Chapter VII. CIVIL WAR (49–47)

“Against the organization of committees of the rural poor, against the crusade of class-conscious urban proletarians against the village kulaks and the rich, against the preaching of class struggle among the peasantry, all parties speak out, from the Cadets to the Left SR.

All these parties reproach the Soviet government and our party for artificially inciting a civil war in the countryside, and that our food detachments will bring nothing but harm to the countryside.

And, meanwhile, the news received from the localities, from the villages and countryside, shows that the decree of the Central Executive Committee on the Committees of the Poor Peasants was not invented by our Party, which supposedly wants, at all costs, to provoke a futile struggle and useless bloodshed.

All the news indicates that the struggle of the poor against the rich, of the proletarians of the countryside against the kulaks, is a widespread and everyday phenomenon, that this decree is a correct and timely response to the voice of life.

The class struggle waged between the poor and the kulak elements of the countryside, as reported on all sides, often takes the form of armed uprisings.

Reading the provincial newspapers, all sorts of "news" published by various provincial, district and even volost soviets, almost every time you find the most curious reports about the real war, the most authentic revolutionary struggle that is now being waged by the rural poor against their own kulaks.

The volost councils and committees of the poor are a thorn in the eye of the world-eaters and the rich, this rural bourgeoisie, imitating its older sister, the urban bourgeoisie, arranges the most real counter-revolutionary actions against the Soviet power and shows no less cruelty and brutality than the bourgeoisie of Tambov or Samara.

The life of the Nizhny Novgorod province gives many examples of this. Here is the village of Shargoley, Pavlovsky district, the kulaks, organizing themselves, killed three Bolsheviks and “knocked down the Soviet.” But the Bogoroditsky and Pavlovsk comrades came to the rescue and again “knocked down the kulaks.”

Here is the Kozyevskaya volost, Vasilyevsky district. The poor, numbering about 200 people, elect their Executive Committee. The kulaks gather a crowd of thousands and stage an armed attack on the Soviet at night. The Soviet has been dispersed, the kulaks are beating Soviet workers. But the poor do not give up their positions, with 20 rifles a small handful of people manage to disperse the angry crowd.

As you can see, the poor have to defend their organizations with an armed hand. Kulaks are people of action, and not with bare hands go to Soviet power. They act armed and, naturally, the struggle against them results in a bloody clash. Armed detachments of urban workers who are sent to the countryside provide the rural poor with unconditional necessary assistance in their struggle against their enemies, who at the same time are the enemies of the urban proletariat.

Often the poor themselves cope with their enemies, without resorting to anyone's help. So, in the same Nizhny Novgorod province, in the village. The Migalikhas are a small but well-organized bunch of former soldiers who have come from the front, firmly holding weapons in their hands, with difficulty restraining the pressure on the volost Soviet of kulaks and the unconscious masses blindly following them, since they promise them heaven on earth with the free sale of bread.

The Migalikha bourgeoisie, like our Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, plays on the unconsciousness and ignorance of the masses.

Apart from directly fighting the kulaks for power in the localities, the village poor, without any decrees, do exactly the same thing for the sake of which committees of the village poor are created by decree.

In the already mentioned p. Koziev, after dispersing the embittered kulak crowd, the poor peasants requisition grain from the kulaks, with which they succeed in sowing the fields of the entire poor peasantry, and the fields of the kulaks are not left without sowing. After that, the contented poor once again elect a purely Bolshevik Soviet.

From these few examples (and there are many such examples every day in the provincial newspapers), it is clear that the decree on committees of the poor does not invent anything, does not create anything contrary to life.

A class struggle is being waged in the countryside, a sharp, stubborn and fierce struggle. No united efforts, from the Cadets to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, can stop the stratification of the countryside, which has begun long ago, and the class struggle within it.

Decree of the C.I.K. gives a certain meaning and organization to this struggle, and the Soviet government, as the government of worker-peasant Russia, helps the rural poor against the kulaks and the rich, and thereby shows that, as the government of the workers, it listens very sensitively to the true voice of life.

Boris Volin.

The civil war in Russia is a series of armed conflicts of 1917-1922 that took place in the territories of the former Russian Empire. The opposing sides were various political, ethnic, social groups and state entities. The war began after the October Revolution, the main reason for which was the coming to power of the Bolsheviks. Let's take a closer look at the prerequisites, course and results of the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922.

periodization

The main stages of the Civil War in Russia:

1. Summer 1917 - late autumn 1918 The main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement were formed.
2. Autumn 1918 - mid-spring 1919 The Entente began its intervention.
3. Spring 1919 - spring 1920 The struggle of the Soviet authorities of Russia with the "white" armies and troops of the Entente.
4. Spring 1920 - autumn 1922 The victory of power and the end of the war.

Prerequisites

There is no strictly defined cause of the Russian Civil War. It was the result of political, economic, social, national and even spiritual contradictions. An important role was played by the public discontent accumulated during the First World War and the devaluation of human life by the authorities. The agrarian-peasant Bolshevik policy also became an incentive for protest moods.

The Bolsheviks initiated the dissolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly and the liquidation of the multi-party system. In addition, after the adoption of the Brest Peace, they were accused of destroying the state. The right of self-determination of peoples and the formation of independent state formations in different parts of the country was perceived by supporters of indivisible Russia as a betrayal.

Dissatisfaction with the new government was also expressed by those who were against a break with the historical past. The anti-church Bolshevik policy caused a special resonance in society. All the reasons listed above came together and led to the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922.

The military confrontation took on all sorts of forms: clashes, guerrilla actions, terrorist attacks and large-scale operations involving the regular army. A feature of the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 was that it stood out as exceptionally long, cruel and capturing vast territories.

Chronological framework

The Civil War in Russia of 1917-1922 began to take on a large-scale front-line character in the spring and summer of 1918, but separate episodes of confrontation took place as early as 1917. It is also difficult to determine the final boundary of events. On the territory of the European part of Russia, front-line battles ended in 1920. However, after that there were mass uprisings of peasants against Bolshevism and performances by Kronstadt sailors. In the Far East, the armed struggle ended altogether in 1922-1923. It is this milestone that is considered the end of a large-scale war. Sometimes you can find the phrase "Civil War in Russia 1918-1922" and other shifts of 1-2 years.

Confrontation Features

The military operations of 1917-1922 were fundamentally different from the battles of previous periods. They broke more than a dozen stereotypes regarding the management of units, the army command and control system and military discipline. Significant successes were achieved by those commanders who commanded in a new way, used all possible means to achieve the task. The civil war was very maneuverable. In contrast to the positional battles of previous years, solid front lines were not used in 1917-1922. Cities and towns could change hands several times. Of decisive importance were active offensives aimed at seizing the championship from the enemy.

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 was characterized by the use of diverse tactics and strategies. During the establishment in Moscow and Petrograd, street fighting tactics were used. In October 1917, the military revolutionary committee, headed by V. I. Lenin and N. I. Podvoisky, developed a plan to capture the main city facilities. During the battles in Moscow (autumn 1917), Red Guard detachments advanced from the outskirts to the center of the city, which was occupied by the White Guard and junkers. Artillery was used to suppress strongholds. Similar tactics were used during the establishment of Soviet power in Kiev, Irkutsk, Kaluga and Chita.

Formation of the centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement

With the beginning of the formation of parts of the Red and White armies, the Civil War in Russia of 1917-1922 became more ambitious. In 1918, military operations were carried out, as a rule, along railway communications and were limited to the capture of important junction stations. This period was called the "echelon war".

In the first months of 1918, in Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk, where the forces of volunteer units of Generals L. G. Kornilov and M. V. Alekseev were concentrated, the Red Guards were advancing under the leadership of R. F. Siver and V. A. Antonov- Ovseyenko. In the spring of the same year, the Czechoslovak corps, formed from Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war, set off along the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Western Front. During May-June, this corps overthrew the authorities in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Vladivostok, Novonikolaevsk and throughout the territory adjacent to the Trans-Siberian Railway.

