Izhevsk–Votkinsk Uprising
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The rising against Bolshevik rule by workers and the Union of Front-Line Soldiers in the state arms-factory town of Izhevsk on the Kama on 8 August 1918, and in Votkinsk on 17 August. Under the slogan "Soviets without Bolsheviks" it set up the Kama region Komuch of Socialist-Revolutionary deputies to the Constituent Assembly, and it is counted as the largest workers' rising against Soviet power. Vladimir Azin's division retook Izhevsk on 8 November, and the insurgents crossed the Kama to become the Izhevsk and Votkinsk units of Kolchak's army.
In depth
Workers of the state arms factories and their families made up 73 to 74 per cent of the population of Izhevsk and Votkinsk, and in May 1918 the Izhevsk works alone employed 26,700 people. Amid discontent over the ban on free trade, unemployment and falling wages, the Bolsheviks and SR Maximalists, having lost the city soviet elections in May and June, dispersed the soviet by force. When the Bolsheviks tried to draft the workers into the army after the fall of Kazan in early August, the Union of Front-Line Soldiers opened the factory arsenals on 8 August and rose, and the fewer than a hundred Bolsheviks left the town. Izhevsk sent a detachment carrying two rifles per man that brought Votkinsk into the rising on 17 August, and power passed to the Kama region Komuch of three SR deputies. The Izhevsk works supplied the insurgents with up to 2,500 rifles a day, and at its height the rising covered a territory of more than a million people.
After the Red Army retook Kazan on 10 September the insurgents' position worsened: the volunteer army became a conscript one, and the officers quarrelled with the SR leadership. Azin, who took over the 2nd Combined Division on 15 September, captured Agryz station on 4 October and Sarapul on the 5th and closed in on Izhevsk. In the decisive battle south of the town on 7 November the insurgents, short of ammunition, advanced in parade order without firing, a so-called "psychological attack", but fell back with heavy losses, and on the night of 7 to 8 November about 15,000 residents left the town. The Red Army entered Izhevsk on the morning of the 8th; the insurgents abandoned Votkinsk as well and crossed the Kama by a pontoon bridge on 14 November. Estimates of the number executed after the Red occupation range from dozens to several hundred.