At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian peasantry experienced two wars against the Russian state, both the product of revolutions and both ended with the imposition of state power: 1905–1907 and 1917–1922.
Rebellions in Central and Eastern Siberia against whites The rebellious peasants were always enemies of the whites. The latter refused to accept land tenure reform and wanted revenge on the villagers for expropriating the land themselves in 1917. Admiral
Aleksandr Kolchak made the fatal mistake of winning the animosity of peasants, by restoring the rights of landowners. Many Siberian villagers were descendants of
Russian and
Ukrainian immigrants who had fled from
serfdom and had a strong love for their freedom. The guerrillas began shortly after the formation of their government, on August 31, 1918, in the rural areas near
Slavgorod,
Altai. But the problem worsened in early 1919. The White Army began to carry out
grain requisitions and a
military draft, but most of their recruits deserted and numerous rear-guard revolts broke out (encouraged by Bolshevik activists, anarchists and left-wing SRs).
Taiga guerrillas were often led by deserters and sometimes joined scattered Red soldiers when the whites conquered the region in 1918, setting out to ambush units and cut off supply lines. Kolchak resorted to terror to pacify them. With its rear weakened by the wear and tear of the guerrillas and being forced to distract its detachments in defending themselves against the peasantry, the white regime could not stop the advance of 200,000 Bolsheviks, who, on the other hand, knew how to add local partisans to their forces wherever they advanced. At the end of 1919, when the Siberian regime was totally defeated and disintegrated, the autonomous bands from
Central Siberia to
Amur Oblast numbered more than 100,000 combatants.
Fall of Kolchak and Bolshevik advance When his forces withdrew in 1920, Kolchak faced numerous mutinies that joined the guerrillas, leaving his loyal few completely alone and condemned. The
Eastern Front of the
Red Army, under the command of Major General
Vladimir Olderogge and formed by 70,000 soldiers, seized
Tyumen and
Kurgan and then attacked
Petropavlovsk on August 25. In response, 58,000 targets commanded by General
Mikhail Diterikhs fought back, seizing
Tobolsk and driving the Bolsheviks across the
Tobol River. On October 14 with 75,000 soldiers, Olderogge ordered a new offensive, forcing the 56,000 whites to withdraw from Petropavlovsk on October 29. Diterikhs suffered 5,000 dead and 8,000 prisoners. After the defeat, the Bolshevik advance became unstoppable, as did the peasant guerrillas. Nearly 100,000 whites were killed, captured or deserted in the following months.
Omsk,
Novosibirsk,
Tomsk,
Krasnoyarsk and
Irkutsk all fell into their hands. In early February 1920, after the
Great Siberian Ice March 25,000 surviving white soldiers entered Irkutsk and soon fled to
Chita. The withdrawal of the
Japanese from Chitá, on October 21, 1920, and the consolidation of the
Republic of the Far East made the guerrillas disappear from the region. Between the late 1920s and early 1921, with the foreseeable defeat of the
White Movement, the
Red Army was in charge of subduing the unruly rural world. The latter was disunited in various movements led by its own
atamans. == Rebellion ==