During the second Kuban campaign (summer-autumn 1918), the Volunteer Army took the junction stations: Tikhoretskaya, Torgovaya, Armavir and Stavropol, which actually determined the outcome of the North Caucasian operation.

The beginning of the Civil War in Russia was marked by the extensive activity of the underground organizations of the White movement. In the large cities of the country there were cells that were associated with the former military districts and military units of these cities, as well as local cadets, socialist-revolutionaries and monarchists. In the spring of 1918, the underground operated in Tomsk under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Pepelyaev, in Omsk - Colonel Ivanov-Rinov, in Nikolaevsk - Colonel Grishin-Almazov. In the summer of 1918, a secret regulation was approved regarding the recruiting centers for the army of volunteers in Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov and Taganrog. They were engaged in the transfer of intelligence information, sent officers across the front line and intended to oppose the authorities when the White Army approached their home city.

The Soviet underground, which was active in the Crimea, Eastern Siberia, the North Caucasus and the Far East, had a similar function. It created very strong partisan detachments, which later became part of the regular units of the Red Army.

By the beginning of 1919, the White and Red armies were finally formed. The RKKR included 15 armies, which covered the entire front of the European part of the country. The highest military leadership was concentrated with L.D. Trotsky - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR) and S.S. Kamenev - Commander-in-Chief. The rear support of the front and the regulation of the economy in the territories of Soviet Russia was carried out by the STO (Council of Labor and Defense), whose chairman was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He also headed the Council of People's Commissars (Council of People's Commissars) - in fact, the Soviet government.

The Red Army was opposed by the united armies of the Eastern Front under the command of Admiral A. V. Kolchak: Western, Southern, Orenburg. They were also joined by the armies of the Commander-in-Chief of the VSYUR (Armed Forces of the South of Russia), Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin: Volunteer, Don and Caucasian. In addition, in the general Petrograd direction, the troops of the infantry general N.N. Yudenich - Commander-in-Chief of the North-Western Front and E.K. Miller - Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Region.

Intervention

The civil war and foreign intervention in Russia were closely linked. Intervention is called the armed intervention of foreign powers in the internal affairs of the country. Its main goals in this case are: to force Russia to continue fighting on the side of the Entente; protect personal interests in Russian territories; to provide financial, political and military support to the participants of the White movement, as well as to the governments of the countries formed after the October Revolution; and to prevent the ideas of the world revolution from penetrating the countries of Europe and Asia.

War development

In the spring of 1919, the first attempts at a combined strike by the "white" fronts were made. From this period, the Civil War in Russia acquired a large-scale character, all types of troops (infantry, artillery, cavalry) began to be used in it, military operations were conducted with the assistance of tanks, armored trains and aviation. In March 1919, the eastern front of Admiral Kolchak began its offensive, striking in two directions: on Vyatka-Kotlas and on the Volga.

The armies of the Soviet Eastern Front under the command of S. S. Kamenev at the beginning of June 1919 were able to contain the offensive of the Whites, inflicting counter blows on them in the Southern Urals and in the Kama region.

In the summer of the same year, the VSYUR began its offensive against Kharkov, Tsaritsyn and Yekaterinoslav. On July 3, when these cities were taken, Denikin signed the directive "On the March on Moscow." From that moment until October, the AFSR troops occupied the main part of Ukraine and the Black Earth Center of Russia. They stopped on the line Kiev - Tsaritsyn, passing through Bryansk, Orel and Voronezh. Almost simultaneously with the withdrawal of the All-Union Socialist League to Moscow, the North-Western Army of General Yudenich went to Petrograd.

The autumn of 1919 became the most critical period for the Soviet army. Under the slogans "Everything - for the defense of Moscow" and "Everything - for the defense of Petrograd", a total mobilization of Komsomol members and communists was carried out. Control over the railway lines that converged to the center of Russia allowed the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic to transfer troops between the fronts. So, at the height of the battles in the Moscow direction near Petrograd and to the Southern Front, several divisions were transferred from Siberia and the Western Front. At the same time, the White armies failed to establish a common anti-Bolshevik front. The only exceptions were a few local contacts at the squad level.

The concentration of forces from different fronts allowed Lieutenant General V.N. Egorov, the commander of the southern front, to create a strike group, the basis of which were parts of the Estonian and Latvian rifle divisions, as well as the cavalry army of K.E. Voroshilov and S.M. Budyonny. Impressive blows were dealt to the flanks of the 1st Volunteer Corps, which was under the command of Lieutenant General A.P. Kutepov and advanced on Moscow.

After intense fighting in October-November 1919, the VSYUR front was broken and the Whites began to retreat from Moscow. In mid-November, units of the North-Western Army were stopped and defeated, which were 25 kilometers short of reaching Petrograd.

The battles of 1919 were notable for their extensive use of maneuver. In order to break through the front and conduct a raid behind enemy lines, large cavalry formations were used. The White Army used the Cossack cavalry for this purpose. So, the fourth Don Corps, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Mamontov, in the fall of 1919, made a deep raid from the city of Tambov to the Ryazan province. And the Siberian Cossack Corps, Major General Ivanov-Rinov, managed to break through the "red" front near Petropavlovsk. Meanwhile, the "Chervona Division" of the Southern Front of the Red Army made a raid on the rear of the volunteer corps. At the end of 1919, it began to decisively attack the Rostov and Novocherkassk directions.

In the first months of 1920, a fierce battle unfolded in the Kuban. As part of operations on the Manych River and near the village of Yegorlykskaya, the last massive horse battles in the history of mankind took place. The number of riders who took part in them from both sides was about 50 thousand. The result of the brutal confrontation was the defeat of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation. In April of the same year, the White troops began to be called the "Russian Army" and obey Lieutenant General Wrangel.

End of the war

In late 1919 - early 1920, the army of A.V. Kolchak was finally defeated. In February 1920, the admiral was shot by the Bolsheviks, and only small partisan detachments remained of his troops. A month earlier, after a couple of unsuccessful campaigns, General Yudenich announced the dissolution of the Northwestern Army. After the defeat of Poland, the army of P. N. Wrangel, locked in the Crimea, was doomed. In the autumn of 1920 (by the forces of the Southern Front of the Red Army), it was defeated. In this regard, about 150 thousand people (both military and civilian) left the peninsula. It seemed that the end of the Civil War in Russia of 1917-1922 was not far off, but everything was not so simple.

In 1920-1922, hostilities took place in small territories (Transbaikalia, Primorye, Tavria) and began to acquire elements of a positional war. For defense, fortifications began to be actively used, for the breakthrough of which the warring side needed long-term artillery preparation, as well as flamethrower and tank support.

The defeat of the army of P.N. Wrangel did not mean at all that the Civil War in Russia was over. The Reds still had to cope with the peasant insurrectionary movements, which called themselves "greens". The most powerful of them were deployed in the Voronezh and Tambov provinces. The rebel army was led by the Socialist-Revolutionary A. S. Antonov. She even managed to overthrow the Bolsheviks from power in several areas.

At the end of 1920, the fight against the rebels was entrusted to units of the regular Red Army under the control of M. N. Tukhachevsky. However, it turned out to be even more difficult to resist the partisans of the peasant army than the open pressure of the White Guards. The Tambov uprising of the "greens" was suppressed only in 1921. A. S. Antonov was killed in a shootout. Around the same time, Makhno's army was also defeated.

