Union of Working Peasantry (Tambov)
근로농민동맹 (탐보프)
The political organisation of the Tambov insurgents of 1920–1921, built on the surviving Socialist Revolutionary organisations. It called for the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship, the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the restoration of political and economic freedoms, and in May 1921 proclaimed the "Provisional Democratic Republic of the Tambov Partisan Region". The Russian-language source names Pyotr Tokmakov, commander of the United Partisan Army of Tambov, as its chairman; the English-language source names Alexander Antonov as its leader.
In depth
On 14 November 1920 the Tambov insurgents united all their forces in the United Partisan Army of the Tambov region and at the same time founded the Union of Working Peasantry as their political organisation. According to the Russian-language source, Tokmakov was both army commander and chairman of the Union and so headed the insurgents on the military and the political line alike; the English-language source sums up the Union's goal as the "overthrow of the government of Communist-Bolsheviks". Its manifesto of December 1920 demanded political equality for all citizens without division into classes, an end to the civil war and a lasting peace with foreign states, a Constituent Assembly elected by equal, universal, direct and secret suffrage with the right to recall deputies, provisional authorities elected meanwhile by the unions and parties that had fought the communists, and freedom of speech, the press, conscience, unions and assembly. Its economic programme called for the full implementation of the land-socialisation law of the former Constituent Assembly, supply of necessities through the cooperatives, partial denationalisation of factories while heavy industry, coal mining and metallurgy stayed in state hands, workers' control, and the participation of Russian and foreign capital in restoring the economy; it also included self-determination for the nationalities of the former empire, state credit for small farming, freedom for handicrafts and compulsory universal literacy education.
In May 1921 the Union proclaimed the "Provisional Democratic Republic of the Tambov Partisan Region", to rule until a democratically elected Constituent Assembly met. The Russian-language source dates the proclamation to 20 May at a village meeting in Karai-Saltyki, Kirsanov district, and says the peasant Shendyapin was put forward as head of the republic. According to the English-language source, the republic used the pre-revolutionary Russian flag, and the White slogan "Long live the Great United and Indivisible Russia" became one of the rebels' mottos. The same source holds that its programme gave the movement a strength and coherence other peasant uprisings lacked, but that it had no clear idea of how to replace the government. The Union disappeared when the Red Army broke the main insurgent forces in the summer of 1921.