that it is likely that Kolesnikov
intended to meet the advance Makhnovist detachments not suspecting that
they were already defeated and pushed back into central Ukraine. He
assumes that this was part of an overall plan of the two insurgent
commanders to unite their forces, hatched during Kolesnikov’s stay in
the Kharkov region. If this is true it means that the Makhnovists
intended to break out of the Ukraine into the Central Chernozem region.
With the failure of the link-up with Makhno, Kolesnikov turned to the
mass insurrection in the Tambov region and the northern counties of
Voronezh region led by Antonov. He rapidly advanced to the north east of
Voronezh province, with Red Army squadrons in hot pursuit. BY now the
Kolesnikovists had run out of ammunition and often had to engage in
costly hand-to-hand fighting. They invaded the town of Novohopersk to
get supplies. This resulted in fierce resistance from the Bolshevik
garrison. Kolesnikov, realizing that his cavalry was not able to fight
in the narrow streets of Novohopersk, gave his men the order to
dismount. But two commanders refused to obey orders of their leader.
Infuriated by this, Kolesnikov personally shot them down. After
sustaining heavy losses, the insurgents left the town.
Eventually after much harassment from their pursuers there there was a
meeting of the Kolesnikovists with an Antonovist regiment. As a result
of this Kolesnikov was elected leader of the 1^(st) Antonov Army, which
now escalated its actions. It defeated the 14^(th) Red Cavalry Brigade
Reds, followed shortly after by the capture of 2 Red units, followed by
another major defeat of Red Cavalry units. As a result of this the
insurgents were able to replenish their arms supplies. But as it turned
out, it was the last success of Kolesnikov. On March 22^(nd) Milonov’s
red Cavalry inflicted a serious defeat on the 1^(st) Antonov Army, with
about three hundred men killed and wounded. A twenty year old Chekist
called Katarina Verenikina had infiltrated the Kolesnikov headquarters
and was able to pass information back to the Soviet authorities. Among
those killed was Grigori Kolesnikov, the cousin of Ivan and a regimental
commander.
At the end of March the insurgents heard of the decision by the
Bolshevik Plenipotentiary Commission of Tambov region, headed up by
Antonov-Ovseenko, to end food requisitioning in the region. Antonovists
began to desert so Kolesnikov decided to leave the area. On April 6^(th)
in Voronezh province a spontaneous meeting of the insurgents was held,
where there was a split between the majority of the Antonovists and the
Kolesnikovists. Most Antonovists (1400 insurgents) decided to return to
Tambov.
Kolesnikov with about 500 insurgents moved on to Stara Kalitva by
mid-April. The appearance of Kolesnikov in his native place once again
stepped up the insurgency in the south of Voronezh province. On April
21^(st) the insurgents were attacked by a Red cavalry division. The
insurgents gathered all their forces in one detachment and the Red
Cavalry were driven back. On April 24^(th) insurgents completely
destroyed a Bolshevik special unit. But the days of Kolesnikov were
numbered. According to one account on the of evening April 28^(th) at
the end of a fierce five-hour battle with the Reds he was shot in the
back by one of his own men. According to another version Kolesnikov died
two weeks later on May 12, 1921, when his group fought a battle against
Red mobile groups which vastly outnumbered them.
No one with the military skills of Kolesnikov could be found to replace
him. As a result, by May 1921 the scattered Kolesnikov detachments moved
from an open confrontation of Soviet power to local guerrilla struggle.
After the death of Kolesnikov the Soviet government declared an amnesty
and thousands of insurgents surrendered, although many fought on with up
to 2,000 insurgents dispersed in Ostrogozhsk and Bogucharsky counties in
small mobile detachments. Many of the insurgents linked up with the
forces of Makhno or Antonov. In June the Cheka reported a Kolesnikov
band with 1000 cavalry and 13 machine guns, which operated in the
Lugansk region. Perhaps the commander of this detachment was our old
friend Kamenyuk. In July, the remnants of a Kolesnikov unit under
Luhachev returned from Ukraine to Voronezh province, where fighting
continued until October 1921, until they disappear from records.
Nick Heath
Sources:
http://bereg.sia.vrn.ru/article554.html
In the interests of the oppressed peasantry by Denis Borisov (In
Russian) Photo of Kolesnikov from same source.
Newspaper article in Volga Commune, No.130
old.samara.ru/paper/41/6771/119544/
(in Russian)