During 1920-1921, the Red Army made a number of campaigns in the Transcaucasus, as a result of which Soviet power was established in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. To suppress the White Guards and interventionists in the Far East, the Bolsheviks created the FER (Far Eastern Republic) in 1921. For two years, the army of the republic held back the onslaught of Japanese troops in Primorye and neutralized several White Guard atamans. She made a significant contribution to the outcome of the Civil War and intervention in Russia. At the end of 1922, the FER joined the RSFSR. In the same period, having defeated the Basmachi, who fought to preserve medieval traditions, the Bolsheviks consolidated their power in Central Asia. Speaking about the Civil War in Russia, it is worth noting that individual rebel groups operated until the 1940s.

Reasons for the Reds' victory

The superiority of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 was due to the following reasons:

1. Powerful propaganda and use of the political mood of the masses.
2. Control of the central provinces of Russia, in which the main military enterprises were located.
3. Disunity and territorial fragmentation of the Whites.

The main result of the events of 1917-1922 was the establishment of Bolshevik power. The revolution and civil war in Russia took about 13 million lives. Almost half of them became victims of mass epidemics and famine. About 2 million Russians left their homeland in those years to protect themselves and their families. During the years of the Civil War in Russia, the state's economy fell to catastrophic levels. In 1922, compared with pre-war data, industrial production decreased by 5-7 times, and agricultural - by a third. The empire was finally destroyed, and the RSFSR became the largest of the formed states.

Under the terms of the Brest Peace, the Black Sea Fleet was to be transferred to Germany. The Bolsheviks wanted to fulfill the terms of the treaty. They sent an order to the commander-in-chief, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. He categorically refused.

The Bolsheviks tried to act through the Soviets of Sailors and Soldiers' Deputies. But the Black Sea Fleet was less affected by the revolutionary movement than the Baltic Fleet: it fought. The Soviets were mostly anarchist rather than Bolshevik and did not follow orders from Smolny. And then the Bolsheviks sent detachments of Baltic sailors to the Black Sea Fleet and to the cities where the garrisons were stationed.

Already in February and April 1917, Baltic sailors committed monstrous mockery and atrocities against officers and members of their families. But that was a spontaneous revolt, and now the communists sent "brothers" to the Crimea on purpose, so that they would pass on their accumulated experience. So to speak, from the Baltic Fleet to the Black Sea. And it started...

In the Sevastopol Soviet, the majority were Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Both the Sevastopol Soviet and even the first Crimean Bolshevik Conference condemned the October Revolution. The delegation of the Baltic sailors "strengthened » Bolsheviks in the Crimea. The Bolsheviks withdrew from the Soviet and organized the Revolutionary Committee. With the help of the Baltic sailors, they shot the members of the Council and began the systematic extermination of the "enemies", that is, opponents of the surrender of the fleet to the enemy.

More than 800 officers and civilians were brutally killed in Sevastopol. They were drowned, shot, stabbed with bayonets. For what? For belonging to the cadet party or to the number of officers. Supervised the murders of Commissar Solovyov.

In Taganrog, the Bolshevik Sivere, close to Lenin, exterminated more than 300 cadets and officers, and many of them were quartered, and about 50 people were thrown alive into blast furnaces.

In Feodosia, 60 people were killed, in Yalta - 80, in Simferopol - 160, in Evpatoria - 300 people. Officers were often nailed to their bodies with shoulder straps: let them know how bad it is not to want to part with them, with these despicable insignia! On the ships "Truvor" and "Romania" under the leadership of another commissar, Antonina Nimich, the victims were cut off their noses, ears, genitals, then they chopped off their arms and legs, and threw them into the sea.

But the Germans failed to give the Black Sea Fleet. 250 pennants went to foreign ports to continue the Great War on the side of the Allies. Some ships left after killing some of the officers. Among those who left was Admiral A.V. Kolchak. When the officers were disarmed, he defiantly threw the saber of the commander-in-chief into the sea and left for St. Petersburg, and then abroad, to continue the war there.

The remaining ships of the Black Sea Fleet, about 80 pennants, went to Novorossiysk - if you don’t fight the Germans, then don’t give up. The Bolsheviks decided to sink these ships. A ship was found with a Bolshevik crew on board - the destroyer Kerch, led by Captain Kugel. From this destroyer, mines were launched into the warships standing in the roadstead.

After this action, neither the Germans nor the Bolsheviks had their own fleet on the Black Sea.

In order to establish the power of the Soviets in the localities, Lenin sent out 644 commissars from Smolny, but the country was in no hurry to submit to them.

In the Central Industrial Region, especially in large cities (Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Sormovo, Shuya and others), the Soviets were stronger and more significant than the city Dumas before. In Samara, Syzran, Tsaritsyn, Simbirsk, the Soviets also took power easily and simply, without resistance from other authorities. True, the Bolsheviks did not predominate in all these Soviets ...

In Perm, Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk under Soviet rule), Yekaterinburg, local Dumas, Zemstvos and Soviets created common coalition governments ... or rather, local authorities. Here the Bolsheviks had nothing to catch at all, but for a long time they could not do anything. And formally, the Soviet system also won in these cities.

In many cities, for example, in Kaluga and Tula, the Soviets generally won only in December 1917, and in the districts - in the spring of 1918.

In the Central Black Earth region, the Soviets, if they won, then there were very few Bolsheviks in them, the Socialist-Revolutionaries prevailed. In general, the SRs were very popular in the provinces, including in educated, urban circles. After all, the provincial intelligentsia was 70–80% “of peasants” in the second or third, and even in the first generation.

In Nizhny Novgorod, Soviet power was proclaimed on November 21, in Veliky Novgorod on December 3. In Kaluga, the energetic commissar of the Provisional Government, Galkin, dissolved the Soviet and disarmed the local Military Revolutionary Committee with the help of shock troops. The provincial government remained loyal to the Provisional Government until December. In Irkutsk, street fighting went on for 10 days - until December 30th. The Peasant Congress in Voronezh met until the end of December, and Soviet power came to Kursk in February 1918. In Tambov, the Bolsheviks seized power only in March 1918; in Transbaikalia, their power was established in April. In the Vologda province, city and zemstvo self-government worked until 1919.

In the city of Plyos - in the Levitan places, in the very heart of Russia - until the summer of 1919 there was a local city Duma, and the sailors who sailed on a certain revolutionary ship along the Volga looked wild. The sailors asked strange questions about receiving rations and “getting registered”, the townsfolk were stunned by these amazing speeches ... It was as if two cultural and historical eras collided, although separated by very short periods of absolute time.

The sailors shot down members of the Duma, robbed and killed many residents of Plyos. And then the townsfolk realized that they, too, now have a revolution.

The Communists were very fond of and love to carry on vague conversations about the fact that during the Civil War "everyone became brutalized" and that mutual cruelty was generated by this very Civil War. There is some truth in this - but only a fraction. Because the communists initially planned to exterminate part of the population of Russia, they planned the cruelty of the Civil War. From the very beginning, they pursued a policy by criminal means: by promoting “their own” to important posts, by deceit, meanness, arrogance, cruelty, drawing the weak and vile into their environment, intimidating everyone else.

The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and especially in Moscow, all the more "the triumphal march of Soviet power" was accompanied by monstrous cruelties. Very often they were organized and put into practice just by “class relatives” taken into service. Or people with pathological tendencies.

More than 2,000 people were killed in Kiev. Many of them were arrested because they did not have documents or had documents issued by the Ukrainian government. In the cold, people were stripped naked and taken to their deaths. People sometimes waited for hours to be deigned to shoot them.

Many gymnasium and seminarians were arrested in Rostov - the young students "belonged to the exploiting classes." Many teenagers fought against Soviet power in Petrograd and in Moscow. Adolescents aged 14-16 were stripped to underpants and driven through the streets to the city cathedral, shooting at its walls.

In the Ukrainian city of Glukhov, all high school and high school students were exterminated: they were rounded up and shot. And they not only shot: after the departure of the communists, people buried the children's corpses thrown out of the commandant's office with monstrous injuries - gouged out eyes, severed hands, cut off ears and noses.

