West Siberian Uprising of 1921
1921년 서시베리아 봉기
A peasant uprising that began in Ishim district, Tyumen province, on 31 January 1921 and spread across Western Siberia. Raised against grain and seed requisitioning under the slogan "Soviets without communists", it took several towns including Tobolsk and Petropavlovsk. It is regarded as the largest of the Green uprisings in numbers and territory; its main forces were broken by the Red Army in the spring of 1921, and its last pockets disappeared at the end of 1922.
In depth
After Kolchak's regime collapsed, Siberia became a new source for grain requisitioning. Under a Sovnarkom decision of 20 July 1920, the six provinces under the Siberian Revolutionary Committee were to deliver 110 million poods of grain and Tyumen province 8,177,000 poods between 20 June 1920 and 1 March 1921, a third of the national quota of 440 million poods. Besides grain there were 37 levies in all, from meat to butter, eggs, hides and wool. Even in Ishim district, hit by a severe crop failure in 1920, the authorities took food grain and seed, and in December 1920 a seed levy was prepared to move all household seed into communal stores. On 31 January 1921 soldiers fired on peasants trying to stop seed grain being taken from the village of Chelnokovskoye, and the revolt spread across northern Ishim district and then to Tyumen, Tobolsk, Yalutorovsk, Kurgan and other districts. In February the rebels paralysed both lines of the Trans-Siberian Railway for three weeks, and they took Petropavlovsk on 14 February, Tobolsk on 21 February, Surgut on 10 March, Beryozovo on 21 March and Obdorsk on 1 April.
The most widespread slogan was "Soviets without communists"; the rebels demanded freedom of speech, assembly and association, free trade and the right to dispose of their own land and produce, and in the areas they freed they restored freely elected volost and village soviets. There was no single headquarters: several commands, such as the Siberian headquarters of the retired lieutenant Vladimir Rodin, acted separately. Estimates of their numbers range from 30,000 to 150,000; the Russian-language source says they exceeded 100,000 by April, while the English-language source considers 55,000–60,000 the most likely figure. The suppression was directed by a plenipotentiary troika including Ivan Smirnov, who reported that in a month and a half of fighting about 7,000 peasants had been killed in Ishim district and 15,000 in Petropavlovsk district. The Red Army retook Tobolsk in April and dealt the rebels a heavy blow around Aromashevo at the end of April and the beginning of May. The rebels then turned to guerrilla warfare, and in December 1922 reports stated that "banditry" had all but disappeared.