Tachanka
타찬카
An open horse-drawn wagon with a heavy machine gun mounted facing the rear. Pulled by two to four horses, it carried a driver and a machine-gun crew of two or three. It was widely used in the mobile warfare of southern Russia and Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, and after Nestor Makhno's insurgents used it en masse the Red Army and the Polish Army adopted it too.
In depth
The word is thought to come from the Ukrainian netychanka, a carriage named after the Czech town of Nový Jičín, or from an affectionate form of tachka, "wheelbarrow". An ordinary wagon could easily be converted to military use, and with four horses abreast it could keep up with cavalry and support it with firepower. Because the gun faced backwards it was well suited to laying suppressive fire on pursuing cavalry after a raid.
Makhno's forces also carried infantry on tachankas, covering about 100 km a day, and after breaking through at Peregonovka in September 1919 they travelled more than 600 km in eleven days to strike the White rear. The Russian source, noting that horse-drawn machine-gun carriages existed earlier, is cautious about calling Makhno the inventor, and says that crews more often unloaded the gun and fired it from a position. Chapayev's Red troops and Budyonny's First Cavalry Army used tachankas, and the Polish Army kept factory-made taczankas in its cavalry machine-gun squadrons until the German invasion of 1939. Isaac Babel wrote that Makhno "made the tachanka the axis of his strategy".