Editing Tambov Rebellion (section)

== Background ==
[[File:1920 staff tambov green army.jpg|thumb|300px|[[Alexander Antonov (politician)|Alexander Antonov]] (centre) and his staff]]

In 1904, [[Alexander Antonov (politician)|Alexander Antonov]] was sentenced to twenty years in prison for blowing up a train, but received an amnesty from the [[Russian Provisional Government]] following the [[February Revolution]] and returned to his native [[Tambov Governorate|Tambov]], where he served in the local militia in [[Kirsanov]].{{Sfnm|1a1=Chamberlin|1y=1965|1p=437|2a1=Mayer|2y=2002|2p=390}} As the Provisional Government refused to discuss agrarian reform, he joined the [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries]].{{Sfn|Mayer|2002|p=390}}

The peasants of Tambov largely supported the [[October Revolution]], since [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s [[Decree on Land]] legalized the expropriation of property. Nevertheless, the [[Bolsheviks]] had problems in maintaining control of the governorate.{{Sfn|Scheibert|1984|pp=389–393}} Unlike in the cities, the Bolsheviks had hardly any supporters in the rural regions, where in the [[1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election|elections of 1917]] the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]] had won large majorities.{{sfn|Pipes|2011|p=374}} In March 1918, the Bolshevik delegates in Tambov were even thrown out of the local [[Soviet (council)|soviet]]s, following the ratification of the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]].{{Sfn|Scheibert|1984|pp=389–393}}

Following the outbreak of the [[Russian Civil War]], the newly established [[Russian Soviet Republic]] adopted the policy of [[war communism]], in which food for the cities was obtained by compulsory requisition from the villages, without financial compensation. This was met with the resistance of the peasant population, especially as the requisitions were often violent in nature. Likewise, the amount of grain to be requisitioned were not measured according to production. Instead, commissions gave a rough estimate based on pre-war production, so that devastation, crop failures, and population decline were not included. Before the revolution, the peasants in Tambov produced around one million [[tonnes]] of grain. Of these, one-third was [[exported]]. On the basis of these figures, which did not include the dislocations of the civil war in the countryside, a high target for the procurement of grain was set.{{sfn|Pipes|2011|p=374}} The peasants often responded by reducing their acreage, as they no longer had the economic incentive to produce surpluses, which made the confiscations ordered from above hit them even harder.{{sfn|Werth|1999|p=124}}

For the most part, the peasants had been indifferent to Bolshevik ideology,{{sfn|Pipes|2011|p=374}} but they came to hate the Bolsheviks for their forced requisitions, which had put them at the limit of survival, and for the forced levies that had created numerous fugitives.{{Sfnm|1a1=Chamberlin|1y=1965|1p=437|2a1=Mayer|2y=2002|2pp=388}} In the summer of 1919, Antonov fled to the forest and formed a gang that murdered several Bolshevik activists.{{Sfn|Mayer|2002|p=390}} This is how the first anti-Bolshevik guerrilla movements arose, made up of [[Red Army]] deserters, Socialist-Revolutionaries and peasants who resisted the searches in the forests. Their first acts were assassinating unpopular state officials and raiding state farms.{{Sfnm|1a1=Chamberlin|1y=1965|1p=437|2a1=Bookchin|2y=2004|2p=327}} They killed more than 200 government grain collectors and over the next year their forces grew steadily, growing from an initial 150 to 6,000 by early summer 1920,{{Sfnm|1a1=Chamberlin|1y=1965|1p=437|2a1=Bookchin|2y=2004|2p=327}} but that would have to wait until after the defeat of [[Anton Denikin]]'s [[White movement]] for there to be a real mass uprising.{{Sfn|Mayer|2002|p=391}} The other leaders of this force were Alexander Antonov's younger brother, {{ill|Dmitri Antonov|ru|Антонов, Дмитрий Степанович}}, and the SR {{ill|Peter Tokmakov|ru|Токмаков, Пётр Михайлович}}.{{Sfn|Bookchin|2004|p=327}}