It was even worse in Eastern Siberia and the Far East: a lot of former convicts settled there. Against ataman G.M. Semyonov, there were two red regiments, one of them was completely formed by criminals. They were led by the chief of staff and mistress of the hardened criminal S. Lazo, a certain Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko. The girl declared herself an anarchist-maximalist, she was 19 years old, when the criminal-communist regiment in Blagoveshchensk alone exterminated more than 1,500 people out of 10,000 of the total population. At the same time, people were slaughtered “just like that” or so that they would not dare to interfere with robbing their property. I will save the reader from describing the scenes of the brutal murder of children in front of their fathers and mothers, the rape of daughters in front of their parents, the chopping off of hands and feet, and much, much more. And everything of any value was dragged from the houses.

I am writing about what the Reds carried with them to the most ordinary, relatively quiet places. Where there was no resistance at all. If the population expressed even the slightest dissatisfaction with the new order, the scale of terror increased sharply.

After the uprising in the Labinsk department in the Kuban, the Bolsheviks killed more than 770 people, entire families, including small children.

There were unrest among the workers in Omsk: only unrest, no armed uprising! There, the communists carried out a "decimation" - the murder of every tenth person along with his family. Several hundred people gathered, including very old people, pregnant women and very young children. They were all undressed in front of each other, flogged and shot. The English consul Eliot reported to Curzon about the details of the extermination, so that the "enlightened West" was in the know.

Sometimes "class enemies" were not killed, but they were strongly frightened. In the village of Petrovsky in Stavropol, the Bolsheviks first shot hundreds of "bourgeois" on the steep bank of the Kalausa River. The victims fell directly into the icy water, and if they tried to get out, they were finished off by the red punishers standing on the shore. Then, local gymnasium girls were driven to the same place, with spots and pools of blood - they took them straight from the gymnasium from classes. Girls aged 13-15 were ordered to undress at gunpoint, but they did not kill: they raped them, flogged them with whips and rods, and shot over their heads. Having enjoyed the fear, the expectation of death, they left.

One of these girls later became a nurse in Denikin's army and died a very old woman in France. But even in 1985, she could not remember without shivering how the Bolsheviks taught her to be afraid of the new government.

So, on anarchy, ideology, stunned by rudeness and impudence, on panic fear, a whole “red island” of Soviet power arose. It began in Petrograd and Moscow at the end of November 1917. Until the spring of 1918, it only expanded, covering the entire central part of European Russia and passing through the entire southern Siberia to Vladivostok, spilling over into the territory of Kazakhstan and Turkestan, reaching the Caucasus, in some places flooding the Baltic states and Belarus. This "red island" became the basis for Soviet Russia, and then the USSR grew out of it.

In an effort to enlist the support of the peasants, on January 27, 1918, Lenin issued the Basic Law on the socialization of the land, literally written off from the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. After all, Lenin willingly gave everyone and everything that he was only asked for: workers - factories, criminals - revolvers, sadists - positions in the Cheka ... So he also gave land to the peasants.

The peasants divided the land in an egalitarian way - it seemed to them the fairest of all. Large private farms were destroyed - and it was they who supplied the bulk of marketable grain. The total number of peasant farms increased by a third: communities gave land even to those who previously had no land at all. Small farms used to sell little bread even before. Now, money began to rapidly depreciate, manufactured goods became scarce ... The peasants were rapidly losing interest in any trade.

It would seem that what needs to be done? "Strengthen large farms!" - any economist will tell you. To some extent, the Bolsheviks followed this path, but in a very peculiar way: all large farms were exclusively state-owned, based on large estates. Basically, they supplied food to the party elite.

There were also "agricultural communes" - 40 or 50 for the whole of Russia.

The “state farms” and communes were in charge of no more than 0.4% of all land, they did not play any role. But the communists believed that this was the future of all agriculture. This is what all peasants should come to.

Only here is the trouble - the peasants were not going there.

Throughout the Civil War, in 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, there was quite enough bread in Russia. Bread was all over Russia, nothing threatened famine. There has NEVER been a famine in ANY of the territories of the white states of Russia. There was no famine in the territory of gangs, peasant armies, foreign military units. ANYWHERE.

During the Civil War, famine was ONLY in the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks. It appeared wherever they appeared and disappeared wherever they left. If the Bolsheviks had wanted it, they would have wiped out the famine in a matter of hours.

Grain stocks in the center of the country have been accumulated for at least a year or two. Even without getting a single grain from the harvest of 1918, the cities will live well until the spring of 1919. And the Red Army will be fed. In the spring of 1918, all elevators were full of bread, and if there is famine in the cities, then the reason is not the lack of bread. Moreover, on February 15, 1918, a decree was issued on the nationalization of all granaries. All bread is in the hands of the state; this state does not extradite him, forbids selling bread; it is in the state of the Bolsheviks for the importation of bread into the cities that an immediate execution is due.

Apparently, the Bolsheviks still do not want the elimination of hunger.

You don't even have to fight the countryside to start starvation in the cities. This famine has already been organized, it already exists.

But the triumphal procession of Soviet power passed through the cities. The village was still on its own. Even those peasants who considered themselves Bolsheviks did not understand Bolshevism in the Leninist way. And according to the slogans that brought Bolshevism to power.

The Bolsheviks wanted to make the non-Soviet village Soviet - and in a way familiar to them, through the Civil War. In April 1918, Sverdlov increasingly spoke to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee about the need to "transfer the class struggle to the countryside."

“We must most seriously set ourselves the task of dividing the countryside into classes, creating in it two opposing hostile camps, and restoring the poorest strata against the kulaks. Only if we succeed in splitting the countryside into two camps, inducing in it the same class struggle as in the city, only then will we achieve in the countryside what we have achieved in the city.

Note - no talk about the "struggle for bread" or screams about the intrigues of the "kulaks". Sverdlov does not even try to deny that there is no class war going on in the countryside. He says that this war must be brought to the village.

In the USSR, in all textbooks and reference books, it was always written that the kulaks “refused to sell bread to the Soviet state. The most important grain regions were captured by the troops of foreign imperialists and internal counter-revolution." And if so, then the surplus has become “the only method of mobilizing the products of the village. x-va". At the same time, the peasants “received land from the Soviet government for free use and protection from the landowner and the kulak,” and in general, all this was a temporary measure - a kind of loan that the Soviet government returned.

At the same time, in all reference books, the communists are “confused in their testimony” - since when did the surplus appraisal exist? And most often they say - since 1918. The decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the surplus appraisal was issued on January 11, 1919, but it turns out that there was a surplus appraisal before ...

It is not true. The food allotment policy really began in January 1919. Food distribution is when each rural area was obliged to hand over a certain amount of "surplus" to the state. The norms of the surplus were set arbitrarily, it was carried out at best by a third and caused the darkness of uprisings. But the surplus appropriation is the happy tomorrow of the Soviet Republic of 1918.

Before the surplus was a dictatorship.

On May 9, 1918, Lenin issues a decree "On the food dictatorship." Not about requisitioning, but about dictatorship. May 13 - a new decree, "On the emergency powers of the People's Commissariat for Food", which was in charge of A.D. Tsyurupa.

According to the decree, the kulaks and the rural bourgeoisie in general hide, conceal grain, and this grain must be taken away from them.

Peasants should be left with a minimum ration - so much so that only they remain alive. And let the rest be taken to the procurement points! Whoever has not handed over the "surplus" is the "enemy of the people", he is imprisoned for a period of at least 10 years, with the confiscation of all property. “To carry out a merciless, terrorist war against the peasant and other bourgeoisie, who are holding onto surplus grain,” wrote Lenin.

