Green Army

The peasant rebellions of 1918-1919 had strong national and regional differences, many ideological shades, but put forward a number of the following uniform requirements ^[2] :

1. Black redistribution of communal land.
2. The end of the surplus-surplus and the state’s monopoly on grain and other food products, a return to the free local market.
3. Free advice, that is, self-government. Everywhere this meant advice without communists, and in the former Pale of Settlement Jews and Muscovites were added to the list. The main exceptions were Western Siberia and the Urals, where in 1919 there were slogans in support of the Constituent Assembly, as well as Tambov, where the Antonovites fought for it even in 1921.
4. None imposed on top of state farms and communes , often identified with the introduction of new serfdom.
5. Respect for religion, local and national customs and traditions.

These requirements, especially in the socio-economic part, were close to the Social Revolutionary ideology, which prevailed then in the Russian and Ukrainian folk, and often intellectual, milieu. This does not mean that they were an exact expression of the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which did not include the requirements of free councils, or that the Socialist Revolutionary Party led the peasant insurgent movement ^[2] .

In everyday life, the concepts of “red-green” (more gravitating to red) and “white-green” existed. The national democratic wing of the rebel movement arose in the Kuban , it included residents of the village of Razdolny , Izmailovka and other villages of the Krasnodar Territory ^[3] .

Massively green began to appear in the spring and summer of 1918, when both the White Guards and the Reds launched a forced wide mobilization. The deviators, who did not want to serve, hid in the forests (hence the name), and in response to the terror and repression in the rear of the territory controlled by one side or another, partisan detachments began to be created, which were often supported by the corresponding enemy. So partisans can be divided into conventionally red-green and white-green. ^[4] In Ukraine in 1919, "green" was also called the members of the detachments of the chieftain Zeleny , who fought alternately against the "white", "red", German troops and hetmans ^[5] . Ataman (Old Man) Bulak-Bulakhovich called himself the "Green General".

In a document of the headquarters of the Red Army in the beginning of 1921, S. S. Kamenev informed Trotsky that at the moment there was "banditry" of three kinds ^[2] .

1. Six large “centers” where the rebels enjoy the active support of the local population and can attract thousands of soldiers:
   1. Antonovism in the Tambov province - approximately 15,000 rebels;
   2. Western Siberia - 50,000-60,000 rebels;
   3. Right-bank Ukraine - about 2,500 partisans, mostly Ukrainian nationalists;
   4. Left-bank Ukraine, where under the command of Makhno there were almost 1,500 people;
   5. Central Asia - approximately 25,000-30,000 Basmachis ;
   6. Dagestan, where in the spring of 1921 there were almost 5,000 rebels.
2. Many small and large gangs throughout the country are associated with the local population, but do not enjoy its active support.
3. Criminal banditry in the proper sense of the word, the suppression of which was strongly supported by the peasants themselves.

According to the historian A. Graziosi, the Kuban should be classified as the first category, where the big uprising, which began in the summer of 1920, and the entire east coast of the Black Sea, which was partially controlled by the “green” in the spring of 1921, had just been suppressed ^[2] .

T. P. Dmitriev in the novel “Green Swell” talks about the activities of the “Green Army”, which was zealously struggling with the new government, about the dramatic events in Yuryev-Polsky and the county, as well as in the surrounding lands and in neighboring territories, played out in the summer of 1919 and later . ^[6] Dmitriev changed the names and names of settlements, but he accurately preserved the outline of events. As a result, literary and historical plagiarism appeared in 1982: a group of authors published the text of the novel in the form of historical essays, returning the real names and titles (some of the names turned out to be, however, mixed up). In the novel, Dmitriev portrayed greens as fists, deserters and bandits, but the artistic language of the work raises them to the level of heroes dissatisfied with life, and in a review given in October magazine No. 4 for 1927 it is said that Dmitriev gives a proportionally true picture of the civil war on a scale one county. ^[6]

• Tolerated, Daniil Ilyich

• Greens / V.N. Khaustov // Big Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. ed. Yu.S. Osipov . - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2004—2017.
• Greens / I.K. Fishing // Big Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
• Graziosi A. The Great Peasant War in the USSR. Bolsheviks and peasants. 1917 - 1933. - M .: ROSSPEN , 2001. - 96 p.
• The history of the civil war in the USSR, T. 4, M., 1959.
• Kakurin N.E. How the revolution fought, vol. 1, M. - L., 1925.
• Posadsky A.V. Green movement in the Civil war in Russia. Peasant front between red and white. 1918-1922 - M.: Centerpolygraph , 2018. - (The latest research on the history of Russia. Issue 7) - ISBN 978-5-227-07689-2
• Favitsky V. Green Army in the Black Sea. // " Proletarian Revolution ", 1924, No. 8-9.
• Dobranitsky M.M. Green Partisans (1918-1920). // "Proletarian Revolution", 1924, No. 8-9.

• A.V. Posadsky Nineteenth, green ... ("Green" movement during the Civil War in Russia) RFBR publication, 2016