Movement of the "green" during the Civil War. Leaders of the "green" movement

Among the variety of terms that we use when we talk about the world around us, there is one that was born during the Civil War and survived to the present day, but received a completely different meaning. This movement is "green". In ancient times, the so-called rebel protests of peasants who defended their rights with weapons in their hands. Today, the so-called community of people defending the rights of nature around us.

The Russian peasantry in post-revolutionary years

The "green" movement in the years of the Civil War is a mass demonstration by peasants against the main contenders for the seizure of power in the country - the Bolsheviks, White Guards and foreign interventionists. As a rule, they saw the governing bodies of the state as free Soviets formed as a result of the independent will of all citizens and alien to any form of appointment from above.

The movement of the "green" was of great importance during the war, already because its main strength - the peasants - accounted for the majority of the country's population. From the one to whom from the opposing sides they will support, the Civil War as a whole often depended. This was well understood by all participants in the fighting and, as far as possible, tried to attract millions of peasants to their side. However, not always it was possible, and then the opposition took extreme forms.

Negative attitude of the villagers to both the Bolsheviks and the White Guards

So, for example, in the Central part of Russia the attitude of peasants to the Bolsheviks was ambivalent. On the one hand, they supported them after the famous land decree, which fixed the landlords' estates for the peasants, on the other hand, well-to-do peasants and most of the middle peasants opposed the Bolshevik food policy and the forced withdrawal of agricultural products. This duality was reflected in the Civil War.

Socially alien to the peasants, the White Guard movement also rarely found support from them. Despite the fact that in the ranks of the White Army there were many villagers, most of them were recruited by force. This is evidenced by the numerous memories of the participants of those events. In addition, White Guards often forced the peasants to perform various economic duties, not compensating for the time and effort. This also caused discontent.

Peasant uprisings caused by the surplus

The "green" movement in the Civil War, directed against the Bolsheviks, as already mentioned, was caused mainly by discontent with the policy of surplus-appropriation, which condemned thousands of peasant families to starvation. It is no accident that the main heat of passion occurred in 1919-1920, when the compulsory withdrawal of agricultural products took the broadest scale.

Among the most active speeches directed against the Bolsheviks, one can name the movement of the "green" in the Stavropol region, which began in April 1918, and the mass uprising of peasants in the Volga region that followed a year later. According to some reports, up to 180,000 people took part in it. In general, for the first half of 1019, there were 340 armed speeches that swept over twenty provinces.

The Socialist Revolutionaries and their program "The Third Way"

The "green" movement during the Civil War tried to use for political purposes representatives of the parties of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They developed a joint tactic of struggle aimed at two fronts. With their opponents, they declared both the Bolsheviks and the leaders of the white movement of A. V. Kolchak and A. I. Denikin. This program was called "The Third Way" and was, in their words, a struggle against the reaction from the left and right. However, the SRs, far from the peasant masses, could not unite around themselves significant forces.

The peasant army of Nestor Makhno

The most popular slogan proclaiming the "third way" was in Ukraine, where for a long time the peasant rebel army under the command of NI Makhno was fighting. It is noted that its main backbone was composed of well-to-do peasants who successfully farmed and traded bread.

They actively joined the redistribution of the landed estates and placed great hopes on it. As a result, it was their farms that became the objects of numerous requisitions, carried out alternately by Bolsheviks, White Guards and interventionists. Spontaneously emerged in Ukraine, the movement of "green" has become a reaction to such lawlessness.

The special character of Makhno's army was given by anarchism, the adherents of which were both the commander-in-chief himself and the majority of his commanders. In this idea, the most attractive was the theory of the "social" revolution, which destroys all state power and thus eliminates the main instrument of violence against the individual. The main position of the Makhno program was popular self-government and the rejection of any form of dictate.

The People's Movement under the leadership of A. S. Antonov

No less powerful and large-scale movement of "green" was observed in Tambov province and in the Volga region. On behalf of its leader, it received the name "Antonovschina". In these areas the peasants, in September 1917, took control of the landed estates and began to actively develop them. Accordingly, their living standards increased, and a favorable prospect opened ahead. When, in 1919, a large-scale surplus-stocking began, and people began to take away the fruits of their labor, this caused the most acute reaction and forced the peasants to take up arms. They had something to protect.

The struggle took on a special intensity in 1920, when a severe drought occurred in Tambov region, destroying most of the crop. Under these difficult conditions, what they managed to collect was withdrawn in favor of the Red Army and the townspeople. As a result of such actions of the authorities, a popular uprising broke out, covering several counties. It involved about 4,000 armed peasants and more than 10,000 people with forks and braids. Leader and inspirer of the people's movement became a member of the party of the SRs Antonov.

Defeat of Antonovschina

He, like other leaders of the "green" movement, put forward clear and simple slogans, understandable to every peasant. The main one was the call to fight the Communists to build a free peasant republic. We should pay tribute to his commanding abilities and ability to conduct a flexible guerrilla war.

As a result, the uprising soon spread to other areas and took an even larger scale. The Bolshevik government had great efforts to suppress it in 1921. For this purpose, the units withdrawn from the Denikin Front, headed by MN Tukhachevsky and GI Kotovsky, were sent to Tambov.

The modern public movement "Green"

The battles of the Civil War died down, and the events described above were gone. Much of that era has forever sunk into oblivion, but the amazing thing is that in our everyday life the term "Green movement" was preserved, although it acquired a completely different meaning. If at the beginning of the last century this phrase meant a struggle for the interests of those who cultivated the land, today the movement's participants are struggling to preserve the wet nurse-land with all its natural resources.

"Green" is the ecological movement of our time, which opposes the harmful influence of negative factors of technical progress on the environment. In our country, they appeared in the mid-eighties of the last century and for their history passed several stages of development. According to the data published at the end of last year, the number of environmental groups in the all-Russian movement reaches thirty thousand.

The most important non-governmental organization

Among the most famous - the movement "Green Russia", "Motherland", "Green Patrol" and a number of other organizations. Each of them has its own characteristics, but all of them are united by common tasks and the massive enthusiasm that is inherent in their members. In general, this sector of society exists in the form of a non-governmental organization. It is a kind of third sector, which does not belong either to state structures or to private business.

The political platform of representatives of modern "green" movements is based on a constructive approach to the restructuring of the state's economic policy with a view to harmoniously combining the interests of people and their environment. In such matters, there can be no compromises, because on their decision depends not only the material well-being of people, but also their health and life.