On May 26, in the article “Theses on the Current Situation,” Lenin clarifies what needs to be done: “Turn the military commissariat into a military food commissariat, that is, concentrate 9/10 of the work on transferring the army to fight for bread and to wage such a war for 3 months - June August. 2. Declare martial law throughout the country at the same time. 3. To mobilize the army, allocating its healthy parts, and to call on 19-year-olds for systematic military operations to conquer, collect and transport grain and fuel. 4. Introduce execution for indiscipline.

In the winter of 1917/18, the Bolsheviks occupied the cities of Russia. Now they want to conquer and occupy the villages... with their own army.

Hammer and sickle hike

On May 27, 1918, the first "food detachments" were created. Workers enter into them, who are directly told: the fists are holding the bread for you. Go kill kulaks, your children will have bread. Not everyone believes the Bolsheviks, many do not want to join the food detachments, and yet 30 thousand armed workers of the city were put up.

In the article “Comrade workers! Let's go to the last and decisive battle! Lenin calls "for a mass crusade of advanced workers to every point of grain production", for a war against "disorganizers and concealers". He directly writes: “A merciless war against the kulaks! Death to them!

The army is also thrown against the "kulaks" - up to 75 thousand soldiers. Not all of them are ready to go against their own people. Executions, floggings, exile in concentration camps are the usual means of breaking the will of the peasant boys, forcing them to fulfill the wishes of the Bolshevik command.

Another force - special purpose units - CHONs, they were introduced back in March 1918. As a rule, the composition of CHONs is international. There are about 30,000 members of the Chon, and experienced communists are at the head of the Chon. Even if a non-party person comes to the CHON, he is immediately considered a candidate member of the RCP (b).

The Three Forces of the "Crusade in the Village". But what kind of "cross" is he? Crosses are not supposed even to the Red Army, not to mention the Chonovites. Crosses on the necks - except for some of the workers. And it is not under the slogans of Christianity that this war is waged against our own people. This is some kind of sickle-and-hammer campaign.

combos

In the village itself, another force is being created - "committees of the poor", committees. Kombeds were given full power in their village and volost. They could disperse the Soviets or bring their own people into them to make up the majority. The kombeds usually included the most unlucky people: either idlers and drunkards, rural squalor, or drunkards and street husks who fled from cities.

Where the peasants were stronger, richer - in the Chernozem zone, in the Volga region, in the North Caucasus - they often opposed the commanders in a united front - from the richest to farm laborers.

Combeds should help search for and seize "surplus food". Part of the confiscated bread was handed over to the commanders. They could arbitrarily redistribute the confiscated bread and confiscated property of those who were considered kulaks and "saboteurs."

Sholokhov has an amazing scene in Virgin Soil Upturned: when the communists, guardians of class justice, open chests in the houses of the dispossessed kulaks and equip the gathered fellow villagers with simple belongings: scarves, dresses, shirts, cuts of matter. And people take it all!

So: the same scenes took place much earlier, not in 1931, but in 1918. Through the Committees of the Poor.

Relying on armed force, the Kombeds actually pushed the Soviets out of power, “shaking up” them, expelling the “unreliable”. That is, the most "strong" and most active peasants. In November 1918, the communists canceled the committees - they caused too many negative emotions among the peasants. But they did their job - they changed the composition of the village councils.

The Communists spent a lot of ink arguing that the peasant uprisings started in 1920... In reality, already in the spring of 1918, a kind of First Peasant War began. Like the entire Civil War of 1917-1922, it was imposed by the Bolsheviks. The peasants had absolutely no intention of fighting and were forced to because they were attacked. Just as the junkers and the intelligentsia rise up in the autumn of 1917, just as civil servants go on strike, so the peasants rise and go on strike.

They have weapons: the army fled from the fronts armed, and fled mainly to the village. Millions of rifles, and besides, there were hunting weapons.

The peasants were divided: they did not expect an attack at all. Each village was on its own during these months. The men had neither artillery nor machine guns. Peasant resistance was doomed from the start, but the war could not help but become bloody and cruel.

After all, if the workers from the food detachments went to get bread for their children, then the peasants also defended their property. Also needed to feed families. They acted with the desperation of the doomed.

A “flying detachment” operated in the Tambov region under the command of Commissar S.N. Gelberg, "Red Sonya". The peasants called her "Bloody Dormouse". The detachment consisted of Hungarians, Chinese and Austrian Germans. Bursting into the village, "Bloody Sonya" certainly arranged a "purge", exterminating priests, officers, non-commissioned officers, St. George's Knights and high school students. Usually her "flying detachment" collected these doomed, and "Red Sonya" shot them with her own hands. She did it with great pleasure, killed in front of her wives and children, mocking the doomed people.

Her detachment dispersed the "wrong" Soviets, with resistance, these people were also killed. In their place, Sonya appointed new ones, from those whom she considered poor. After her departure, these Soviets usually scattered.

Soon the peasants began to resist: when the “flying detachment” approached the village, the ringing of the bell called the village militia, and it took up defense. And the boys fled to other villages for help. Militia came from other villages. Soon the "flying detachment" was utterly defeated. All of his "internationalists" were killed on the spot. "Bloody Sonya" surrendered. She was judged by a court gathering of several villages and impaled. Howling "Red Sonya" was heard for three days.

In the village of Kozlovka (Tambov province), the commissar, an elderly Jew with a beard and pince-nez, made a speech: there is no need to be afraid, the Soviet government wants to rely on the most respected people. Let the peasants themselves name those whom they want to see in the Soviets. The commissar looked calm and even affectionate, they believed him.

The men named several "fists", a village teacher, a priest. The commissar asked these people to approach the cart, quietly ordered something... The Chinese with rifles at the ready pushed the respected people back to the barn wall... The shutters slammed, a desperate female cry soared from the crowd. Volley!

The men were so stunned that they did not immediately go to the communists. Yes, they did not have any weapons, they came to the village meeting unarmed. Women rushed at the Chinese and the commissar. Volley! Several women were killed and wounded, a four-year-old child was killed on the spot. But a crowd of women ran into the builders of a brighter future and began to carry out a counter-revolutionary cause, preventing humanity from leading to complete happiness. Men also rushed at the bearers of the age-old dream of the proletariat, the army of the World Revolution.

The commissar rushed to the machine gun, but, fortunately, the tape jammed. According to other sources, one of the men ran up, kicked the commissar in the head with his boot and knocked out his eye. The Chinese were killed with stakes and shafts (there were no other weapons), trampled underfoot. The commissar, with his eyes gouged out, was thrown by the peasants onto the wood-bins and sawed in half with a saw.

Cruelty? But the death of both the "Red Sonya" and the unknown commissar fits well into the proverb: "What you sow, you will reap." And what were the peasants supposed to do when, before their eyes, the best people of the village were being shot, women were being shot from rifles, and a child was being killed? According to the concepts of the peasants, these were absolutely monstrous crimes for which there is no explanation or forgiveness. And women... In such cases, women set the bar... In Kozlovka, a man could not help but throw himself at the Bolsheviks without losing respect for himself. Thank you sisters! Low bow to you.

Already in May 1918, artillery was used against the peasants in the Voronezh province. According to the report of the Cheka, during the suppression of only a part of such "counter-revolutionary rebellions", 3,057 peasants were killed, and after the suppression of the rebellion, another 3,437 people were shot. This is only in part of the territory of one Voronezh province!

Researchers give different numbers of those who died in this war - from 20-30 thousand to 200 thousand peasants. Most likely, the true figures lie somewhere in the middle, but the spread of information means one thing: as always, no one really counted.

The losses of the Chonovites are estimated at 500-800 people, workers from food detachments and soldiers - about 2-3 thousand people. However, this number could also include deserters who fled from their units under the guise and were considered killed.

The results of the war? About 13 million poods of grain (more than 200 thousand tons) were taken away from the peasants and brought to the cities. Is it a lot? For a comfortable life, a person needs about 200 kilograms of bread a year. And another 100 kilograms, if he eats the meat of pigs and cows, uses the work of a horse (after all, it must be fed with oats).

It turns out that the hammer and sickle campaign in the village brought a million annual rations. The minimum required amount for 0.6-0.8% of the population of Soviet Russia. Every 10 tons, and maybe even every ton of this bread was worth a human life.

Yes! The committees also redistributed 50 million hectares of land. It was taken from the rich and given to the poor. The total amount of this land is three times the area of ​​the entire landowner's land in Russia. Much was said about the landlords' land. This "black redistribution" of the summer of 1918 is still little known in Russia ... But he was!

Let the reader judge for himself whether this helped to solve the food problem - after all, once again a blow was dealt to the most economic and active.

And let the reader calculate for himself how many acres of land have been redistributed for each life ruined by the communists.

All events in Russia are taking place against the backdrop of the events of the Great War. Their slogan is "Peace to the nations!" - is important for the fate of all warring countries. If Russia withdraws from the war, Germany will not fight on two fronts. This will give her a chance! But this "chance" will mean that the Entente allies will fight longer and more brutally.

And the Bolsheviks are still campaigning.

The "Appeal" demanded an immediate truce and immediate negotiations "of all nationalities drawn into the war or forced to participate in it" and "the convocation of plenipotentiary assemblies of people's representatives of all countries for the final approval of peace conditions."

Apparently, the Bolsheviks explained to the governments how unjust and predatory they were, and what the nature of imperialist seizures was. But in order to solve practical issues, they completely ignored just the really existing governments.

All countries ignored this ridiculous "Appeal" made by impostors. The British newspapers reported on "the provocation of the German puppet, which opened the Eastern Front to the Austro-German troops." But this is the opinion of the newspapers, not the government. The government didn't say a word at all.

On November 9, 1917, Trotsky announced the forthcoming publication of all the secret treaties of the tsarist and Provisional governments. In this way the Bolsheviks will expose the vile nature of imperialism. This has never been implemented.

The Bolsheviks had no choice but to start separate negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

November 7 - Order of the Council of People's Commissars signed by Lenin to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces N.N. Dukhonin: immediately enter into negotiations with the German and Austro-Hungarian troops on a truce. The categorical refusal of N.N. Dukhonin. On November 9, the Council of People's Commissars dismissed N.N. Dukhonin and appoints N.V. Krylenko as Supreme Commander. N.N. Dukhonin ignores the order.

On November 9, 1917, Lenin radioed the following directive to the Russian army: stop hostilities and begin negotiations on a truce. If the officers resist, remove them and choose new commanders for themselves.

By mid-November, all of the 125 divisions participating in the war had at least verbally agreed on a truce, and 20 divisions had concluded written agreements with the enemy.

November 15, the new Glavkomverh N.V. Krylenko issued an order to demobilize the tsarist army. The soldiers could, if they wished, remain in the new army, in the Red ... If they want. If they don't want to, let them go home.

Dukhonin ignored the order. On November 20, Krylenko, with detachments of the Red Guard, captures Headquarters. Dukhonin orders the release of political prisoners from the Bykhov prison: Kornilov and his officers. He himself goes to the railway station ... On the platform, the Red Guards caught Dukhonin and brutally killed him, inflicting more than 100 bayonet wounds. The corpse was drenched and pissed off, thrown into the roadside mud.

On the morning of November 13, a solid Soviet delegation crossed the front line in the area of ​​the Lithuanian city of Ponevezys: a volunteer, a military doctor and a lieutenant of a hussar regiment. They carried the text of the Soviet proposal for a truce and for the start of negotiations. The command of the German army was completely stunned and simply did not know what to do with these unfortunate "parliamentarians".

But intelligence knew very well that this was the ripened fruit of its righteous labors. And the very next day, the German government set a deadline for negotiations - November 19 in Brest-Litovsk.

On November 24, an armistice was agreed until January 1, 1918. On December 2, a Bolshevik delegation headed by A.A. arrived in Brest-Litovsk. Ioffe, and on December 12, the negotiations themselves began ...

From the German side, the negotiations were conducted by Prince Max of Baden and Prince Ernst of Hohenlohe. From the Soviet side, the delegation included one sailor, one peasant and one worker - as symbols of the pillars of the new government.

Prince M. Baden left amazingly interesting memories of these negotiations. He was seated at a dinner next to the Left SR Anastasia Alexandrovna Bitsenko. In 1905, the Social Revolutionary killed the former Minister of War V.V. Sakharov and was considered a very respected comrade. According to M. Badensky, she deserved this honor (to sit with him) by committing a murder.

However, the composition of the delegation changed several times. The chief of the German headquarters of the Eastern Front, Max Hoffmann, recalled, not without poison, that the members of the Soviet delegation made a difficult impression on him ... On the one hand, A.A. Ioffe, L.B. Kamenev, G.Ya. Sokolnikov seemed to be very smart people ... On the other hand, they enthusiastically talked about the need to lead the world proletariat to the heights of unheard-of happiness - to the World Revolution.

“Which was frank and very interesting, but hardly appropriate and diplomatic,” notes M. Hoffman. It was during the negotiations that the formula was born that the Bolsheviks are a "government of madness." The Bolsheviks made it clear to the Germans that they could not be trusted.

Negotiations frankly reached a dead end: neither side, even if they wanted to, could fulfill the requirements of the other. A world without annexations and indemnities? But for a long time for Germany and Austria-Hungary, the territories seized in the east worked for their supply, as part of their economy that had collapsed during the war. And so a hunger demonstration took place in Vienna in October, unrest under economic slogans intensified in Berlin. It became physically impossible for the Germans to refuse food from the east, primarily Ukraine.

Yes, the Germans did not want an inconclusive peace. The Bolsheviks accomplished even more than could be expected: in fact, they destroyed and destroyed the entire Russian army, and stopped the war on the vast Eastern Front. It gave me a chance! After all, the United States, although it did not enter the war for a long time, finally decided: American troops were soon to come.

The Central Powers wanted one thing: to transfer as many troops as possible to the Western Front and defeat England and France before fresh Americans arrived. So, we need to drag out the negotiations! At Christmas they agreed with the formula of the Bolsheviks: "A world without annexations and indemnities on the basis of the self-determination of peoples."

Aha! Well, what part of occupied Russia are they ready to clear?! At what time?

"Not a single millimeter!" Hoffman answered. And he explained to the stunned communists: after all, the peoples of the countries occupied by the Germans do not at all want to live as part of Russia.

By the way, he was absolutely right, the German military man Max Hoffmann: absolutely no one wanted to live under the Bolsheviks. But in conditions of war, such an application means one thing: the termination of negotiations.

Fight?!

This is where the Communists found themselves in an extremely difficult position. They could not fight either technically or politically.

Technically, because the army actually fled. They themselves had just provoked the soldiers to fraternize with the enemy and sign peace. There was no army, the trenches were practically empty.

It was impossible to fight politically, because the communists themselves taught the soldiers: the war is waged to enrich the bourgeoisie. We will come to power - and immediately put an end to the war. After that, it was completely impossible to say “fight on.”

Conclude an agreement on the terms of the Kaiser? Also unthinkable! All of Russia would have risen against such a treaty... Both left and right opponents of the Bolsheviks would have seen in the subjugation of Russia some as a betrayal of national interests, some of the "interests of the revolution" and "the interests of the working class."

Even in the ranks of the Bolsheviks there was no unity: many "left communists" considered it "politically harmful" to negotiate with the Kaiser. What for? Soon a revolution will begin in Germany too. And if it does not start, the revolution in Russia is doomed anyway. After all, Karl Marx clearly says: A world revolution can take place only in the most developed countries ... If Russia is the “weak link in the chain of imperialism”, the rest, the central links of this “chain” - the countries of Europe, must still rise.

So thought Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, Pokrovsky, Armand, Kollontai... A lot! The two largest party organizations - Petrograd and Moscow - demanded that all negotiations with the "imperialist predators" be stopped.

General Hoffmann's boot as a diplomatic argument

And then the Bolsheviks began ... to drag out the negotiations. They really hoped that a revolution would break out in Germany and everything would work out by itself.

Trotsky and Lenin declared to the Central Committee that they did not believe in the combat effectiveness of the German units and, in general, that the Germans were transferring troops to the Western Front. It is necessary to delay as much as possible, but they will present an ultimatum - to declare an end to the war and the demobilization of the army, but there is no need to sign peace (that is, again continue to pull the rubber).

Karl Radek handed out leaflets to German soldiers in which the Kaiser and his ministers directly called pigs fattening on the blood of the workers.

General Hoffmann demanded an end to the incitement of the German soldiers. Trotsky replied: they say, conduct propaganda among the Russians, who is stopping you ...

Trotsky refused to resolve any practical issues, and led many hours of discussions on historical and philosophical topics. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron von Kuhlmann, argued with him. The military remained grimly silent, and "only gradually did it become clear to those participating that Trotsky's main goal was to spread the Bolshevik doctrine." Realizing this, General Hoffmann used a peculiar method of persuasion: he began to put a soldier's boot right on the negotiating table. Hooliganism? But as Trotsky wrote, he "is the only serious reality in these negotiations."

In early February 1918, a radio message from Petrograd was intercepted in Berlin to German soldiers of the Berlin garrison. In their message, the communists called on the German soldiers to create Soviets and fraternize with the Russian Soviets, to kill Kaiser Wilhelm and his generals.

The Kaiser literally went berserk at this news and ordered an immediate break in negotiations. And in addition to the previous conditions, he demanded to annex the not yet occupied parts of Estonia and Latvia.

From the beginning of February 1918, the Western (Gregorian) calendar was introduced in Soviet Russia: February 1 became the 14th. In the white South, the old calendar was preserved, but the rest of Russia accepted this innovation. There are no white states in Siberia in the North yet, but the Cossacks also adopted a new calendar.

On February 11, 1918, Kuhlmann once again asked whether the Bolsheviks accepted the peace terms. To this, Trotsky burst into a demagogic speech: “We no longer want to take part in this purely imperialist war, where the claims of the propertied classes are clearly paid for with human blood. In anticipation of that, we hope, approaching hour when the oppressed working classes of all countries will take power into their own hands, like the working class of Russia, we are withdrawing our army and our people from the war. We give the order for the complete demobilization of our armies."

Kuhlmann states that this means the resumption of the war. And Trotsky bears his own: “Not a single honest person in the whole world will say that the continuation of hostilities on the part of Germany and Austria-Hungary under the given conditions is the defense of the Fatherland. I am deeply convinced that the German people and the peoples of Austria-Hungary will not allow this.”

That was the end of the negotiations. The Bolshevik newspapers rejoiced, congratulating Trotsky on how famously he "shaved off" the evil imperialists. On February 14, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee unanimously approved the behavior of the Soviet delegation.

By the way, the situation of the Germans is also daunting. Strike hard? Capture Petrograd and Moscow, hang your own agents for treachery? General Hoffmann's hands are frankly itchy. The Kaiser, it seems, too ... But it is extremely dangerous to overthrow the Bolsheviks: the people may rise, a new government, a national government, may come to power. It will start a real war, the people will support it ... and Germany is in no way capable of waging a war on two fronts.

At a meeting with the Kaiser on February 13, Kühlmann proposes not to react to Trotsky's chatter and simply transfer troops to the west. Reich Chancellor Gertling fears that if peace is not made, demonstrations and strikes will break out. And the chief of staff, von Ludendorff, insists "to end the war in a military way." After all, if “tolerate the antics of a handful of unarmed anarchists,” then the Entente countries may think that Germany no longer has the strength ...

But von Ludendorff also wrote in his memoirs: they say, "a broad operation was out of the question." Germany could only afford a "short and sharp blow". There was simply no strength for anything else.

According to the terms of the truce, hostilities could only begin seven days after it was broken. The Germans honestly complied with the conditions, but they did not wait an extra hour either. On February 16, General Hoffmann informed the Soviet representative that Germany was resuming the state of war from February 18 at 12 noon.

The Germans strike, but not to completely crush the enemy. They rather intimidate him, that's all. It is extremely easy to do this: the Germans have no one to resist. The demoralized and disorganized crowds, having killed their officers, decomposed and drunk, roll back without a fight.

Red guard? These are anarchist crowds of deserters and lumpen, they are dangerous only for schoolgirls and junkers. They drape only when they hear about the approach of the enemy.

Baltic sailors? They also scrambled to Gatchina, naturally scrambled, losing their rifles and machine guns along the way. In Gatchina, they seized trains and stopped only ... near Samara. This remarkable story was first told to the Russian reader by V. Suvorov. But he did not specify why Dybenko scrambled so far ... And the reason is simple - the Bolsheviks thought the Germans were going to take Petrograd. The Germans strongly disliked traitors, alcoholics and bandits. Wartime - they were quickly shot. Here Dybenko and trembled through the roof.

The Germans, on the other hand, were moving without even deploying battle formations. They rode on trains singing bravura songs to the harmonica and occupied station after station. The main contingents of troops were already on the Western Front. These few, about 20 thousand people, German soldiers were lucky - the rest were spitting blood in the trenches, and these rode in warm wagons, went out into the spring silence to the fertile frost ...

There was no resistance. If the Germans fired, then they fired into the air. So Narva and Pskov were taken. The German army stopped at predetermined lines, the generals were strictly forbidden to move on. After all, the Germans were not at all going to capture Russia and waste time and effort on managing the captured country. They wanted to keep their paid agents in power in Russia.

And in Petrograd, their agents rush about: they are not sure of the intentions of their masters ... For such things as a call to kill the Kaiser and start a revolution, they hang in wartime.

The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks split: some want to accept the German conditions, but only after they come. Let Russia lose part of its territory, "but" the workers of all countries will understand that the Germans are imperialists, and the communists are good.

Others are in favor of immediately agreeing to the signing of a peace treaty.

Lenin rushes between these positions ... On the evening of February 18 (and the Germans keep coming and going) the Central Committee finally decides: to sign the treaty! Now we need the consent of our partners in the government, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Their Central Committee meets together with the Bolsheviks already at night and decides in the morning - no, do not sign the treaties!

But Lenin, it turned out, was ahead of everyone - even before the end of the meeting, he, as head of government, informed the Germans on the radio: the Bolsheviks accept their terms of peace.

General Hoffmann acted competently: he explained to Lenin that chatter on the radio was a very irresponsible thing. Lenin must submit a written document, with his personal signature and seal, and deliver this letter to the commandant of the city of Dvinsk (and the Germans keep coming and going).

Some historians believe that there was generally a dashing collusion between the Bolsheviks and the Germans ... Both of them were most satisfied with just this option: for the Germans to attack, and the Bolsheviks "had no other choice but to sign an agreement." Well, they played a comedy.

This assumption is justified ... Very often Trotsky said over and over again during the negotiations: they say, we do not want to sign peace, but if you force us to force ... Maybe it’s really a hint? Maybe this hint really understood? Maybe the Bolsheviks communicated with the Germans through other channels, asking them to defiantly "scare" them?

There is no direct evidence for this, but somehow everything “converges well” very much. And for the Germans, and for the Bolsheviks.

But even if there was no agreement with the Germans this time, there was an agreement between Lenin and Trotsky. Then the communists lied, blamed everything on Trotsky alone - they say, he “violated the instructions of the Central Committee and signed the peace that V.I. Lenin called it "obscene."

Allegedly, the “imperialist circles of the Entente countries, as well as the White Guard generals, Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks ... allegedly wanted to disrupt the negotiations ... the disguised enemies of Soviet power, traitors and traitors - Trotskyists and Bukharinites” led the same provocative line.

Why Trotsky, who was expelled from the country in 1929, should be to blame, is also understandable - I really wanted to blame my own crimes on someone. Trotsky turned out to be very useful: he negotiated and signed papers ... But Lenin was not at all against the treaty in Brest-Litovsk! Lenin took an active part in its signing.

Fellow citizens... Of course, you can continue to celebrate the mythical Red Army Day, now bashfully renamed Defender of the Fatherland Day... Your will. But the author of these lines is not able to do this. lat. Because I still somehow digest fake chocolate and burnt vodka, but I can no longer bear the fake victories of Russian weapons.

Brothers and sisters. I turn to you my friends...

The Red Army did not stop anyone. She was too busy - draped. The communists came up with some kind of "Pskov-Narva battles of 1918": supposedly "on Pskov and Narva germ. The command sent a significant group of troops (up to 15 divisions) with the aim of capturing Petrograd and overthrowing Soviet power. Troops collapsed (collapsed by itself. - A.B.) the former tsarist army did not resist the invaders.

In the same article, half a page describes how the brilliant Lenin and Stalin built the Red Army (not a word about Trotsky, of course), how the revolutionary people fled in droves under their leadership ... And it’s ready: “The vanguards of the Germans. troops met with strong resistance from the Pskov Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers, who on February 23 pushed the enemy back to the south and south-west.

Compatriots... Fellow citizens... It's all lies. From start to finish it's a lie. All descriptions of different parts, their movements, their numbers - all lies from beginning to end, fiction sits on fiction and drives nonsense.

In the USSR, there were other explanations for this amazing holiday - February 23. The Strugatsky brothers gave such rumors a good definition: "an official legend."

It's not true, he didn't go anywhere.

Another legend: on this day, a decree was signed on the creation of the Red Army ...

Lies, there was no such decree on that day.

All these are dissident legends, and nothing more.

On February 23, only one thing happened: a reply letter came from the Germans with peace conditions. Russia was supposed to give up Poland, the Baltic states and part of Belarus, give Germany’s ally Turkey the cities of Kare, Batum and Ardigan in Transcaucasia, withdraw troops from Ukraine and Finland, make peace with the Central Rada, immediately start demobilizing the army, pay Germany 6 billion marks indemnity. 2 million German prisoners of war return to Germany. Germany retains all the equipment, weapons, and ammunition captured by it during the offensive.

And - "quickly, quickly!". Schnel! Accept - within 48 hours. Report to Brest-Litovsk within three days.

If the reader agrees to celebrate this day as Defender of the Fatherland Day, that's his business.

Again passions are raging in the Central Committee: to sign or not to sign? They boil for a long time. “Now the policy of revolutionary phrases is over,” Lenin declared, threatening to resign. On February 24, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee accepted these conditions by a majority of 51%. On March 3, the Soviet delegation signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk without reading it.

He tore away from Russia 780,000 square meters. km of territory with a population of 56 million (about 1/3 of the population of the Russian Empire) and about 4/5 of iron and coal mining.

On March 6-8, an emergency 7th Party Congress is held. Two important events take place on it. First: the RSDLP (b) is officially renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - RCP (b). Once again I send airy kisses to those who are divorcing the Bolsheviks and the Communists.

Second: the 7th emergency congress of the RCP (b) heard Lenin's speech. The task of the proletarian state, said Lenin, is to cause a world revolution and destroy capitalism. And for this it is necessary to preserve the proletarian state. Contract? And it's just paper! The bourgeois attach importance to it, but we, the proletarians, know very well: “You can never be bound by formal considerations in a war. It is ridiculous not to know that a treaty is a means of gathering forces.”

I emphasize: this is not Trotsky speaking, but Lenin. It is he - for the "obscene" world.

The Congress, by an absolute majority of votes, recognizes the logic of its leader and teacher. And one important addition was made to the resolution on peace ... It seems that the Bolsheviks very resolutely, with incredible adherence to principles, advocated the abolition of secret diplomacy? Happens…

Because the addition to the resolution of the congress is purely secret. It is not subject to publicity either in the press or in private conversations, and the delegates to the congress sign a non-disclosure agreement. The addition is this:

"The Central Committee is given the authority to break all peace treaties with the imperialist and bourgeois states at any moment, and equally to declare war on them."

With the help of the committees of the peasantry, the peasantry was artificially split into "labor" (poor, poor) and "petty-bourgeois" (commodity-producing, entrepreneurial) in order to push them into a fierce class, civil struggle. And this war flared up in the countryside, destroying it economically, morally, morally. Kombedy became a symbol of violence, terror, robbery. In areas where the general standard of living in the countryside was higher (in Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, etc., especially in the places of settlement of the Cossacks), attempts to redistribute property, primarily land, split the peasantry, create committees caused a decisive rebuff, up to armed resistance, because many peasants returned from the front with weapons. Almost half (47.7%) of the able-bodied peasantry (men) during the World War II were mobilized into the army.

The food dictatorship allowed the city to hold out until the next harvest. In the second half of 1918, food was prepared 2.5 times more than in the first half of the year.

The dictatorship of the city caused a response wave of widespread armed peasant uprisings. Violence to violence, weapons to weapons. Armed force and repressions were widely used to suppress peasant revolts.

Lenin recognized that the bread-holders in the villages "made up the main and most serious support of the counter-revolutionary movement in Russia."

The split between town and country, workers and peasants, was also exposed in the highest organs of power. The "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the anti-peasant food policy, actually withdrew from participating in the work of the Council of People's Commissars. They were supported by other socialist parties. In order to get out of the food crisis, it proposed the attraction of private capital, material incentives for grain holders, an increase in procurement prices, and the introduction of free trade in grain. In the summer, the shaky bloc of Bolsheviks and "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries finally disintegrated.

To coincide with the Fifth Congress of Soviets, which opened on July 4, the "Left" SRs timed an action that, according to their calculations, could become a turning point in the development of the revolution. Among the congress delegates, the "Left" SRs made up the second largest faction - 352 people (Bolsheviks - 745). Fulfilling the decision of the Central Committee of the "Left Socialist-Revolutionaries" (June 24), Ya.G. Blyumkin, who worked in the protection of foreign embassies in Moscow, on July 6 made an attempt on the German envoy Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. its disruption, but in fact it reflected the growing dissatisfaction of the peasantry with the economic policy of the government.

An armed incident in Moscow turned out to be connected with the murder of Mirbach. A detachment of the Social Revolutionary Popov captured 4K, arrested F.E. Dzerzhinsky. There were casualties in the ensuing firefight.

The Bolshevik leadership regarded all these facts as an attempt to make paths, to seize power.

"Left" SRs, delegates to the Fifth Congress of Soviets were arrested right in the building of the Bolshoi Theater, where the congress was held. Party leader M. Spiridonova, who devoted her entire adult life to the revolutionary movement, was imprisoned. In 1941, after the outbreak of the Patriotic War, she was shot with a group of political prisoners. Blyumkin in 1919 was amnestied by the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and in 1921 he was admitted to the ranks of the RCP (b), and was in a number of responsible positions. In 1929 he was arrested for his connection with Trotsky and shot without trial or investigation.

By the decision of the Fifth Congress of Soviets, the "Left" Socialist-Revolutionaries were excluded from the composition of the Soviets at all levels, and their newspapers were closed. Subsequently, the party split into a number of small groups. One part joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, the other - into the anti-Soviet movement.

The peasantry lost the legal party channel for defending their interests. The same fate befell the Right SR and Menshevik parties. Among the delegates to the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets (November 1918), the percentage of Bolsheviks has already reached 97 (against 66% at the 5th Congress). The last hopes for a multi-party system were buried.